Respect and Memories

12 - RB6

The driver slowly walked in her thoughts until she reached her car and a wave of dizziness came over her; she thought maybe the no sleep finally caught up to her.

Just as she unlocked her car and opened the door, footsteps came from behind her.

"Drama queen? Really?"

The Mercedes driver let out a huge sigh, threw her things in her car, and turned around to face her brother.

"Don't do this here, Milo," she says softly, knowing the other drivers could come out of the restaurant any minute now.

"No, we are. You keep doing this!"

"Me?" She furrows her brows and crossed her arms across her chest.

"Yes you! You blame me for what happened 11 years ago! When are you ever going to stop letting yourself be so miserable?" Milo walks towards her.

"Do you not have any another argument other than that one?" Emrys asks, rolling her eyes.

"I have apologized. You were the one who shut me out. I did nothing wrong, I simply did what I was told to do and I'm sorry if you can't handle the fact that someone else loves doing what you love too," he yells.

Emrys scoffs and turns to walk away when Milo grabs her arm to turn her around. She yanks it out of his grasp immediately.

"Just talk to me!" Milo ruffles his hair and holds her hand in his. "You're my little sister, Ace."

Emrys pulls her hand out of his like it was on fire. "You have no right to call me that."

"Everyone waited for you. Everyone did everything they could, just for you!" Milo started yelling again, this time with desperation. "Mom spent all night and all day taking care of you when you wouldn't wake up!"

He pointed at her throughout his whole sentence. Voice cracks scattered in the air. "I prayed and prayed that one day I could have my little sister back, but when you woke up, all you thought about was this anger and sadness!"

"Do you know how much I blamed myself? What I went through after? And then you destroyed the last ounce of hope we had left when you decided to leave us!"

A tear rolled down his face as he continued. "How could you be so heartless?"

"Heartless? Is that what you think I am?" She walks towards Milo who nods. "Mom stayed up all night and day to take care of me? Is that what she told you? Because I woke up from that coma with no one by my side but aunt Lev! When I asked Aunt Lev where everyone was, guess the shock I had when I heard they never came because they were too busy watching you race!"

"Supporting you, when I had no one behind me on that track! The amount of times mom pushed me to quit so that you could take my place, nothing I ever did was good enough! No amount of trophies, no amount of sponsors, and no matter how fast I went, you guys always doubted me! Every single thing I ever did, you guys hated on every piece of it!"

Milo sighs and grabs her shoulder, "I know how you feel, but nobody hated you. You can't just sit there and blame us for something we never did!"

"But you don't know how it feels! And you never will!" Emrys yells, frustratingly, shrugging his hand off her shoulder. "You haven't experienced what I've experienced! You defended mom every single time! I cried and begged and pleaded to get back into racing, I told everyone how it made me feel and what I was going through!"

"No one cared! All because you were the one they wanted to feel proud of. The golden child that did everything right."

Tears fell down her face and her legs and arms felt weak. "I recovered on my own, no thanks to any of you. I spent nights and days in that hospital bed where I thought I was gonna go crazy!"

"You didn't even want to be in F1! So why did you feel the need to ruin my chances of racing for something you never even gave the time of day?"

Milo goes to speak when she stops him. "I tried. I tried so hard, because you can't hate someone who's family right?"

"But everyone tossed me to the side as if I was nothing because finally it wasn't the unwanted child on those podiums, it was you."

"I just—" He stops mid-sentence to collects his thoughts. "I just don't understand."

"Let me break it down in simple terms for you, Milo." She goes back to her car, takes off her jacket, throws it in, and walks back towards him while rolling up her sleeve.

"This—" Emrys points towards the scar on her left arm as Milo's face pales. "This is my reminder of the night everything went wrong. Because after that accident, my own mother wouldn't come see her daughter that was lying in the hospital, grasping onto her dying breath, trying to stay alive."

"And my brother, who was my best friend and the person I looked up to the most, abandoned me and took my dreams with him."

"Stop! Did you ever even stop to think that I was in that crash too?" Milo jabbed a finger into his chest. "You make it seem like you were the only one affected by it!"

"I did think about you and how you were beside me. But is that really ever the same? The way I was treated compared to you, it made me wish I would've died in that wreck."

"So yeah, I do blame you." Emrys wipes her tears and looks directly into Milo's red teary eyes. "And yeah maybe I am miserable, but don't think for a second that I won't make this season just as miserable for you as I've been for the past 11 years."

She gets in her car and pulls out of the parking space. A wave of heat passing over her as she sees most of the grid standing within hearing distance of where her and her brother were just arguing.

Emrys doesn't look back anymore as she drives off into the distance and back to her hotel room.

She took a shower and immediately fell off to a deep slumber, hoping that by the next morning, the painful pounding in her head would cease.