LOVE OR RIDE | LESTAPPEN

chapter fourteen - bad decisions

Charles
The day of the race

After Max runs out of the hotel room, I take the phone in my hand and immediately understand what his unintelligible screams meant. It's long after the hour I was supposed to show up at the track. A lot of people called me, and I don't feel good. For the rest, I don't feel like this, I haven't felt good in a long time, and yet I have to get up and pretend, smiling.

I get out of bed reluctantly, cursing the race in my head. For the first time in a long time, I slept without waking up. It may only be a few hours, but I feel better than usual. Since I've been having nightmares, having trouble falling asleep and waking up at night a thousand times, I can't feel rested. I keep taking coffee, energy drinks and other crap to stay awake. I pretend to be full of energy while inside I'm crying, fed up with everything.

And it's not like I'm like this every day. I can't take the drugs only on race weekends, because they disrupt my concentration and don't make it easy to get up in the morning. At first, when I took them, I felt sluggish, which made my results terrible. I've decided to quit, which is not a good idea as far as my health is concerned, but I can't let anyone know that I'm taking some pills and because of them I might be a bad driver. I can't do anything else but Formula.

Today I exceptionally managed to get those few hours of sleep, so I'm proud of myself and feel better mentally than usual. It's going to be a good race, even though I'm starting far from P1.

I dress quickly and run out of the room. I put the keys in my pocket to give them back to him only after the race and run down the stairs and into the garage. I get into the car, ignoring another ringing of my phone. Yes, I know, I'm late! Annoyed, I mute my smartphone, pulling out onto the street with a squeal of tires. It only takes me a few minutes to get there, and when I run breathlessly into the garage, everyone looks at me amused.

"What?" I ask, taking my suit from Carlos.

"You have a T-shirt on your left side." Sainz points to his shirt.

"Tough luck, God." I wave my hand in the air.

"But it's a Red Bull jersey." he adds amused.

I curse under my breath, quickly removing the clothes I wore in the morning. I don't have time to explain, I'll do it later, as long as I can find something sensible in my head, because for now it's blank. I change into my overalls and head to the track with my teammate. We wish each other good luck and get into the car. I have a good feeling, I must be able to win in the end.

"Formation lap in ten seconds." I hear a voice on the radio.

Just as I thought, everything goes according to plan. After the race starts, I manage to climb three places higher at the first turn. In addition, this time Ferrari's strategy is quite good, so I'm hoping to be at least on the podium to score some points for the team. After another dozen or so laps, I'm ahead of the next drivers, as I went down to the box earlier for a tire change than they did. Smiling, I drive the car behind Perez, who is also about to pit in a moment.

This is also what happens this way I find myself on P2. I could try to chase Verstappen, but he's too far away, and I'm anxious to get those points, so I'm not going to try to make myself look bad. Sometimes it's better to have an inferior place without the risk of losing it. I know how Ferrari needs a good start, which me and Carlos want to give them.

Suddenly all the adrenaline runs out of me as I go straight. Sleep returns and I feel terribly bad. Like the days where I didn't sleep a wink all night. I feel a headache, shortness of breath in my chest, and all I can see are black dots in front of my eyes. I'm not able to do anything, feeling damn weak. I don't even know where I'm going. Suddenly I feel a searing pain, a tugging, and silence. The blissful, dreamlike silence I've wanted to experience for a long time.