roadside romance
leila ouahabi x reader
summary: when leila’s car breaks down, you come to the rescue
words: 2037
notes: this is an ode to british weather and hot mechanics. i know nothing about cars but i learnt something while writing this!!!!
this was requested btw 🫡
It’s just fucking inconvenient. A closure on the motorway means that they have to take a detour down winding, country roads. And Leila has a sneaking suspicion that her car is going to stop functioning at any given minute now that the blinking, red light has become a permanent fixture on her dashboard.
Leila had looked at her friends apprehensively the minute the light had appeared, but Ona didn’t care and Laia was too wrapped up in posting their day trip to Blackpool on her Instagram to offer any worthwhile advice.
So, lacking expertise and a good enough grasp of English geography to find a nearby mechanic, Leila had carried on with their journey. It was only another hour to Manchester after all.
Which leads them to now, stranded on the side of the road. Laia and Leila stood outside of the car, while Ona spreads out as she naps in the backseat, none the wiser to the situation they have landed themselves in.
“Can’t you just fix it?” Laia asks her friend as they stare at the bonnet helplessly. “You seem like you know how to fix cars.”
Leila places an uncertain hand on the shiny metal, wondering if she even knows how to get the bonnet open. “That’s Mapi, not me. I have no idea what to do.”
They try to call someone, but there is no service and no pavement to walk down the road to see if elsewhere has a few more bars.
Frankly, it’s so unlucky that this has happened that Laia and Leila both have to hold in their laughter, not wanting the other to think they don’t understand how bad the situation actually is. Because, being stuck in a foreign country with no service and no knowledge about the inner-workings of a car is quite comical. It would be a great scene of a movie.
It’s Ona, when she returns to the land of the living, who comes up with a solution.
The defender gets out of the car, joining her friends as they sit on the grass verge adjacent to the road. “We’ve just got to wait here and look like three damsels in distress until someone drives past and helps us.” Though Leila knows she could probably think of something better if she really put her mind to it, she agrees to Ona’s plan, too lazy to do anything other than wallow in her misery. Now she’s going to have to take her car to the mechanic, and she hates doing things like that here because she has to drag Hempo with her to translate strong Mancunian accents into normal, more understandable English.
…
“Yeah, I’m coming. The motorway’s just chock-a-block and so I’ve taken a back route,” you tell your impatient sister, who is annoyed that you are late to her daughter’s birthday party. “Don’t be angry with me, be angry with the M6.” She chides you for your tardiness anyway, and you internally curse her for moving to Blackpool. It’s not like she’s a ballroom dancing fan or anything.
The countryside looks miserable when it’s just your car zipping down the empty roads, and it doesn’t help that the grey sky above makes you think it’s going to rain. While you have lived in Manchester your whole life and strive to not get bummed out by the weather, it makes you a little annoyed that the country can’t get its act together. You wish you had the power to teleport to Spain or something.
You pity anyone who is stuck outside as it begins to drizzle.
…
“Can we get in the car now?” Ona whines, completely going back on her plan after feeling the droplets of rain hit the top of her head. “I don’t want to get wet.”
“Please, Leila,” Laia adds. She hopes to sway her friend's adamance to stay where they can be seen, in case a helicopter flies over and lands in a nearby field to offer their aid (which seems more likely than someone driving past at this point).
“No, it’s only a bit of rain,” she tells her friends. A low rumble of thunder echoes in the fields. Ona and Laia raise their eyebrows. “Fine. You two be pathetic. I’ll stay here, doing the saving.”
“Our hero,” Laia replies sarcastically, chasing after Ona as she sprints to the car. “Have fun getting wet!”
It begins to chuck it down.
When a black Ford pulls up, a bit further up the road, coming from the direction they were heading in, and you get out, Leila finds that getting soaked has become worth it.
“Are you alright?” you shout to her, crossing the road and walking along the grass verge to get a better look at what is happening.
“My car is not working!” Leila shouts back.
You frown, approaching the brunette with concern. She has had to sit in the rain so that someone notices her. You’re a sympathetic person.
“Hi,” Leila says shyly as you help her up, wiping the water from her eyes so that she can see you properly.
“Hi.” You give her a once-over (solely for the purpose of checking she’s okay), and then turn to her car. “What’s wrong with it?” She squints at the sound of your strong accent, and you flush red, embarrassed. “What is wrong with your car?” you repeat with more clarity.
“I don’t know.”
“Was there a red light on the dash?” Leila’s vindication comes out in a muttered Spanish swear, before she nods and follows you down the verge to the road. “Can you pop the bonnet? I’ll give it a look.”
And, while you are doing that, Leila is giving you a look. Along with Ona and Laia.
“Es guapa,” an enviably dry Ona comments to her friends as Leila settles in the driver’s seat. You have instructed her to stay put for a moment while you puzzle at the state of her engine, wanting to know what is wrong before you explain it to the pretty woman you have found on the side of the road.
“Y lesbiana,” Laia points out as you tie your sopping hair up into a bun. Your t-shirt is so soaked that it is no longer of any use, so you pull it up over your head, getting to work in just your bra after wringing out enough water to fill a swimming pool. On your wrist is a bracelet from a Pride event you were dragged to by your friend the other day. You are secretly hoping Leila notices it. “Lei, dile tu nombre. Coquetea con ella.”
“Sí, pregúntale cuál es el problema.”
Leila scoffs, unimpressed with herself at how easily they have picked up on her attraction to you.
“Va. Es de Manchester, también.”
“Guapa, local, y lesbiana. Es perfecta.”
“No sé…” Leila starts, undecided as to whether she should let them convince her she has a chance or not.
Just when Laia and Ona are about to list more of your enticing physical qualities, you appear by the door, knocking on the window to tell her to open it.
“Good to see you’ve dried off a bit,” you joke, feeling as though you are so drenched that you will never be dry again. Leila blushes, but you are unsure whether it's because your joke is terrible or because her friends in the backseat have squashed together in the middle so that they can see what’s happening. You clear your throat. “So it’s a coolant leak. Took me a minute to realise half the water on the ground was actually your coolant and not the rain, but I figured it out eventually! The radiator’s hose clamps were damaged and, obviously, they’ve failed…”
But Leila isn’t listening to you telling her what is wrong with her car, because her friends are whispering in Spanish about how good you look topless. And she is inclined to agree with them.
It is only when you stop talking and the white noise of your ramble is no longer present that she realises what has happened, and she snaps out of staring at you. “Perdón, please could you repeat that?” It’s a phrase she has become very accustomed to, after all.
You laugh, and Leila likes the sound of it very much. “There was a leak, but I can fix it for you. If you’d like?”
“Yes!” Ona answers for her, making Leila practically jump out of her skin.
At Leila’s apparent hesitance, you remember you never introduced yourself to the three women in need of a car mechanic. It’s handy that that is exactly what you do for a living. “Fuck, sorry. I’m Y/n.” You hold out your hand for her to shake, and ignore the tingles where your skin meets hers. “I’ll need, like, an hour to do it, but I can. I’m a mechanic.”
“Es tan perfecta,” Laia giggles, poking Leila to remind her to tell you her name too.
“My name is Leila. I am not a mechanic, but can you… teach me?”
It’s an excuse to watch you fix her car.
You both know it.
“Yeah, sure. I have an umbrella in my car, and I’ll need to get my toolkit and stuff. I’ll bring it over, and then you won’t get wet.”
“I already am.”
You blush, though you know it’s probably not what she meant. All three of them speak with strong Spanish accents, reminding you of your grandmother.
…
It takes slightly longer than expected to sort out the clamps, but you don’t mind having an excuse to not go to a little kid’s birthday party. You love your niece, but the thought of thirty hyper five-year-olds running around and begging you to play with them makes you gulp. You’d rather arrive when the guests have left and your niece has crashed from her inevitable sugar-high.
Leila stands beside you as you work, holding the umbrella above both of your heads. You are too focused on your task to see her check you out every so often, but she has left the car door open so you can hear the eager encouragement from her friends. Ona even takes a picture because the scene is so hilarious.
“What does this do?” Leila quizzes as you finish up, pointing at the engine and enjoying the way you answer so effortlessly. “And this? And that?”
You wipe the sweat (and rain) from your brow, sighing as you step back to observe your work. For an impromptu fix-up on the side of the road, it’s not bad. She may need to bring her car into the garage to get it properly sorted once she gets to her destination.
“Could I borrow your phone?” you ask after catching her staring. It gives you a surge of confidence.
Confused, Leila nods, handing it over to you.
“Mi madre es de España.” All three Spanish women feel their mouths open in shock. And horror. And the realisation that you definitely heard everything they have been saying about you.
Leila feels like jogging to the nearest motorway and diving in front of a truck.
“I’ll give you my number and you can update me on the car? You’ll need to get someone to look over it more thoroughly.”
“Sí,” Leila breathes, hoping that you are signing yourself up for that job.
“I’m based in Manchester, so if that’s convenient, you could always bring it into my garage.”
“We live in Manchester too,” Laia helpfully shouts from inside the car. “And she will do that!”
“And… I could also text you a restaurant where you can ask me even more questions about car engines over dinner?” You grin at her, and she grins back.
“Sí, por favor.”
“It was nice to meet you, Leila,” you say slowly, pleased with yourself but dignified to hold in your cheering until your return to your own car.
“Igualmente,” Leila replies, handing you your t-shirt that you had previously discarded onto the floor. She’s still embarrassed that you understood what her friends said about you, but at least that means she now has a date.
Or two.
Or three.
It depends on how many more problems she can find with her car.
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stay, at least for breakfast ✴︎ cl16
genre: angst, just. angst, fluff
word count: 9.2k
You love once and miss always.
notes... internet translated ita/fre, non linear format so might b a tad confusing but thats it
auds here... this fic is a tad long sry. many thanks to mack who recommended the most painful songs to me that got me through writing the last couple of scenes. ik i said i wasn’t sure when i’d release this but here it is :)
You’re the only person Pierre knows in New York, so you’re the first one he calls. You suggest you meet just at your place, so you can smoke more freely, because so many people complain about the smell these days. You stall. You say the L train is broken. You say you’re tied up with work at the firm. But Pierre sees through you and eventually you meet anyway.
He looks the same, and just seeing him reminds you of so much. Shadows and outlines of memories long gone. You try to keep up the pretense of being okay, to remember that truly, your mind has been elsewhere lately—off everything, off the memories, on work, on cases. You try not to bring him up, even if it’s inevitable that he arises; you keep conversation to a polite minimum.
Pierre offers a cigarette, a Camel light. You’re a fourth’s way through the stick.
“He asks about you, sometimes.” And then just like that, your world has ceased to turn.
“Oh?” A beat. “What do you say?”
“Just the usual. You’re working on this and that case for the law firm… you went to Greece in the summer.”
You and Pierre are still close, but it’s difficult to forget why. You two are connected by Charles, by a friendship so sacred it warranted a dinner for a Pierre-exclusive introduction. You’d grown close then, and when the breakup happened, it became hard for Pierre to maintain close contact with both of you.
Selfishly, you wanted him to see how broken you were, so he could report it all back to Charles, etch every last detail of your pain. But Pierre is more mature than he’s given credit for.
“Okay.” You say blankly, unsure of how to bridge a less tense topic.
Perhaps sensing the apprehension, Pierre does it instead. “Do you remember when we bought shaving cream and made Charles look like Santa?”
It was in here in Manhattan, you recall, when Charles had dragged Pierre along with him to visit you over winter, when he’d been dating you for nearly two years at the time. Your flat was just above a bodega that had a comical amount of cheap cans of shaving cream that you and Pierre had found so absolutely silly, birthing a series of Charles-related pranks. After your grocery run, you’d returned to your place, where your boyfriend was fast asleep, mouth half open.
Shh. Quiet, you’d said, spurting shaving cream along his chin, his jaw, laughing silently.
Pierre had followed suit until finally, a beard of Nivea Men bounded down to Charles’ torso. You’d snapped a picture; the shutter sound had woken him up to a red-faced you and Pierre.
He was a good sport about it, kissed you with laughter, so you, too, had a beard of froth. Pierre took a Polaroid with a gifted camera of you on Charles’ lap, arms entwined around his neck, both of you bubbly with the cream, cheeks achy with smiles and laughter. You pretend to forget where it is, to forget that it’s tucked in a box you open once in a while.
“I miss him sometimes, you know.” The confession rips through you, exacerbated by the cigarette.
“I know.” Says Pierre, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You realize maybe it is.
I still have so much love for him, you wish to say. But where will I put it? Will I keep this inside of me forever? A great, monstrous, shameful thing it is, to love somebody who’s left. But here I am doing it, trying to fill a void that feels like a crater. Where do I put this love? Maybe I can give it to somebody else, somebody new—but I’d say it’s not the same.
You think you’ll always hold a torch to Charles, even when the fire burns through the wood, ash trickling onto your arm until it hurts. And even then, when the light’s gone, when the flame’s wounded you and licked deep into your heart and bones, like it has now, you’ll linger, still holding this torch, still yearning, still unwanting to let go. Still loving. How desperate, you think. How human.
You clear your tobacco-flavoured throat. “It’s em—it’s embarrassing,” you say instead, throat closing up midway, in a futile attempt to water down your intense emotions. They threaten to crawl up your throat, force secrets out of you with the ease of ripping a piece of paper in half.
“Is it?” He asks, open-ended. “N’est-il pas honorable d'être si aimant?”
“Pas si ce n’est pas réciproque.” You scoff.
But he’s relentless, persistent in his pursuit to prove a point. “No. Love isn’t embarrassing, or pathetic, when it’s one-sided. It means more that way, when it’s not reciprocated. It means you’re selfless. It means the love is real.” He turns toward you, and in a billow of smoke, asks, “Does it not?”
You stare, left speechless. All you muster is: “Va te faire foutre.”
—
You exit the room at eight-thirty with your toothbrush still foaming in your mouth. You stretch your arms over your head, combing a hand through your bedhead. Your eyes are half-shut, and already you smell it before you see it.
Pausing in your tracks, you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “Charles?” You call out, still out of the kitchen’s view. You try to remember if he was in bed when you crawled out, but your mind was still cloudy then, and the desire to pee took precedence.
You turn toward the bedroom door. “Charles, come out here. I think something’s on fire in the kitchen. Babe!”
You speedwalk, concern taking over—you didn’t pay enough attention to fire drills in primary school, clearly. Once you peek into the kitchen, however, your concern is only exacerbated, but not nearly as much as the extreme confusion that begins to well up inside you. There, at your stove, is your boyfriend himself, clearly fully awake and conscious, and holding a frying pan in mid-air that’s billowing smoke.
Having heard your voice already, he feels your presence and turns slowly. His gaze blinks from the pan in his grip to your totally incredulous stare.
“I can…” He pauses. “I’ll try to explain.”
“Very smart save, babe,” you say, but it’s muffled by your toothbrush.
“You sound stupid,” he retorts.
You remove the toothbrush and try to speak as coherently as you can through the spearmint foam. “I don’t think you’re in a position to be giving me criticism right now.”
“Fair,” he says, flitting his gaze over to where he holds the frying pan in mid-air. “I will explain as soon as you rinse your mouth. I promise.” You narrow your eyes, wondering if maybe this is another tactic to get himself out of trouble, but you figure it makes sense. If you’re going to scold him, might as well not spray toothpaste everywhere.
You grab your phone on your way back, where the disarray has not subsided in the least. He’s wearing your kiss the chef apron, stained with grease and pancake batter, both vital ingredients to bacon and flapjacks, neither of which are to be seen anywhere.
“What’s going on, Charles?”
“I wanted to cook you a surprise breakfast. But I can’t get the stove right.”
“Tu es fou.” You laugh, inspecting the smoke-scented pan. “Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas simplement pris à emporter?”
“Je voulais être pensif!” He defends, pouting. “Sorry. I’ll clean up the mess.” He deposits a batch of dishes at the sink as you watch in amusement. Your boyfriend is usually a good cook, you’ll say—he makes a mean stack of pancakes, and anybody can cook bacon, really. You suppose this is all just one honest mistake, born from a desire to surprise you on this morning.
He’s scrubbing at the pan when you wrap your arms around him in a backhug. “Thank you anyway. You’re the sweetest, Charles.”
He turns, a bubble of dish soap on the tip of his nose and hums. “Does this get me boyfriend points?”
“Alright, Jesus, a hundred of them.” You smile fondly, meeting his lips in a soft kiss. He makes you toast as compensation, takes the time to cut the crusts off the bread and the pulp out of the orange juice and the big bits out of the jam. He does his best, perfecting the art of toast and breakfast and, by extension, making you happy.
—
“Un amaretto sour, une bouteille de rose et un dirty martini,” you order smilingly in smooth, sure French.
The waiter nods and after thanks are exchanged, he leaves your table alone. In your limited knowledge of Paris, you’ve chalked it up to a few things: many people will be rude, the serving sizes will be petite, and the men will be anything but trustworthy. You’ve tried them before and they all go the same way, slipping out of hotel rooms with disarming desolés, buttoning their polos as they go.
So here you are, characteristically silent, because your friend is flirting with a guy and you refuse to do the same.
“You speak French?” The guy across you asks curiously. He talks like he’s always smiling, eyes turning into half-crescents. He’s accented, but you’re unsure of the origin—it sounds French, in the same way it kind of doesn’t. You nod politely.
“Ah? Où est-ce que vous l'avez appris?”
“Université,” you respond. “J’ai etudie le langue français, mais… est trés difficil.” He laughs, nodding like you’ve said the funniest thing in the world. Half-crescents.
“I’m Charles. I grew up—I’m from Monaco, so I speak it. And Italian. Joris and I.” He elbows his friend, who your friend is flirting with. Oh, Monaco. So… not French.
“I’ve never been,” you say, letting yourself loosen up a bit more.
“It’s very small. You should go sometime.” An implication of something hangs in the air, like clouds over France. You smile, bashful, nodding along.
“I’ll make sure to.” The drinks arrive and flow through the night, laughter passed along the table like wine. At some point you and Charles get up to dance, but are quickly put to your chairs by the waiter—you mutter some slurred remark about how why play music if you can’t dance?!
But he is funny, and charming, and pretty. You find yourself staring at him in a very desperate, schoolgirl crush way, lip bitten and cheeks warm when he catches you.
Later that night, tipsy off the alcohol, Charles the Monegasque presses a kiss to your cheek and asks, shyly, if you’d like to come to his hotel. You tease him, just to see the half-crescents again, and then you’re in his car and in his room, top pulled off and bra unclasped, laughing drunkenly into his neck when the pleasure reaches its crux. And you hope he doesn’t ask you to leave the next day, drifting into sleep with his arm slung over your waist.
—
You like Charles’ voice in real life.
This is because it means you feel it more than hear it, a low thrum through his chest and into your ear. It lets you know he’s close by, which is the best kind of reassurance, because he never usually is. It doesn’t matter what he talks about—the day past or about to begin, racing, family—all you can really digest is the amount of love and care he puts into his words.
Most of the time you hear his voice through the layered, stuffy audio of your phone or your laptop, when they can’t quite catch up to his lips, when the Internet lag is just that awful. If you’re lucky, he sounds more like himself, but nothing compares to hearing it for real, the whispers and murmurs and roughness of it all. He’s here, and you’re home, content just to listen.
You’re in Monaco; it’s your fourth day here. You’re off school for two weeks before you dive into midterms, so you spend it in Europe, because you haven’t seen Charles in ages. Lately he’s been pixels, voice memos, bubbles of words. But now he’s Charles, real, tangible, yours.
Life has become easier when he’s around, a fact wholly owed to his presence. When he’s here, you feel at ease, like laughter is effortless and loving is natural. But there is a ticking timebomb you sleep on, and it’s your impending departure, your flight back to the city, your resuming of normal life. Of life without him.
“I’ll be in Geneva next week,” he tells you, voice throaty from having just woken up. They’re the first words out of his mouth after he hangs up the early morning phone with Andrea. It’s an invite, even if it’s phrased as a statement; he awaits your affirmation, should it come. He invites you to these things often, as a way to introduce you more into his world. The words rumble through him, slowly onto your fingertips that waltz silently across his bare chest. They skate while you formulate a response.
“Okay,” you say quietly, half-asleep still. “I have… a huge recitation coming up, so I don’t think I can make it. Criminal law.”
He tenses, and you feel it. But his words say something else. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I wish I could,” you say, as compensation. It’s what you’ve both grown used to lately, wishing. Wishes that, for all your trying, never seem to come true. I wish I could make it. I wish I could visit. I wish we could celebrate together. I wish I was there for the podium, or the grades release, or the job offer phone call. I wish, I wish, I wish, and not much of anything else. Just wishing. Wishing, wanting, never getting.
“Yeah,” he says, sighing. “I wish you could, too.”
The dissonance between the voice that rumbles through him and into you—comforting—and the words that leave—a touch too sharp—strikes through you like electricity. “I’m sorry,” you say achingly, and the morning is silent as you both fall back into ignorant, blissful sleep.
—
“Aaaaand that pretty much evens us out to a solid 12-3.”
You finish tracking the score on your Notes app, closing your phone and facing your boyfriend’s pouting face of defeat.
As always, the loser packs up the chessboard first—the wooden pieces click noisily against each other as he folds up the game, to be won (by you, no doubt) another time. Between work and the general upkeep of a relationship that’s constantly long distance, you and Charles find it difficult to begin and maintain romantic traditions.
But there’s always the assurance of chess. To air out grievances, to pass the time, to play footsie under the table. You and Charles always play, keeping a seasonal tally of near-daily games—during flights, pre and post race, after sex, at brunches with family.
“You’ve been cheating,” he accuses jokingly, storing the chessboard and inviting you onto his lap.
You’re in Nice today, housesitting for a friend while Charles spends time off racing. He claims it’s sufficient practice for when you one day buy a place together; two, at that: one in New York and one in Monaco. The days have passed in chess games, pots of coffee, and slow dances in the kitchen while you wait for pasta to boil or rice to cook.
“You’re just jealous,” you tease, clambering atop him. Your arms loop around his neck, his around your waist. “Don’t worry. The tally will restart in September.”
“I’ll best you then.” Here, in this still moment of silence, where the sunlight from outside filters in just right and illuminates every detail of Charles’ face, you can almost feel your heart swell to an unimaginable size. You connect the moles and freckles with the tip of your pinky, traveling lower until it rests softly against his lips. He smiles, flexing against your touch.
“Sore loser,” you say, flirtatious, playing with his hair.
“I think I keep losing,” he starts, hands tightening around your frame, “because every time I see you, I forget how to do the most ordinary things.”
You bite back a smile. “Hey, don’t try to charm yourself into a win.”
“Can’t help it, the winner’s too pretty,” he teases back; your lack of retort leads you to press your face into his chest. He smells like he always smells, clean and woody and a bit like your own perfume, your pretty boy. You inhale, breathe him in and ground yourself. Here, miles away from Monaco, even farther from Manhattan, you are home.
—
“How do you tell people you broke up?”
“I say we wanted different things,” you reply, two puffs into your second Camel.
A white lie, a half-truth, a rehearsed answer after being asked the same repetitive question so many times. You and Charles broke up because at that point, nothing about you made sense. You were growing older, and with age came the stupefying realization that nonsense wasn’t always romantic. If it didn’t make sense, it never would. But you did want the same things, you suppose, at least to some extent.
You know you wanted marriage. After law school, it had to be, and in Europe, somewhere sunny and windy and flowery with a sea nearby. A small affair, family and friends. You know you wanted kids, two or three, a bunch of Charles lookalikes, tufts of light hair and bouts of crazy energy. You know you wanted a house—not a flat, a house, a brownstone in Manhattan, a big property in Monaco. You wanted so much of the same things.
Perhaps that is why Pierre will never understand the magnitude of the way you miss Charles. You dream of him when you’re awake, of the times you spent together that finished abruptly. You look for him in everyday objects. You keep the tissue paper conversations, you want to say, even if it’s so, so mortifying, so raw to admit it.
“But you didn’t,” says Pierre, because he knows it.
“We didn’t. But what other explanation is there?” Where a concrete summary of your breakup is supposed to be, there lies grey matter, webs of explanation spanning years and months and questions unanswered.
“I get it,” he replies. But he’s not you, or Charles, so he doesn’t.
—
Charles looks at you and imagines your smiling face in every moment of his future. Holding a child, under a veil, half-asleep in the morning, flushed and warm after a few beers.
You’re—you’re you, and he just loves you, in a way he will never be able to articulate. He drives for a living—he looks at all kinds of statistics, worded and encoded onto machines and computer screens. But this love isn’t quantifiable. Not in numbers, not in speed, not in words, stanzas of Italian. His love for you is indescribable; it exists in a wordless plane, massive and all-encompassing, carved and chiseled finely.
When you’re absent, the world seems duller, a bit more empty. But it’s okay, he thinks—you’re here now, across the room, in nothing but lingerie, your dress pooled at your feet. You’ve both just arrived from another social gathering, with so many people, and an afterparty arranged by Max.
You’d utilized your well-used secret signal for parties that directly translated to “let’s go home”—bringing up peanut butter meant you were well past exhausted and needed to leave. One “the dessert would’ve been so good with peanut butter” later and you’re here. Years of being together means you’ve both created a vocabulary all your own, lexicon and phonetics making up a language of love and familiarity. Nobody else will ever get this, he thinks. It’s just yours.
You’re removing your makeup in the mirror, and oh, well, you’re beautiful. He wonders what he has to do now to be able to find you in the next life, to be able to meet your eyes again for the first time and fall in love with you the way he did.
You’re what he looks for after a race, after a win, after a DNF. So he can, if just for a moment, let his guard down and allow himself to be yours, yours and only yours, collapse into your arms from ache and overwhelm and find reprieve there. With you, he lets himself go, lets the façade fall, lets himself stay in your touch before he deems himself ready to be with the rest of the world.
“Hey, you,” you call, and he blinks. “Eyes up here, buddy.”
“I just love you,” he says sleepily.
You tug on a nightshirt—his, from ages ago—and crawl into bed beside him, raising a teasing brow. “Sex is off the table.”
He laughs. “I wasn’t trying to get into your pants.”
“Good,” you half-yawn, yanking the lamplight closed and nestling yourself beside him. “I look horribly un-sexy.”
“The shirt’s kinda doing it for me.”
“Go to sleep.”
—
It’s raining today, for the first time in a dull stretch of weeks. The fall comes in angry, noisy sheets, made more furious by the wind. Wrapped in one of his hoodies, you clasp a mug in your hands, staring sullenly out the window, wondering when Charles will be home. Something has shifted in the weeks since you last saw each other, since you flew back out to New York and Charles didn’t finish in the last race.
Sometimes everything feels impossible to touch, like you don’t know what the next step is, let alone how to take it. There’s a certain uncertainty to where you stand, a possibility that, if the seconds tick just right, everything will crash down. This isn’t a feeling you’ve ever had before, but you suppose this is the only way to learn how to deal with it.
It’s comforting, then, when you hear the keys jingle at the door.
Your flat, as expensive as it is, has a quirk to it; the door only opens when you jerk it with your knee twice. You hear it, the double thump, and in almost childish excitement, you set your mug down and pad gently over to the foyer, so you’re ready for him when the door opens. Everytime you’re apart for this long, the routine is standard, and first thing you do is hug—so hard, so tight, your legs wrapped around his waist, his face in your neck.
“Hey,” Charles says, seeing you wait idly by the front door. You inch forward, but freeze. He heaves his luggage in, smiling softly, tiredly almost, pressing a brief kiss to your cheek and then disappears into the bedroom. The lump in your throat doesn’t go away when you slowly realize the hug you’d awaited, prepared for even, does not come.
You follow him instead, to the bedroom, where he’s still quiet, shirtless and picking out something from the drawers. He turns when he hears you. “Have you seen my grey hoodie?”
“Yeah, it’s in the wash.” You pause. “I used it last week, sorry.”
“I tol—it’s,” he says, inhaling, “it’s fine.”
“I’m sorry,” you repeat, taken aback by how affected he is. “I can get it dried.”
“It’s okay.” He insists, a bit sharply, tugging on a different shirt instead.
The air is thick, threatening to break, and you’re hopeless, lost, left wondering—what the hell is going on. You try your best anyway, humming as you take a seat on the bed and fold the bits of laundry you’d abandoned in the morning.
“Pascale’s inviting us over tomorrow,” you open, finishing a pair of shorts and depositing them into the drawers. Your arms wrap around him, and he holds them there. This is good, you think. This is okay. “For brunch, because Arthur’s going to be home. I told her okay—since I’m back in New York by Tuesday and you’ll be in Italy then, too. We haven’t had brunch with your family in forever. God, they’re going to be asking questions about marriage, and engagement, and ki—”
“Stop.” The room goes still. “Why did you tell her okay?” He asks, disengaging the hug and turning toward you fully.
You’re like a deer in the headlights, confused, lost all over again.
“Charles?” You prod, gently. “Is… are you okay? I mean, we always greenlight brunch.”
You watch him pinch his nose bridge, exhale, close his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” You echo, stepping forward. He steps back, avoidant.
“Don’t,” he says. “Please, just… don’t.”
You’ve heard this often lately. In fact, no—you’ve maybe felt this more than heard it. This—this distance, this space, this push. Every call unanswered, every flight missed, every text answered with a brief, apathetic OK. You can’t quell the fear, the panic swelling in your chest, because you can feel him floating away, just out of grasp.
“Talk to me,” you say, because it’s the only thing that can bring itself to leave your mouth. It’s weak, it’s desperate, lacking composure and firmness. “Nous pouvons travailler à travers cela.”
“Non,” he says, as if he knows it already. “This, I—I just. I think I just need some space.”
Space.
“Okay,” you say. “I’ll be in the living room.”
“No, I’ll go,” he insists, like he’s doing you a favor. I’ll save us the nasty fight, he seems to convey. I’ll go. So he does—grabs a coat and wrestles himself out of the door, with barely anything left to reassure you, just a short kiss and a hand on your hair. It’s performative, you know this, but you’ll take it. You don’t have much to accept these days.
The night passes, still and quiet, without the jingle of keys or the double thump at the door.
Even in memory and introspection you will come to find this moment and remain capable of recounting every thread of detail, ones as small as the eyes of needles, every prick of pain that pokes at you. Because even if you see him the day next, and even if he greets you with a kiss, and pulls you aside to apologize profusely, and even if you feel so loved in this very moment, with hugs from Pascale and jokes from Arthur and check-ins with Lorenzo, the fact has secured, burrowed itself into the dark crevice of your heart.
You will look back on this one day, and think, with the kind of certainty so crushingly absolute: yes, this is when it all went wrong.
—
“Is he seeing anybody?” Halfway through the third stick.
“No,” Pierre says, blowing smoke out into the air.
“Be honest.”
He snorts. “D’accord. An Italian girl, few months ago, but it’s over. It was quick. Very. And you?”
The information makes you weak in ways you refuse to share. “Just… testing things out with this guy.”
“Does he know about Charles?”
The silence is telling. “About Charles” is an awfully broad topic.
Charles was such a big part of who you are, and who you’ve been, and what you’ve been through. How would you even begin telling somebody about you both? The bits and pieces, the great figure eight, the tiny infinity. The moments within the moments, memories within memories. The love. The way you loved, the way you sought him, the way you have yet to replicate the feeling of loving him, the way you wait for the next life, so you can seek him all over again.
There is “does he know Charles,” and there is “does he know about Charles,” and the two are so cruelly separate and different. Anyone can know Charles; he is, after all, world-famous. You don’t know how he’s doing in motorsport these days, because a lot of the time the Google search for his name suggests ex girlfriend right beside it, and that’s enough to stun you into not searching again. But still he’s famous and renowned, so of course he’d be known. But for someone to know about him, what he meant to you—it feels like you’d be reciting a novel in an effort to explain how the both of you began, became, and ended. Reciting sonnets and stanzas of prose, of moments painfully intimate, of habits that have yet to die, of things you wished to be taught by him.
“So, no.” You nod softly.
—
The possibility of spending Christmas with either of your families grows thin as December begins. Between final exams and racing meetings, neither of you give, discussing over hours-long calls and coordinating calendars. You find that your only common free day is the seventh of January, which is effectively well past the holidays. You’ve sunk into a pile of misery at the very real chance of spending the holidays by yourself. It’s not a pretty idea, despite the fact that you’ve befriended loneliness lately.
Outside your window, Manhattan is caked in snow; it reminds you of Santa Claus Charles, with his foamy frizzy beard and kisses of froth and the Polaroid on the fridge. You wonder if Charles, wherever he is in Europe now—traveling multiple times a day—remembers you, too, in these little mundane things.
He’d called on the third of December, when it was three in the morning in New York. You picked up after two rings, busy studying, and mumbled a sleepy hello into the receiver.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, clearly excited over something.
“Bit early, honey.” You’d said back amusedly, highlighting phrases on the textbook.
“Just saying it now, because the next time you hear me say these words, it’ll be in New York.”
You didn’t register his words until you realized you’d tinted two entire paragraphs fluorescent yellow.
You blinked. “Wait, what’d you say?”
“I’m there by the twenty-fifth, evening. Found a sweet spot in my calendar thanks to Joris.”
“If you’re joking, Charles, I swear—”
“I’ll see you then,” he had said; even then you could hear his smile through the scratchy audio of international calls.
That’s what you’re doing here, over your stove cooking chicken to commemorate your first Christmas together. You stick a thermometer inside it, busying your mind with thoughts of dinner instead of the fact that you haven’t spoken to your supposed guest in over a week.
Like many fights lately, this began over something irrational and grew into a serious, temperamental discussion about your future.
About moving in together and how impossible it seemed. About raising kids or getting engaged. Everything was written on different pages for the two of you. Your plans were always years too early, years too late, never aligning. Bilingual paragraphs eventually devolved into exhausted intermittent texts, check-ins if it mattered, and barely any concrete discussion at all.
It’s mortifying to have to say the phrases “like many fights lately.” You wonder what it proves about the two of you, about the relationship you share. Has it gone sour? No, you tell yourself. But this yogurt dip will, if I don’t put it in the fridge. You wipe your hands off after you do, rechecking your phone; still no texts or calls or updates. He’d texted this morning, a brief and simple see you soon, but hadn’t responded to your text.
Chicken, mashed potatoes, candles ready to be lit. You fiddle with the pink Bic, lighting and unlighting, sighing.
You dial the airline eventually. They man both public and private flights, so they should know something about his jet. Something, anything—any tidbit of information is useful to you right now. You’re embarrassed, alone on Christmas in a dress you thought was beautiful hours ago but now only seems over the top and mocking. A woman picks up your call after it’s transferred thrice.
I just need to know the ETA of this flight, you say. Under Charles Leclerc. He gave me the flight code.
Silence. You hear the bustle of the airport on the other end and wonder if Charles is there in that bustle, in his puffer jacket he uses in the winter, holding a suitcase and waiting for the delayed plane. Or maybe he’s already here in your timezone, in a cab bumbling with excitement, or in the elevator, or right outside, fist posed in front of the door—
A snowstorm, she says, her voice tinny through the phone. The pity in her voice makes you want to smash the landline to pieces. So sorry. If you’d gotten your husband to book just two days earlier, you two would’ve been together. Why don’t you call him, sweetie?
She is right about the unsolicited booking advice, wrong about the title. Charles is not your husband. You hang up after mumbling something you can no longer remember, too exhausted to be rude or polite at this point, and turn to face your dining room. Your texts go unanswered, and in your earlier effort to save energy, the lack of heating has caused your phone screen to grow cold to the touch. The roast chicken is getting cold now, too, the mashed potatoes cool, the sourdough stale, the butter melted into ugly coagulated puddles, the wine sweating all over the table.
You eat two bites before depositing a clean plate at the sink. The flat smells of pine and citrus; it’s stronger because you’re by yourself, with no Charles to cloud the room with his own scent. Your phone remains silent, your heart drowning slowly in a cloud of imprecise sorrow. And you realize, remembering the airline officer’s words as you unplug the lights from the Christmas tree and let the moonlight swallow the room, that Charles is not your boyfriend, either.
He texts the morning next, says he’ll make it on the next flight, twenty-six. He doesn’t apologize and you unwrap presents alone, from friends, shipped from family. You wallow in your loneliness, humiliated by your need for him, a need that is met only on the seventh of January.
—
“Are you and Charles okay?”
Lorenzo is always the first to ask. He’s intuitive, and you think maybe it comes with age, but damn if it isn’t infuriating when he knows something is up before anyone else. You purse your lips, hope your laugh is a good enough substitute for an answer.
“Are you?” Obviously, it’s not.
“We’re… we’re just working through things.” You’ve had two glasses of bourbon, and your eyesight is blurring the way your words do. You’re in a big Manhattan ballroom, just several floors underneath your hotel room. Charles is somewhere socializing, because of course he is, and you can’t take your mind off school, because of course you can’t.
“But you’re good, right?” He sounds hopeful, like your answer is the only thing that can convince him. Does he think you aren’t? What has Charles been telling him? Your breathing quickens, grows frantic.
“Yeah.” It convinces nobody, not even yourself. He nods, smart enough to drop the subject, and you’re alone again. This is the umpteenth gala you’ve been to this week alone, all for something or other along racing. You grow used to the faces, the introductions, the gentle nos when asked if you two are engaged, because why would you be? It’s a farfetched idea, engagement.
The bathroom is half-full when you usher yourself inside in your gown, almost tripping with how fast you try to make it to the mirrors. There are two middle-aged women beside you lazily drawing lipstick onto their faces, their French accents thick as they converse.
“…So I decided to divorce him.”
You stare deep into the mirror. You look like a caricature of yourself, a puppet. Where is Charles? He overestimates your capability to be alone.
The other woman goes, “I can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.”
“I know! You’d think he would notice, no? Bah, men.”
“You’d felt it for a while then, too.”
“Tch, I really did. Just goes to show.”
Before you digest it, you’re turning and intrusively asking: “How did you know you wanted to divorce him?”
They exchange a look that’s as condescending as it is patronizing. Here you are, a naive twenty-something asking for relationship advice like you’re some know-it-all. You feel like a child suddenly, meek and curling in on yourself. Answer me, you want to say, tell me how it feels, tell me how you knew. You look petulant.
“Well,” she says, eyes meeting yours as she closes the tube of lipstick, “sometimes, dear, you just know.” It clicks closed.
“Yes,” says the other. “You just know. When you wake up one day and you feel it, that’s just it.”
Bullshit. Easy answer. You won’t know, you want to say.
No matter how stupid, how cliché, it sounds, you’ll never know this feeling. This feeling of nonchalance over a relationship lost, of laughter over unsuccessful love, of casually coloring the same lips that talk so abrasively of a lover. Because you have Charles, and Charles has you, and what else is there to know?
The rest are candles on a cake, kisses under a blanket, orange juice served over toast, arguments that end with compromise and a hug. The rest is love. These two know nothing about it. They know hurt and heartbreak and denial. They know nothing but this sad, sad feeling.
It must be sad to know, you think, even if the exact suffocating feeling crawls up your spine and wraps around your throat on the elevator ride back to the room.
—
This is boring
You scan over the scribbled phrase on the embossed, no doubt above asking price, tissue paper given at this (granted, boring) charity ball. Stifling a laugh, you fish a pen out of your purse, rereading the words and judging your outgoing response. In neater penmanship, you quickly write a message below it.
OK let’s end things.
He laughs when he reads it, eyes crinkling into half-crescents, mouth in a wide, silent smile. He mulls over a response and when you get it—
No goodbye sex? Quelle poisse. You giggle, rolling your eyes and squeezing his hand underneath the table, putting your little game on pause lest you get in trouble for not listening to the speaker onstage. This kind of lovely, comedic push and pull is what keeps you always entertained with Charles; he always, without fail, manages to make you laugh. Your easy, instant, but equally profound connection to one another constantly has you revisiting the idea of soulmates, of destiny.
Prior to meeting, your and Charles’ lives were barely entwined. You were a law student in America, Charles a racing driver based in Europe. A year ago, to the date, you’d been in Paris on vacation, when a friend invited you out to get drinks somewhere along the Seine. You had three case studies waiting on your laptop, but something tugged at you to accept the invite.
Had you not been up for drinks in Paris that night, for instance—you’d never have met. And the drinks wouldn’t have been suggested in the first place if Charles got home from a meeting early, expressing boredom over the phone to Joris, who relayed it to the girl he was currently flirting with, who relayed it to you. You would never have talked if you didn’t order cocktails in French, prompting him to ask where you learned the language.
And if you hadn’t, in a haze of rosé and amaretto sours, accepted the handsome guy’s invite back to his hotel—where would you be now? The series of little things make up where you are now.
“Je t’aime,” he whispers into your hair.
But, then again, Charles has never felt like a stranger. You’re so sure that if you’d declined, or if Charles’ meeting ended on time, or if Joris was single, or if you ordered in meek English instead, you’d still be here, laughing over irrelevant tissue paper conversations, holding Charles’ hand under the table.
“Moi aussi,” you murmur. So sure.
—
God is the best scapegoat.
You first realize this when you’re ten and your favorite necklace snaps in half. You’d been running around, you moved too fast, it stuck on a branch, and became forever unfixable. You’d skipped on the usual nightly prayers as some sort of petulant, rebellious counterattack. You’re fifteen when you’re friendzoned, a first for you. You convince yourself it’s God playing tricks on you. You’re sixteen when you get an F for skipping class too often; you tweet God wtf is happening to me and you giddily watch it get thirteen likes. You’re not alone in this revolt, you think. You’re seventeen and a half when you lose your virginity; it sucks. You’re on top and you learn the art of faking. So you lay on your bed and bemoan Him for the misleading introduction to sex.
It becomes easy to blame God, moreso than usual, when the matter is one of life and death and danger. Being with Charles puts you in this position often. You curse God when something happens during a race that causes your heart to snag in itself and skip a beat or go five times faster. Inversely, it’s dreadfully difficult for you, innately unreligious, to pay thanks to God. Charles knows this, and is always the first to say “thank God” when a race goes well.
You throw around the phrase a few times, but it’s rare. Most, many, all times—it’s “oh, thank fuck” or “I’m so happy you’re safe.” It’s almost like you actively avoid the phrase, so whenever you say it, Charles is momentarily stunned; sometimes it’s after a particularly nasty circuit, or a rainy race day when you physically cannot withstand the stress of watching the love of your life drive fast under such bad conditions.
You have nothing to thank God for.
The hotel room is thin-walled and cold. Just last night you’d been tangled into each other for warmth, but now you’re throwing your suitcase onto the same bed and shoving laundry inside. No folding. No organizing. You make quick, messy work of it to avoid the conversation Charles so desperately tries to coerce out of both of you. The chessboard from last night’s game—5-7—lies abandoned, folded up at the foot of the bed. You ignore it.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he says, lazy almost. He seems to say oh, fine. If you need me to say sorry I’ll say it, here.
“You don’t understand.” You say, cutting phrases short to avoid saying anything you’d rather harbor inside yourself.
“Then enlighten me,” he shoots back. “Please, really. Dis moi tout.” He sounds sarcastic.
“I don’t fit here,” you respond cuttingly. If he chooses to be sarcastic, you think—then be it. You’ll be blunt. You’ll exaggerate. You’ll be impulsive, if for once in your life, you have to be.
“Here, in your life.” You clutch a shirt to your chest. “We don’t make sense. We never did, and you know what? We never will. I honestly don’t know why we keep trying. It’s pointless to believe this could ever work. In between our careers, friends, and schedules, it takes more work for us to see each other for just a day than to push a fucking rock uphill. Ç’est inutile et tu le sais—tout ce travail pour rien.”
Your words sting, join the draft leaving through the crack in the window, turn into dew that stains the vines of the hotel exterior. The ones about to leave his mouth, though, stay put, cement themselves in the grooves of your brain. You’ll think of this exchange years from now, and the words will never blur, sore on your tender heart.
A pregnant silence follows your soliloquy, prompting you to look up and meet his eyes. He says it then. “Pourquoi se disputer pour rien? Let’s just end things.”
“Fine, let’s just end things.” You repeat. Struck, hurt, and angry, you say one last thing, in a valiant attempt to get the last word in. “Thank God.”
The seconds tick by like days, where you look at one another, thinking the same thing. So that’s it? When did it all turn to this? You push past him, bearing your suitcase and messily wiping your face of tears, pretending not to notice the hitch in his voice when he mumbles a quiet goodbye.
Your steps to the elevator tick by like hours, and you take the time to think of how you’d lived much of your relationship thinking that, with how strong your and Charles’ personalities are, a breakup would be messy. Loud. A yelled out fight, tears, thrown curses and hurtful names. You’d always thought, with much conviction, that you would end with a bang.
Many previous fights had gone something like that. There was Thanksgiving, where you ushered him out of your family home to avoid anything escalating into a yelling match. Bang.
There was post-race, where, in the throes of frustration, you two had a heated exchange and you left the paddock in tears. Bang.
There was nothing, however, that couldn’t be solved without a shag and a kiss and an apology. So, reasonably, you expected the final fight to be the loudest. The angriest. This relationship, you were so sure—this would end in a bang. Because you and Charles love the same way: strongly, with so much conviction and noise, and the line between love and spite is more frail than you think. A great big bang, where finally you collided in ways you’d never done before, every frustration, every complaint, thrown back and forth like comets, like war.
But you are wrong. It doesn’t.
It ends with you softly sighing, arms crossed over your torso to shield yourself from the ache in your chest, tears slipping then falling unstoppingly in the elevator. It ends with a night’s sleep taking up one side of the bed. It ends with Charles deceiving himself into thinking you didn’t just thank the Lord that your relationship has just crumbled to nothing in the bounds of this thin-walled, cold hotel room.
—
“Say something to me,” you say quietly, like you’re afraid to disturb the still morning silence of Paris. “In Italian.”
It’s a corny, cheesy request, no doubt inflamed by the butterflies in your stomach when you think about the night before and one romantic comedy too many. But you ask for it, anyway, your leg bumping his under the too-thin cotton blanket of his hotel. You found yourself here this morning after a night of sweet French alcohol and slurred, flirty conversation.
“Assomigli al resto della mia vita.” He says, smiling.
“Okay. What’s it mean?”
“I won’t translate it for you, because it’s a bit cliché.” He narrows his eyes.
“All of European language is cliché.” You laugh. “Come on, tell me.”
“I will one day,” he says, “I promise. I swear!”
The promise of “one day” is upsettingly romantic. Barely a day after you first met, first bonded, first kissed, first had sex. Okay, fine, you two hadn’t really gone the traditional route of dating, but here he is waxing poetic in Italian, finger tracing your bare arm. “One day,” you say, just so you’re sure.
“Yeah. One day.”
His hand finds yours, and fingers are laced together. Words wrestle themselves out of your throat nervously, a question that might seal the morning. “Should I go?”
The question rests in the air. How do you want your eggs, he wants to ask. Or would you want pancakes or waffles or bacon? Or bread, a croissant with coffee and compote? He wants to know all these things, hear all your answers, watch your eyes twinkle with amusement at the silly questions. So he’ll ask them, he figures. He’ll ask them if you don’t go.
“Stay,” he says. “At least for breakfast.”
—
Pierre leaves after a few more hours. He says Yuki texted him about some Mexican place they need to try. The night next, he is brought up in conversation: “Who were you with last night?”
“A friend,” you explain. “He’s an old friend, Henry.”
Henry Maxwell, the Wall Street guy you’re seeing, who’s inviting you to a charity ball a month into dating. To you, that’s basically a sign to end things, but you allow him to explain his invitation. Babe, don’t you think networking in New York is a gold mine for everything great these days? Don’t you think we need to network if we ever move in together?
“Henry, n—I mean. It’s just going to be another one of those stuffy city galas where everyone tries to out-wealthy one another,” you half-joke. In truth, the reason why you’re so adamant on not going is because this is just about the worst first date idea ever conceived—from experience, you’re sure you’ll have barely any time alone to get to know each other, whisked away to socialize with groups of other people.
“Oh, lighten up,” says Henry, with a sheepish smile. “You’re my plus one on the RSVP, so you can’t complain.”
“Am I?” You ask, chuckling. It’s a bit weird. But he’s excited, and asking, and convincing, so you tug a green silk dress out of your closet and take an Uber to the hotel address. Nevermind the fact that you’ve been here before.
You squeeze Henry’s hand when you walk into the massive ballroom, and not five minutes later you’re facing a crowd of people, drowning in taffeta skirts and wool suits and champagne and snooty small talk. Henry is charming, Henry is kind, Henry is a smooth talker.
He’s the ideal prototype of a guy you should be dating right now. His hand never leaves the small of your back, playing with the satin of your dress, laughing into your neck. You’ve faced several groups of business magnates and supermodels; right now, he’s introducing you to a big journalist for the Post.
She’s in the middle of talking about some hippie retreat to Thailand or somewhere or other when your eyes glide across the room, bored, searching for something to occupy you. To be frank, you really don’t care about ayahuasca.
The hands on the clock seem to halt just for you, just for now, suspending this moment in time like a mosquito in amber. Your eyes meet—and if you’d been less careful or maybe more tipsy, you might have mistaken his gaze for a stranger’s. But your heart demands hurt, demands the memories, demands the sick, sweet nostalgia threading through you like needle to cloth. Your heart demands you to remember, but the demand is so painfully easy to obey because you’ve never forgotten. All at once hate and love arise in you, like great big waves conflicting against one another, until you feel swollen with longing and spite, finding reprieve in the green of his eyes.
Timing, destiny, God. Whatever it is, it’s decided to play some silly joke, because here you are. In the precarious balance of a memory and a figment of your imagination, here you are. In the gap between never and always, here you are. You might appear to be strangers, stranded across opposite ends of this marble ballroom, but to both of you, the idea is almost unfathomable. No, not strangers; you two are anything but.
You are you, and he is Charles, here again in the place where it all ended.
He is never a stranger, and he could never be. He is Charles, your Charles, the beautiful boy who took up years of your life and explored every inch of your heart and mind. He is Charles, who broke your heart, he is Charles, whose heart you broke. But now, he is just Charles Leclerc, racing driver and charity gala attendee, conversing with the same crowds, mingling as he always does. Did. The usage of past tense is a painful pill to swallow.
Charles feels like it’s torture, suffering, a slow punishment, to be rooted to the ground and to do nothing but look. How can he look away now? He is rooted to the tiles, thick vines keeping him here, even if his heart tells him to go, run, now. He is stuck, tacked by the stillness of the memories that play back through his head, the love and the sorrow. You’re still you, hair a little shorter, brows a little darker, but you’re still you. The you he had once, held once, loved and lost once. The you he wishes to have, hold, and love once again.
For a moment, a fleeting, short, moment, he wishes to blink, to nod and to signal for you to meet him outside, on the balcony, so he can straighten his tie and press a polite hand to this person’s shoulder and say excuse me and leave, slip quietly into the night. So maybe you can tug on Henry’s suit jacket and say I’m sorry and join the crowd of gowns and satin and leave, run, go. Because you’re you. And what a sweet lie it would be if he said he wouldn’t do anything for you.
In the end you stay, and you stare, rooted still, time moving the way grass grows. When he smiles, you smile back, and the answers to what if are quietly fabricated in the limits of your imagination.
—
“I miss you. I know it’s—I know this is weird to say, after so long. After not talking for such a long time.”
“No, I understand. I miss you, too.”
“Right… well, how have you been?”
“Same old. You?”
“Yeah, same. How’s everything?”
“It’s… it’s okay. How’s life?”
“Tough, but great.”
“I noticed you were with someone.”
“Yeah, no. That’s—it’s sort of—I don’t see it going anywhere, really. It’s kind of over.”
“Oh? Is it?”
“Listen, I’m… sorry. For—just for everything. I’ve lived the past few years thinking about everything and still hoping I could someday apologize properly. I’m just glad I’ve been given the chance. And I think things ended without… without… I just don’t think we were mature enough. And sometimes now I think—it’s you, it’s still you.”
“Don’t apologize. Can you believe it happened right here?”
“I know. It’s almost crazy—”
“You left a bottle of scent at my place. It’s… it’s still half full. Sometimes I—nevermind. I mean, I think of you a lot. Probably too much for my own good. I think of us, our past, our relationship.”
“So do I.”
“—I love you. I try to stop it, I keep trying but I always end up here. Always here, back here, loving you.”
“If you didn’t see me tonight—would you have felt this way?”
“Oh, I feel… I feel it everyday. I think I’m always going to love you.”
“I’m always going to love you, too.”
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