[POV: Narrator]
"Carlos did what?" an angry Australian demanded to know for the second time, even though Lando had (accidentally) explained perfectly what had happened the first time. Clearly, Lando's ability as a lightweight to refrain from ratting out his friends was shockingly bad. "He brought her... to my house?!"
Lando, who'd been laughing continuously, wasn't laughing anymore. Instead, he seemed to sober up and see sense.
"I..." he began, only looking at Oscar when it was absolutely necessary, "I had nothing to do with it." He said, proud. With that, Oscar sped away into the crowd as he'd already spotted Carlos with a girl that he thought looked familiar, but now he knew definitely looked familiar.
With a sigh of relief and a sip of his - much too strong - drink, Lando turned to find Andi Saunterre, practically in pieces. The entire ordeal was apparently too much for her to handle; the initial ratting out from Lando, Oscar's comical reaction, and Lando's pathetic attempt to keep himself out of trouble. She'd been laughing so hard that she had to place her drink down, which resulted in a waiter swooping it away from her thinking she was finished with it, which only made her laugh harder. If it were to happen at any time, this is when Andi's smile lines would indefinitely set into her skin.
"I'm sorry—" she breathed out, hardly keeping it together, "it's just, his face, your—" she tried again, only to begin another fit of silent laughter.
"Jesus," Lando remarked at the sight of her, "you're in a worse state than me."
"Impossible." She said, finally calming down. When another waiter passed by the pair, Andi politely stopped the gentleman and requested a drink to replace the one that was stolen. Then, at the sight of Lando, she went straight back to giggling.
"Carlos really has no shame," she said, finding her way back onto the barstool she was sat on before it became too painful to sit while laughing. Lando followed suit, sitting himself beside her.
"I aspire to be a man of such unawareness." Lando answered, as if what he said was some philosophical statement.
Whilst Andi tried not to laugh at that, her drink arrived and she began to pour it from bottle to glass.
Lando sighed. "You know, we actually thought of asking you to be Oscar's blind date, but..."
Andi stopped pouring, breathing hitched.
"We didn't think Oscar would even sit down once he saw it was you."
"Oh," She was taken aback. "Is that right?" She leaned against the counter, catching Lando's eye as he turned to talk to her face-to-face.
"Oh! No! I didn't mean it— in that way, it's just that you're..." He paused, pointing at her. He regretted doing that when she raised her eyebrows. "You know... you're..."
She stared at Lando with critical eyes, glass in hand. When he realised that if he didn't give an answer he'd probably have to go chasing Carlos, who was definitely being told off, he sighed and braced.
"You're you." He said.
With a tilt of her head and nothing more, she made him continue.
"You're Andreanna Saunterre! You go to any party you can find, you— You end every night with a different guy! You—" He paused, realising she wasn't catching on. Or, at least, that's what he gathered from her lifeless expression. "You're the Viper, for god's sake! If Oscar saw that we'd set him up with you, god. He'd know we were messing with him straight away."
Andi turned from him.
Thoughts of the summer piled up, spinning around in her head. What Lando said wasn't wrong, and Andi knew that. She knew he was only commenting on what he knew and what he saw first-hand.
'Oscar didn't know who I was, though...' She thought, swirling the ice around in her drink, void. Her brows furrowed as she bit her tongue. 'But Lando's right.'
'I didn't think about what would happen if—' She sighed, realising her thoughts were pointless. It wasn't Oscar she should be caring about; it was what she was going to tell Charles when she inevitably comes clean, since...
"Yeah." She said, putting Lando at ease. Smiling politely at him, she said: "I suppose you're right."
Her thoughts, however, were not as calm.
She thought about how pointless her planning had been. She thought about Charles. She couldn't fathom the thought; the thought of him knowing about her feelings for him. It doesn't exactly look good on my part that I tried to fake being in a relationship in order to impress him.
Andi began thinking of ways to come clean, trying to accept her fate as it were.
She tried to come to terms with the fact that there was no way around this, that she had no other option.
And that Oscar would never, ever, agree to dating her.
Even if it was all fake.
*
By 1:00am, Andi had just about reached her eighth drink. Lando had long gone; she hadn't seen him in at least an hour since Max Verstappen had appeared.
Alone at the bar, Andi downed the final sip of her eighth drink, cradling her face in her hands once she'd done so.
"Stupid... stupid..." she mumbled, sometimes banging her closed fist onto her forehead with whatever strength she could muster. She then waved for another drink to be sent her way, but it never came. The bar staff must've seen her clear display of despair, and decided that she didn't need another drink. And they'd be right in that judgement, of course; Andi was not in any state of mind to stay for any longer than she had already. And... she was therefore, without a doubt, not in any state to converse.
She felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Hey!" said a sweet voice. Andi turned to face the smiling girl, who was being held around her waist by—
Uuuuuuugh, Andi mentally groaned.
"Hello, to you both." Andi greeted the couple, trying to smile as she struggled to hold her head up manually.
"Are you alright?" Alex, Charles' girlfriend, asked.
"Oh, yeah, fine," Andi insisted, mustering up enough core strength to sit up straight and appear normal for a second or two. "Just tired is all."
"No worries! We're about to head off, too." she nudged Charles, who gave her a small smile. Andi didn't look at him, in fear of throwing up. "Congrats on telling the parents! I heard your dad was super supportive of you two."
Andi looked at her, puzzled. She could see the girl gesturing with her index finger; she pointed straight at Andi but then diverted her point slightly to the left, making Andi turn in that direction. When she did, she almost threw up for another reason.
"Sorry, congratulations for what, exac-" are the words that almost left Oscar Piastri's mouth - who'd been sat beside the girl at the bar for God knows how long, unbeknownst to her, clearly - before Andi quickly grabbed his arm and shut him up, swiftly removing herself from her seat and pulling him with her.
"Sorry!" She said, practically yelling over at Alex and Charles. "Got to run, Dad's waiting!"
Just a few minutes later, Andreanna Saunterre was facedown on the counter of a nearby bar, frantically searching for ways to fix this big, big problem. She'd just been sulking for the past hour about having to tell Charles the truth, since she realised Oscar would never even consider what she was considering, and now everything had gone tits up. At one point, she tried to remember back to her old physics class and whether her teacher had said that time travel was or wasn't possible.
Oscar, on the other hand, or perhaps more accurately: Oscar, on the other barstool, was experiencing other emotions. He was just plain confused. Sixty-odd seconds ago, he'd been congratulated by Charles Leclerc and his girlfriend for something he had no recollection of, something that apparently Andi had 'told the parents' about. And now, he was sat at another bar, a hundred-odd feet from the original venue, watching on as a helpless MotoGP driver drank her life away. He didn't dare stop her though, since the last time he tried that, things went sideways (which was literally minutes prior, at the other bar, when he beckoned the bar staff not to give her any more drinks).
Then, a sudden noise made him jump.
"Okay!" Andi sat up straight without warning, neck hung back, eyes shut. "Okay." she repeated, rubbing her face once over as a sort of 'cleanse'. Her final "Okay!" was much more aggressive, as if she was being pressured into speaking.
Oscar, who was still too scared to say anything, watched on, helpless.
"Charles..." She began, immediately taking another shot, "Charles thinks you and I are in a relationship. So does his girlfriend. And my dad."
For a while after that, neither of them moved. The one to break that stalemate was Andi, who peeked over at the boy next to her for the first time since she'd dragged him over here. She could see that he was pretty still, too, except for a few slow blinks every now and then. He then raised his eyebrows in a quick stretch, as if he had just about broken out of his stunned gaze.
Oh my god, he's furious! Andi thought, immediately taking action.
"Okay!" She said again, almost in a full-blown yell, "Okay! I..." she breathed in, "In Jeddah, when I met Charles' girlfriend for the first time, she kind-of, somehow, got the impression that you and I were a... thing, and from the way Charles reacted I guess I got a bit defensive, and..." she looked at him again, only to see the same expressionless face. Panic set in, even more so than before. "So I lied! Okay?!" she collapsed into her own hands, hiding her face as best she could. "I lied and told him that we were together because I was—"
This time, she really paused. No, I can't say that, she thought. She didn't dare look at Oscar, her mind too busy figuring out what to say next. Note: Alcohol and high-staked cognitive decisions do not mix well.
Nevertheless, she braved onward. "Then, the more time that went by, the more I panicked about what I did, and the more I panicked about what I did, the more I didn't want to tell him what I did, so I just decided to not tell him what I did!" She caught her breath. "And so I, uhm..." Scratching her head, she made sure to avoid his direction, still looking away. "I came up with this, like..." she struggle, "God, it's so stupid. Uhm...I made... a plan."
This time, Andi peeked at him. Oscar, who was now leaned back against the counter, was watching her indefinitely. Suddenly aware of herself, she fixed her posture and held her hands in a polite manner. She gulped, "It was a three-phased plan, actually, and, uhm...Uh, basically, the gist of it was that I'd end up persuading you to, y'know, like, agree to go along with... the plan..."
She peeked again, and the boy had not moved. "Which... basically, involved you and me, pretending, to... y'know, be, like..." Once again, Oscar gave her nothing to work with when she looked. "Together!" She shut her eyes tightly, scared to face him. "And so, I had this whole thing planned where I'd present the benefits of doing this; which, in your case, would be to get Lando off of your back about the whole blind dating bullshit, and for me it was because if I appeared to be— like, in a... relationship, as such, it might make... uhm, a certain someone— Uh..."
Andi, who did not want to continue, was forced to as Oscar merely stared at her.
"Okay! Okay. I'm just gonna come right out and say it." She turned to face him fully, shutting her eyes until the final second. She clasped both of her hands together and prepared to come clean. As she did so, she mumbled to herself, "Oh, god, this is horrible. I am not as drunk as I'd like to be." Then, she breathed in deeply. "Okay. Okay, so—I thought that, maybe, doing this, would make Charles jealous." She paused, making sure to maintain her eye contain in order to convey full transparency. She owed him that much, she supposed. "Because I..." she bit her tongue. "Like him. Like, like-like, him."
After a while, Oscar finally moved and rested an elbow on the counter top, his hand holding his chin as if he was contemplating something. Andi could now feel beads of sweat fall down the back of her neck.
"But, hey, it's all good!" She quickly stated, nervous. "I realise now that it was stupid, and that it was wrong, and that I'm a huge, massive idiot for even trying it in the first place and for dragging you into my mess and thinking you'd actually, like, agree, and so— I'm gonna tell him— them, I'm gonna tell them that it's not true and that I lied, so no need to freak out! I will fix this, I'll come clean, so, you don't have to worry." She said, meaning it, nodding her head in confidence.
It took him a moment, but after all that, all Oscar Piastri said was, "Okay."
Relieved, Andi finally breathed out normally, "Yeah! Okay, good. So, just leave this all to me, and uhm... I'll make sure to not bother you with this again."
"No," He said, making Andi regret her entire existence up until this point. Oh god, she thought. This is it, this is when he tells me he thinks I'm some kind of freak, or weirdo, or— "I mean... Okay, I'll do it."
Andi held her position as it was, unsure of what to do. Her jaw was strained and her eyes held their confused, widened state. Then she decided that the best possible thing to do in this situation was laugh. And that she did. She slapped her knee, breaking into the second fit of laughter of the night. "Ha! That's— funny!" She said, wiping a tear from her eye (which, wasn't necessarily a tear of laughter but one of pure fear). "You know, I'm just glad you're not too mad about this, because let me tell you, I was—"
"Andi." Oscar stopped her.
"Hm?" She tilted her head, eyes still wild.
"I said I'll do it."
She blinked approximately eleven times in the span of thirty seconds.
"Sorry. Uhm, did you just say you'll do it?"
"Yes."
"You'll— you'll do it? You agree?"
"Yes."
"To this?"
"Yes, I agree."
"To— to this?" She held out her index finger and pointed to the both of them, waving back and forth, back and forth...
"Yes, this. All of this." He copied her, pointing back and forth, back and forth. "I agree. I'll do it.
It seemed like the entire bar was moving in slow motion; drinks being poured out with precision, customers talking in slowed movements. Andi, who had her mouth hung open and eyes glued to the individual in front of her who'd just agreed to her, admittedly, preposterous idea of a faked relationship, was lost for both words and thoughts. Her head was filled with one word: "What."
Oscar, on the other end, was pretty calm for someone who'd just listened to a drunk lady blab on about her pitiful and daft experiences and eventually agreed to do what she wanted. I mean, 'calm' and 'Oscar' were often in the same situation; this one was no different.
"So," he spoke, making the girl close her mouth finally, "Is that... everything?"
"Um." Is all Andi could come up with. Then, she promptly stood up. "Just... wait—" She fumbled around, looking for something. Her eyes focused when she found whatever it was, reaching behind her head to undo the ponytail she'd tied for 'convenience' at some point during the night. She then held it in her hand, stretched it out and reached for Oscar's hand. All he did, or could do, was watch as she grabbed it and shoved a dark-brown elastic hair-tie onto his wrist. When he looked up at her, she seemed half-proud of herself and half-bewildered.
She then clasped her hands together and promptly said, "That can be act as my placeholder for now. I will contact you shortly with more details," as if she was some savvy business woman, and left the bar without looking back.
Again, all Oscar could do was sit back and watch it happen.
He looked down at his wrist and then back at the door.
"What the hell did I just agree to." He mumbled to himself, catching a second glance at the hair-tie on his wrist. He was suddenly glad that Andi had left, as if she were still sat in front of him, she would've caught the slight smile on his face at the sight of it.
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