Driving Miss Catherine

“Are you sure I’m not overdressed?” Cat turned in front of the mirror and eye’d Seb’s outfit. “You’re wearing like, a shirt, and pants. I feel like I’m going to a business meeting or something.”

“In a way, you are. You are a sponsor, my sponsor,” he corrected and looked slightly embarrassed. “So, it is technically business. I am wearing my Ferrari issued shirt that all Ferrari drivers wear. Except this one has my name on it,” he smiled proudly and pointed to the stitched lettering on his collar, next to the little red crab.

“That’s so cute,” Cat ran her finger over the monogrammed image, and trailed her hand down his shirt over the names of sponsors until she came to her logo. “Oh wait, what’s this?” She asked with mock surprise and chuckled. “Daddy will be so proud of me once he finds out I’ve made a business investment.”

Seb smiled and cocked his head questioningly, the way he did when he was amused at some irony or sarcasm in Cat’s voice. “I love the way you almost get a bit of a fake British accent when you call him ‘daddy.’ It’s like you’re mocking him or something.”

“I am mocking him,” Cat gave him her best ‘really?’ face before switching to a more ‘matter of fact’ tone. “And I am British, if you’re forgetting. I have dual citizenship.”

Instead of responding with something witty, Seb held out his hand and smiled. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

By now, Cat was used to being driven by Seb, but tonight he wasn’t her chauffeur, he was her date. Or maybe she was his date. Either way, it didn’t feel like a date. It was a party, or a very casual meeting, for the Ferrari team and sponsors to kick off the 2015 season. Seb had been to this kind of thing before with Red Bull, so he knew what to expect. Cat put her hand on his arm as they were pulling into the building.

“Don’t leave me, okay? I’m kind of scared,” she said quietly. He shot her a concerned look and smiled.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” he said as he parked. “But it might be better if we don’t spend too much time together. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

“Right,” Cat agreed with a nervous laugh. ‘The wrong idea?’ She thought as he helped her out of the car (Seb’s new Ferrari). ‘Do they not know we’re dating?’ Seb obviously knew what he was doing, so Cat smiled and went with it. As they got closer to the building he pulled away, loosening his arm from her tight grasp, and kept a respectable distance between themselves, as if they were work associates and not at all romantically involved.

“Just talk to some of the engineers, or some other sponsors. It’ll be fine,” Seb smiled at her one last time before they walked into the party.

“Sebastian! There you are! Man of the hour,” someone stepped between them and put his arm around Seb. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Marco, it’s so good to see you again!” Seb smiled.

“Come on, I have to introduce you to your technical team,” they continued talking as they walked away, leaving Cat alone near the door. She wondered if she could just leave now without anyone noticing.

Someone handed her a glass of wine, which she accepted graciously and began sipping it nervously. She scanned the room for someone to talk to and tried to find a quiet corner to hide in. She’d lost track of Seb, so she settled for trying to find anyone who looked somewhat familiar. There must be someone here that she’d met with when she signed on to be a sponsor….

“Hey,” a voice to her left said quietly. She looked up to see who it was, or if he was even talking to her. It was the guy she’d seen last week at Seb’s meeting.

“Hi,” she smiled back. “I was looking for anyone I might know…”

“And then I appeared,” he smiled. “Want to sit down?” He gestured to a pair of soft looking chairs with the Ferrari logo stitched to the seat, nextled in the corner near them.

“I’d love to, these shoes are not as comfortable as I thought they would be,” Cat pointed to her red high heels and grimaced. With a kinky smile, Seb had talked her into wearing them. If she’d known she wasn’t going to be around him that much tonight, Cat probably would have chosen a more practical pair of shoes. Regardless, she sat down and placed her empty wine glass on the table between the chairs.

“I hate these kinds of things. I’m not good at small talk.” He set down his glass of scotch. “And I’m new to the team, so I don’t really know anyone yet.”

“Me too. The one person I know has run off to talk to some engineers or something,” Cat sighed and scanned the crowd for any signs of Seb, but from her vantage point she couldn’t see anything.There was a pause, and it became obvious that neither of them really was any good at small talk.

“So, if you’re not the environmental engineer consultant, what are you?”

“I’m a sponsor,” she smiled, still proud of her investment.

“A private sponsor?” He raised his eyebrows, as if impressed.

“I guess. I technically have a ‘company’ or a ‘corporation’ or whatever,” she glanced over at him and scanned his shirt until she found her name. Leaning closer, she ran her index finger over it, in the same spot it had been on Seb’s shirt: mid-way down on the front left. He jumped at her touch, but he looked down to read the logo she was pointing out.

“A.C.E.?” He read the letters on his shirt and Cat withdrew her hand.

“I’m the ‘C,’ it stands for Cat, or Catherine, and the ‘A’ is my dad.” Cat looked over the letters again, tracing them with her eyes.

“And the ‘E’?” He asked after a pause.

“That was my mom,” she replied, and shrugged when he gave her a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry,” he replied quietly.

“It’s fine,” Cat interrupted him, before he felt any worse. “I was very young and I didn’t know her. But her name is still on our logo as a kind of memorial to her, even though she was never really a part of the company. Not that I am,” Cat laughed. “I have zero business sense; this is my first real investment on my own.”

“Really?” He looked amused. “Why did you pick an F1 team?”

Cat smiled and shrugged; recalling Seb’s warning that they shouldn’t ‘spend too much time together’ so people didn’t ‘get the wrong idea,’ (Cat still didn’t know what he meant by that). “I don’t know….I just kind of picked something close to my area of study, but something I didn’t know much about.”

“That’s cool,” he nodded.

“I’ve never even seen a race,” Cat leaned over and said quietly to him, slightly embarrassed, but she laughed at the absurdity and irony of the situation.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and chuckled. “That is….interesting. So you randomly chose to become a sponsor for a team you don’t seem to have connections to, in a sport you’ve never even watched? You are quite fascinating, Cat.” He eyed her, and he looked like he was going to ask more on the subject, so Cat tried to find a new topic. She scanned his shirt once again, hoping to find a new conversation among one of the other sponsor’s logos, when something occurred to her. ‘He’s wearing the same shirt as Seb, the shirt Seb said all the drivers wore….’ Her eyes flicked up to the collar and found his name neatly monogrammed.

“So you’re Kevin,” Cat said with sudden realization. She thought she remembered Seb talking about a Kevin at some point. It didn’t sound like he liked him too much.

“I am Kevin,” he laughed, and he might have been blushing. It’s hard to tell in the lighting, paired with the red shirt and his pale skin, but he seemed modest enough that he would blush at such a comment.

“Are you excited to drive with Vettel this season?” Cat asked, fully expecting him to enthusiastically say how much he was looking forward to driving with the four time world champion, or something like that.

But he shrugged, “It should be a good challenge.”

Cat was shocked. Perhaps because Seb had been her only window into F1 and car racing, she assumed he was the best and anyone would want to drive with him. She had yet to learn about the interesting and complex relationship between teammates, very unlike teammates in other sports she was more familiar with.

“Well, I’m very excited to see how this season plays out for him.” Cat couldn’t think of a better response. “And you,” she added, not wanting to show favoritism.

“Want me to tell you about F1? Just the basics, so you at least know what you’re getting into,” Kevin asked after a pause.

“Sure,” Cat laughed. “Maybe if we keep talking, I won’t have to talk to some engineer, or another sponsor.”

Kevin dove into a thorough, but interesting description of how races work, the scoring system, what happened behind the scenes…. He even explained how he got into racing (his dad), which Cat thought was very cute. When the party slowly started ending, Kevin was dragged away to talk to some engineers, saying he ‘looked forward to seeing Cat later.’ Cat smiled; Kevin was nice, and it would certainly help to know more than just Seb on the team.

When Seb found her fifteen minutes later she was still smiling, however, he was not. They quietly left together and walked back to the car in silence. On their way home, Seb drove a little more aggressively than Cat would have liked, but she didn’t complain.

“So, I see you met Kevin,” he commented. “Do I have some competition?”

“Yeah, he seems like a good driver, and he knows what he’s talking about,” Cat smiled recalling their conversation. Why hadn’t Seb told her about F1 and racing like that? He always seemed like he wanted to protect her from it; perhaps he was worried she would hear some nasty rumors about him, but Kevin didn’t even mention Seb, Kimi, or the crash.

“That’s not what I meant,” Seb replied with more bitterness than he had intended. Cat was struck by his tone, and speechless for a moment, before her confusion was replaced with anger.

“What exactly do you want? First you say that we shouldn’t spend too much time together, then you get mad at me for talking to the one person who was kind enough to even notice I was there? We talked about F1, and cars, and racing...things you’ve failed to teach me about. Do you know how stupid I feel becoming a sponsor for a sport I’ve never seen?” This was the first time Cat had ever lashed out at Seb, and it hurt. She wasn’t sure why, but there were tears forming in her eyes. She wiped them away before he noticed, and stared straight ahead the rest of the ride home.