Drive to Survive

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Miami was big.

There was no other way to describe it, really. As they walked into the paddock on the Thursday, everything was brighter and louder and just bigger. Dylan hadn't been to the USA before but everything seemed very quintessentially American.

Today was media day and Dylan was shadowing Max with a camera, following him around his commitments to make a 'Media Day in the Life' for the Red Bull TikTok and YouTube. She was a bit uncertain about it as it was the first day she'd really hung out with him since they'd landed on Monday night.

The rest of the week had been granted as free time so, as usual, she'd been hanging out with Charles, Carlos, and Lando, who had all arrived on Tuesday morning straight from Monaco. They'd immediately come to her hotel room to catch up and they'd all stayed up to the early hours of the morning, ordering room service snacks and giggling over Charles' golfing losses.

She'd faced quite the interrogation about her time in Hasselt but she'd managed to vaguely deflect for the most part, showing them the official content she'd got, rather than diving into details about her time with Max. Carlos was still grumbling about how she'd been forced to go there but she falsely reassured him that she'd kept her distance.

Arguably, she should have told them how the dynamic had changed between Max and herself. Yet, she felt like any attempt to do so could spark the anger of her cousin again, who had been very firm about Max not saying another word to her. She also didn't want to give Carlos any hint about her hidden feelings for Max as that would just be disrespectful to everything he'd done in defence of her. How could she expect him to understand when she could barely wrap her head around it?

On Wednesday, Dylan had enjoyed a lovely day out with Lewis, George, and Carmen to one of the nearby baseball stadiums. She was so thankful they'd invited her out because talking with Lewis always made her feel better. She had a sneaking feeling that was the reason he'd invited her in the first place; he knew she'd been in Hasselt for the last week. Thankfully, he didn't ask any detailed questions but his check in was still appreciated.

In the evening, a bunch of the other drivers joined them for dinner at a seafood restaurant. Dylan ended up sat between Pierre and Charles and she delighted over hearing all their childhood stories. Carlos had told her before that the pair had been friends for years but it was touching to actually see the bond and to see how their different journeys had brought them separately to F1. Coincidentally, they were also both massive flirts and they spent ages testing out all their best pickup lines on her, much to her hilarity. Clearly, Frenchmen were the cheesiest in romance.

The only downside of the entire night was that someone in the restaurant had sneakily taken photos of the group, and it was once again circulating around F1 Twitter about whether she was dating Charles or Pierre. It was definitely not what she needed when she was trying to keep a lower profile but what's done was done, and the advice from Greg was just to keep her head down and not comment on anything. It had been hard to ignore the string of disappointed text messages from her dad that evening.

Thursday brought a new day and the paddock was already bursting with people. While Max went into a meeting with Christian, Dylan sat down at a table to catch up with Hunter who she hadn't seen since Italy.

"How was your week away, doll?"

"Yeah, not bad, thanks. I got used to it, it's almost weird to be back here."

Hunter laughed, "Fancy permanently moving to the land of windmills and tulips?"

"We were in Belgium, you twat." She smacked him on the arm, rolling her eyes, "Anyway, how was Mexico?"