"We really have to do this again Sky, it was so much fun." Charlotte gets up from behind her piano and gives me a big hug.
"Careful Char, she's hurt!" Charles warnes her.
She immediately lets go of me and puts her hand in front of her mouth. "Oh my I'm so sorry, I forgot, Charles did tell me. Are you ok, did I hurt you?"
"What, no you didn't! I'm fine, please don't worry." To prove her I hug her again tightly and she lets out a sigh of relief.
"Charles seriously you scared the crap out of her, if anything hurts I'll let you know ok." I look at Charles and smile.
"Sorry Char, I didn't mean to scare you." He quickly apologizes to his girlfriend.
"It's ok, I'll get back at you sometime." She walks over to him and gives him a kiss.
"Oh shit." He looks scared and I can't help but to laugh.
"Let's get going guys, we made reservations and I'm sure you'll love it Sky. You know they have a bar next to the restaurant that has open mic night tonight. Maybe we can get you up there."
She moves her eyebrows up and down and she looks so funny.
"Oooh I don't think so, I don't think I should put myself out there. We're already on social media." I tell her.
"Oh really, I'm sorry, what does it say?" She takes out her phone to check some of the posts.
"You can't really tell it's you, because there's only a small part of your face showing. But that might be different after tonight though. Are you sure you want to go out? We can stay here and order food."
Charles looks at her phone with her and nods.
"Yeah if you would feel more comfortable here that's fine you know."
"I'm alright, I knew this was going to happen anyways, so for me it's all good. Daniel what about you?" I look around but he isn't in the room anymore.
"Where did he go?" I ask and both Charles and Charlotte look confused.
I walk out to the living room and I see Daniel on the phone. He looks serious, so I'll just wait until he ends the call.
He comes up to me and sees my questioning face.
"I just reached out to my social media person. I wanted to know what we should do. So she asked me if we wanted to keep our relationship a secret and I said we probably can't anyways. So she said maybe we should just announce it ourselves to be ahead of the 'detectives' online."
"Ok so what do you think about that, do you want to or just leave it to see what happens?" I ask him.
"We could post a picture of us with just a short message. And we don't need to tag you in it."
He suggests.
"I know what you should do!" Charlotte shouts, "I can take a picture, you could give each other a kiss or something, because then Skylars face is still only partially visible. Then people will know what's going on, but they won't be able to come at you immediately, because they would still have some investigation to do. You know, keep them occupied."
I look at Daniel to see how he feels about that. I know he loves his privacy, but we both know if we go out tonight it's only a matter of time anyways. So we might as well be the ones announcing it.
"Yeah sounds good, here's my phone." He hands her his phone and comes close to me.
I wrap my arms around his neck and our forehead rest against each other.
"You sure about this?" He whispers.
"I am, we will be fine ok." I whisper back at him.
"I love you, you know." He looks into my eyes and my mouth drops.
"Really? You do?" I ask him as my eyes start to tear up.
"I do, I love you so much it's crazy. I never thought I would say it to somebody so quickly, but I just know and I want you to know as well." He gives me the sweetest smile.
"I love you too, so much." A tear of happiness makes it's way down my cheek and Daniel wipes it away with his thumb as he cups my face in his hands.
He pulls me to him gently and first he gives me a sweet and soft kiss, but within seconds the kiss deepens and it feels like we are all alone in this room.
Eventually we need to breathe, but we keep standing there with our noses touching. He puts a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
I suddenly hear somebody sniffing and I look up.
Charlotte wipes a tear from her eye. "Guys this was so beautiful, I'm so happy for you."
We totally forgot she and Charles were there as she stands there with Daniels phone.
"I think I've got the perfect picture. The love just bursts out of it." She walks up to us to show it and I see she is right. It's the moment Daniel cups my face and we look into each other's eyes.
I absolutely love the picture, I check Daniels face and I can tell he is moved by it as well.
"It's perfect babe, don't you think?" I ask him.
"It really is." He clears his throat. "Ok let's get it out there then."
He opens his instagram and I can tell he has got tons of DM's, but he ignores it.
He puts the photo on his page and captions it with just one sentence. 'You are my true love at first sight and forever'
He then writes underneath it: 'Please respect our privacy, we will talk about us when we choose to'
Then he posts it and we both put our phones on quiet and in my purse so we won't be disturbed.
"Well how about some dinner then" Charles says.
"Yeah let's go I'm pretty hungry." I respond.
"Wait Sky, put this on." Charlotte comes to me with pretty big sunglasses. "Let's try to protect you a bit longer."
"Thanks, you are a sweetheart you know that." I tell her.
"Hey that's what friends are for. Also I know how it is at first, however I can help you I will." She smiles. I realize even though she is still so young, she is very mature.
We head out and in the elevator Charles tells us we only need to walk for 2 minutes.
When we reach the door to go out on the street I take a deep breath and look at Daniel.
His smile reassures me and he holds my hand firmly.
Charles and Charlotte walk out in front of us so they can show us the way.
One of the positive things about Monaco is that there are so many of the drivers living here, that for the locals it's nothing new.
There are still some fans that come up to them for pictures, Charles takes a few, but then he kindly tells them he would like to keep going.
"Daniel! Daniel! Are you really in a relationship?" Somebody shouts.
"We are, but please we want to enjoy our night, so I would like everybody to let us." He responds.
Somebody comes up beside me,"What's your name and how did you meet Daniel?"
"Leave her alone please. We just want some privacy." Daniel interrupts the person next to me.
They give us space and we can walk on.
We do hear some camera's and people still try to get more pictures and info, but we just keep going.
When we reach the restaurant Charles talks to the security guy in the front and he makes sure we aren't being followed inside.
Charles and Charlotte are regulars here, so we are immediately taken to our table, it's a pretty private spot, so that's really nice.
When we reach the table I see it's more like a booth. We don't have chairs but it's a C shaped couch. It looks pretty comfortable, so I sit down and move a bit to the middle so Daniel can sit next to me. Charlotte is on my other side and Charles besides her.
"This looks really nice guys, what kind of food do they serve here?" I ask.
"Well they have like small bites, so you get a lot of options and you can pick 2 every round. The menu is over here so you can see what they have." Charlotte hands me a menu and I look at it.
"Ooh this looks really good. I love the fact that you don't just have to choose one thing and have that. Now I can try all sorts of things. How cool" I'm really looking forward for some of the dishes on there that I've never heard off.
The waiter comes up and asks us if we would like to order a drink.
"I would like a cocktail to be honest, I could use a little bit of alcohol. I hope you don't mind?" I look at Daniel.
"Please drink whatever you want, I'll get you home safe I promise." He has his hand on my back and is softly caressing the skin that isn't covered by the dress.
"I never drink much, so you won't have to carry me home." I put one hand on his leg. "I would like a cocktail please, so you have any that is fruity and sweet? I don't really like to taste too much alcohol in it."
"Of course madame I'll have something special made for you." The waiter takes the others orders as well and Charlotte explains how you order the food on the menu.
"There's a QR code in the corner that will take you to a special site where you can just order what you want for this table. Works really well." She gets out her phone and notices a lot of messages and notifications from Instagram and Twitter. She shows me and I shrug, "want to check?" I ask her. To be fair I'm a bit curious myself.
"Ok let's see." She opens Instagram first and the first thing we see is the picture of Daniel and me. There are already thousands of likes and comments. "Wow that blew up quickly!" I say surprised. She opens the comment section and first we see a lot of reactions from the other drivers. They are all super sweet and supportive. Even Lewis reacted 'Man I'm happy for you! The love is clearly visible between you. Hopefully we can meet soon.'
Alex Albon reacted with heart emoji's and smiley faces.
'She is great my friend, you are a perfect match.' Max commented.
So far only sweet comments. But when we read on it gets a bit less nice.
'I think it's fake, who is she anyways?' Somebody wrote.
Charlotte scoffs,"This person must be blind, not even the best actors in the world could fake that look between you two."
I laugh, "you did take a really good picture Char, I really love it."
We keep reading and I have to admit some people really are nasty, but it really doesn't bother me.
Daniel reads along over my shoulder and I feel his tension rising. "Baby relax, I know it sucks and people are nasty sometimes. But there's also so much support from the ones that are closest to us. Or well you and hopefully me as well once they get to know me." I lean my head against his shoulder and give him a kiss on the jaw.
"I know you are right and I know for sure everybody on the grid or in the team will adore you. Sometimes I just think it's better for everyone involved to stay single until I retire, because then nobody has to deal with this crap." He sees my shocked face, "No no I mean not now, I've found you and I'm not giving you up for anybody. We will get through anything, I'm sure of it."
Suddenly a thought hits me, "Oh my god I haven't even called my parents and told them, or Bri and Jenna. They are going to kill me."
"I'm sure they will understand. I've kept you busy haven't I," he winks, "why don't you call them tomorrow, everything will be alright."
"I really should, oh well there's nothing I can do about it now anyways. You still have to call your parents as well right?" I ask him.
"No I called them this morning after training, we didn't express our feelings to each other yet, but I wanted them to know about you and how I felt." He explains. "My mom told me she hopes to meet you very soon and my dad was also very excited."
"I hope they will like me. They always seem so nice when I see them on tv when they come to see you race."
The waiter comes with our drinks and Charlotte gives me her phone to choose some of the dishes I want to try.
As I'm looking I take a sip from the cocktail and they really made it perfect for me. Nice and fruity, I can't taste the alcohol too much, which might actually be dangerous, because then I won't expect how strong it probably is.
Daniel picks his dishes as well and the subject changes to more fun things.
It's really cute to hear Charlotte and Charles tease each other, they are such a cute couple.
The first round of food is brought to the table and everything looks really good. I taste the ones I chose and it's perfect. Daniel feeds me some of his and those are also amazing.
We order another round and when I finish my cocktail I decide to have just one more. There's water on the table, so I do drink some water in between, I really don't want to get drunk and have a hangover tomorrow when I go for a work out.
It does make me relax a bit more. And after we are all full and done eating Charlotte asks me if we could go and watch the people in the bar next door where they have open mic night.
It's only 9 I clock so we decide we might as well go there for a little while.
"That doesn't mean I'm going to sing ok Char, don't get any ideas in your head." I warn her.
She gives me an innocent look, "No of course not."