i forget you aren't mine - lando norris - Chapter 6: Chapter 6

"seven years will cut through / other people like a knife..."
it starts with a smell.
someone at the coffee shop wears his cologne — that clean, heady scent he used to keep in her bathroom cabinet. the one she'd sometimes wear just to feel him on her skin.
she freezes mid-order.
her barista waits, confused. she says oat flat white, please without looking up, voice soft, like she's trying not to startle the past.
the scent fades. but the ache? that stays.
she goes home and opens the box.
every girl has one.
the post-breakup graveyard of things too heavy to throw away.
his old hoodie. their polaroids. a hotel keycard from monza.
a matchbook from that beach bar in ibiza.
a ticket stub from his first podium — he gave it to her on the flight home, grinning like a kid.
"for good luck," he'd said, closing her fingers around it.
the flashbacks come easy.
it's like her mind is a projector and he's every frame.
the first time they met, it was dumb.
a mutual friend. an afterparty. too much music, not enough air.
he bumped into her, muttered an apology, and spilled red wine all down her dress.
she was livid.
he was mortified.
they ended up talking for two hours.
the thing is — she didn't even know who he was.
lando norris, yeah, she recognized the name. vaguely. but he was just lando that night.
funny. warm. slightly awkward with his hands.
the kind of guy who listened like it mattered.
he made her laugh so hard she spilled her drink.
they sat on the floor near the balcony and shared a slice of pizza someone had dropped on the table like an offering.
when she left, he asked for her number.
typed it in wrong on purpose so she'd have to text him first.
smooth, she'd sent the next morning.
worked, didn't it?
they moved fast.
but not recklessly.
late night calls turned into weekend drives.
inside jokes turned into shared toothbrushes.
he learned how she took her coffee.
she learned his real laugh — not the press one, the one with the head tilt and the little snort at the end.
they weren't perfect.
but they were theirs.
she remembers the first time he kissed her in the rain.
outside a hotel. she was soaked. he was late.
but he cupped her face like he was grounding himself — like she was the only real thing left in the world.
"don't go," she whispered, half-joking.
"never," he whispered back.
she writes about it in her journal that night.
not to be dramatic. not to romanticize it.
just to hold it still — like pressing a flower between pages before it withers.
i think i knew it then.
that he'd ruin me in the best way.
they weren't perfect.
sometimes she got quiet.
sometimes he shut down.
there were arguments about time zones and schedules and who should've called first.
but even when they fought, they always came back to each other.
every. single. time.
until they didn't.
she replays the last real night they had.
after the race. after the podium.
in that tiny airbnb with the cheap wine and tangled limbs and whispered i love yous like confessions.
she wonders if he knew it then — that it was the last time.
sometimes she thinks she did.
she tries to remember the beginning so she doesn't hate the end.
because it mattered.
because he mattered.
and because forgetting the soft parts would be a second kind of loss.
she tucks the ticket stub back in the box.
smooths the hoodie.
closes the lid.
she doesn't cry.
just stares at it for a long time.
it's wild, how love starts with something stupid — spilled wine, a shared laugh, a wrong number.
and ends like this.
quiet.
cold.
undone.