Foggy Mirrors | Max Verstappen

Chapter 11 - THE PRESENT

Once every year the time of the summer break came. For this time, always the first week of the break, they came back to always the same place. It was a family tradition which never got lost in between busy schedules or hectic lives.

In this short period of time, they were no strangers in a fight for a prize, who used to be somebody they knew all too well, they were their parent's children, pretending that time has never left its mark on them. It was like turning back time to recharge at a better place.

For Max, the thought of turning back time was so overly pretentious, he hated coming back. After all, these people from three families came together once a year to lie to themselves. But time had changed them all, since Michael's accident, the Schumachers weren't coming anymore and also their parents had stopped. By now it was just them, but they pretended as if that wasn't the case.

In this universe, his parents acted civil towards each other and Leanne spoke to him like an old friend from their childhood. Josh was just somewhere around the corner and Michael never had the accident. They were all here, even though by now the house is nothing less than an overexpansive memory they tried to keep alive.

It didn't matter than they've been fighting for a win on track mere hours ago. In this world, in this place, they're forever fifteen. Their careers ahead of them and their dreams still a tiny little bit too far away to grasp.

Having watched it so many times, Max shouldn't be so mesmerised by it, shouldn't pay as much attention but he never managed to look away. It seemed as if Leanne changed the moment she stepped onto the property. Her voice quickened with constant underlying excitement. Suddenly, she's not thinking twice before saying something. Her words brutally honest and her movements had nothing sexual to themselves any longer. The fear of getting lines disappeared in the favour of ugly grimaces to express her opinion even without having to even utter a word.

Max tried to find words for her behaviour so often but all he could come up with was that Leanne was simply fifteen again, even though there was a rest of natural grace and feminine body language she didn't held as she was actually fifteen. It was beautiful and worrisome at the same time. If this place seemed to turn back time for Leanne, if it made her the Leanne she was as she was fifteen, what promised him that it wasn't turning him into the Max from back then. The Max from back then, who had fallen in love with Leanne in the summer before they turned sixteen.

Watching Leanne so young and unbothered again he liked to look at Isa, wondering if he saw the same but if she did she never said so and Max would never ask.

Maybe it was her way of protecting herself and here on holiday, he belonged to the inner circle allowing him to see the real Leanne. It was a sight for sore eyes. He wondered if he changed as well. If his body language relaxed as soon as he arrived, if his muscle memory was telling his body to adapt without him knowing. If this was all real or just an illusion.

This place was heaven, but it was also hell. To much time spend here might cause the want to never leave again. To be imprisoned in this time capsule.

Leanne was hanging after her thoughts since they've arrived in Saint Tropez. It was weird as if they've turned back time again, as if Josh would come from the house any moment only to complain about how the meat was grilled and steal someone's already taken seat. It was hard on her to know that it will never again happen.

The way Isa behaved, almost as love drunken as back then, but the man she was looking at had changed. From a good-looking Dutch boy, two years her senior to a married Mexican, almost nine years older.

Leanne wondered how even the little crush on Max, Isa had years ago had moved on while she was still stuck. Same old, same old. Maybe she had never had the chance to move on, to search for happiness because happiness had literally hit her with a shovel over the head already years ago and she never noticed. Was it stupid and naïve to think that? That maybe Max was always the one for her and with spreading her wings to see the world, she had almost lost what had always been waiting for her at home.