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The first time Kelly agrees for them to all have dinner together, she immediately regrets it and tells Max they will never, ever do it again.
Charles came wearing a smart open collared black shirt and all of his polite French kisses. He brings a bottle of red wine; Italian, with a big red wax seal. Kelly thought that was weird. Max doesn’t drink wine and he doesn’t know what she likes. She serves a pomegranate and walnut salad but it turns out Charles is allergic to walnuts. He picks at bread while Max apologies profusely until Kelly feels like her head is about to explode. Then Lily starts bawling and won’t stop as she and Max pass her between the two of them like a volleyball until Charles offers to help.
Lily spits up down herself and Charles leaves within the quarter hour.
But then a month passes and Max tells her that Charles will be around for dinner that Thursday. It isn’t a question.
Kelly fills the pot with water from the tap and sets it on the stove. She throws a pinch of salt into the pot and waits for it to boil.
Kelly doesn’t really cook. They have Marta for all that, and Max has all of his trainer approved meal plans. But they don’t want to involve Marta in this disgusting mess so they always give her the night off when he is here, and now it is up to Kelly to make them all dinner.
She makes stir fry for Max’s birthday. She orders in Chinese around Halloween. She makes tomato soup from fucking scratch after Max lost in Abu Dhabi, and bought good bread from Max’s favourite bakery in Monaco which Charles gasped at, because that is his favourite bakery too! On Three Kings they had oven pizza and Lily demanded everyone’s crusts to chew.
Today, pasta.
He’ll be here soon. He never arrives any earlier than he has too. Lily is sitting in her hair chair seriously contemplating her wooden stacking tower while P sets the table for them in a huff.
Max argues he wants Charles to get to know Lily and P, like P is his kid. Why, Kelly had asked, why do they need to know each other, why does it matter. He didn’t really have a good answer, but really Max has never been good at arguing. Kelly? She’s a pro.
Charles.
Step-daddy.
She knows after Formula One this could all be over. Kelly is prepared for it. She’s sensible. If he leaves, there is a trust set up for Lily and P, 10 million euros each when they come of age. She thought maybe she’d have to fight for P to get the same, but Max had been completely happy to do it. Fuck him. She’ll get the apartment too, and Max will give her an extra 30% on whatever she earns every year after tax on top of the Lily money.
She’s set for life.
And he can run away and kiss and fuck whoever he wants because he doesn’t have to go the middle East anymore. Although he probably won’t, he’ll probably just kiss and fuck Charles because he loves him.
Kelly rips the packet of pasta open and tips it into the water.
Max told her in 2023. Sat her down in Brazil, in her father’s house, as if she needed that memory every time she returned home. He was blunt about it. Max is blunt about everything. He told her how he needed her and valued her and how he was sleeping with Charles Leclerc.
He said he thinks he might be gay but isn’t sure. That he wants to stay together but if she can’t deal with it that’s okay too.
Then Max let go of her hands and actually expected her to say something.
Like they hadn’t been together for three years, like they never loved each other at all. Like they hadn’t been trying for a fucking baby.
Kelly got mean and said maybe the reason they hadn’t conceived a baby yet was because his dick was broken from sticking it in men.
He is not easy to make cry, but he cried then.
There is a knock on the door.
“Can you get that P?” Max in the sim, of course– sorry, there are actually four people in her relationship, Kelly, Max, Charles and fucking Twitch.
She hears P greet him, Charles’ high pitched voice, the clunk of him taking off his shoes. They all live in the same apartment building now. Kelly didn’t find that out until after they had bought it. What a day, her and Max driving back and forth in the Audi moving their things from the old house to the new only to see a familiar, sleek looking Ferrari across the communal garage.
Charles enters her kitchen wearing his anxieties and guilt and Puma sweatpants. He is holding a bouquet of red roses. For her, of course.
Does Max think that if he asked for her to leave when Charles comes to see her children, she’ll say go fuck yourself? Wine for her, roses for her. The effort somehow makes this all so much more pathetic.
They cheek kiss politely. Kelly withdraws with a smile.
Everyone online thinks Charles is so pretty. Kelly isn’t sure she sees what everyone else sees. Yes, he is attractive, but it is all so boyish, and he has no dress sense. What sort of forehead is that hair cut hiding?
“What are we eating?” Charles asks.
“Linguine”
“Ah, that’s good. I love pasta” Charles smiles.
Max finally joins them, and she turns around so she doesn’t have to see the look on his face.
“Charles” Max lets out a heavy exhale. He and Charles hug. Kelly stirs the bubbling pasta.
They never kiss in front of her, but they kiss with her in the house. She’s spotted them enough times.
He hears Charles coo over her child, Lily making lots of happy baby noises, whacking the wooden blocks on her tray table.
“Wow, mon chou, well done, are you having fun?”
What is he doing?
They still had Lily after everything because they both really, really wanted a baby and Max isn’t getting one from him. She never asked him if he liked it because she didn’t want to know. But they finally had their baby and she is so special and so loved. Their miracle.
“Dinner is ready” She calls.
P runs back into the kitchen.
Lily sits at the head of the table. Charles rifles through her kitchen cupboards until he finds her wine glasses and a bottle opener. Max pulls one of Lily’s tupperware meals out of the fridge and sticks it in the microwave, wiggling a bib under her fat chins. Kelly cuts up P’s plate before passing it back to her. Charles twists his linguine with a spoon like a proper little Italian man.
“Delicious” Charles smiles.
“Just from a jar” Kelly says.
“Ah! Good jar, then”
There is a dead silence. P, usually chatty P, is too busy slurping up pasta to fill it.
“Kelly, I saw that you were away somewhere this last week?” Charles asks.
He doesn’t follow her on instagram, though. Kelly imagines him frantically scrolling on his phone on the elevator to find things to talk to her about.
“Paris for fashion week” She says.
Max nods enthusiastically with her, eyes flicking down to the plate of sliced baguette in the middle of the table. He doesn’t take one. She knows what he is thinking. If we weren’t together you’d never been invited to Paris Fashion Week. You wouldn’t get to sit on the front row of shows wearing Nina Ricci and Schiaparelli.
That’s what everyone thinks, that there is no work behind it.
Like managing him is some major fucking delight.
“I saw your races went well” Kelly replies. Charles nods and shrugs.
“As well as you can expect, of course, this soon with the new regulations. The team is working well together, and we seem competitive so– I mean it is all you can really hope for right now”
“Better than the start to my season” Max snorts. Charles laughs too.
He’s thinking of quitting. She knows that. She doesn’t know what that will mean for her.
Kelly refills her and Charles glasses, a few drops spilling on the table. Lily starts banging the end of her spoon enthusiastically on her high chair, Kelly takes it out of her hand and back again, redirecting her attention to the mashed squash on her plate.
“She is getting so big” Charles says, waving a hand at Lily. She doesn’t pay any attention to him. “What are you doing for her birthday?”
“What were we thinking?” Max asks her.
“Um-” Why don’t you think of something for once? “-Brazil”
“Oh” Max looks a little crestfallen, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Nice” Charles says, but he looks sad too. Did he expect an invitation?
Lily smears food all over her chin, and Max cleans it with a wipe.
She thinks about that attractive man she met at the padel event for Tiffany. They had laughed and drank champagne as the sun got low. He had been taller, with money too. Not as much as Max, but most people don’t have as much money as Max.
She wonders what Charles’ girlfriend Alexandra is doing right now. Does she even know? She’s never bothered to ask.
Nino shuffles into the room yapping before bolting under the table, weaving through their ankles and the table legs.
“Get him” Kelly says. Max grabs Nino and takes him out of the room. P pouts sadly.
“I have a dog” Charles says to P.
“What’s his name?”
“Leo. He is like Nino, but yellow”
“Is he small?”
“Yes, he is small. I should bring him around so you can meet him, I think he’d love Nino, they’d be great friends” Charles smiles.
Kelly twists linguine around her fork, the metal scraping loudly.
P, why P? Why the fuck does P need to met Charles Leclerc’s ugly little dog?
Lily threw her spoon to the floor. Max bends down and picks it up.
P slurps as much pasta as a six year old can before she pushes her plate away and starts huffing. It is rude to act that way in front of a guest and Kelly would tell her off for it but when the guest is step-daddy.
“Can we watch K-Pop De-”
“-No, P, you are not making him watch it again” Kelly says sharply.
“I don’t mind” Charles says earnestly. “I think it’s a good movie”
God, he tries so hard. It’s pathetic. When will Max try?
“Fine. But movie and then bath and then bed” Kelly says sharply.
P grins gleefully and grabs Charles hand. She watches her daughter drag Charles into the living room, going on about how she wants colourful braids in her hair again for the races like she did in Dubai, but purple this time, and she can’t wait to go back this year.
Lily threw her spoon on the ground again. Max picks it up again.
They clear the table together. Kelly clears away their half chewed food while Max wipes Lily down, her sticky fingers and face, before clicking the tray table off to clean it and clicking it back on again. She is fussing a little but they both ignore it. The kitchen tap keeps loudly dripping water, she needs to call someone to get it fixed.
Kelly puts the red stained dishes into the dishwasher while Max puts in the cutlery, he has a thing about the knives, forks and spoons being kept separate. The metal clicks quietly together as he slots it all carefully into place. Kelly runs water over the sieve and puts it on the drying rack. The boiling pot is heavy iron and should only be hand washed but she puts it in the dishwasher anyway.
She puts a tablet in and pushes the dishwasher door closed. Max presses the start button.