Rêveuse

Chapter 16.

2023

It took guts to tell our parents that we broke up. We ignored it for as long as we could. But Christmas was approaching, and we would celebrate like we always had, and we realized we couldn't really pretend for the holidays when we'd be surrounded.

The one person even scarier to tell was Arthur, and we worried he would hear it from someone else first. Luckily, the season was over which meant Arthur would be spending time at home in Monaco where people didn't know. Evie knew, she told Max who was shocked and thought that we were pranking him or something. Pierre knew, he didn't tell anyone. Joris, Marta, Riccardo and Andrea knew. They knew not to talk.

As time went by, I realized I actually had to move out, because Charles was about to come back and be home a lot until the season started again. I still didn't have an apartment, but I was packing up my stuff little by little. Charles still had some things going on in other places in the world, so I still had some time. We talked on the phone occasionally. I called to ask him where we put something, or we called to inform someone of something, or I just called to tell him what came in the mail for him. During one of these calls we just decided to tell our families separately, which I was okay with, because that means telling two people rather than three plus his brother's girlfriends.

So I got some stuff I wanted to put into my parents' basement to save some space, and I drove it up there. I still didn't like visiting that house, and I sat in the car for at least ten minutes just contemplating if I couldn't just call to tell them we broke up and then book a plane ticket anywhere else. But eventually I got out of the car and I walked in with my stuff.

"Salut chérie, nous ne t'attendions pas," Hi, sweetie, we weren't expecting you, my Mom said when I walked in and she came up to me to kiss my cheeks, then she looked at the box I was holding. "Organisez-vous l'appartement ?" Are you organizing the apartment? she asked.

"Oui, en quelque sorte, as-tu de la place pour ça au sous-sol ?" Yes, kind of, do you have space for this in the basement?

"Bien sûr, emmène-le là-bas," Of course, just take it down there, she replied.

I smiled, walked past her and down the stairs into the basement. There were still some moving boxes with their things from Sweden, along with some furniture. Some of Jules' stuff, because luckily they didn't take all of his things and remake the room completely. The room he used to have still kind of looks the way he did when it was his, but it no longer had his posters, pictures and all the clothes in the closet. All of his clothes and stuff were stuffed in the basement.

I put the box down and I saw a box with Jules' name on it. I opened it up and I looked through it, seeing what they had left in the box. They had left some Motorsport photos he had framed in there, along with some medals they couldn't find space for. There was a photo of him and Lorenzo in there. I looked at it for a little bit. They were like 13 or 14 in the picture and they had their arms around each other and posed next to some racetrack.

I heard my Mom come down the stairs, so I turned around and held the picture up, "As-tu pensé à donner ça à Lorenzo ? Je pense qu'il l'apprécierait." Have you considered giving this to Lorenzo? I think he'd appreciate it.

"Peut-être pour Noël," Maybe for Christmas, Mom replied with a smile. "Peut-être que tu devrais acheter une unité de stockage avec Charles, ton père connaît un gars qui peut t'obtenir un très bon prix," maybe you should get a storage unit with Charles, your Dad knows a guy who can get you a really good price, she said.

"Cela ne sera pas nécessaire," That won't be necessary, I replied as I shook my head.

"Ce n'est pas un problème, vous aurez plus de choses à stocker au fil du temps et vous collectionnerez plus de choses, ça ne peut pas faire de mal d'y jeter un œil." It's no problem, you will have more things to stuff away as time goes on and you collect more stuff, it can't hurt to look into it.