All the Way - an F1 story

18

09 July , 2021
📍Various Locations, England

"We're gonna go see Lando's parents."

Calina looked up from the email she was writing to Lindsay, trying to register what he was saying. "Tonight? He wants me to come to see his parents?"

"Yeah. His parents heard—well, I told them you were staying over so they told him to invite you." Okay, so Max was gonna be there. It wasn't just her.

"Yeah, I'll come. I just have some meetings, and a call."

"Don't worry. We're leaving here at, like, five. You've got lots of time," Max replied, sitting beside her at the table. "What's this?"

"Uh, my contract negotiations," she chuckled, lowering her laptop screen after each of his attempts to raise it to peek at her emails. "Get out!"

"So? Will you be there to piss everyone off for many more years to come or what?"

"Yeah, I'm going to Mercedes."

Max nearly choked on his orange juice. "Are you fucking serious!"

"No, oh my god, you idiot! We all know George is. Jesus, how fucking gullible are you?"

"Well how am I supposed to know when you sound so serious?"

"We're only planning who we're gonna talk to," Calina said, not giving too many details. Marco was at the top of her list, but others had reached out to her. Some teams in Formula E, Ferrari's endurance racing team, even Zak spoke to her, back in France. He wanted her back at McLaren, offering Indy once more to her.

"That's good, no? You have any ideas on what you want to do?"

"Dear God, no."

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"Wait, wait, wait. So, he invited you to dinner? At his house?" Elara asked on the other side of the FaceTime call.

"Yeah."

"With his parents, too?" Sophie asked. All Calina could see of her was her back, as she was most likely in Ivelle's studio, coming up with some new project.

"Okay, Max is going to be there too," Calina said, trying to remain quiet as she sifted through her clothing options. The two were only downstairs, and she could hear them screaming at each other as gunshots emitted from the video game displayed on TV. "Guys, holy shit. It's dinner. I didn't think it was this big of a deal."

"No, Elara's making it a big deal," Sophie huffed, finally putting all her attention on the call they were having.

"Well, I'm sorry. We don't know what the fuck is going on in that whole situation. For all we know they could be dating again!"

"We never dated in the first place!"

"So three years ago? Was that not dating, because that's what it looked like to me."

"Please, El, you couldn't even call that friends-with-benefits," Sophie interjected.

"Okay, whatever. Just don't–oh, for fuck's sake! He shouldn't be calling–" Elara's square went black, and it was just Sophie and Calina left now.

"Okay, ignoring whatever the fuck just happened. Honestly, Calì, you're his friend right now. Tu parles à Matteo maintenant, alors peut-être tu ne devrais pas essayer quelque chose avec Lando." Sophie sighed, bringing what she was working on to the table her phone was standing on. "Je sais que tu veux, mais en ce moment, ce serait risqué."