Here With Me - A Formula 1 Story

I'm In Love With You

The whole afternoon Kelly and I have been working hard on planning a birthday party for Charles. I know it's probably crazy that I'm working so hard on this for him when only two days ago I hadn't talked to him in weeks. The past two days have been insane and honestly it might be a mistake that I decided to give Charles another chance, but my heart is telling me it's the right thing to do.

"So we have the place, time and theme figured out. Since we decided to make it sort of a surprise I'm assuming you'll want to go to dinner just you two while we set up and have everyone get here to surprise Charles?" Kelly asks me as she's going over the list we made when we first arrived back at the airbnb of things we needed to figure out.

We were able to get permission by the airbnb host to have a party for around 30 people. We have to pay an extra fee but I was willing to do that because I want Ezra to be able to celebrate with us and if we were to go to a club he wouldn't be able to. We decided to have the party start around 10, so going out to dinner with Charles is a good idea so everyone can get to the house and there will be time to decorate. We decided on a rave theme and Lando texted me back only a few minutes ago saying he would love to DJ.

"Just us two. I'll make the reservations." I reply as I pull up restaurants in Austin near the club on my phone.

"We will need to get decorations, booze and some food as well but that can happen Monday." Kelly adds as she starts writing down a list of what we need to purchase.

"Do we have a head count yet? I want to order a cake and I need to know how big of one I need to get." I ask as I scroll through the list of restaurants. My finger chooses one called Jeffrey's that looks delicious and has good ratings and I quickly make a reservation for 8:00pm and look up at Kelly.

"I've heard back from Pierre & Kika, Alex & Lily, George & Carmen, Daniel & Heidi, Esteban & Carlos. They all said they would be there." She tells me and I can't help but smile. I'm surprised that they all agreed so short notice but then again I shouldn't be surprised. They all love Charles.

"Awesome! What about Joris & Charlotte? Lorenzo & Charlotte? Andrea?" I ask with curiosity.

"I haven't heard from them. It might have been better if you had messaged them." She says and I nod absentmindedly. She's probably right, since they don't really know her. They also don't really know me though either.

Kelly excuses herself a few minutes later to call Penelope and I decide to message them to let them know about the party. If they respond that's great, if not that's fine too. In the meantime I place the order for a cake big enough for at least 30 people. Most likely it won't all get ate, but that's fine. I mainly want it so Charles can make his wish. Once the cake is ordered I feel much better about his birthday. I still need to find an outfit for it but at least I got the hard parts complete. I'm thinking I might skip ACL tomorrow since I don't really care about seeing anyone playing.

As I contemplate on whether or not I'll be going to the festival tomorrow I decide to pull up Instagram. I haven't checked it since Charles and I made our posts this morning. There are a lot of notifications and messages. I quickly read through some of them and surprisingly they are all pretty supportive and nice. There are a lot of well wishes and questions, the main one being whether or not Charles and I are together. I think I may have to do a question/answer time soon based on how many people are curious about everything. I'll have to discuss it with Charles to see what he wants to do.

I'm still scrolling through messages when a new text message comes in. I quickly open it and see that it's Joris responding to my earlier message letting me know he, Charlotte, Andrea and a few other people on Charles team would love to come to the party. I respond happily with the theme, time and address and a promise to see them in a couple of days. Now I just need to hear from Lorenzo and we'll be great. I wonder if Pascale is going to be in town for this Grand Prix and if I should invite her. Opening up my texts, I pull up Arthur's contact information and shoot him a text asking if his mom will be in town, to which he replies that she will be, but not until Saturday. My stomach drops when I realize I'll have to see her again but at least I still have a week to prepare for when that time comes.