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ABU Dhabi is as bright as ever, in this big restaurant overflowing with guests. Some people are wearing party clothes, others are still in their team gear from the Grand Prix; but regardless of what someone was wearing, they were talking to someone. One, two, maybe even a big group of seven people all at once.
Sareena found herself alone at the bar again, the same pool table she had paid attention to the first time she came here still catching her eye.
The game is between Lando and Bianca against Pierre and Charles, while Oscar and Logan are sat on-looking the game, waiting for their turn to exchange with the losing team.
On her pale wrist, Sareena feels the beads of a certain red, blue, and yellow bracelet with the number '33' flush against her skin. She reaches for one of the white beads with the number indentation and begins fidgeting with it.
It was Max's, an artifact she accidentally stole when he was too drunk to care back when they first met last year.
Same place, same event, around the same time.
Where could he have been? She's sure that Red Bull Racing's superstar wouldn't miss such a big end-of-season celebration party.
Sareena watches as Bianca shoots one of the billiard balls into a pocket, and she high-fives Lando as it sinks down. In the distance, she can hear Pierre's protests about her being too good, and the laughter of the six individuals by the pool table barely overheard through the music.
The nearly tasteless little lemonade that she's been sipping on is getting more and more watered down by the minute, but she's staying awake until they go home, because she knows she'll be on driver duty anyway—even though she had barely flown in three hours ago because her only reason for being here was giving the bracelet to Max.
She might be an introvert, but she knows how to keep her word.
So, to keep her awake and to keep her alert, she stirs, and stirs, and stirs her beverage around with her tall straw, and watches the ice swirl around as her attention goes from the game of pool to the question of Where the hell is Max—
"Hello, pretty teacher."
Sareena turns her head and halts her movements.
The restaurant is so dim, so dim for a high-budget place rented out by Toto Wolff (in honor of Lewis's departure to Ferrari,) but she can still see his features quite well, even in the orange and beige hues.
Max looks happy tonight, dressed in a black top and some gray jeans. His only outerwear was a blue jacket reminiscent of the shade of blue on the livery his car had, and his face was politely holding a smile as he looked her way.
"Hello," she responds, resting her elbow on the bar as she looks towards him. "'Pretty teacher' has a name, by the way."
Max nods. "Yes, yes, I know. I just thought since that's what I called you last time we spoke in person, it would remind you who I was."
Sareena snorts, "You're Max Verstappen. Everyone knows who you are."
He walks over and takes a seat at the empty chair next to her, and shrugs his shoulders. "Out there, I'm Max Verstappen. Today, I am just Max who intends to get through the night without a single drink."
"To ensure you don't forget your bracelet again?" She jokes, rolling the beaded bracelet off of her arm with ease. She dangles it in the space between them, and quirks up at brow. "You missing this?"
"Very," he hovers his palm under the bracelet, and Sareena lets it drop. "It's one of my favorites I've received."
"Sentimental, are you?"
"Sometimes," he closes his fingers around the bracelet and places his hands on the bar. He spins the accessory in his hands as he continues to speak, "How have you been?"
"Busy. Teacher duties," she responds as she goes back to stirring her lemonade. "How are you? Since you're not drinking tonight."
Max shakes his head. "I shouldn't. I said to myself that I would like to remember the next time that we speak."
Oh, so he's crazy.
Sareena laughs, raising the straw to her lips with her hand around the cold glass. "You're so optimistic."
"Still waiting for you to accept my follow request," he points out. "So, yes, I am very optimistic."
Sareena has a grand total of 89 followers on Instagram, all friends that she keeps up with decently and family she's somewhat in contact with, and Max's request to follow her has been sitting in her inbox for a few months now.
The determination, at least, is something she can admire.
"I won't do it, you know," she rejects, lowering the glass back down to the table.
"Someday, you might."
"It would be a misclick."
Max quirks his head from side-to-side. "Then, I can be patient and wait for the real thing."
Patient.
Max Verstappen and 'patient' don't really go together. They're never on the same assembly line of thought, and they're never really two things that you think of at the same time. Sareena's seen him race, seen the articles, seen how short his fuse can be if you leave it out and lit.
She lets the faint sourness of the lemonade linger as she eyes the man next to her. "Are you really patient, or is that your New Years Resolution?"
He lets out a laugh, then shrugs. "Who knows?"
Eventually, the two get their attention taken away by the voice of Daniel Ricciardo, who they can see is holding two pool cues with a beaming smile on his face.
"Max! You in? Need to show Oscar who the better Aussie is!"
Some hooting and hollering is heard from around the pool table, Bianca and Lando included.
Oscar shakes his head in the distance. "Relax yourself before you have a heart attack, you fossil."
"'You foss—' What did you just call me?" Daniel's head whips around, making everyone laugh.
Sareena and Max look to one another again, and she spares him a barely visible smile on her face. "Try and win this time."
Max hums with a small nod, and he then places the bracelet back on the table. With two fingers over its beads, he slides it over next to Sareena's lemonade.
"Keep it. It looked nice on you."
Sareena only scoffs at the gesture as he gets up and adjusts his jacket, eyes still on her. "Less looking at me, more looking at the game of pool you're about to play."
Max tilts his head to the side as he spins around to join the others, but he stops halfway through a step.
"It was good seeing you."
"I know it was."
The Red Bull driver scrunches up his nose with a small smirk and shakes his head, then finds his way next to Daniel as he pats his former teammate's back.
While she watches them play, Sareena finds herself slipping the bracelet back onto where it was before.
Christ.
She doesn't have time for this.
Max shoots one of the billiard balls into a pocket and cheers, high-fiving Daniel as he moves around the table.
She's got more important things than the Formula One driver who wants to be in her life so bad. She's got tests to grade, students to help, and a good life away from prying cameras—save for Bianca's phone camera that she likes to shove in Sareena's face on birthdays and the small outings they do.
She doesn't need anything obstructing her life, and yet, here he was, Max Verstappen in all his glory trying to weasel his way into the hours of her days.
Sareena doesn't need him, but Bianca and Charles have been telling her that he's a good person, a good friend in waiting for her to spend time with.
Ha.
Sareena takes another sip of her lemonade, her wrist once again covered by the bracelet that dons Max's racing number.
She only started wearing it to make sure she wouldn't lose it—and also because she thought it was funny when she would see the fumes come out the sides of Cameron's face, the little Mercedes fan in her World History class who despises Red Bull with a passion; or when she would hear the murmurs in her classroom about how 'Is Miss Garrett a Verstappen fan? What the fuck!'.
No other reason but those.
After all, it's just a stupid bracelet, isn't it?
As Sareena keeps her eyes on the game ahead of her, she sees Max look at her, then give her a small curl of the lips as his attention goes from the pool table, to her, to the game, and back again.
She returns the gesture with a small smile of her own, and when he takes his turn again, his grin and the light in his eyes never go away.
Just a stupid bracelet.
Yeah.
Exactly.
NOTES!
not exactly the romantic sareena and max epilogue you all were expecting but i hope it serves to show a bit of sareena's mindset and how straightforward she tends to be in conversation, she's a very interesting character and i hope that if i get around to that max verstappen fanfic (if!!) you all enjoy reading her development :)
it's still a maybe on that max fanfic since this school year has proven to be much more heavy on the workload for me, but i hope that this can suffice for now!
thank you all for reading sunrise blvd, and i hope you all enjoyed reading about lando and bianca as much as i enjoyed writing about them <3
lots of love!!
xoxo, cas
YOU HAVE NOW REACHED THE END OF:
SUNRISE BOULEVARD, lando norris
[ written by -planetpiastri on wattpad ]
more works by me:
UNTIL THE SONG WAS DONE, oscar piastri
(in progress)
thank you for reading, and
thank you for sticking around!
take care now!