who would have thought [lando norris]

Chapter 26

Landos POV

When we walked home from dinner it was already dark. The sky was clear so we could see the stars.

We took the least efficient way home because we wanted to hold onto the moment.

I watched Fiona as she walked a few meters in front of me, jumping around and spinning, expressing her happiness. She was now walking backwards to face me. He face had the biggest smile on it.

She is the piece that was missing, I thought to myself. The months right before the Austrian GP back in July had been really hard for me, I was struggling with mental health and had lost my motivation and didn't know anymore why I was doing what I was doing.

When I met Fiona in the Paddock, somehow I got back my motivation. As I knew she would be watching I wanted to impress her. Considering where we were right now, I guess I managed to impress her back then. But I doubt that was the only reason she was with me.

Not only I felt better when she was with me, I could tell she was experiencing the same. Just a few seconds ago she grabbed into the pockets of her jacket and found a pack of cigarettes. Normal she would have lit one, telling herself it was a celebration of the moment, knowing she only lit one to enjoy the dizzy calming feeling and escape the stress, but today she just looked at the pack for a second, debating, and put it back into her pocked.

I wished someday she stopped smoking entirely. Not because I didn't like the smell of it or any other selfish reason, but because I didn't want her to ever need that escape from stress again.

The rest of the way we walked close side by side with my left arm around her shoulders and her right arm around my waist.

The next few days weren't eventful, qualifying and the race went smoothly and I finished P4 again. Missing out on a podium is never the best feeling and I used to beat myself up about it a lot but I've come to learn to appreciate the effort we gave to get P4. It was still an amazing position and meant we would get 12 points. It would be dumb of me not to appreciate it when we did everything we could.

All I could think about now was the days I would spend in Milan with Fiona. To be honest I was already thinking about it while racing.

The Saturday before, Fiona had got the call the she got the apartment. Out of the 4 she applied to she got the one she wanted the most. She was ecstatic about it. Understandably. I was so happy for her, because I knew moving to Milan still brought her some anxiety and the fact that she got the apartment of her dreams took a bit of that anxiety away.

We landed in Milan on Monday at 1 in the afternoon. After settling into the hotel we walked through Milan and Fiona showed me around. For every cute little cafe, park or street I made up a scenario of her future life, to get her even more exited.

"And here you'll sit and read a book while drinking espresso and enjoying the sun in between classes." I said while we walked past a small café that looked like straight out of Fionas imaginary world. It was minimalistic but classy and modern with a pop of color.

She only ever smiled and laughed at my scenarios, I could tell in her head she was imagining her sitting there.

I purposely didn't include myself in any scenarios because even though she was happy when we were together, I wanted her to be happy on her own too and since it was for sure I wouldn't always be there I wanted to plant these scenarios in her head where she was happy even without me there.

"I've decided I want to get another tattoo. Do you think we can find a place here in Milan?" I said

"Oh really? What do you want to get?" she looked at me, excited for my answer.

"I want it in addition to the one I have, just on the other arm. It's also about transience and just like the other I want it to remind me to cherish every moment. I want it to say: Nothing is forever"

"I love it - everything about it! Let's try and get an appointment for Wednesday. I think I might want to get one too."

On Tuesday we got to visit the apartment Fiona was going to live in in a few weeks. It was absolutely stunning. The many windows made it really bright and seem more spacious. It wasn't big but Fiona didn't need more.

While inspecting the place Fiona told me about her plans to furnish and decorate the whole thing. She had a plan for every corner already. I couldn't wait to see the finished product.

After that we sat in a cafe and called several tattoo places trying to find anyone who had time to tattoo us the next day. Finally we got an appointment at 11 in the morning for both of us. We would only have an hour but we both wanted something small so it would work out.

That night I couldn't sleep. Fiona still hadn't told me what tattoo she would be getting but that was not what was keeping me awake. I couldn't stop thinking about how great the last two and a half months had been, how Fiona had managed me to get me out of this depressed hole I had dug myself without even knowing - I hadn't yet told her how bad I was doing before I met her. My mind kept wondering for hours before I finally fell asleep at 4 in the morning.

Only when Fiona told the tattoo artist what she wanted to get done did I find out too. She had kept silent about it up until now no matter how many times I had asked her.

"I want the word TEMPORARY on the outside of my foot vertically beside my ankle" she explained to the tattoo artist in Italian. I had known she knew Italian but I hadn't known she could speak it so well. The talked for 10 minutes about the details of the tattoo of which I couldn't understand a word, but I loved her tattoo idea. The irony of getting tattoo - which is forever - and it saying temporary, was just too good, but also the correlation to my tattoos which expressed the temporariness of everything.

We left the shop with our fresh tattoos smiling like idiots. Putting something onto your body that would be there forever felt weirdly freeing. I couldn't help but grab her and spin her around a few times. Hand in hand we spent the rest of the day eating pasta, walking around Milan and watching the sunset at the end of the day from the balcony of our hotel room while enjoying an Aperol Spritz before we'd have to relocate to Monza for the Grand Prix tomorrow.