when will our part two begin | oscar piastri & lando norris
read part 1 here
summary: he stopped showing up. she stopped waiting but sometimes, endings are just new beginnings
Oscar loved me most when I was already halfway out the door.
I was folding my clothes, hands trembling a bit, trying to stay calm, pretending this was just another night. But inside, everything was unraveling.
His eyes barely left the glow of his phone screen. Until—finally—when I zipped my suitcase shut, he looked up.
He reached for my hand, slow and uncertain, like maybe he still had the right to stop me.
“You don’t have to do this,” he whispered, voice raw, like he was begging, but also like he knew it was already too late.
I had done it. Weeks ago. Maybe months.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said again, softer this time, as if the words tasted bitter in his mouth.
“Then don’t let go,” I said. “But you already did—long before I packed this bag.”
He looked down, shoulders slumping. “I swear I tried.”
The hardest part wasn’t walking away.
It was all the quiet moments I swallowed—the times I wanted to scream, “Look at me! I’m still here! I still love you! But maybe I don’t love you anymore—just the ghost of what we used to be.”
He only held me when he was scared of losing me. Never when I needed him most and love like that doesn’t last.
I closed my eyes and let the memories come — sharp and bittersweet.
Flashback – Barcelona, 2024.
By now, I knew the routine.
Fly in Wednesday morning. Check into the hotel. Drop our stuff. Oscar insists he’s “just going to check in with the engineers really quickly” and disappears for three hours. I scroll on my phone, drink hotel water I still believe might be cursed, and wait.
But Barcelona was different.
It was hot. Like the kind of hot that melts lip balm in your bag. The kind of hot that makes even Oscar loosen the top buttons of his McLaren shirt — which should be declared a historical moment, honestly.
“Lando’s looking for you,” he told me, casually, as we walked through the paddock.
Oscar shrugged. “You’ve been deemed more interesting. Congratulations.”
I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or alarmed.
We found Lando outside the hospitality tent, sitting with his feet up on a bench like he owned the entire sport. His sunglasses were crooked, he was eating gummy worms like it was a food group, and when he saw us, he lit up like he’d just seen his favourite drama unfold live.
“There she is,” Lando grinned. “Oscar’s better half. Literally and emotionally.”
Oscar blinked. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means,” Lando stood up, brushing sugar off his hands onto his race suit, “that if she ever breaks up with you, I’m adopting her.”
I deadpanned. “Do I get snacks in this adoption deal?”
“You get snacks and better Spotify playlists.”
Oscar sighed like a man who regretted every decision that brought him here.
“He’s been unbearable since quali,” Oscar muttered, handing me a water bottle. “Ignore him.”
“Don’t be jealous, mate,” Lando winked. “She laughed at my jokes first today. You’ve got competition.”
“Oh no,” I said dryly. “Whatever will I do with two emotionally unavailable men fighting for my attention.”
Oscar cracked a grin. Just a little one. But I caught it.
The three of us sat outside for a bit — the boys talking strategy, tyre degradation, team radio mishaps. I watched them, soaking it in.
Lando had a way of bringing Oscar out of his shell. Not dramatically — not like flipping a switch. More like slowly turning up the volume on someone who usually lived life on mute.
And for some reason, Lando always looped me into the chaos.
“You’re coming karting with us tonight,” he declared suddenly. “Non-negotiable.”
I raised a brow. “Says who?”
“Says me. And also Andrea. He said Oscar needs to socialise with people other than tyre engineers.”
Oscar mumbled, “I like the tyre engineers.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t laugh at your jokes.”
“Exactly,” I chimed in. “Mystery solved.”
They both stared at me. Then burst out laughing at the same time.
Sticky, loud, exhausting.
That night, Oscar let me braid a small section of his hair while we watched karting replays in bed. He pretended to hate it. He didn’t.
Lando texted us in a group chat titled The Real McLarens with nothing but a blurry photo of us from across the paddock and the caption:
Oscar sent back a thumbs-down emoji.
And then, even before all this, there was the very beginning — the first time I met Oscar.
I wasn’t supposed to be there.
My best friend had somehow scored paddock passes for the F2 weekend, and I’d tagged along just for the experience — no real expectations, just curiosity and the hope of spotting someone famous.
But I didn’t expect to find him.
Oscar Piastri was sitting on the edge of a folding chair behind the Prema garage, sipping water like it was just any other afternoon. His race suit was rolled down to his waist, and his hair was messy in a way that looked unintentional but somehow deliberate. There was a trophy sitting beside him, untouched. I recognized him instantly — not because he was loud or flashy, but because I’d watched the race and couldn’t stop thinking about how calm he looked behind the wheel.
I hesitated for a second before walking over. He noticed me, gave a tiny nod, like he wasn’t sure if I was a fan or lost.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked.
He shook his head, gesturing slightly.
“Congrats on the win,” I added as I sat. “That overtake into Turn 1 was insane.”
He gave me the smallest smile — like it caught him off guard.
“Thanks. Bit of a sketchy move, to be honest.”
I laughed. “Yeah, but it worked. So I’m guessing it counts as genius instead of reckless.”
Oscar glanced sideways at me. “Only if I’d pulled it off. Otherwise, you’d be calling me stupid.”
“Maybe,” I teased. “Or unlucky.”
We sat in silence for a beat. Comfortable silence. The kind that settles only when both people are content not to fill it with noise.
“I’m surprised you’re out here alone,” I said after a moment.
He shrugged. “People tend to forget F2 exists when F1 is ten feet away.”
There was no bitterness in his voice. Just a quiet honesty. Like he’d already made peace with being invisible to most — but not to me.
“I didn’t forget,” I said. “You were the best thing on track today.”
He looked at me again — properly this time. There was something intense and oddly soft in his gaze, like he wasn’t used to being seen but wasn’t afraid of it either.
I reached into my tote bag and pulled out a little packet of biscotti I’d grabbed earlier from catering.
He looked at it, amused. “I just won another Feature Race of the season and my prize is dry Italian cookies?”
“They’re almond,” I grinned. “Fancy.”
He took them anyway. “You’re strange.”
Another pause. Then, with that same low, steady voice, he asked:
“Are you around tomorrow?”
He didn’t fidget or over-explain. Just said:
“Thought we could grab a coffee. Unless you think drivers are only interesting on podiums.”
That made me smile — because it wasn’t cocky. It was quiet confidence wrapped in humility. Classic Oscar.
“I think you might be more interesting off the podium,” I said. “Coffee sounds good.”
No grand gestures. No fireworks.
A single, quietly significant moment that I’d look back on later and realize was the start of everything.
What came next was silence. Days without words, unanswered texts, pictures of podiums that cut sharper than any fight.
Two people who used to be everything—now strangers in someone else’s story.
And then there was Lando.
He’d always been there—not to replace. Just to remind me that I deserved someone who actually looked at me when I spoke.
Someone who didn’t only love me when he was afraid of losing me.
I still remember the day we met. I wasn’t nervous about meeting Lando.
Not until we were walking down the paddock and Oscar, in all his emotionally-repressed glory, said:
“He’s going to give you shit.”
Oscar kept walking. “Just… ignore him. Or fight back. He likes that.”
“Are you talking about Lando or a stray dog?”
He didn’t answer. Just pressed his lips together and gave me a subtle shake of his head — his version of “good luck.”
We turned the corner into the McLaren hospitality suite, and I swear I heard a record scratch in my head when I saw Lando in the flesh. Curly hair slightly damp from the heat and a grin so cocky it should’ve been illegal.
“Oi, rookie!” Lando called, mid-bite of a cookie he definitely hadn’t paid for. “About time you brought the mysterious girlfriend. Thought you made her up.”
Oscar muttered, “Regret everything,” under his breath, then turned to me. “You don’t have to say anything. You can just walk away.”
But I stepped forward, smiling. “Hi. I’m the myth.”
“I’m Lando. The better half of the team.”
“Careful,” I said. “You’re talking to the man who beats you in qualifying sometimes.”
Lando clutched his chest. “Wow. Straight for the jugular. You sure you’re not dating me?”
Oscar rolled his eyes. “This is going great.”
We sat in the lounge, and I watched them interact — and it hit me then: this wasn’t some big brother–little brother dynamic like people thought. It was more like chaotic golden retriever meets skeptical house cat.
Oscar listened, occasionally raised an eyebrow, and once threw a grape at him.
“You’re not gonna survive this season if you keep dating someone smarter than you,” Lando said eventually, pointing at Oscar with his water bottle.
Oscar shrugged. “I like suffering.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
It was strange — seeing this version of Oscar. Not the one hunched over data sheets or half-asleep on flights. But the one who let his guard down, even if it was just a little, around the one person who knew how to poke and prod at him until he smiled.
That night, after the media chaos died down and the sun dipped low over the circuit, we walked back to the hotel hand-in-hand.
“You okay?” Oscar asked, squeezing my fingers gently.
“With Lando?” I smiled. “He’s insane. But I think I passed the vibe check.”
“I’m definitely going to be his favourite now,” I teased. “He’s going to text me more than he texts you.”
Oscar side-eyed me. “I don’t like how real that sounds.”
We stopped at the elevator. He turned to me, quiet for a second.
“I liked having you there today.”
I looked up at him. “You mean in your world?”
He nodded. “It’s better with you in it.”
He didn’t say things often, but when he did — they landed like thunder.
I kissed him on the cheek, soft and quick, and said, “I’ll remind you of that when Lando inevitably drags me into a prank war.”
Oscar deadpanned, “If he tries anything, I’m replacing his protein powder with flour.”
I laughed so hard I nearly missed our floor.
And that was the day I met Lando Norris.
The day I became part of the chaos — not just someone on the sidelines, watching.
Now, one night, under the soft glow of a Monaco terrace, he asked,
“Are you sure you don’t love him anymore?”
I hesitated. Took a breath.
“I’m not sure about that.”
“But I am sure he doesn’t love me right.”
Lando didn’t smile. Didn’t push.
He just looked at me with that calm, like he already knew before I did.
“Then maybe it’s time someone loves you properly.”
No rushed kisses, no dramatic confessions.
Just glances that stayed a second too long, silences that didn’t hurt, and coffee shared without pain.
Until one afternoon, Oscar came back.
Knocked on the door like he still had the right. Held flowers. Not wild or stolen. Expensive. Polished.
“I didn’t want it to end like this,” he said.
“I didn’t want to leave,” he continued, voice cracking. “But you… you left too.”
“Because I was breaking trying to stay,” I whispered.
“Is there someone else?” he asked, blunt and hurt.
“It’s not about someone else,” I said firmly.
“It’s about me. About what I deserve. And what you forgot how to give.”
And for the first time, it didn’t break me.
Not because I didn’t love him, because I finally understood I couldn’t love for the both of us.
When I closed the door behind him tears came, not from regret, but because ending something real always hurts.
With a colder heart, yes.
And when I saw Lando again, he didn’t say a word.
Just opened the door, poured me tea and sat beside me as if the world wasn’t burning, as if I wasn’t made of ash.
And for the first time in a long time…I didn’t feel broken.
I didn’t want to leave, but I did because this time... I chose me.
