the bucket list | charles leclerc

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"If you told me I would be standing in the paddock today having watched a very randomly revealed daughter assemble an impromptu dance party only to pull Max Verstappen into the mix. I would have called you crazy." Lewis concluded and the group murmured in agreement.

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It was a new weekend. A fresh start for Charles. So he thought he should feel ready, but his heart just ached at the thought of more disappointment potentially coming his way. But somehow over the past week, his mind had been elsewhere. That elsewhere being a curly-haired, dimple-cheeked, freckle-spread girl who so effortlessly had enthralled him. He found himself remembering their conversation in his driver's room. Originally, he had wanted to throw her out of the room and speak to no one for a good long time, but she had just started talking. Charles' mind had morphed from its need to be angry to find a new purpose, to focus on her words. To listen to how she wanted to explore the rest of the paddock and meet the other drivers and how her father was so opposed to her doing it. She had allowed him to be angry while equally encouraging him to move on, to move forward. And she had done it so effortlessly; she had posed as the perfect distraction. Charles wondered how she had done it and why she made it easier for him to congratulate Carlos and move onto the following race weekend. He settled on her ability to help him forget; she had let him unload the disappointments that had been threatening to overspill, and she had just opened the dam. Until all his previous grudges had flown out fast and rapidly like the tidal wave of water. But after she left, he was left feeling like an empty shell and the doubts started to leak back in just ever so slowly with each passing day that approached the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix.

Charles hadn't seen her since the previous Sunday, despite having travelled straight to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. He suspected Vasseur and Elise had done the same but the girl was nowhere to be seen even when they were staying at the same hotel. Charles didn't know what to think about it, or he didn't want to assume the worst. He tried to recall the previous weekend and the signs that had led him to believe there was something more to the hidden daughter situation. Vasseur had such an unruly protective look in his eye every time he interacted with his daughter, and Charles hated it. His blood boiled at the way he looked at his daughter when he saw her in the drivers room with him. At first he had stared in confusion, but then his jaw had tightened and his frown had increased. Charles remembered how Vasseur had looked at him, there had been something so worried in his glance as he pulled his daughter away. It was if the physical action was to pull her from Charles, as if he didn't want them to interact. At the end of all his overthinking, Charles was just so confused.

A section of his confusion was asking himself why he cared so much. But there was something so much more to Elise, and he was trying so desperately to remember. It had been while they were watching Carlos celebrate on the podium that he realised he remembered her from somewhere. His thoughts were pulled back to how Max knew her and a wave of unknown nostalgia had hit that somehow encompassed the three of them. But he couldn't pin point it, and it was annoying him, which was why he was determined to talk to her again or to Max, whoever he saw first. He wasn't sure how he was to bring it up. Oh, by the way I think I know Elise, but I'm not sure where from? Sounded stupid and creepy.

So here he was walking into the paddock in a pair of baggy blue jeans and a Ferrari shirt, with sunglasses rested on his face. Upon walking in, he suspected the press and cameras to meet him upon entrance, with questions thrown at him about his DNF last Sunday and what he hopes for the upcoming race. But the focus was pin pointed on a different part of the paddock. Charles saw as Elise danced with Max.

He almost stopped walking right in the entrance of the paddock. Here she was, the girl who had been plaguing his mind while also granting it salvation from its inner darkness. And she was dancing to a tune playing from a nearby bar, and she had amassed a group of dancers around her. Charles hadn't needed to be there from the beginning to know she had started this. And she had gotten Max, the most stone cold-focused driver, to dance with her. And he was horrible at it. But not as horrible as Charles knew he would be if he was to be the one dancing by her side. But how he longed to be that one. She was smiling at Max as if he were her only friend.