Sara stared at her laptop as she listened to Olivier.
"Sara?"
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Oliver started to get frustrated with his employee.
"You had an interview, Sara. You had an interview and asked for days off." Sara frowned. She didn't have an interview. Where did Olivier get the idea that she had an interview? "I got a call from Juliette Reynolds, she said she had an interview with you." Sara nearly dropped her phone. Juliette?
"I'm sorry, I honestly did not have an interview with her. She is an old friend of mine, could she just have used it as an excuse because I swear I did not have an interview." Sara apologised to her boss, hoping he would understand the situation and would believe her innocence.
"Either way, make sure you don't have to take so many days off anymore. I know that you have a boyfriend who travels the world but you can't just drop your work to follow him. We count on you."
"I know, we have found our way to make it work, so it won't happen as frequent anymore. Just Abu Dhabi. After that, it will be months and then I'll make sure to plan it better than the past half-year." Sara promised. "But I need to go now. I have an important email I need to reply to."
"I will talk to you later." The call ended and Sara looked at the headline of the mail.
Juliette Reynolds
Sara's breath got stuck in her throat.
"Sara, are you okay?" Andrea placed her hand on Sara's shoulder. "You look like you have seen a ghost."
"Might have as well," Sara whispered. "But I am fine." She opened the email and read it through three times before closing her laptop. She only had half a day seeing the celebrations of the podium went late into the night and Sara had a bit of a morning in. "I'll see you tomorrow." Sara smiled at Andrea and left the office.
"Hello, beautiful." Carlos hugged Sara tightly. "What is wrong?" It took Carlos a whole of three seconds before noticing something was up.
"I got an email from Juliette and she has called the French office for me." Carlos was just as confused as Sara was.
"Can I see the email?" Sara took her phone and opened the email on it. Carlos read it. "It seems like she is trying to make amends." Sara nodded. That was the vibe she got out of it as well.
"Can you read the mail I send back before I send it?" Carlos nodded as he watched Sara sit down to type the email. She was clearly out of her doing and confused.
Xxx
"Why did I agree to meet up with her? Where was my head when I agreed?" Carlos laughed.
"On your head. You made the right decision." Sara shook her head. She and Carlos were sitting in the car which was parked in front of the café where Sara would be meeting up with Sara. She was tearing up.
"I'm so freaking scared Carlos. What if this goes so wrong it will never be made right again. The last time I saw her I said so many nasty things. Sara just manages to get the brake of whatever I say. I just can't keep myself from snapping whenever I am with her and she gets on my nerves. I don't want to do that this time." Carlos took her hand.
"Why don't I sit outside to make sure I can keep check on the two of you. Once things get heated, I will come and calm things down." Sara still wasn't sure but Carlos wasn't going to let her get away. "Come on." He got out of the car and from the back seats he got himself a hat to wear. It was cold outside and he didn't feel like freezing his ears off.
"I don't know Carlos."
"I do, when I am outside, I don't make Juliette feel cornered, so she won't say things she doesn't mean." Sara shook her head. "Come on." Carlos sat down on a chair outside and looked at Sara with a look that asked her what she was waiting for.
"Fine." She whispered and she entered the café, with her heart in her throat. Everything inside her was screaming for her to go back outside but Carlos was barricading the door. She had nowhere to go.
"Hey." Juliette's eyes shot up from her laptop. "Can I sit down? Or are you still busy with work?" Sara was hoping Juliette would say she was busy. Sara didn't want to as her throat felt like it was squeezed shut and she felt her heart beating in her temple.
"Oh, no. I'm just checking my mailbox. It's not important though. Have a seat." Sara forced a smile, she had never been so nervous in her life. Not even for her job interview with Vogue.
"Congratulations on the championship by the way. It must be awesome to be a part of such a successful team." IT was forced, everything Sara did was forced by the fact that she knew Carlos was sitting outside and wouldn't let her get away without giving it a shot.
"Yeah, thanks. We worked hard for it." It remained silent for a few moments. "How are you?" Sara considered her words. She didn't want to bring the mood down in any way, the best choice was just to keep it light and funny.
"I-" She swallowed away the lump in her throat in an attempt to not sound as nervous as she felt. "I'm okay. Being back at the track was weird but I'm happy for Carlos that he finally managed to get a podium. And Pierre of course. So thank Lewis for me please." Juliette chuckled softly.
"It was a stupid mistake, but it does nothing to me. I mean, the podium was just one of the best podiums of the year." Sara had to bite her tongue. A good result in the bin for the team and it did her nothing. Her breathing slightly increased and it seemed like Juliette noticed her change in behaviour. "It's unfortunate Lewis didn't end up on the podium, it was disappointing to the tea. But it was worth it. And we all love that podium, it's just different from the normal. It's Verstappen, Pierre and Carlos. Who would have thought? Even as a team, we like it."
"I sure liked it, let me tell you that." Sara forced herself to calm down, though with the adrenaline coursing through her veins she was having a hard time. It was not like the past, she just liked this podium better. It wasn't because she was simply indifferent. "It is the first good thing that happened in this sport since..." She stopped, blinking the tears that suddenly started brimming away. "Since Anthoine." Sara chuckled sadly. "Did you know Anthoine tried to get us together like this in Spa? He set us up without us knowing. The bastard." Juliette reflected the emotional look on Sara's face.
"Yeah, George Russell told me that... I can't believe he did that." The tension was thickening the air so much that Sara felt like it closed off the oxygen to Sara's lungs.
"Would you like something to drink?" The waiter stopped beside their table and Sara nodded. She needed a cup of coffee. Whether it was a smart idea was something entirely different, but she needed it.
"Yes, please. Can I have a latte macchiato?" The waiter wrote down the order and then looked at Juliette but she didn't want any8thing. They were both avoiding the topic they needed to talk about. Sara looked outside. To do what she wanted to do she needed just that little encouragement from the Spaniard outside who hid in his coat and hat against the cold wind. He raised his thump at her and Sara took a deep breath. "Was it me?" Sara had told herself so many times to not be the first to start about all of it. She didn't want to start about it without knowing whether Juliette felt just as bad about it as she did. But then again, why would she have emailed and called if she wouldn't have felt as bad about it?
"What was it you did?" Juliette frowned at the three little words. The train of words that went through Sara's head in an attempt to come up with the perfect words to explain what she was getting at got disrupted when the waiter placed down her coffee.
"Thank you." She said and looked at the coffee as the separation line between the coffee and foamed milk wobbled. Tears were burning and she was rapidly blinking as her breathing fastened.
"Was it me who pushed you away?" She eventually whispered.
"Gosh no," Juliette immediately blurted. "Absolutely not. I..." Sara didn't give Juliette the time to continue.
"Because I was a bitch. I should have listened to you instead of trying to say what was best for you. I didn't have all the facts and therefore didn't know what was best. I was just so jealous and I saw you throw it all away. I just-" The first tear escaped the corner of her eye and dripped down the side of her nose.
"You were trying to do the best for me, Sara..." Sara didn't understand. If Juliette understood, why did all of it happen?
"Then why didn't you act like it? Even after you left?" She looked her previous best friend in the eye and she saw how she froze and then started to snap her knuckles. She still hadn't stopped doing that. "Why did you reply to Anthoine and not me and Pierre? That was months ago!"
"I bumped into Anthoine when he was in London..." Juliette took a deep breath. "My dad dragged me out of my mother's house, I didn't have the time to grab my belongings. I left my phone there and I... I was on bed terms with Pierre and you hated me. Anthoine was the only person I still had a friendship with – to say it like that. You weren't in Spa when it happened. Pierre was the only one and I didn't know where else to go."
"I was there when it happened," Sara exclaimed. The tears started to rush down faster and more frequently as she tried to keep the images of the crash from flashing in front of her eyes.
"You were?"
"I was." She cried. "I sat at the McLaren facilities. I watched the race. I watched him fly across the track." Her voice broke. "I watched his car come to a halt."
"No..."
"And I didn't hate you." She whispered, her voice croaking with every word she said before letting out a frustrated sigh. How could Juliette have ever thought that she hated her? If she would have, she wouldn't have tried so hard to get back in touch with her. "Why would you think that." The frustration caused that it was louder than she intended but it was like all the frustration she had built up just came out. "You were my best friend. I was upset with your results, true. I was green with jealousy. I was fighting so hard but got nothing and you didn't do a thing and got everything. And I was stubborn. I didn't want to confess that I had been a bitch and when I finally got over myself, things had already gone too far and you didn't want our friendship anymore."
"I wasn't myself." Sara noticed how fragile Juliette's voice was. It was very unlike her. The confident woman from Mercedes, who managed to make a life for herself after winning medals at the European championships. "My mother pushed me over my limit, I had to win for her. I didn't want to win because I didn't care about that. I'm sorry if I reflected that to you. This wasn't your fault."
"But why didn't you tell me any of it?" Sara still didn't understand any of it. "I trusted you with my life, my greatest secrets. I don't know if I could have done anything to help you but I could have listened, cared for you."
"It's not something you would tell for fun."
"But you told Anthoine." Another thing that bothered Sara. He had known and she had been kept in the dark.
"I did not. He found out about it. I told him not to tell anyone because I was scared, scared my mother would hurt me even more. I got lost, I pushed everyone away who tried to help me."
"I waited," Sara muttered. "Day after day, month after month, year after year. Against my better judgement, I kept waiting for any sign of life from you. But it never came. I had to walk up to you for a conversation. We had to play games with at least ten other people to have fun, only to return to nothing right after. I had to insult you in order to get any emotion out of you. There wasn't even a thing after Anthoine died."
"I... I didn't fit in your picture anymore. You switched careers, got a job at Vogue, got into a relationship with Carlos. I wouldn't think I still meant anything to you."
"It meant the world to me." Sara suddenly started to laugh. It wasn't happy, it wasn't sarcastic it was just at how dumb she and Juliette had been all those years. She now understood how frustrated Anthoine must have been knowing both sides of the story but being unable to meddle. "I swear I can hear Anthoine curse at us. Incroyable." Juliette had a weak smile on her face. "We are so incredibly stupid. We have been filling in the blanks for each other without knowing the truth. We could have prevented all of this if we just would have asked and listened. All of this could have been solved before it even began." Juliette ran her hands through her hair.
"No wonder why Anthoine was pushing us so hard to make it up. It was just bullshit." Sara wiped away the tears that were on her cheek. The constant flow had stopped.
"I'm sorry for my part in this all."
"I'm sorry too, Sara." Both young women looked relieved, knowing that this was behind them and they could finally go back to the times where they were friends, albeit it being without Anthoine. "Oh gosh. This is something only we could do."
"Let's just never pull a stunt like this again. But I do think we have to seal that promise without pinkies." Sara put her elbow on the table, her hand in the air while her pinkie was sticking out. She had a cheeky grin on her face, knowing very well how it looked for a woman of her age to ask for a pinkie promise. They locked eyes and Juliette raised an eyebrow but soon chuckled and hooked her pinkie around Sara's.
"Never again." Both women took a sip of their now cold beverages.
"Oh gosh, this is so nasty." Sara scrunched up her nose as she put the glass down.
"I know," Juliette said as she nearly chugged her mug empty. "but it was too expensive to throw away." They fell back into silence but didn't feel the tension in the air that time. They both needed to process all that was said. "But look at us... being WAG's and all."
"Who would have thought?" Sara took another sip of her coffee as the words suddenly hit her and she nearly choked, staring at Juliette in disbelieve.
"You are kidding, right? You and Pierre are official now?"
"Yes?" Sara started to squeal and shook her head. She had been hoping the two would find a way to be together although certain parties didn't agree. The two of them belonged together. They always had. "That took you long enough. We waited over seven years for this, but we finally have our dream couple together." Sara's smile reached from one ear to the other. "But all jokes aside, I kind of already knew." She hadn't known it was official but she had known it would eventually be okay. "Pierre has been talking about you for weeks. With every struggle, he came to me after he and I made up.. and even with those struggles, you still bloody made it."
"Yeah..." Juliette looked outside. "Wow, wow, wow." Juliette suddenly said, making Sara frown. "What is Carlos doing outside?" Sara chuckled softly. Carlos was reading the newspaper, freezing from the cold. "Get that poor man inside and give him a cup of hot chocolate." Sara sheepishly chuckled and stood up to get Carlos inside.
"Hey, you can come inside, we are fine." She smiled. "We are some shitheads." She took Carlos' hands. "Gosh, Juliette was right, you really need a cup of hot cocoa." She rubbed over Carlos' hands and then dragged him inside.
"Three hot cocoas please." Juliette looked up at the waiter as she ordered the three mugs of hot chocolate.
"Juliette, this is Carlos. Carlos, this is Juliette."
"May I assume all is well now?" Carlos asked andthe two young women looked at each other and just smiled. Carlos looked betweenthe two of them and knew enough. They were good.