Max
I'm looking at the calendar on my phone, not knowing what to do anymore. We are just flying to Monaco and I'm starting to regret agreeing. I have a lot of problems right now, and partying with this man will complicate everything even more. It was for him that I made so many enemies and I regret it. I damn well regret trusting him so soon, because now I'm the enemy in my own team. I feel like an unwanted scoring boy there.
"Max?" I hear Charles' voice across from me.
"Yes?" I lift my head, meeting his gaze. I still feel strange when he calls my name after the way he treated me. I could have passed by indifferently at the time, leaving him alone, but when I saw him sitting in the corner, clenching his eyelids as he got pepper spray in his eyes it made me unable to leave. He looked like a little kid who doesn't know what to do.
"Shall we have a drink?" he glances toward the bottle of vodka.
"How are you going to hold the glass? With your teeth?" I kidding, to which he opens his mouth in surprise and looks at me in shock, not expecting me to say such a thing.
"You asshole!" he shouts, at which I start laughing. "We always have your hands available." He shifts, sitting down next to me.
"Oh, yeah?" I ask, turning toward him.
"God, go." He mumbles, turning his face the other way.
I grab the bottle and unscrew it, which Charles hears and turns curiously toward me. I pour the alcohol into two glasses, then top off the juice and throw in ice cubes from the bucket it's in to cool the bottle.
"Professionally. I thought you were making me drink from the bottle." He says, smiling.
"Don't tempt." I wink at him and glance uncontrollably at his hands.
I immediately have that day in my mind. We were all so terrified, thinking the worst, and he came out of it with almost no injuries and still had the strength in the hospital to taunt me like that.
"Here's to your victory?" he asks as he crookedly catches the glass in two hands and lifts it up.
"Here's to your health, Charles." I lift my drink and, without waiting for him to say anything, tip the glass, drinking its entire contents at once. I need alcohol today more than ever, because sober I will think too much about being careful in his company, which will ruin everything.
As I put down my glass, I see the boy looking at me with a smile, and his drink is not moved. I furrow my eyebrows, already wanting to ask what this is all about, but suddenly the pilot notifies us that we will be landing, so Leclerc drinks the contents of the glass and also sets it down on the table.
"No one will see us on the yacht?" I make sure. I don't want to have a problem with Christian again. Things haven't been very interesting between us lately.
"No, no one goes far out."
After a while we are already at the airport. We leave the plane in silence and walk toward the substituted car. I open the door, waiting for Charles to get inside. I can see perfectly well how he smiles under his breath that he making me a chauffeur. We both get into the back seats and listen to music on the radio in silence as we drive toward where his yacht is standing.
"Max?" he asks quietly, leaning his head against my shoulder. I shift my gaze to him, looking closely at the still softly red eyes after the pepper spray incident.
"Yes?"
"Can we forget about everything and everyone today and spend it having fun?" he asks hopefully. I can see it in his eyes. He's tired of what's happened to him, the media, the constant questions about when he'll return to Formula, and watching Oliver do so well in his place.
But will it be wise if I agree? I, too, am fed up, but this is our life that we can't escape from. I am quarreled with Christian, my father had an accident and is lying in the hospital, and my mother and sister are also people who are highly offended with me. My whole life is fucked by the man next to me, and despite how he was, I've decided to forgive him again, and I'm probably staggering in a vicious circle, but his idea is too good.
"Yes, let's do it," I nod.
A wide smile appears on his face again. He leans forward and takes the bottle of liquor he gave to the security guards to move it here. He hands it to me to unscrew it for him. As I do so, he takes a few sips of alcohol, croaking at the same time, and hands me the bottle to make me feel it too.
"At this rate, we won't be sober entering the yacht." I comment on his behavior, to which he waves his hand in the air and waits expectantly for me to repeat what he just did.
I roll my eyes while taking a few smaller sips of alcohol from him. I feel it flow down my esophagus, pleasantly irritating my throat. I don't drink very often, although that seems strange to some, since I keep winning and should be celebrating. Yes, it was like that at the beginning of my career, but when I win a whole season, celebrating a victory no longer pleases like it used to, because there was no competition, so we gave it up.
Before I have time to analyze everything, every now and then taking a bottle from the boy to drink, this one is left empty. A great start to the party. At this rate, it will end quickly.
"Maybe a yacht in two is a bad idea?" I ask suddenly, when the voice of reason manifests itself in my head between alcohol.
"We are." I hear the driver's voice.
"It's a perfect idea, Max." He opens the door with difficulty and gets out, staggering. Heartbroken, I also leave, thanking the driver. Seeing people in the distance, I quickly catch up with the boy and so that they can't see, I grab his arm to make him walk straight. "Hey, let go!" he indignantly looks in my direction as I take my sunglasses off my head and put them on his nose. "Max." He admonishes me, wanting to take them off but I don't let him, pushing him onto the yacht.
"People are watching, calm down." I say him quietly, to which he immediately nods and does not put up again, but walks obediently towards the bench.
I sit him down, and the man who takes care of the yachts that stand here untangles the rope so we can sail out. I have a similar yacht, so I know how to fire it up. I don't know how much we're sailing, but eventually I decide that we're far enough away, and on top of that I can still hear the inebriated Charles shouting, trying to sing some songs because he's bored.
I leave the cabin, looking at the boy lying in the middle of the deck, looking at the clouds, and next to him are two bottles of vodka.
"Where did you get this?" I ask, sitting down next to him.
"I conjure." He rises to sit down.
"Don't you think you've had enough alcohol, Charles?" I push back the bottles, watching as the boy sighs loudly and his mood flees, leaving sadness and depression on his face. "Drinking up problems doesn't help." I says.
"How can you know that, Mr. Perfect Life?" he crosses his arms over his chest.
I press my lips into a thin line, turning my gaze away from him. A perfect life. Yes, I would like it to be like that, at least for a while. But it never has been and never will be. Even when I win the world championship, my father comes up and says something that ruins everything. Why didn't you win all the races, Max? For him, winning doesn't count if I wasn't the best all season. There will always be something to improve, so that he won't have to call me the perfect son.
"I wish." I parry, although I'm not laughing at all.
"So what helps?" he asks quietly.
"Well..." Before I have time to say anything more, the brunet moves closer to me.
In fact, because of the alcohol in my blood, I don't manage to move away in time before his lips touch mine. I grab him by the shoulders and break the instant kiss, which should never have happened at all. Then it was a mistake that can't happen again. I see him look at me drunkenly with disappointment.
"I can't, Charles." I say frankly. If anyone found out about it I would have a bigger hell than I have now, and it's already hard.
"But you would like to." He mumbles, smiling innocently, like a small child.
"I don't know." I sigh, stepping back. "I have a confusing situation in my head, and you're not helping me solve it at all." I add, opening a bottle of alcohol.
"They say that if you have a problem you should sleep with it, so..." I don't let him finish, starting to laugh. He smiles wider, satisfied that his attempt to make me feel better has worked. "Well, let's dance then." He takes out his phone and turns on some song, standing up.
I raise a surprised eyebrow, watching as he starts twisting and tripping over his own feet. It looks more like he's trying to catch his balance, instead of dancing. I look at him, thinking about what happened a few seconds ago. I can't even call him a friend, and this is the second time we've kissed. As far as I can call this second time a kiss, because as soon as our lips made contact, I pushed him away from me. But if I didn't have problems with the band, would I do it? I'm getting more and more confused. I would need to talk to someone, but no one can answer for me about my feelings.
Until now, I thought that the only people I was sexually attracted to were women. But do I continue to think so? The problem is that I'm not sure, which means there is an option that I don't. And it's not that it's a bad thing or I'm afraid of it and will try to lie to myself that it's not. I just don't want to throw around words I'm not sure of, and at the moment I'm not sure of anything. I'm not sure if he'll be my friend, if there's a chance I'm attracted to men, if I'll be able to trust him, if I'll repair contact with my mother and sister, if Christian will forgive me and if my father will recover. Everything has gotten so fucked up since I reconciled with Charles, but I don't blame him for that, because, after all, he didn't do anything. I'm the one who made the decisions I made, not the other.
"Come on!" the boy's shout brings me back to reality.
"I need to drink more to be able to dance. Now I'm definitely too sober for that." I smile in his direction.
He nods, not taking in the fact that he is dancing alone. He's having fun, looking like a kid who doesn't have any problems, and those injured hands don't mean anything. I hope that when he takes off the bandages, he will be able to return to Formula, because I know how much it means to him. I drink alcohol from the bottle, trying not to croak as I look in his direction. Suddenly my phone starts ringing. I stand up, taking it out of my pocket, and walk to the back of the yacht so that the music is not so loud. I look at the display screen, and when I see my father's name on the screen, I count to three in my mind and, taking a deep breath, putting the phone to my ear.
"Yes?" I ask, trying to sound nice. My reluctance to talk today must stay inside.
"Come to the hospital. I have to show you what you did wrong in the race." He says, without any greeting.
"I won." I note. It's always like this. There is never, congratulations, just come and see what your mistakes were.
"You won because they were worse, not because you were better." reminds me how I should think. I should never talk about myself better, only about them worse, although this, after all, although it's the same, but according to my father it is important.
"I'm not at home. I don't have time now." I say plainly.
"Don't you have time? Do you want to be the best, or would you rather become someone like Leclerc is? A constant failure who achieves nothing." he is upset, almost shouting into the phone.
"Definitely." I hang up, trying not to take these words personally, but it never works out for me. My father has always been and will always be an important person to me, so every argument and his disappointment at me I experience badly, although I try not to show it.
I turn to go back to the boy and almost bump into him as he manages to come to me, probably not knowing why I ran away. He looks at me with an emotion I can't guess.
"You scared me." I laugh, wanting to somehow divert the subject so that he doesn't ask about the conversation with my dad, but apparently it doesn't work, even if he is drunk, because he suddenly comes up to me and hugs me.
I stand for a while in shock, doing nothing. Only when he wants to move away do I reciprocate the gesture. I hear the accelerated beating of my own heart in my ears. My breathing becomes heavier, though I don't know what it's caused by. I put my hands on his back, resting my chin against the top of his head as he rests his cheek against my chest. I don't know how long we last like this, but eventually my heart calms down and doesn't beat as fast as it did at first.
"Better?" he asks, pulling away at last.
"I..." I begin, stuttering. Maybe I'm getting naive again, but I think honesty is the basis of our relationship if I want to trust him again. "Yes, thank you." I add more quietly.
"So now we can go dancing?" he asks impatiently.
"Lead the way, ballerina." I let go of his eyes when he indignantly wants to answer something.
He squints menacingly, moving to the front of the yacht, and I follow, turning off the phone completely on the way. I don't want to worry about it anymore today. After all, I told the boy that today is a day to forget about problems and only good fun is to be had, so I should relax so as not to spoil it.