I said that I didn't want to spend the whole morning after hurling into a bucket, and even though I didn't, I still didn't feel good. When my parents woke me up to say goodbye before heading to the airport, I just simply felt like dying on the spot. My head was still spinning and my head was hurting while it felt like all the organs in my body had been rearranged. They didn't seem to notice though, since they left early in the morning and only woke me up to kiss my cheeks 'goodbye', even though I'll be home in a week.
When they left my room, I just hid under my blanket and fell back asleep. I felt the need to simply stay there all day and not move a single muscle because that might end up with me vomiting.
Of course I don't get my way. The next time I wake up, it's Arthur coming into my room. He nudges me and I groan in response. I hear him laugh at me before climbing into my bed. He sits next to me and pulls the blanket over his legs. I groan again instead of yelling at him to get out and after that I realize that I just have to accept it.
"Charles a dit que vous en aurez probablement besoin." Charles said you'll probably need this, he says as he hands me a glass of something. I take a sip from it and I taste some pear in it, "C'est un substitut liquide." It's a fluid replacement.
Enough said, really. I begin to take big gulps of it and then I put it on the table next to my bed. He chuckles and removes some hair out of my face. I just slap his hand away from my face and lay down again, putting my pillow over my head.
"Combien as-tu bu?" How much did you drink? He laughs at me and I blindly try to slap him, but just end up hitting his leg or something.
"Si ce n'est pas tout à fait évident, un peu trop," If it's not quite obvious, a little too much, I say into the pillow while it muffles my voice. He removes the pillow and smiles down at me as he tries to contain his laughter. The sun shining in through the window is not helping my pounding headache.
Some parts of the night are quite blurry, but I do remember him having a date and then showing up there, and I do remember seeing him put his arm around the red-head. It has been itching at me since I saw it. I don't understand why he wouldn't tell me about a girl he's seeing. He usually tells me when a girl looks at him for a second too long. The only reason I could think he'd be lying is if it's someone I know and someone I don't like or would be supportive of him dating, but he wouldn't keep a total stranger from me.
"Je t'ai vu hier soir," I saw you last night.
"Je sais, je t'ai vu aussi, nous avons eu toute cette conversation," I know, I saw you too, we had this whole conversation.
"Oui, mais je t'ai vu avec la fille," Yes, but I saw you with the girl.
Arthur presses his lips together and looks away for a second. When he looks back at me he's looking apologetic and that's when I know who she is. He wouldn't feel the need to apologize about anyone else. I sigh and push myself up on my elbow.
"Vous sortez avec Valérie?" Are you dating Valerie? My tone comes out a bit more negative than I originally intended it to do.
"Elle a mûri pendant ton absence." She matured when you were away. His defense makes me chuckle out of pure disgust because there is no way in hell she has gotten any better while I was away. She simply saw the opportunity to piss me off and she took it as soon as I went away. I bet she threw me a going away party but left me out from the guest list.
A habit I've mastered the last few years is to just ignore the problem until you're ready to deal with it, and I am not ready to deal with this while being hungover. Sleeping is the easiest way to escape things, so I roll over instead of picking this fight.
"C, c'était une enfant, elle ne savait pas mieux," She was a child, she didn't know any better, he says and I feel him put a hand on my shoulder. "Nous étions tous des enfants!" We were all children! I immediately shrug him off.
"C'était une vilaine enfant, maintenant arrête d'ajouter à mon mal de tête," She was a mean child, now stop adding to my headache. I hear him sigh before he gets off of my bed. I keep my eyes closed as he walks out the room and I listen to his steps as he walks down the hall.
The next time I wake up, the sun has moved so it's no longer shining into the room, meaning it's after 1 PM. I feel a bit better after having that drink Arthur gave me, but as I sit I begin to feel a bit worse again. Not as bad as before, but still not good. I put my hair up and begin to move downstairs. It's suspiciously quiet in the house and when I get down to the kitchen there is no one there. I peek around to look into the living room which is also empty.
There's an omelet on a plate sitting on the kitchen island and a jug of orange juice in front of it. I grab a glass and pour myself some orange juice, taking it with me to the backyard. When I slide the door open I feel the sun hit my skin and I squint to see anything, but the fresh air is so refreshing. I step outside and walk over to the table, sitting down with my legs up to my chest.
The house is up a hill and from the backyard you can see the ocean and some of the city. There are multiple boats out and the sun is reflecting on the blue water. I can see these tiny little people walking on the beach. A plate is set down in front of me. I look down at the omelet and then I look up at Charles who's putting down a knife and a fork next to it.
"Charles, sérieusement..." Charles, seriously, I say while he sits down on the chair next to me, "Je ne peux pas manger ça, j'ai la nausée," I can't eat this, I'm nauseous.
"Il disparaîtra si vous mangez quelque chose," It will go away if you eat something.
At this point I'm just going to ignore him. I don't feel like arguing with him right now so I leave it standing in front of me and look out ahead of me instead. We didn't have this view at our house, our house had a view of the mountain instead. It was just rocks with some green on it. I always enjoyed this more.
"Je n'ai pas envie de te nourrir, mais je le ferai si nécessaire," I don't want to feed you, but I will if necessary, he says and I just sigh when I look back at him. I lean forward to slice a piece of it and put it into my mouth, chewing clearly in front of him.
"J'ai entendu Arthur te dire," I heard Arthur told you, he says.
"Il ne m'a rien dit, je l'ai vue," He didn't say anything to me, I saw her. I look down at the omelet before grabbing another bite, it wasn't as bad as I thought, it was actually kind of good. "Il est où d'ailleurs?" Where is he anyway?
Charles looks at me in silence before he sighs and looks down at the grass under us. I just nod because I already know.
"Ils sont descendus à la plage," They went down to the beach, he tells me before taking my glass of orange juice and taking a swig from it. "Maman est allée t'acheter des trucs pour la chambre," Mum went to get you some things for your bedroom.
I smile as I chew because I honestly don't deserve their mum. She really fought to keep me here and she's always been a crucial part of my life. I'm glad I can spend some more time with her now for the next few weeks.
"Au fait, mon coach média travaillera avec vous, j'ai vérifié avec elle," My media coach will work with you by the way, I checked with her.
Right, media training. Someone telling me how to speak without saying things. Saying things that don't mean anything. It will all be about Jules and my family too, no one has anything else to ask me. I should probably thank him for setting me up with his coach but I focus on the food because I really don't like the thought of everything I say being controlled.
"Je suis désolé de ne pas t'avoir parlé d'Arthur, j'ai pensé qu'il valait mieux que ça vienne de lui," I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Arthur, I thought it would be better if it came from him, he says after moments of my silence. I don't need him to apologize, I'm not angry with him. What I need from Charles is for him to leave me alone until he leaves for Canada tomorrow. I need some time and space to get my mind straight so I can stop acting all weird when he's around. I drop the fork and stand up with the plate, taking it with me inside the house again.
"C'est d'accord," It's alright, I state while forcing a smile, "Je vais prendre une douche," I'm going to take a shower.
I take the dishes back inside and put it in the sink to take care of it later. After that I rush upstairs to take a shower in the guest bathroom, I feel filthy. I take a long shower, hair mask, shaving my legs, exfoliating, anything just to distract myself from the fact that my best friend since birth currently is out getting lovey-dovey with the girl that made sure no girls in our class wanted to play with me because I was covered in "boy germs" and then proceeded to talk behind my back all through high school. She started spreading a rumor about me being a lesbian, simply because I only hung out with Arthur and sometimes some of his other friends.
She made my school years a lot more difficult than they had to be. When Jules died, I heard she had talked about me as if we were really close, saying how bad I must've felt, "c'est malheureux," poor thing. When I started getting home schooled she told everyone how I had to stay home because I couldn't get out of bed. It wasn't a total lie, but she didn't know and it definitely wasn't something I wanted people to talk about. She teased me and used my grief and pain for attention and now Arthur is out with her saying she's changed.
I don't care if she's changed, she still did all those things to me.
When I got out of the shower, I got dressed into a summer dress that I had planned on wearing to the Grand Prix, but decided it would look too dressed up and I know Dad wouldn't have liked it.
I had only packed for three, maybe four days, so I didn't really have enough clothes for the entire week. I put on some makeup to compliment the slight tan I have, grab my sandals and run down the stairs to the kitchen. Pascale isn't back yet, so I go look for Charles. He's in the conservatory on his phone when I find him so I peek my head in.
"Les vélos sont-ils dans le garage? Je vais en ville," Are the bikes in the garage? I'm going into town.
Charles stands up, putting his phone away, "Je peux te conduire," I can drive you.
"Ce n'est pas nécessaire, je veux prendre le vélo," That's not necessary, I want to take the bike, I tell him while he walks past me into the house. I follow him, thinking he's going to show me where the bikes are.
"Je vais avec vous," I'm going with you.
I cross my arms over my chest, just staring at him in confusion. Does he not think that I can do things myself? I look down at what I'm wearing, in case he's just doing something he thinks Jules would do if he was here, but what I'm wearing isn't inappropriate.
"Je peux y aller tout seul, Charles, ça va," I can go by myself, Charles, it's fine.
"Je ne suis pas inquiet," I'm not worried, he laughs as he opens the front door and waits for me to step out too before closing it and locking it, "Je veux juste passer du temps avec toi avant de partir pour encore deux mois," I just want to spend some time with you before I leave for another two months.
It's actually kind of sweet that he wants to spend time with me even though we kind of drifted apart over the years I lived in Sweden. I follow him to the garage and he gets the bikes out for us. I can't believe he'll actually be gone for two whole months. Evie goes with Max to pretty much all of his races so that means that she'll probably be gone for that long too. I'm not even allowed to go to these races because I have to "settle in".
We go down the hill and bike through the slim streets of Monte-Carlo. We go all the way down to the harbor and bike along the water and all the big boats. We park them there and decide to walk through the main street so I can shop without struggling with the bike.
Charles obediently follows me into every store I went into. As I look through the clothes, he finds something hideous, puts it in front of him and poses with it, then proceeds to laugh at himself. Every now and then he finds something, holds it up and tells me it would look nice on me, even though I'm pretty sure it would look horrible on me. Some of them made me question if he's trying to sabotage me.
He finds a dress and holds it up to me. It's a light, rose gold color and it has some colorful flowers all over it. It's a silky material and over the chest the material is baggy. The dress is quite long, mid-ankle length with a slit that would end on my mid-thigh. It actually doesn't look bad.
"Tu pourrais le porter au dîner ce soir," You could wear it to dinner tonight, he says, looking at it again before handing it to me. I shake my head.
"On est juste en train de manger chez toi, à quoi ça sert?" We're just eating at your house, what's the point? I ask.
"On part demain, maman cuisine bien... elle sera bien habillée," We're leaving tomorrow, mum is cooking nice... she'll be well dressed.
I agree to buy it, just thinking I can return it tomorrow if I don't like it. Charles will have forgotten about the dress even existing by then and I don't want him to think I don't like the things he's trying to pick out for me. I buy two skirts, a sundress, a pair of linen pants and two sweaters. It'll be enough until I go home to bring all my stuff down here.
When I had to get underwear I order him strictly to stay outside of the store. I don't need him knowing what underwear I'll have on for the next week.
After all the shopping, Charles looks both a bit bored and exhausted so I don't try to bring him to any other stores that I don't actually have to go into. We make our way back to the bikes by the harbor. When we see them, Charles stops me and starts pulling me the other way. He doesn't stop until we're in front of a little house facing the water.
"Deux rouleaux de glace aux fruits de la passion," Two rolls of the passionfruit ice cream, he says to the woman behind the counter and she starts to roll up two balls of a yellow ice cream and then hands it over to him. He pays before he brings me over to a bench a bit further over, sitting down. I sit down next to him and he holds out a spoon of the yellow ice cream in front of me, "Essayez-le," Try it.
"Euh... je-" when I open my mouth, he shoves the spoon into my mouth and the sweet flavor spreads in my mouth. It's so creamy but still very icy. The flavor is sweet but not too sweet nor sour. It's actually delicious.
"C'est bon, non?" It's good, right?
I silently nod as he gives the spoon to me so I can eat it without it being shoved into my mouth. In my head, I curse myself for letting him feed me passionfruit ice cream on a bench. He should not be feeding me ice cream, or make me breakfast, or come shopping with me. There's something telling me it wasn't a good idea.
We sit there for a while, sharing the ice cream, passing the spoon back and forth. Every now and then we find something new to laugh about and I feel like it's going to be okay. I'm sitting here with one of my closest friends and that's that. It's as simple as that.
When we burst through the door laughing about Charles getting in trouble with Christian Horner for mine and Evie's performance yesterday, Arthur and Pascale are in the kitchen. Pascale smiles and turns back to the carrot she's slicing. Arthur looks at me as if to see if I'm mad at him, which I kind of am, but I'm in too much of a good mood to actually act mad, so I keep my smile on my face when we walk into the kitchen.
"Va te laver les mains," Go wash your hands, Pascale says while focusing on her cutting. We do as she asks us and then she gives us things to do to help with dinner. Charles, who's in charge of peeling the potatoes, throws one in Arthur's direction but it lands on me instead. Offended, I reach around Arthur to slap him with the wooden spatula I'm using to mix the tomatoes for the Bruschetta. Arthur, stuck in the middle, tries to fight both of us off before dropping the bread knife to tickle my waist to keep me off, earning a screech from me.
"Vous trois ne grandirez jamais," You three will never grow up, she sighs, spinning a towel to slap us with it, each of us just accepting the slap even though it stings, "Maintenant fais le bien," Now do good, she says while laughing.
We finish our chores in the kitchen, though after some more bickering about standing in the way of each other. Then Pascale sent us up to wash up and get ready for dinner. I took the dress out of the bag and held it up in front of me. It was very pretty... When I tried it on, it fit every curve of my body, a bit too good. It felt like the wrong type of dress for dinner with the Leclerc family, but I also felt too pretty to take it off. I put a claw clip in my hair and went downstairs again to help Pascale set the table outside. When I came downstairs with the dress she nearly gasped, telling me it was the prettiest dress she's seen. I didn't tell her that her son picked it out for me.
Charles came downstairs in a beige pair of pants and a white linen shirt that was unbuttoned at the top. His hair was still a mess from our bike trip when he had the wind going through it, but it looked good. Arthur came down in all black, both the pants and then a black piké shirt. Charles stopped and looked at the dress, about to open his mouth to speak when he saw his mother walk into the kitchen again. She handed me some napkins and a vase of flowers she asked me to put on the table outside. I walk outside and place both the vase on the table and then the napkins. Arthur and Charles come to sit down at the table and soon enough Pascale joins us too. We eat and we talk about old times, like we do most of the time nowadays, reminiscing about the times where people weren't missing from our lives. Old memories that can make us laugh until we cry and our stomachs hurt. Pascale has the best stories, since she actually remembers all of our lives.
"Tu m'as poussé, je viens de me venger," You pushed me, I just got revenge, I defend when Arthur accuses me of pushing a glass of water over as a kid, resulting in him getting all wet. But I'm sure that was because he pushed me when I tried to stand by myself.
"Eri una piccola merda," You were a little shit, he says in Italian so their mother won't know what he says. I gasp as my jaw falls open.
"Stai zitto, eri un bambino inutile," Shut up, you were a useless child, I shoot back while Charles laughs at us both, shaking his head.
"Siete stati entrambi orribili," You both were awful, he chimes in. It makes Pascale whistle loudly to get our attention.
"Français, s'il vous plaît!" French, please, she exclaims and we all apologize to her while containing our laughter for a bit. After finishing the meal we all help out to get it all back inside. Getting the food and the dishes inside. When I gather the plates together, Charles reaches past me, way too close. It brings chills down my spine and I hate my body for it. Once again, I'm pissed off. Then I feel him stay close to me for a second longer. I look up at him.
"Je t'avais dit que la robe t'irait bien," I told you the dress would look good on you. My cheeks warm up again and before I even turn to him completely, I have a smile on my face. I smile up at him, but I can't get any words out, so that's all I do. I smile. Then I just walk away with the plates. If I'm silent, I can't say anything wrong to mess something up.
Pascale went to bed and I thought Charles and Arthur did too, since they have to leave tomorrow. I go out to sit on the grass at the end of the backyard, just to look at all the boats still out on the ocean. There are parties on them, music blasting and lights flashing. The whole town is lit up and it feels so weird now to think that I've grown up on these streets. I know them all like the back of my hand.
"Vous n'avez pas froid?" Aren't you cold? Arthur stands behind me with his hands in his pockets. He sits down next to me on the grass.
"Je pensais que tu étais allé au lit," I thought you had gone to bed.
"Je ne peux pas dormir," I can't sleep.
"Tu es entièrement habillé, tu n'es même pas au lit," You're fully dressed, you haven't gone to bed.
"Je ne peux pas dormir si tu es en colère contre moi, je ne pourrais jamais dormir quand tu es en colère contre moi," I can't sleep when you're mad at me, I've never been able to sleep when you're mad at me. Arthur lays down on his back in the grass, staring up at the sky so I do the same, looking up at the sky covered in stars.
I could probably never stay mad at Arthur. The sad thing is that he and Charles could probably do anything in their power to hurt me, and I'd still never be able to hate them. They're my people, they've always been there and I know them better than I know myself and I guess they'd say the same about me.
"Elle n'est rien comparée à toi, C." She is nothing compared to you, C. "Tu seras toujours plus important, elle ne fera jamais obstacle à notre amitié donc si tu ne veux pas que je sois avec elle alors je ne le serai pas. Je te respecte trop pour choisir quelqu'un d'autre à ta place." You will always be more important, she will never stand in the way of our friendship so if you don't want me to be with her then I won't be. I respect you too much to choose someone else over you.
"Si tu es heureux avec elle alors je veux que tu sois avec elle," If you're happy with her then I want you to be with her, I state firmly. "Ne me force pas à sortir avec elle," Don't force me to hang out with her.
Arthur laughs at me before reaching out to pull me onto his chest to hug him. How could I stay mad at him when he's telling me he respects me too much to choose someone else over me. It feels good to know my first choice in life considers me his first choice too.