Mary just graduated from Law School and is setting out for a journey through Europe.
Charles is a F1 driver for Scuderia Ferrari.
How will their lives change when their paths cross?
Storyline starts in 2020, COVID does not exist.
On Tuesday, Mr Gant, Claudia, the senior associate, and me, took a plane from Gatwick to JFK. It was my first time in the US because my parents, true Englishmen, deemed the States as 'not interesting' to visit. My whole travels were also complicated by the fact that I was there on a work visa, which expired on Friday - and since I was flying down to Miami for other purposes that day, I had to get a tourist visa for that as well as I definitely didn't want to risk being deported straight from the center of the Miami GP Paddock.
Mr Gant was flying First Class, but Claudia and me were booked in Economy. Claudia apparently already earned well enough to purchase herself an upgrade to Business at the airport, so I was stuck alone at the back of the plane next to a screaming child and a man, probably the father, who didn't care about it for seven hours. We finally landed in New York and after going through immigration, we made our way to our hotel in Manhattan. As we didn't have any meetings scheduled until tomorrow, we agreed to have dinner together and until then everyone was free to do whatever they wanted.
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📍 New York, New York mary.wright98 Big 🍎
carmenmmundt Que lindaaaa 😘😘😘 landonorris Miami is waiting for you 😎 Replying to landonorris: mary.wright98 Have to be back in LDN at the end of the week :( Replying to mary.wright98: landonorris Meh 😒 charles_leclerc La Grande Pomme Replying to charles_leclerc: mary.wright98 That sounds so unromantic
Mr Gant, Claudia and I went to Per Se, a French restaurant near Central Park, for dinner and reviewed the most important points from our side in these final contract negotiations. Then we all went to sleep early, hoping to ease the jet lag.
Tuesday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel's buffet and then headed to our client's offices in Midtown. We met the other lawyers in the conference room and continued going through the contract. The CEO was set to visit us shortly today before the contract signing on Friday. And when he did, all hell broke loose.
Apparently, him and our senior associate Claudia had spent a magic night in Guadalajara a few years ago and after that, she ghosted him. He was furious when he saw her again and made all kinds of accusations of her being a bitch and breaking his heart and so on. Then, Mr Gant made the fatal mistake to tell him to calm down, as she had clearly moved on with her life, being in a relationship and having a five-year-old son. Claudia threw her head in her hands and the CEO, Mr Phillips turned pale as a piece of paper. "Five years?" he whispered and Claudia nodded with a tear streaming down her face. "Is he mine?" he added and she nodded, bursting into tears and making her storm out of the room and him following suit. Fuck, this was worse than a bad rom-com. After a few minutes of awkward silence and strange glances among us lawyers, we tried to carry on with our work.
The counterpart's lawyers now, tried to insinuate that Claudia was clearly biased during these negotiations and wanted to get better conditions or they would completely back out of the deal. This was making things worse, but Mr Gant, being the brilliant lawyer he is, managed to get everything back on track and everyone left quite content with how the day went.
In the evening I called Charles to tell him all about my adventurous day and he was very amused by my story and asked me about every little detail. Gosh, he was such a gossip queen. "I went to my first baseball game today by the way and it was so fun!" he told me excitedly. "I know nothing about that sport" I chuckled. "Yeah, I also doubt that I will start following it now, but it was a cool experience." he replied. "Are you ready for the weekend?" I asked. "I hope so! I need to finish as high as possible to maintain the championship lead, preferably higher than Max" he sighed. We chatted a bit more and eventually said good night as we both had a packed day tomorrow.
Thursday was our last day of contract negotiations and we needed to get everything ready by the end of the day. Friday was literally just the contract signing in front of the press, followed by a small business breakfast and then I was going to catch my plane to Miami. There was lots of anticipation about the race and I had already seen a few American billboards about it around town. We finished our meeting at 10pm and were happy with the result. Claudia had left New York in the morning as she had to resolve her "private matters" - Mr Gant was furious about losing her in the negotiations and I had to basically do my job and hers now too, which was quite stressful, as she was definitely more proficient than me.
On Friday we had our big contract signing and everyone involved was glad that, except for the short drama with Claudia and the CEO, everything had gone smoothly.
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📍 Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York mary.wright98 Merger closed ✅ Time for food 🤤
william_stuart97 "Business trip" 🤪 lucygraham Why do we never have these at the office? Replying to lucygraham: mary.wright98 But we have that delicious expired oat milk from a few months ago 🤌🏼 oli_wright_one_and_only I thought you were working?!
When we got outside, Mr Gant offered me to share a cab to the airport, but unfortunately he was flying from JFK again and I had to get to LaGuardia. I was flying with Spirit Airlines, which apparently was similar to RyanAir in terms of... service and I just prayed that the flight would be on time as I had specifically timed my arrival before the start of second practice.
The odds were on my side for once, and I embarked on the plane for Florida on time, counting down the minutes until I would see Charles again.
