Faking it || Lando Norris LN

45

Olivia Reyes

Back in the apartment, time seemed to be ticking more slowly. The whole story had fallen into place. Vincent had heard Lando call me GF —for girlfriend, as we'd joked— and then heard Daniel and Max joke around with the term as well. He'd heard everything and made up that story on the spot to influence my qualifying. Santiago had meant he'd heard Lando and me fighting, not Lando talking about me. In hindsight, it all clicked, and the stories lined up.

As we sat on my living room couch, slowly digesting the information the other had and making sure it all made sense, Lando told me about an interaction with Vincent I didn't know he'd had during the Monaco afterparty. What a piece of shit Reid was.

"Good news is," Lando said, "he just got dropped by Mercedes."

"What?!" I sat up immediately. "I mean, great, but how come?"

Lando handed his phone over with a tweet on the screen. Apparently, Reid was trending, and every mention of his name had the same picture of him raising his fist at Lando in the middle of the garage. In the end, Mercedes hadn't had much of a choice than letting him go. Too much bad press and you're done for, no matter how good of a driver you were —Lando and I knew it perfectly. Sadly for Vincent, he wasn't that good of a driver either.

"Jesus," I let out with a sigh as I returned his phone.

I pulled the blanket covering me a little higher as my eyes got lost in staring at the fabric. No more Vincent walking around the paddock. No team in Formula 1 would touch him with a five-foot pole.

"Are you still mad?" Lando voiced softly, snapping me out of my thoughts cautiously.

"What? Oh," I shook the thoughts of Reid off my mind, "I guess? Not at you, no. Maybe not even at Vincent more than at myself," I whispered as I pulled the blanket a little higher. "I hate how my Achilles' heel is so visible to him. How he keeps using it. How predictable I am."

I sat with my words for a couple of seconds.

"I... Um," Lando began. Anyone could sense his desperate search for words from a mile away.

"You don't have to say anything," I assured him genuinely.

I knew how hard it was for Lando to find the words to console people. Knowing what to say is a skill you develop through experience, both being there for people and having people be there for you when you need it. Lando didn't have that sort of experience under his belt, and it was okay. I hadn't said it to get a reply from him; I just wanted to let the words out of my chest to feel a little lighter.

"Would a hug help?" Lando asked.

I turned to see him with his arched brows and his unsure face. A small smile invaded my lips as my heart warmed.

"It definitely would," I replied.

Lando scooted over from his side of the couch until he sat next to me and then wrapped an arm around me, pulling me closer with the other as I accepted his hug.

"For the record, I don't think you're predictable. At least not in a bad way," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, furrowing my brows while still in his embrace.

"I mean, you're the nice kind of predictable. I always know that if the mechanics laugh and you're there to see it, you're pulling your phone out to take a picture, or if the sunset's pretty or if a building has flowers on it," he replied. "I always know you're going to squeeze my hand tighter before we cross a street or that you're going to glance at my seatbelt once I pull out of the parking lot to make sure it's fastened. You've done it since the beginning of the stunt."