𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹 | 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗰

Chapter 24

The beach day went as planned as we all felt much more relaxed once we had finished there and were all heading over to the ice cream store, which was round the corner. As the others mingled in front, me and Charles hung back a little on the way to the store as we fell into our own separate conversation.

He knew that me and Lily were joining them in Australia and he had taken it upon himself to get us both passes into the Ferrari garage. Even though Lily would most likely be in the Mclaren garage, it allowed her to join me in the Italian teams garage if she wanted to. He also explained that hardly none of the drivers stayed in hotels when they were over there, but he didn't expand on where they did stay, which confused me a little as he made it sound like they were all homeless for the weekend.

As we continued to talk, his phone rang and I saw him roll his eyes at whoever had appeared on his screen before turning the screen back away from him, ignoring the call. I went to ask who it was but it started to ring again and he excused himself, trailing behind even further. I looked behind at him as he moved further back and I could see that look of frustration on his face that I had seen earlier on this weekend, which showed that whoever was on the other side of that call wasn't someone he really wanted to talk to.

I didn't fully catch up with the others as I didn't want to leave Charles behind but I sped up a little so that I was closer to them so I didn't look like I was walking on my own. I could feel the heat of the floor through my sliders it was that hot.

Lily and Lando were giggling in front with each other about whatever they were talking about and even though I believed they were quite a fast new thing, I could see how much she liked him. It was obvious. I wanted to see whatever they had develop as she'd not had the best past with men in her life, as I didn't either.

We weren't far away from the ice cream store now and when I looked back I realised that Charles was no longer following. I'd not realised as I'd not looked behind me until now as I didn't want to seem like I was intruding on his conversation so him being gone all of a sudden didn't really make sense to me. If he had just gone surely he would've had a good reason for it so I just ignored his disappearance and continued following the others.

When we arrived at the ice cream store, the cool air from the air con hit us as we entered and I think it was a relief for everyone as the walk had made us all hotter. Daniel and I were first in the line for the ice creams as we knew what we wanted to order whilst the others were being indecisive about their decisions. I ordered the salter caramel ice cream but couldn't help but double it up adding mint on top as well, whereas Daniel got chocolate and strawberry.

Once we got our ice creams we went to wait outside for the others and it was only then that Daniel also noticed Charles wasn't there as he looked at me then inside at the rest before looking back at me with a questioning face.

"I swear you was with Charles, where did he go?"

"I was, he had a call then left. He didn't say why though" I told Daniel. I thought about messaging Charles just to make sure he was alright as it was unusual for him to just go without saying anything but I also didn't want to interfere with anything by asking so decided against it. 

"Weird. Do you think it's his manager or Lauren or something?" he asked, trying to come up with an idea but I shrugged my shoulders as I didn't want to make any guess myself without knowing and I also couldn't answer verbally as I had just had a mouthful of my ice cream.

We left our mini conversation there as the others finally joined us outside with their ice creams that they had taken their time to decide on. None of us really had any more ideas on what to do for the rest of the day but we didn't want to be staying out late as we wanted to be refreshed for tomorrow's flight as it would be a long one.