Faking it || Lando Norris LN

8

* this is a longer chapter, make sure you stick 'till the end! 

Olivia Reyes

Monday. 10 am. Flight Bahrain - Italy.

"¡Te quiero, mija! Nos vemos pronto, amor." (I love you, mija. I'll see you soon, my love) My mom spoke through the computer. I had just finished getting her up to speed with the whole PR stunt thing.

'¡Bendito Dios! Tu papá ya se me había puesto pálido del susto.' (God bless! Your dad went pale when he heard the news.) — She'd said moments before.

Her face was makeup-less despite it already being noon back home and her hair was down, her gorgeous brown curls framing her rested face. Behind her was the kitchen, the forest green wooden cabinets in the background making her look even more alive on the screen, her olive skin was glowing. I took a moment to take in the view of her. Every time I was home, I couldn't help but smile and stare at her so much it made her anxious. I couldn't help it, I loved the sight of her and the way she moved around the house I'd bought for my family.

It was a big hacienda-style house she'd once pointed out and told me she dreamed of having when I was around 3 years old. Her hair had been down and she'd worn a beautiful yellow dress as she drove us to the supermarket, but she wore an even prettier smile on her face as she told me.

I was so ridiculously young I shouldn't even remember the moment. In fact, I don't have any memories up until I was 5 years old, as all children do, but something about the spark in her eyes in the rearview when she'd said it engraved it in my mind.

She didn't think I remembered it either, so I'm sure she didn't think I ever noticed how, a few years later, she'd drive past the house with her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles whitened, forcing herself not to look that way.

My family was upper-middle-class when I was born, but by the time I started karting seriously, I could tell we were struggling to fit into the middle-class category at all. Mamá had started to work, Papá was working double shifts, and we were moving into smaller houses each time. They did their best to hide how exhausted they would come home, doing their best to keep a smile on their face each night when we all sat together for dinner and pretended to ignore how the table kept getting narrower and the rooms smaller every few months.

Still, I knew it kept them awake at night. They'd wake up with bags under their eyes, smiling through the weariness as Papá grabbed his lunch from the small kitchen counter and Mamá kissed him. I told my dad several times that I would quit it, I'd stop karting. I even pretended to stop liking it, but he saw right through it, he always did.

'Mija, when life shows you something that makes your heart feel big and your soul burn bright red, you do your best to chase it. A lot of people spend their entire lives without finding it, and you already did. Your mom and I are the guardians of your dreams and your brothers', there's nothing we wouldn't do to protect them. As long as there's a smile on your face under that helmet, we're gonna do everything for you to keep putting that helmet on.'

Now that I was in Formula 1, I had started earning millions of dollars from one year to the other. I wasn't the highest-paid driver in the grid, but it was still more money than what my parents had ever seen in their entire lives. I'd spend so much of it spoiling my family and I still had millions left, so I bought my mom the house she'd dreamed of. I gave my brother enough money to graduate without a cent of debt, made a fund with enough money for my younger brother to do the same (and bought him a ton of musical instruments he'd always wanted), and gifted my dad a boat in his favorite beach. I couldn't get enough of the smiles on their faces, I still can't.