INVISIBLE STRING ☆ DANIEL RICCIARDO

six

MIAMI, USA; MAY 6th 2022

     Lando and Luisinha had successfully managed to convince Isla and Amani to fly down to Miami for the next race weekend. The three girls had spent the majority of their time in the Paddock Club, wanting to stay out of everyone's way in the garage.

Amani had a right fit when she finally met Daniel on their first day, having it all out on Isla when they got back to their hotel room that night.

"You're actually dumb. Like full on, mentally ill, stupid." she had exclaimed, flailing her arms as she spoke. "How the heck did you let that man go?"

"Are we forgetting the part where I had just gotten cheated on?" Isla deadpans, raising her eyebrows at her friend. "Like literally forty-eight hours before I met him."

Luisinha was lying across the hotel bed, popping gummies into her mouth every now and then while giggling along to the exchange. She must admit, Amani was definitely making a big deal out of this. But then again, she freaked out too.

"Oh my God, Isla!" Amani grabs onto her shoulders, shaking the woman lightly. "Is he single? I can't imagine that man being single but he has to be, I don't care. This is your second chance!"

Isla gently peels her friends hands off her and laughs. "Yeah, definitely not. The last thing I want right now is a relationship, thank you very much."

"Isla, come on." Luisinha sighs, looking at her sadly. "You can't keep going about your life like this. You need to start giving people a chance."

"I do give people chances, I just don't want anything from him that you guys are expecting."

And that was the end of that conversation.

Isla was not the type of person to speak freely about her feelings, unless she really, desperately needed to; ie. when she was in therapy. Both her friends knew that she had her evasion to relationships ever since Ramy, what they didn't know is that it would keep going for so long.

Obviously, Isla had been with guys— she had been with plenty, but none of them had managed to stick around for longer than a month or two. She would never let anyone in too close to be with her for longer than that. Which is why the subject was dropped almost immediately.

On their first official day at the track, Luisinha had planned to introduce the girls to the other drivers partners that were present for the weekend. They had run into Kelly early on in the day, who they had learned was Maxs partner. The Redbull driver was apparently good friends with both the McLaren boys.

They had spent a couple hours together in the paddock club that first morning, being joined by her daughter Penelope — who after a slight mishap, Isla had learned wasn't actually Max's kid. The whole thing really confused her, but that's a story for another day.

The boys hadn't made much of an appearance due to their overly packed media schedules, with James Corden hanging around the McLaren garage to film a segment with them. The girls had managed to stay fairly out of their way except for one of their shots.

"Oh, there's no fucking way." Isla cackled as she pulled her sunglasses to the top of her head as they spotted Lando and Daniel in what appeared to be their new team uniform.

Standing before them at the entrance to the garage were both drivers in cropped versions of their team t-shirts. Luisinha had already taken it upon herself to take a multitude of pictures of Lando as blackmail, effectively teasing him through the process.

Islas eyes were trained on Daniel's visible midriff, admiring the exceptionally toned muscle, until he had spotted her. "Take a picture, it'll last longer"