Rêveries

Chapter 81

"Winning is our protocol, okay?" Evie told me before every single competition. We kept getting better and better, but we didn't win. We got podiums, we got second and third. But it took a long time for us to actually start winning again. But when we did, we kept winning.

When we started winning, it kept us motivated to stay winning, so we worked even harder and we perfected every single little detail even better than we had before, and we kept going to competitions, performing and getting points that put us on that top step of the podium.

I did well on my solo too. I had some podiums and some wins. I wasn't outstanding, but I was pretty good. We kept winning and at the same time we were getting better and better. People called it dominance, but I still had a feeling that we were lucky. Other people messed up, they made tiny mistakes. But Charles kept telling me that we were winning because we were good. They made mistakes while we didn't, and that's not luck, that's skill.

The winning kept bringing in sponsors, and those contracts brought us to all kinds of different places. We were invited to dinners, events, and to Los Angeles to model for a video commercial for their workout clothes.

While we were in Los Angeles we also did some other media things. We went on podcasts, we did short interviews with people creating dance content. We also met up with a choreographer and danced with him for a Youtube video, which was both fun and terrifying. The video was edited and posted for everyone to see and people could leave their opinions in the comments. Out of everything they could leave their opinions on, I didn't want them to say something bad about the one thing I do to relax and shut everything off. But I just did the same as with my other social media, I refused to look.

The thing with winning so much, was that I knew everything other than a win would feel like a loss. It was the first time I understood the way Charles would be disappointed when he didn't get pole or when he didn't win a race. He wasn't winning every race, but he was at the top and he wasn't getting that first place, and for the first time I started to understand him. It was easier to cheer him up and be understanding when he called me, upset about his results.

We were away from each other a lot more, but it just made the times we had with each other more special. When I talked about it to my mom, she said we're keeping the love fresh. We don't have time to get into stupid arguments and we miss each other, which makes everytime we see each other special, a happy moment.

Sometimes I was home without Charles and sometimes he was home without me. Evie stayed with me a lot, and if she didn't, Arthur did. We'd have movie nights and he'd ask me to teach him how to cook. I guess Charles and I moving out made him feel like he had to start thinking about it too. He spent more and more time away from home, even when he was in Monaco. We still made sure to spend time with Pascale a lot, in case she'd get lonely. Though, she told us she kind of liked the peace and quiet sometimes.

The summer break came. Charles and I gave Evie a trip for her birthday, and all four of us would go to a place of her choice. She chose Mykonos, as it had become a popular place to vacay, and we wanted to know what it was like. So we flew out and took a boat to the island, and we checked into the hotel we had booked, and then we just relaxed. Evie had a trial coming up, and I had asked to testify along with Isaak, so we were going to Belgium. Charles and Pierre were going back to prepare for the second half of the season, and then it's Monza.

What we didn't think about with Mykonos being popular, was that there would be a lot of people taking photos of everything. I'm not the biggest fan of PDA, but I am a fan of being clingy when Charles is right next to me in only swimwear, getting a tan, and he's coming out of the water. We rented a boat, and I was pretty much all over him, which I think is reasonable when he looks like that, but people online didn't like it. They thought I was too clingy, they thought I was annoying him. Even though the PDA made me just a bit uncomfortable, I allowed Charles to show himself equally as clingy. Usually he is the clingier one, but somehow it looks different in the media.