Faking it || Lando Norris LN

15

Olivia Reyes

It was the Wednesday of the Austin GP when I realized "confused" wasn't strong enough of a word. It felt too simple, too plain to describe the way I was feeling.

Lando Norris had called me superstitious, smart, and magnetic on live television. He'd rambled about the way I pulled his hand to keep us from walking under a ladder, the way my favorite boots looked on me, and how I loved spending time with the team. 

If people could get nominated for Academy Awards solely based on their acting in an interview, Lando would've taken all of them this year.

During the interview, his eyes sparkled like emeralds and his cheeks blushed in perfect cue. The way his gaze remained glued to the ceiling while he talked about me made it seem as if he could see me descending from the sky on a cloud in the middle of the studio. He went on and on, convincing the world that the decade's iconic troublesome player and Formula 1 prodigy had finally found the one.

He was selling the deal, there was no doubt about that, but my stomach couldn't help but turn a little. It wasn't his green eyes or the rosy color that invaded his cheeks as he spoke. It wasn't even the way his lashes fluttered when he playfully rolled his eyes in response to Jimmy's banter.

It was his words.

It was the Wednesday of the Austin GP that I realized.

Lando Norris was paying attention.

Had it been anyone other than Lando Norris, his comments would've probably made me blush, they would've made my skin tickle with embarrassment and my cheeks flush. Instead, they made me stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours while my phone kept buzzing against the bed's white duvet, all of them messages from drivers saying the same thing: Holy Shit.

But I wasn't fooled by the glimmer in his eyes or the rosy cheeks that the studio lights so heavily accentuated. I knew Lando Norris hated me, his acting wasn't something I could fall for in this life or the next. The question that kept me up had nothing to do with any of those things, it was a single word: why?

Why was he paying that much attention?

The details Lando had revealed to notice about me had left me more confused than him calling me 'gorgeous' for millions of people to see. I'd seen that one coming whenever my anxious mind tortured itself wondering what we'd say when we got asked about each other. Complimenting each other's looks was easy, I had already looked up synonyms of 'handsome' more than once before to prepare myself if an interviewer prompted me to talk about him. It was the details that were the hard part. The little things. The small habits. The pet peeves and the guilty pleasures. Those were the challenge.

And then there was Lando Norris, gushing to the world about me as if we were twin flames when in reality, the only thing that went up in flames was any room we found ourselves in once we started yelling.

Confusion. Anger. Whatever game Lando was playing, I couldn't help but feel I didn't have the upper hand in it. Again. Why was he doing it? I kept asking myself, confused and desperate like a detective aching to find the last clue, but there was only one answer revealing itself to me.

He was playing a different game because he'd already won the first one.

He'd won the first time his words hit home. He'd won after seeing me cry more times than I'd rather admit, most of them because of his words, and the most embarrassing one hadn't been that far off, it had been triggered by my fears, but they spoke in Lando's voice. Mediocre.

Maybe it really was a game. Maybe the only thought that had crossed his mind when he held me the night I had the panic attack was what he would be doing next to entertain himself since he'd already won this game.