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beth_hWritten as a gift for kangeiko for the 2011 edition of Yuletide.
Title: "Unless I'm very much mistaken..."
Fandom: RPF - Misc (Formula One Grand Prix)
Characters and/or Pairing(s): Julie (OFC)/Richard (OMC), Ayrton Senna/Alain Prost
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2916
Possible warnings and/or enticements - highlight to view (may contain story spoilers): (skip)Nothing in particular apart from some teen angst. Please leave a comment if you believe anything should be added here
Summary: In the middle of the 1986 Formula One season, a sometime romantic - and ridiculously naive - fifteen year old girl believes she has found her soul mate. Now if only she could actually meet him. A mostly unbelievable fable of second love featuring, in a supporting role, the background pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.)
Author's Notes: Title taken from the much-quoted catchphrase of legendary British race commentator, Murray Walker. With thanks to Malcolm Folley's 2009 book Senna Versus Prost (although very little from the book was actually incorporated in this story), the usual online sources (wikipedia, youtube, etc), and some dimly remembered in-person encounters. (Note: if Julie - i.e., the OFC - were in fandom, she'd probably be wishing her name was "Mary Sue" so that she could have a little more influence on the events taking place around her. With any luck, she'll grow out of this phase. With even more luck, someday she just might be awesome.)
It had taken Julie the entire month of May to get her dad to agree to buy an extra ticket to the British Grand Prix so her boyfriend Richard could come along for the weekend and she'd stand some chance of not dying of boredom.
Ordinarily, she'd have been allowed to stay with Aunt Wendy and Uncle Ian, but they'd already booked a trip for that same weekend to Ibiza (even though they'd already been to Ibiza on holiday four times!), so that was out. Instead, she'd had to convince her dad that Richard was really crazy about motorsport (which took a bit of doing since not only couldn't Richard tell the difference between a Renault 21 and a Ford Sierra, but he hadn't even bothered to apply for a driving licence yet, and he'd turned seventeen ages ago).
After her dad gave in - which she knew he'd do in the end if she looked pathetic enough - Julie had to convince Richard to agree to spend the whole weekend in some naff Bed and Breakfast in some village in the middle of nowhere, where he'd have to share a room with Julie's dad and not Julie (since "no way was any fifteen year old daughter of his blah blah blah..."), even though Julie was old enough to leave school, or would be in another year. She was practically old enough to marry, not that she wanted to get married - not most days - but that wasn't the point.
Richard did agree to go in the end, and, anyway, Julie said she'd heard there'd be a disco on the Friday night and that Brands Hatch had a go-karting track and besides, her dad would be so mesmerized by the really annoying whine of those F1 engines that he probably wouldn't even notice if she and Richard disappeared altogether (Richard liked the sound of that) so maybe the weekend wouldn't be a complete loss after all.
And then one Sunday late in June, Julie happened to be sitting in the lounge while her dad watched Murray Walker (his favorite commentator) interview a young Brazilian driver named Ayrton Senna...
...and Julie fell in love.
That she was already in love with Richard was almost completely forgotten. Richard, Julie thought (when she could be bothered to think about him at all), was just a boy, and Senna was a man. Handsome, charming, tall (well, taller than Murray Walker anyway, and everybody knew that people on the telly were tall, so it just stood to reason). Richard was definitely not tall, not even if you included his spiked hair.
Julie felt an immediate soul bond with Ayrton Senna, despite the fact that the two of them had never met face to face (She'd laughed at her cousin Maureen last year when she'd announced, right in the middle of watching Live Aid, that she had a soul bond with Bob Geldof, but...honestly, you couldn't have a soul bond with Bob Geldof. It was a completely different situation)
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Jules?"
"Ayrton Senna's a Grand Prix driver, yeah?"
"Second year in Formula One," her dad said. "Not quite up to the level of Al...."
"Yeah, but...are we going to meet the drivers when we go to the Grand Prix?"
Her dad laughed. "I don't know about meeting them, Jules, but we'll get some paddock transfers for the weekend if you'd like. That should get us closer to the cars."
Julie, of course, could not possibly have cared less about getting close to the cars. She was, however, completely over the moon at the thought of getting close to Ayrton Senna.
Her soul mate.***
It was less than a month from the moment Julie first set eyes on Senna and the start of the three-day Shell Oils British Grand Prix weekend, but that was more than enough time for Julie to become an expert on everything to do with the new secret love of her life, up to and including learning the chief exports and imports of Brazil, the history of the South American Kart Championships, and the backgrounds of every girl who'd ever been photographed with Senna (Julie and Ayrton were fated to end up together - Julie knew this - so nothing serious could possibly come of any of those relationships; still, it didn't hurt to know your competition).
Julie even sat down (with her understandably surprised dad) to watch the whole French Grand Prix. The start of the race was actually quite good fun, since Ayrton had pole position, but that excitement only lasted three laps before Ayrton got in an accident that was absolutely not his fault (Julie completely hated Andrea De Cesaris and his evil oil-leaking car!) and then Nigel Mansell and his stupid moustache ended up winning the race.
Her father (that complete traitor!) seemed happy with Mansell's victory, for some reason.***
Finally, the big weekend arrived, although Richard was like a short, scrawny dark cloud hovering over the horizon.
In the tiny corner of Julie's brain that wasn't completely filled with thoughts of Ayrton, there was lodged some hope that Richard wasn't going to be a misery guts for all three days, which it looked like he was likely to do, although her dad suggested that if Richard was a bit miserable, it might be because Julie had barely uttered a sentence to him in weeks that didn't include the words "Ayrton" and "Senna" in it somewhere, which...fair enough (although she'd always thought her dad barely even liked Richard, so why he was defending him was beyond her), but nothing - not even Richard's whinging - was going to ruin her mood. This was it. This was the weekend when she and Ayrton would finally meet and he'd realize that the two of them were made for each other.
It was amazing how much more exciting a race weekend could be when there was something to look forward to. The last time Julie had been dragged to a race meeting by her dad, the only thing that made the cold, rainy day less than completely horrible was the bag of freshly made, hot doughnuts he'd bought for her. This time, though, Julie actually wanted to get to the paddock as quickly as possible, while her dad insisted on checking into the B&B first. He'd even suggested they stop for a full English breakfast on the way to the track, but Julie wasn't about to be delayed by anything as useless as breakfast.
She'd made her plans. As she reckoned it, there only a few serious opportunities to get close to Ayrton, and she didn't want to waste any of them.***
Friday morning, 11 July - the first opportunity
"I don't want to talk about it!"
"I don't know what's got you so narked," Richard grumbled. "You're in the pit lane if you want to get autographs or whatever."
"From who? Teo Fabi? He doesn't even have any hair!"
Richard frowned. "What does that have to do with - "
"It's all dad's fault anyway, spending forever talking to that old man."
"I think 'that old man' was one of McLaren's engineers."
"Whoever! It was practically forever before dad was able to drag himself away from the McLaren pits."
"Yeah, and by the time you'd dragged him over to the Lotus pits, the Boy from Brazil had already left for the morning. I'll bet that's what's got you in a state."
"I hate you."
"No you don't," Richard said.
"That's what you think," Julie muttered.***
Friday, late afternoon, 11 July - the second opportunity
Even Julie had to admit finally - grudgingly, of course - that her dad's conversation with the McLaren engineer wasn't the worst thing that could have happened in her life. She'd missed one chance to talk to Ayrton, but the engineer had actually given her dad a set of all-day crew passes (why he did it, she didn't know exactly; something to do with...the time they spent in the Falklands? Although that couldn't be right, since her dad had never been in the Falklands, so maybe it was just that they had a mutual friend at RAF Lyneham? Honestly, she hadn't been listening very closely) and what that meant was that the three of them didn't have to leave the track at the end of the day.
Richard was especially pleased to hear that they'd be staying for the evening since he'd been trying to have a spin on the go-kart circuit for hours and there'd been massive queues all day. Julie wasn't really bothered about karting, but she trudged along after Richard since the alternative was following her dad to the Kentagon where he was meeting his new engineer friend for a drink, and really, she couldn't think of anything more boring than listening to them discuss 'torque versus horsepower' or whatever it was you'd talk about with an engineer.
So after-hours go-karting it was, and Richard had almost convinced Julie to race instead of just standing by the start line, her dad's stop watch in hand, timing Richard's laps (31 mph!) and pretending she was a member of his pit crew, when Ayrton and that French driver her dad was always going on about showed up.
"They're not really going to race, are they?" Richard asked in a whisper. "Wouldn't that be an infringement of their contract or something?" [1] [2]
"No idea," Julie whispered back, watching out of the corner of her eye as Ayrton slid behind the wheel of one of the go-karts. "But...probably? Except I have a feeling maybe Grand Prix drivers sort of do whatever they want to do?"
"Yeah. So...do you want to have a go at racing against them?"
"Not a chance!" said Julie, taking a step backwards. "I'm perfectly happy to stay here with the stopwatch! You can if you like, though."
Laughing, Richard re-fastened the rental helmet, then got back into the go-kart, and eased his vehicle into the starting formation. Julie knew she should be paying more attention to her boyfriend, but with Ayrton driving, honestly...there was no way she was going to be watching anyone but him.
Richard had won the first race, but it wasn't as if he'd had much in the way of competition. Julie reckoned she probably could have won it herself. but this time around was totally different.
Two seconds after the race started, Ayrton and Prost were already practically lapping the rest of the field. As far as Julie could tell, they were being careful not to make contact with any of the other drivers, but they weren't being very careful when it came to avoiding contact with each other.
In fact, if she hadn't been absolutely sure that her Ayrton wouldn't do anything too risky during a race, she would have sworn that he was actually trying to win by forcing Prost off the track and into the tyres, just like Julie's (ex) friend Jackie had tried to do to her years earlier when their Girl Guide troop spent an afternoon on the Dodgems.
The inevitable crash, just fifteen feet short of the finish line, would probably have been a little more spectacular if the two men had been less experienced drivers and if they'd been going faster than twenty miles per hour. Ayrton's car ended up completely covered by tyres at the last corner and as for Prost, he climbed out of his ruined go-kart, and then, while a laughing Ayrton applauded, pushed the go-kart down the last few feet of the finishing straight and over the line, just barely winning the race - exactly one second before Richard drove his go-kart across the finishing line.***
Saturday, early evening, 12 July - the third opportunity
Saturday night's opportunity really wasn't much of an opportunity at all.
Julie and Richard and Julie's dad headed to the Kentagon at the end of the afternoon qualifying session to get a drink and something to eat, and for one perfect moment, it seemed as if Julie's wishes were finally going to come true, because there he was - Ayrton - sitting alone, a half pint of lager on the bar in front of him. And Julie tried to slip away while her dad and Richard were arguing about whether Lou Macari could pull Swindon Town back out of the Fourth Division, but it was like her dad was a mind reader or something because before she could even get down from the bar stool, he had his arm out in front of her, blocking her way.
"Leave him be, Jules."
Of course, she rolled her eyes and acted like she didn't know what he was talking about, but her cheeks started to feel warm and she knew she was blushing - and it was even worse when Richard winked at her and then shared a knowing look with her dad, as if he'd somehow turned into an adult sometime in the past five minutes (which he hadn't) - and so she sat back, her arms crossed over her chest, letting her chips get cold, and pretended not to be looking across the bar to where Ayrton was sitting, not even when Prost joined him and finished Ayrton's drink.
Five minutes later, Prost got back up and headed for the back door, with Ayrton following in his wake.
Julie sighed, then reached for a cold chip.***
Sunday, afternoon, 13 July - the fourth opportunity
The fourth opportunity wasn't any kind of an opportunity, even though Ayrton was leaning against a fence fewer than six feet from Julie for ages, since the only reason he was there was because there had been a huge, horrible accident at Paddock Hill Bend at the very start of the race, right where Julie and Richard and Julie's dad had been standing. Jacques Laffite - who drove for Ligier - had broken both his legs in the crash, and it was really scary, and when the officials restarted the race, poor Ayrton only made it to the 27th lap before he was forced to withdraw.
At least that annoying Alain Prost didn't win though!***
Sunday evening, 13 July - the fifth (and last) opportunity
It was 9:00 PM, and Julie was back at the Kentagon, nursing a lemonade while her dad and Richard (who'd somehow seemed to have become best mates over the course of the weekend) talked about Richard's A-level course. And then her dad's engineer friend showed up with a drink for her dad, and Richard asked if Julie wanted to go outside and take a walk, which Julie agreed to do (only partly because she'd seen Ayrton go outside a few minutes before).
She and Richard walked hand in hand down the hill, accompanied by the fading strains of Chris De Burgh's "The Lady In Red" which had been playing on the jukebox in the bar. The night was beautiful, the half-moon shining in a cloudless sky. It was dead romantic, or it would have been if Julie hadn't been so confused, If she was meant to be with Ayrton (and she was), then wasn't it wrong to be with Richard like this? Even if Richard was her boyfriend and even if she and Ayrton still hadn't technically said a word to each other, wasn't she being unfaithful, in a way? To...somebody?
Then, off in the distance, just barely visible in the shadowy night, Julie could see Ayrton. He was leaning up against a tree, and once again he was with Prost.
But this time, they weren't just talking. And they weren't racing or laughing or sharing a drink. This time, Ayrton was holding Prost, exactly the way Richard was holding her, and Prost was kissing Ayrton, and even from where she stood, Julie could tell it was a real kiss, not the kind of kiss shared by acquaintances or casual friends, but the kind of kiss shared by lovers.
Julie tried to wipe away one or two tears that had suddenly fallen from her eyes before Richard saw them, but she couldn't quite manage.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly.
"Yeah, I guess," she said quietly, but she wasn't, not really, not yet, not when the man who she'd been sure had been meant to be her soul mate was kissing some stupid old French guy. It was just wrong, and the wrongness had absolutely nothing to do with Alain Prost being a man and everything to do with Prost not being her).
Except...then Richard wrapped his arm around Julie's shoulders and held her close, even though she'd been such a complete idiot, (which she had been, she knew she had), and honestly, Ayrton and Prost did look kind of cute together, even if - in some alternate reality, at least - Ayrton was really meant to be with her.
"I love you, Julie," murmured Richard, his lips soft against her temple.
Julie glanced one last time at Ayrton, then looked back up at Richard.
He really was the best boyfriend.
"I love you too," she said.
[1] Let's face it...there's no chance in hell that two F1 Grand Prix drivers are going to be allowed to enter a go-kart race (even a friendly one) at the track where they'll be racing in two day's time. Let's just call this an AU - or poetic license - and be done with it.
[2] What we see happen during the go-kart race actually took place at the end of the 1986 German Grand Prix and the 1988 Portuguese Grand Prix, respectively. More or less.
Title: "Unless I'm very much mistaken..."
Fandom: RPF - Misc (Formula One Grand Prix)
Characters and/or Pairing(s): Julie (OFC)/Richard (OMC), Ayrton Senna/Alain Prost
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2916
Possible warnings and/or enticements - highlight to view (may contain story spoilers): (skip)Nothing in particular apart from some teen angst. Please leave a comment if you believe anything should be added here
Summary: In the middle of the 1986 Formula One season, a sometime romantic - and ridiculously naive - fifteen year old girl believes she has found her soul mate. Now if only she could actually meet him. A mostly unbelievable fable of second love featuring, in a supporting role, the background pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.)
Author's Notes: Title taken from the much-quoted catchphrase of legendary British race commentator, Murray Walker. With thanks to Malcolm Folley's 2009 book Senna Versus Prost (although very little from the book was actually incorporated in this story), the usual online sources (wikipedia, youtube, etc), and some dimly remembered in-person encounters. (Note: if Julie - i.e., the OFC - were in fandom, she'd probably be wishing her name was "Mary Sue" so that she could have a little more influence on the events taking place around her. With any luck, she'll grow out of this phase. With even more luck, someday she just might be awesome.)
It had taken Julie the entire month of May to get her dad to agree to buy an extra ticket to the British Grand Prix so her boyfriend Richard could come along for the weekend and she'd stand some chance of not dying of boredom.
Ordinarily, she'd have been allowed to stay with Aunt Wendy and Uncle Ian, but they'd already booked a trip for that same weekend to Ibiza (even though they'd already been to Ibiza on holiday four times!), so that was out. Instead, she'd had to convince her dad that Richard was really crazy about motorsport (which took a bit of doing since not only couldn't Richard tell the difference between a Renault 21 and a Ford Sierra, but he hadn't even bothered to apply for a driving licence yet, and he'd turned seventeen ages ago).
After her dad gave in - which she knew he'd do in the end if she looked pathetic enough - Julie had to convince Richard to agree to spend the whole weekend in some naff Bed and Breakfast in some village in the middle of nowhere, where he'd have to share a room with Julie's dad and not Julie (since "no way was any fifteen year old daughter of his blah blah blah..."), even though Julie was old enough to leave school, or would be in another year. She was practically old enough to marry, not that she wanted to get married - not most days - but that wasn't the point.
Richard did agree to go in the end, and, anyway, Julie said she'd heard there'd be a disco on the Friday night and that Brands Hatch had a go-karting track and besides, her dad would be so mesmerized by the really annoying whine of those F1 engines that he probably wouldn't even notice if she and Richard disappeared altogether (Richard liked the sound of that) so maybe the weekend wouldn't be a complete loss after all.
And then one Sunday late in June, Julie happened to be sitting in the lounge while her dad watched Murray Walker (his favorite commentator) interview a young Brazilian driver named Ayrton Senna...
...and Julie fell in love.
That she was already in love with Richard was almost completely forgotten. Richard, Julie thought (when she could be bothered to think about him at all), was just a boy, and Senna was a man. Handsome, charming, tall (well, taller than Murray Walker anyway, and everybody knew that people on the telly were tall, so it just stood to reason). Richard was definitely not tall, not even if you included his spiked hair.
Julie felt an immediate soul bond with Ayrton Senna, despite the fact that the two of them had never met face to face (She'd laughed at her cousin Maureen last year when she'd announced, right in the middle of watching Live Aid, that she had a soul bond with Bob Geldof, but...honestly, you couldn't have a soul bond with Bob Geldof. It was a completely different situation)
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Jules?"
"Ayrton Senna's a Grand Prix driver, yeah?"
"Second year in Formula One," her dad said. "Not quite up to the level of Al...."
"Yeah, but...are we going to meet the drivers when we go to the Grand Prix?"
Her dad laughed. "I don't know about meeting them, Jules, but we'll get some paddock transfers for the weekend if you'd like. That should get us closer to the cars."
Julie, of course, could not possibly have cared less about getting close to the cars. She was, however, completely over the moon at the thought of getting close to Ayrton Senna.
Her soul mate.
It was less than a month from the moment Julie first set eyes on Senna and the start of the three-day Shell Oils British Grand Prix weekend, but that was more than enough time for Julie to become an expert on everything to do with the new secret love of her life, up to and including learning the chief exports and imports of Brazil, the history of the South American Kart Championships, and the backgrounds of every girl who'd ever been photographed with Senna (Julie and Ayrton were fated to end up together - Julie knew this - so nothing serious could possibly come of any of those relationships; still, it didn't hurt to know your competition).
Julie even sat down (with her understandably surprised dad) to watch the whole French Grand Prix. The start of the race was actually quite good fun, since Ayrton had pole position, but that excitement only lasted three laps before Ayrton got in an accident that was absolutely not his fault (Julie completely hated Andrea De Cesaris and his evil oil-leaking car!) and then Nigel Mansell and his stupid moustache ended up winning the race.
Her father (that complete traitor!) seemed happy with Mansell's victory, for some reason.
Finally, the big weekend arrived, although Richard was like a short, scrawny dark cloud hovering over the horizon.
In the tiny corner of Julie's brain that wasn't completely filled with thoughts of Ayrton, there was lodged some hope that Richard wasn't going to be a misery guts for all three days, which it looked like he was likely to do, although her dad suggested that if Richard was a bit miserable, it might be because Julie had barely uttered a sentence to him in weeks that didn't include the words "Ayrton" and "Senna" in it somewhere, which...fair enough (although she'd always thought her dad barely even liked Richard, so why he was defending him was beyond her), but nothing - not even Richard's whinging - was going to ruin her mood. This was it. This was the weekend when she and Ayrton would finally meet and he'd realize that the two of them were made for each other.
It was amazing how much more exciting a race weekend could be when there was something to look forward to. The last time Julie had been dragged to a race meeting by her dad, the only thing that made the cold, rainy day less than completely horrible was the bag of freshly made, hot doughnuts he'd bought for her. This time, though, Julie actually wanted to get to the paddock as quickly as possible, while her dad insisted on checking into the B&B first. He'd even suggested they stop for a full English breakfast on the way to the track, but Julie wasn't about to be delayed by anything as useless as breakfast.
She'd made her plans. As she reckoned it, there only a few serious opportunities to get close to Ayrton, and she didn't want to waste any of them.
Friday morning, 11 July - the first opportunity
"I don't want to talk about it!"
"I don't know what's got you so narked," Richard grumbled. "You're in the pit lane if you want to get autographs or whatever."
"From who? Teo Fabi? He doesn't even have any hair!"
Richard frowned. "What does that have to do with - "
"It's all dad's fault anyway, spending forever talking to that old man."
"I think 'that old man' was one of McLaren's engineers."
"Whoever! It was practically forever before dad was able to drag himself away from the McLaren pits."
"Yeah, and by the time you'd dragged him over to the Lotus pits, the Boy from Brazil had already left for the morning. I'll bet that's what's got you in a state."
"I hate you."
"No you don't," Richard said.
"That's what you think," Julie muttered.
Friday, late afternoon, 11 July - the second opportunity
Even Julie had to admit finally - grudgingly, of course - that her dad's conversation with the McLaren engineer wasn't the worst thing that could have happened in her life. She'd missed one chance to talk to Ayrton, but the engineer had actually given her dad a set of all-day crew passes (why he did it, she didn't know exactly; something to do with...the time they spent in the Falklands? Although that couldn't be right, since her dad had never been in the Falklands, so maybe it was just that they had a mutual friend at RAF Lyneham? Honestly, she hadn't been listening very closely) and what that meant was that the three of them didn't have to leave the track at the end of the day.
Richard was especially pleased to hear that they'd be staying for the evening since he'd been trying to have a spin on the go-kart circuit for hours and there'd been massive queues all day. Julie wasn't really bothered about karting, but she trudged along after Richard since the alternative was following her dad to the Kentagon where he was meeting his new engineer friend for a drink, and really, she couldn't think of anything more boring than listening to them discuss 'torque versus horsepower' or whatever it was you'd talk about with an engineer.
So after-hours go-karting it was, and Richard had almost convinced Julie to race instead of just standing by the start line, her dad's stop watch in hand, timing Richard's laps (31 mph!) and pretending she was a member of his pit crew, when Ayrton and that French driver her dad was always going on about showed up.
"They're not really going to race, are they?" Richard asked in a whisper. "Wouldn't that be an infringement of their contract or something?" [1] [2]
"No idea," Julie whispered back, watching out of the corner of her eye as Ayrton slid behind the wheel of one of the go-karts. "But...probably? Except I have a feeling maybe Grand Prix drivers sort of do whatever they want to do?"
"Yeah. So...do you want to have a go at racing against them?"
"Not a chance!" said Julie, taking a step backwards. "I'm perfectly happy to stay here with the stopwatch! You can if you like, though."
Laughing, Richard re-fastened the rental helmet, then got back into the go-kart, and eased his vehicle into the starting formation. Julie knew she should be paying more attention to her boyfriend, but with Ayrton driving, honestly...there was no way she was going to be watching anyone but him.
Richard had won the first race, but it wasn't as if he'd had much in the way of competition. Julie reckoned she probably could have won it herself. but this time around was totally different.
Two seconds after the race started, Ayrton and Prost were already practically lapping the rest of the field. As far as Julie could tell, they were being careful not to make contact with any of the other drivers, but they weren't being very careful when it came to avoiding contact with each other.
In fact, if she hadn't been absolutely sure that her Ayrton wouldn't do anything too risky during a race, she would have sworn that he was actually trying to win by forcing Prost off the track and into the tyres, just like Julie's (ex) friend Jackie had tried to do to her years earlier when their Girl Guide troop spent an afternoon on the Dodgems.
The inevitable crash, just fifteen feet short of the finish line, would probably have been a little more spectacular if the two men had been less experienced drivers and if they'd been going faster than twenty miles per hour. Ayrton's car ended up completely covered by tyres at the last corner and as for Prost, he climbed out of his ruined go-kart, and then, while a laughing Ayrton applauded, pushed the go-kart down the last few feet of the finishing straight and over the line, just barely winning the race - exactly one second before Richard drove his go-kart across the finishing line.
Saturday, early evening, 12 July - the third opportunity
Saturday night's opportunity really wasn't much of an opportunity at all.
Julie and Richard and Julie's dad headed to the Kentagon at the end of the afternoon qualifying session to get a drink and something to eat, and for one perfect moment, it seemed as if Julie's wishes were finally going to come true, because there he was - Ayrton - sitting alone, a half pint of lager on the bar in front of him. And Julie tried to slip away while her dad and Richard were arguing about whether Lou Macari could pull Swindon Town back out of the Fourth Division, but it was like her dad was a mind reader or something because before she could even get down from the bar stool, he had his arm out in front of her, blocking her way.
"Leave him be, Jules."
Of course, she rolled her eyes and acted like she didn't know what he was talking about, but her cheeks started to feel warm and she knew she was blushing - and it was even worse when Richard winked at her and then shared a knowing look with her dad, as if he'd somehow turned into an adult sometime in the past five minutes (which he hadn't) - and so she sat back, her arms crossed over her chest, letting her chips get cold, and pretended not to be looking across the bar to where Ayrton was sitting, not even when Prost joined him and finished Ayrton's drink.
Five minutes later, Prost got back up and headed for the back door, with Ayrton following in his wake.
Julie sighed, then reached for a cold chip.
Sunday, afternoon, 13 July - the fourth opportunity
The fourth opportunity wasn't any kind of an opportunity, even though Ayrton was leaning against a fence fewer than six feet from Julie for ages, since the only reason he was there was because there had been a huge, horrible accident at Paddock Hill Bend at the very start of the race, right where Julie and Richard and Julie's dad had been standing. Jacques Laffite - who drove for Ligier - had broken both his legs in the crash, and it was really scary, and when the officials restarted the race, poor Ayrton only made it to the 27th lap before he was forced to withdraw.
At least that annoying Alain Prost didn't win though!
Sunday evening, 13 July - the fifth (and last) opportunity
It was 9:00 PM, and Julie was back at the Kentagon, nursing a lemonade while her dad and Richard (who'd somehow seemed to have become best mates over the course of the weekend) talked about Richard's A-level course. And then her dad's engineer friend showed up with a drink for her dad, and Richard asked if Julie wanted to go outside and take a walk, which Julie agreed to do (only partly because she'd seen Ayrton go outside a few minutes before).
She and Richard walked hand in hand down the hill, accompanied by the fading strains of Chris De Burgh's "The Lady In Red" which had been playing on the jukebox in the bar. The night was beautiful, the half-moon shining in a cloudless sky. It was dead romantic, or it would have been if Julie hadn't been so confused, If she was meant to be with Ayrton (and she was), then wasn't it wrong to be with Richard like this? Even if Richard was her boyfriend and even if she and Ayrton still hadn't technically said a word to each other, wasn't she being unfaithful, in a way? To...somebody?
Then, off in the distance, just barely visible in the shadowy night, Julie could see Ayrton. He was leaning up against a tree, and once again he was with Prost.
But this time, they weren't just talking. And they weren't racing or laughing or sharing a drink. This time, Ayrton was holding Prost, exactly the way Richard was holding her, and Prost was kissing Ayrton, and even from where she stood, Julie could tell it was a real kiss, not the kind of kiss shared by acquaintances or casual friends, but the kind of kiss shared by lovers.
Julie tried to wipe away one or two tears that had suddenly fallen from her eyes before Richard saw them, but she couldn't quite manage.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly.
"Yeah, I guess," she said quietly, but she wasn't, not really, not yet, not when the man who she'd been sure had been meant to be her soul mate was kissing some stupid old French guy. It was just wrong, and the wrongness had absolutely nothing to do with Alain Prost being a man and everything to do with Prost not being her).
Except...then Richard wrapped his arm around Julie's shoulders and held her close, even though she'd been such a complete idiot, (which she had been, she knew she had), and honestly, Ayrton and Prost did look kind of cute together, even if - in some alternate reality, at least - Ayrton was really meant to be with her.
"I love you, Julie," murmured Richard, his lips soft against her temple.
Julie glanced one last time at Ayrton, then looked back up at Richard.
He really was the best boyfriend.
"I love you too," she said.
[1] Let's face it...there's no chance in hell that two F1 Grand Prix drivers are going to be allowed to enter a go-kart race (even a friendly one) at the track where they'll be racing in two day's time. Let's just call this an AU - or poetic license - and be done with it.
[2] What we see happen during the go-kart race actually took place at the end of the 1986 German Grand Prix and the 1988 Portuguese Grand Prix, respectively. More or less.