Here With Me - A Formula 1 Story

I miss you, I'm sorry

Part 2

Charles POV

5 weeks later

It's been 48 days since I last saw Lydia in person. Seven weeks since I last looked into those beautiful cerulean eyes filled with tears and made the biggest mistake of my life. I should have never let my PR team convince me that the best choice for everyone was to end things with her. My intention was never to make it forever, I really did just want it to be a break while I figured out how to handle the media and social media backlash. But my team had other ideas and I will always regret letting them control me.

And to make matters worse, I didn't just lose her...I lost Ezra too. He hasn't spoken to me or Arthur since everything went down between me and his mom. And I don't blame him, not one bit. I don't deserve either of them in my life, yet I can't seem to let them go. It's crazy how quickly I grew attached to each of them and how much I miss them. 

I'm constantly checking up on them even if they don't know it. Luckily, Max and Lando feel sorry for me so they keep me in the loop whenever they talk to her or Ezra, which is almost everyday. I've always been a jealous man, and knowing that she's giving her attention to two of my closest friends drives me crazy most days. It also doesn't help that I check her social media accounts daily on my secret account and have to see her living her best life in San Diego. With Jeremy...

Max and Lando tell me at least once a day when I start getting in my head that nothing is going on between the two of them, but I'm not convinced. A couple of weeks ago they went on a weekend trip to Yosemite together, just the two of them. In the photos she posted, they looked close...too close. It took everything in me to not message her demanding to know what's going on between the two of them. She never responds to my messages anyways.

What she does instead is post cryptic posts in response to whenever I message her. It drives me crazy that she won't just talk to me, but at least she's communicating in some way and she has yet to block me on my secret account. In some twisted way that makes me happy, knowing that maybe she doesn't completely hate me. There's also our playlist that I made us in Maranello. We both have continued to put songs on it, silently communicating what we want to tell each other but can't.

Her song choices always seem to splinter my heart, but I'll take anything she gives me. At this point I'm living off the crumbs she's leaving me. It's pathetic, but I'm so deeply in love with her that I'll take anything she's willing to give me. I'm currently listening to the most recent song she posted just last night. 'I miss you, I'm sorry' by Gracie Abrams has been playing on repeat in my headphones the whole flight to Texas. I've been hyper-fixated on it, trying to figure out what Lydia is trying to tell me. Is she telling me she misses me? That she still loves me? I hope so.

"Mate, why do you keep listening to the same song over and over?" Lando asks me, shaking me from my thoughts. I take out my headphones and turn to look at him, and understanding comes over his face. He knows about the playlist, and he's constantly telling me to not read too much into the songs she adds but it's hard not too.

"Does she know I'm going to be there?" I ask him, wondering if she's trying to tell me something before we see each other. Based on Lando's face, she has no clue I'm also going to Austin City Limits and my hope that she's trying to tell me something fades causing me to frown.

Max, Kelly and Lando brought up going to Austin City Limits before the Austin GP next weekend. At first I had no desire to go, having wanted to spend my birthday in Monaco sequestered to my apartment before flying in for the GP, since I couldn't be with the one person I wanted to be with. But when they mentioned both Lydia and Ezra would be going I changed my mind. For the first time in weeks, I felt excited and have been anxious ever since, counting down the minutes until I saw her again.