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As I finished my rant, I turned to Lily, who had a small smirk on her lips.
“You have a crush on Luca,” she accused, wagging her finger at me.
“Wha- have you not been listening to me?” I protested.
“Oh my god. You have it bad!” As Lily squealed the words, she began to snicker so loud she let out a large snort, forcing her into an even larger fit of laughter. “You don’t want to break up because then you’d stop spending all of this alone time withhandsome, sexyLuca…” She pondered her thoughts a bit more, and I could see the proverbial lightbulb go off in her head.
“I think you like Luca. I think you like him a lot, and I think you’re scared that Luca doesn’t return those feelings. You’re worried that if you end this, he’ll revert back to his playboy, womanizing lifestyle… You’re scared that if he doesn’thaveto be with you… he won’t be.” I furrowed my eyebrows as I downed the rest of my coffee, desperately looking for all the reasons that Lily was wrong. I wanted to tell her to fuck right off with her outrageous –and slightly insulting– opinion.
But Lily was right, and I fucking knew it.
I knew the real reason I didn’t want to end this, and I was too much of a coward to say it. I was scared that if we ended this, then Luca would have free reign to move on – go back to partying. He would forget about all of our fun dates, the intimate conversations swapping stories about our families, the late-night mac and cheese dinners – the sex. He wouldn’t be forced to hang out with boring, pedestrian, predictable Georgia “Sassy” Dubois.
Suddenly all of my insecurities came rushing back, and I felt like a volcano about to explode. After a few more moments of silence, I could see Lily eyeing me carefully, like I was a bomb about to go off.
“Wow, you really do like Luca, don’t you?” She said finally. “You do realize that you don’t actuallyhaveto break up, right? Like, Isabelle can’t stop you two from dating,for real, if that’s what you both want? Hell, she might even like it. It’s been great for the team.”
Lily paused again before adding, “It’s okay towantthat, Georgia.”
I looked up at her as a small tear fell from my eye. I tried to wipe it away as quickly as I could, but I knew Lily had noticed it. “But what if Luca wants to break up?”
“And what if he doesn’t?” Lily countered. “You won’t know unless you ask him.” I scoffed at that.
Ask Luca what he wanted? Sounded like a good way to be reminded of how fake this relationship was.
“Thanks for listening, Lil, but I gotta get back out there. More scenarios to run with Mel.” I left the room, still internally sulking.
* * *
Luca
As I entered the Silverstone paddock on that Thursday morning, I felt completely ablaze with joy. The last two weeks hanging out with Georgia, both in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix and then in Monaco for a week of rest, had been a blast. We had put aside our differences and decided just to enjoy each other’s company. Hell, even my relationship with Henri was starting to heal. Instead of making snide remarks about me and his sister, we opted to play the new FIFA game on his PlayStation or just sit around and drink beer.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but just being around Georgia made me a better driver. My drive in Canada had been incredible. From the back of the grid to 5th place, I felt incredibly proud.
“Luca!” I heard Henri call out, pulling me from my thoughts. As I turned towards my teammate, I saw him motioning towards Francesco’s door. “Francesco wants to see you in his office.”
I nodded and walked towards my team principal’s office, giving it a couple of knocks before entering. Inside was Francesco sitting with my father, chatting away about the good old days of racing.
“Good morning, Francesco.” I gave my father a quick hug before sitting down next to him on the purple couch in the corner of the room.
“Luca, as you know, Helios Sunglasses and several other sponsors have come through with some multi-year deals.” I nodded in response, unsure as to where Francesceso was going with this. He had already announced the deals back at the factory last week.
“So, you have fulfilled your end of the bargain, and Hermes thanks you for that. As a reward, we’re working with Valkyrie to strategically see how we can get a jump start on ending your relationship with Georgia Dubois. I know we had originally said we’d do this all year, but we don’t see a need for that now.” Francesco said the words with such pride and gusto, as if he was doing me a favor.
“Wha- no!” I blurted out. “It’s much too soon. I mean, people will think we only did it as a PR stunt.” I felt like in that moment, my heart was beating faster than it did during races and panic started to settle in my chest.
I was finally making progress with Georgia, and this would ruin it all. This would give her the out she needed to leave me. I knew it was petty that I wanted her to keep pretending to date me so that she had to hang out with me, but I was immensely enjoying my time with her, and I didn’t care that it wasn’t genuine – it was better than nothing.
The more time I spent with Georgia, the more opportunities I had to show her that I was a changed man –that I wanted to be a changed man for her.
“Absolutely not,” I continued. “It would ruin my image. You want me to be this refined playboy, and I don’t see how breaking up with my devoted, loving girlfriend during the summer break is going to help my image. No! I refuse! Everyone will just blame me anyway – and then I’ll be the villain who broke up with Formula 1’s sweetheart! If she actually loses the championship, then… they’ll blame that on me, too.
And what are we going to do about the BBC interview next week? Think how awkward it’ll be for the team when the episode on us airsafterwe’ve broken up.” As the words kept tumbling out of my mouth, I knew I was starting to sound like a love sick fool, but I didn’t care if they figured out why I was so upset.
“Whoa, whoa, Flash,” my father said, attempting to stop my tirade. “First of all, no one is forcing either of you to leave this relationship. We’re just giving you both the choice to end this. I mean, a few months ago, you were both fighting tooth and nail to stop this; we didn’t think either of you would care. We still want you to do the BBC interview because it’s about dating on the grid. We’ll just ask for the questions to be less about you two – and more about dating someone while you’re an F1 driver.”
That’s so stupid, I thought to myself.
