The last day before Charles had to leave for Singapore, he had a few errands to run while I was at practice. Elliòtt and I had another really fucking bad practice that we had to end early because of a fight about on what beat we're supposed to start a turn. He's the one who should be leading me so if I'm unsure, he's still supposed to make sure I know what I'm going to do — apparently he doesn't agree and that's 'lazy' from my side.
I'm pissed and I'm cursing under my breath when I'm just about to walk up the driveway to the house. Charles isn't back yet, which makes me even more disappointed.
"Bonjour," a small little voice brings me out of my thoughts. The young girl from next door is sitting on her knees on the sidewalk, drawing with street chalks. She's drawn a red car, a sun and a butterfly.
"Bonjour," I say back with a small smile, "De si jolis dessins," Such pretty drawings.
"Merci," Thank you, she says happily, "Voulez-vous dessiner avec moi? tu peux dessiner une ballerine," Do you want to draw with me? You can draw a ballerina.
The excited, small, happy look on her face made it impossible to say no and I was quickly on my knees next to her, drawing a ballerina while she drew a big boat. She told me some things about her school and it turns out she goes to the same school that Arthur, Charles and I went to when we were younger. She told me that her best friend lives in an apartment right above the track, so she had been there to watch the Grand Prix weekend from the balcony. I told her that Charles drives one of the cars and she told me she already knew that because her dad had told her.
Eventually her mom came out to check on her and when she saw me sitting with her daughter, she came up to greet me and I quickly dusted my hands off on my tights before shaking her hand.
"Je suis Céline, ravie de vous rencontrer," I'm Céline, nice to meet you, I told her with a smile.
"Marie. Pardon, Félicité aime beaucoup parler aux voisins," Marie, sorry, Félicité really likes to talk to the neighbors, she says, looking down at her daughter who is now putting her street chalk away. I smile and shake my head to show that it's not a problem.
"Maman, je peux lui montrer l'affiche dans ma chambre?" Mom, can I show her the poster in my room? she asks, grabbing onto her mother's wrist.
"Tu dois lui demander si elle veut voir ton affiche," You have to ask her if she wants to see your poster, Marie says as she glances at me.
"Voulez-vous voir mon affiche? Il y a des voitures dessus!" You want to see my poster? It has cars on it! Félicité says as she jumps up and down, making her little ponytail swing back and forth.
My first instinct is to say no, because her room might as well be my old room. The house I used to live in is now their house, with their stuff in it. But the look on her face is so sweet and I'm a bit curious to see how it looks now. So I nod, letting her take my hand and pull me with her towards the house, with her mom following right behind us.
As soon as we step a foot on the property I get this nostalgic feeling. Looking at the grass around the house, I think about all the times the same grass has left stains on our clothes that Pascale and my mother would curse for not being able to get rid of completely. Or when Jules would chase us around the house and Arthur and I had a hole in the hedge where we'd crawl through to the other side, which was the Leclerc's backyard and we'd hide under Lorenzo's bed because there was no way he'd look there of all places. He did.
She opened the door and there was just a tiny, tiny hint of that familiar smell the house had when we lived here. Maybe the smell is just that deep rooted into the walls. But it's gone as quickly as it came, and we step into the narrow hallway, the walls now decorated with pictures of another family, rather than of our family.
I remember the first picture being a picture of all of us on Christmas one year when I still used pacifiers and I was holding two in each hand and there was a fifth in my mouth. Mom thought it was hell to get me to drop the pacifiers. Then the second picture was of Jules and I when I was at one of his competitions that he had won. I tried to give him a pacifier for winning, but he didn't take it. I wonder why.
The third photo was a picture of all five of us children on vacation somewhere. I think we were in Mexico, but I'm not sure, because the picture just showed us on the beach and they all kind of look the same, so it's hard to tell. The fourth was my mom and dad's wedding photo, the fifth was Jules and Lorenzo graduating and the last one was of Charles, Arthur and I at Jules' first ever Formula 1 session, a practice session.
Now all of the photos are of Félicité with her parents, on vacation, with her friends or cousins, her parents' wedding photos and all that. But she rushes me through the hallway, just letting me catch a glimpse of the living room which is now furnished very differently, but I can still look out into the backyard to see they remodeled the pool we had.
She rushes me up the stairs and then she takes a right turn and she pushes me to the two bedroom doors that used to belong to Jules and I, and I wait for her to see which door she's going to open. She goes up to Jules' old room and I hold my breath as she opens it, but she doesn't walk in, she just turns to me.
"Mes nouveaux frères resteront ici," My new brothers will stay here, she informs me as she looks into the room, "J'aurai un frère aîné et un frère cadet. Maman a dit qu'ils avaient besoin d'une nouvelle famille," I will have an older brother and a younger brother. Mom said they needed a new family, she says.
"Sont-ils français?" Are they French? I ask, looking closer at the room they've decorated for the boys. It's quite different from Jules' usual messy room.
"Non, ils viennent du Maroc," No, they come from Morocco, she says as she moves towards the second door, opening it to reveal my old room, now hers.
Her bed is where I used to have mine and I can feel that smell again, the way things used to smell when I lived here. Above the bed, there's a poster with a car from each team on the grid this year. She points at it proudly and then she crawls up on the bed to get closer, and I take a few steps into the room so I can look at it more closely.
"Celui-ci," This one, I start as I point to the red Ferrari on the top row, "Mon copain conduit," My boyfriend is driving.
"Charles est-il votre petit-ami?" Is Charles your boyfriend? she asks, wide-eyed. I smile and I nod, because it's not like this seven or eight year old is going to find a way to tell the media.
"Quand j'étais enfant, c'était ma chambre," When I was a kid, this was my bedroom, I tell her, looking around to see Marie coming up the stairs and approaching the rooms, "Ma famille a vécu ici jusqu'en 2015, vous l'avez rendu vraiment agréable," My family lived here until 2015, you guys made it really nice.
"Vraiment?!" Really?! Marie exclaims, raising her eyebrows as she looks at me. "Donc je pense qu'on a laissé certaines de tes affaires au sous-sol, tu veux jeter un œil?" Then I think we got some of your stuff left in the basement, wanna take a look? She asks and I slowly nod, wondering what kind of stuff that might be that we left behind. But there was a lot in that basement and it doesn't surprise me that some things were left behind.
I follow her down into the living room, where she asks me to wait as she goes down into the basement. While I wait, Félicité is showing me a lot of stuff around the house, asking if it was the same when I lived there, and I tell her some stories about what Arthur and I used to do when we were kids. How we'd play in the pool, how he fell in the stairs and rolled down multiple steps and got a horrible bruise and a big ass bump on his head, and how she can do fun stuff with her brothers when they move in.
Marie comes up with two medium sized boxes from the basement, explaining she was going to throw them away, but never really got to it, and she was a bit worried that someone would come looking for the things one day.
I sit down and I open the first box, immediately noticing some of Jules' stuff. The hand I framed in kindergarten for his birthday is on the top. My throat is closing up but I push the feeling away as I put it aside to look for other things. Michael Schumacher's autograph on an old Ferrari cap that Jules used to wear all the time when we were younger. Some old medals that he got at races, some of my old drawings I gave to him.
"C'est les trucs de mon frère," It's my brother's stuff, I explain to Félicité and Marie who are sitting around me. I try my very best to keep the feelings in my chest away.
I see a little box with a little car in it. Jules used to collect these boxes with small versions of Ferrari cars from every year. Some of them were really difficult to find and some of them were really expensive. One year, Lorenzo found a really rare model and it was super expensive, but he let me give it to Jules from the both of us, even though Jules knew that I didn't really know what I was giving him. The one in front of me is one of the more rare ones that he got only a year or two before he died.
"Vous voulez celui-ci?" You want this one? I ask Félicité, giving the car to her, "Tu pouvez collecter plus," You can collect more.
Félicité takes it from my hands and she looks closer at it before suddenly throwing her arms around my neck to hug me really tightly, making me laugh lightly as Marie looks almost a bit embarrassed, until I show her it's absolutely fine.
"Merci Céline!" Thank you! She exclaimed happily.
The other boxes were mostly clothes from when we were children, both Jules and I. But I thanked Marie and I said goodbye to them before taking them over to the house. I was struggling to get through the door, because there was no one there to help me.
I only make it to the living room before there's a knock on the door. I sigh and put the boxes down, because there is no one else here to open the door and they probably won't wait until I've put the boxes down upstairs. So I put them down and I walk over to the door, opening it and the first thought I have is: can I catch a break?
Lucie is standing there, anxiously looking at me when I open the door. Her blonde hair in a ponytail and she's holding an empty sports bag in her hands. She's standing in front of me, looking anxious and shy, smiling kindly when she sees my face, and I've never felt guilt quite like that before.
"Salut, C" She says, "J'ai encore des trucs ici, je voulais juste les récupérer quand il n'est pas à la maison," I still have some stuff here, just wanted to pick it up when he's not home, she says.
"Oh..." is all I manage to get out, "Uh... Charles sera bientôt à la maison," Charles will be home shortly.
"Je pensais qu'il était parti pour Singapour?" I thought he left for Singapore, she says as her face falls and she quickly sends a look over her shoulder.
"Il part demain," He leaves tomorrow, I tell her.
"Puis-je être rapide? Je veux juste en finir," Can I be quick? I just want to get it over with, she pleads, and I'm not going to stand in the way of her not having to come back here again, so I step aside to let her in. "Je ne veux pas qu'il pense que j'ai fouiné, ça te dérangerait de venir avec moi?" I don't want him to think I snooped, would you mind coming with me?
Once again, I'm not going to make this take any longer than it has to, so I silently follow her up the stairs to Charles' bedroom, which I hope is free from things that might let her know about Charles and I. Pascale found my clothes and gave them back, but have I left anything else in here?
She gets some clothes out of his closet, she gets some makeup wipes out of his bedside table and then she goes into the bathroom to get some skincare and hygiene stuff from there, putting it all into her bag and then we walk back downstairs. I hope that's the end of it, but in the kitchen she stops and she looks at me with more sadness this time.
"Je ne vous hais pas," I don't hate you, she says, sounding like she's trying not to cry. I don't even know what to say, so I open my mouth and then I close it again. "J'ai essayé. Mais je ne peux pas te détester... tu n'es pas une mauvaise personne." I tried. But I can't hate you... you're not a bad person.
I look down at my hands, picking at my nails, not really being able to face her. She knows about Charles and I, because she's not stupid. She knows him and she doesn't need it to be confirmed to the media to know. I'm not going to lie to her and tell her that I don't know what she's talking about, because after this I feel like she deserves better than that.
"Je suis vraiment désolé," I am really sorry, I say when I dare meet her eye, but she just tilts her head to the side as her face softens, "Je suis désolé pour tout mal que vous avez pu ressentir," I'm sorry for any hurt you may have felt.
"C'est ma faute de penser que je pourrais rivaliser avec toi," It's my fault for thinking that I could compete with you, she says a shrug, "Je l'ai vu venir depuis si longtemps et j'espérais toujours que je délirais," I saw it coming so long and I always hoped I was delirious.
"J'aurais dû te laisser plus d'espace..." I should've given you more space, I say and she shakes her head.
"Tu as laissé de l'espace... mais ça l'a juste rendu fou... tu n'aurais rien pu faire, parce qu'il voulait être avec toi et pas avec moi. C'est ma faute si j'ai refusé de partir à la seconde où je l'ai vu," You left space...but it just drove him crazy...you couldn't have done anything, because he wanted to be with you and not with me. It's my fault I refused to leave the second I saw it.
"Vous avez été traité injustement," You've been treated unfairly, I state, because I don't think she should be taking any blame for it. She didn't do anything wrong, it was simply unfair of Charles not to leave when he had feelings for someone else.
"Peut-être que oui... mais je me mets dans cette position," Maybe so... but I put myself in this position, she says, making something in my chest hurt a little for her. "Je voulais juste que tu saches que je ne te déteste pas. Je ne t'ai jamais détesté. Je pense que tout ce qui se dit en ligne est complètement injuste pour nous deux," I just wanted you to know that I don't hate you. I never hated you. I think everything being said online is completely unfair to both of us.
I open my mouth to speak just as the front door opens, making both our heads turn towards the hallway as we're both probably hoping to see someone else. But like normal, we don't have that luck and soon we hear Charles' voice.
"Cece!" He shouts from the door and Lucie looks over at me with the smallest hint of a smile, just making me feel more guilty.
"Je suis dans la cuisine," I'm in the kitchen, I say, not having to shout for him to hear me.
"Je t'ai apporté quelque chose!" I got you something, he says excitedly as he walks through the door, his eyes immediately landing on me as he walks through with a smile, but then he catches a glimpse of Lucie standing there still, and he looks over with his smile falling, shock replacing that happy face he just had.
In his hand is a bouquet of red roses with white baby breaths in it.
"Lucie?" He asks, looking at her as she starts taking small steps towards the door.
"Je recevais juste des choses," I was just getting things, she says, starting to escape the kitchen to get to the door, "Prenez soin de vous, Céline." Take care, Céline.
"Toi aussi," You too, I say as she walks out to the hall and shortly after that we hear the front door open and shut. I turn to Charles, who is now looking at me with that shock, the flowers still in his hand, but now looking like they're going to slip out, until he remembers them and holds them up again, walking all the way up to me.
"Que faisait-elle ici? Elle ne m'a pas dit qu'elle venait pour quoi que ce soit," What was she doing here? She didn't tell me she was coming for anything, he asks.
"Elle est venue chercher des vêtements et des trucs dans la salle de bain," She came to get clothes and stuff from the bathroom, I reply with a shrug. "Quelle est l'occasion?" What's the occasion? I ask, looking at the flowers in his hand.
"Sauf si tu viens au Japon, je ne te verrai qu'à nos anniversaires," Unless you come to Japan, I won't see you until our birthdays, he says, handing the flowers over, "Alors je voulais te les donner avant de partir," So I wanted to give them to you before I left.
Our birthdays are in a month, almost exactly. Being away from him for that amount of time makes me hurt. It's so long and he'll be so far away.
I kiss him, making him smile again, but there's still something hanging over us like a cloud as I bring the flowers over to the sink to prepare them for a vase. I know there's something on his mind, and I bet it's about Lucie, but I don't say anything about her visit. I don't even know what to think about it myself.
Pascale comes home, immediately tells me I'm doing the flowers wrong and she pushes me out of the way and she takes over, telling me to get a vase out for her. I dig through the cupboard for one and then I put it on the counter next to her.
"C'est quoi ces boîtes?" What are these boxes? Charles shouts from the living room, where I dropped the boxes and just forgot about them.
"C'est des vieux trucs de Jules," It's old Jules stuff, I tell him as I rush out to the living room, moving him out of the way just as he opens one of the boxes and looking inside of it. I take the lid from him and close it again, even though there's nothing in it that needs to be hidden.
"D'où est-ce que ça vient?" Where does this come from? He asks, furrowing his brows. Behind him, I see Pascale looking out of the kitchen, at me and then at the boxes. She waits for my answer as well.
"Les voisins ont trouvé des vieux trucs dans leur sous-sol," The neighbors found some old stuff in their basement, I explain, but I sense they're waiting for more of an explanation. "Je parlais à la petite fille et elle voulait montrer son affiche dans sa chambre... J'ai dit à sa mère que j'avais habité là et elle est revenue avec deux cartons," I was talking to the little girl and she wanted to show her poster in her room... I told her mother that I had lived there and she came back with two boxes.
Pascale turns back into the kitchen without another word and Charles blinks a couple times as he looks at me and then down at the boxes again. I pick them up before he says something else and I start to carry them towards my room, but Charles follows behind me.
"Êtes-vous entré dans votre ancienne maison?" You went into your old house? he asks and I silently nod as I carry the boxes up the stairs. He tries to follow me into my room, but when I've put the boxes down, I push him back out, making him look nearly offended.
"Allez emballer! Je ne veux pas que tu sois occupé toute la nuit," Go pack! I don't want you busy all night, I tell him before closing the door between us.
I start looking through the boxes. Starting with the one with old clothes. Some of my old clothes and then some of Jules clothes. I do believe that some may be Charles, Arthur or Lorenzo's clothes, though. I refuse to believe our parents managed to keep it all separate, considering we were always running between the houses and leaving our stuff everywhere.
I found a white, Ralph Lauren, piké shirt that I remember a lot more vividly than the other clothes. Charles has a matching one and there's a photo of them together, both wearing the shirt. I think it was framed somewhere, but I haven't seen it in years. There's also a lot of old karting shirts. Some with Charles' logo on it, some with Jules' number he had in karting. There's some sweaters as well, specifically a blue, knitted sweater, that when I picked it up made me freeze in my spot. The smell that hit me was Jules' smell, and it was so evident, it was not just a whiff of the smell, it was like he had walked by in person. My eyes watered, but I swallowed the tears and I put it all away, deciding to look through the rest later.
Pascale came in when I was on my bed reading a book. She carried the vase of flowers that Charles had given me and she brought them up to my side of the bed, taking the vase that was standing there with dead flowers I had been too lazy to throw away, and exchanging them with the big bouquet of roses and baby breaths.
"Parlez-vous toujours à votre thérapeute?" Are you still talking to your therapist? she asks, making me tense up, because no, I'm not. I became too busy and there were a lot of issues and misunderstandings with all the different time zones, so I told her I didn't need therapy anymore.
"Oui," I say shortly, but in the corner of my eye, I see Pascale's head snap in my direction, clearly hearing the lie in my voice, but I keep my eyes on my book.
"Ta mère a dit qu'ils ne prenaient plus d'argent sur son compte," Your mom said they don't take money from her account anymore, she says as she adjusts some flowers in the vase, moving some flowers here and there as if it was actually important.
"Je leur ai dit de le prendre sur mon compte à la place," I told them to take it from my account instead, I say as casually as I can, shrugging a little.
"Céline, l'accord était que tu vois un thérapeute pendant que tu vivais ici... pas pour tes parents et moi... pour toi," Celine, the agreement was that you see a therapist while living here... not for your parents and me... for you.
I sigh and I close the book and put it next to me, sitting up to look at her standing next to my bed, and she turns her body a little more in my direction. Her hands fall from the flowers and down to her side as she sees it as confirmed that I'm not seeing my therapist anymore.
"Cela n'a fait aucune différence de toute façon," It made no difference anyway, I shake my head. She sighs and sits down on the edge of my bed.
"Alors on vous en trouve un nouveau, mais vous avez besoin de voir quelqu'un..." So we'll find you a new one, but you need to see someone... she says.
"Pourquoi?" Why? I ask, because I don't understand why they're pushing me to see a therapist when I'm doing fine.
"Parce que tu as perdu quelqu'un que tu aimais et c'est dur de s'en remettre," Because you lost someone you loved and it's hard to get over that, she argues and I sigh and shake my head.
"Mais je n'ai besoin de personne pour me demander ce que mon petit-déjeuner m'a fait ressentir pour m'en remettre," But I don't need anyone to ask me how my breakfast made me feel to get over it, I shake my head while I furrow my brows.
"Céline, il se passe beaucoup de choses en ce moment. Tous les médias et Charles... Je pense vraiment que tu devrais voir quelqu'un," Celine, there's a lot going on right now. All the media and Charles... I really think you should see someone, she says, now a lot more sternly. She tilts her head slightly back and she looks at me, giving me her authority stare.
I take a deep breath and I clench my jaw, trying to stare back, but I'm the first one to look away and it's down on my lap, "Très bien... je vais l'appeler," Fine, I'll call her, I mutter.
"Je saurai si tu ne le fais pas," I will know if you don't, she states as she stands up, giving me a smile, acting as if the conversation never happened, before she walked out of the room.
Charles and I bought dinner and took it to the boat. We managed to stay pretty hidden with no lights on and just relying on the lights from other boats. He noticed I was a bit distracted but I didn't tell him about the talk I had with his mother, because he'd agree on it and wonder why the hell I stopped seeing the therapist to begin with.
I tried to be as present as I could, because I wouldn't see him in a bit. But I had a lot to think about. Japan, Lucie, the therapist, the things in the boxes and the smell of the shirt. I wasn't sure what I wanted to talk to him about, so I stayed silent and I let him speak about the next few races he's doing and what it will be like with, especially Singapore, being one of the most physically difficult races of the season.
"Je suis désolé, je ne parle que de moi...," I'm sorry, I'm only talking about myself... he said with a little chuckle and I shake my head to tell him it's fine, because I don't want to talk about me, "Comment ça se passe avec Elliòtt?" How are things going with Elliott? he asks, lifting my legs up to put them over his lap as he pulls me closer to let his arm snake around me. I put my head on his shoulder and I sigh.
"Je veux arrêter," I want to quit, I tell him but he just scoffs.
"Non tu ne le fais pas," No you don't, he says, kissing my forehead. "Tu n'abandonnes jamais," You never give up, he says, like it's a well known fact.
But thinking about it... if I've never given up before, maybe I can be excused just this once?
//
If Céline was a song, which one would she be? (yes there is a right answer and this is an experiment)