🫀

Lewis felt way too fast in love for you. He is well aware that that was his first mistake. But, somehow, the man couldn’t help it. He knew he was done as soon as he closed the door of his home, only to spend the next hours thinking about the way you looked at him, trying to decipher the exact colour of your eyes, wishing he could paint himself in the tenderness they hold. 

Every time you opened the door of his office for him to walk inside, your warm smile would make his stomach flutter, almost as if the angels were welcoming him home in your presence. 

The truth is, the driver had to admit this. He was going through a rough path before meeting you. He felt like everyone around him kept pressuring me to follow a certain route, to do things their way. He lost some people along the way of trying to find himself again, and that made him feel quite lonely. Which is kind of ironic, since he was always surrounded by a lot of people. 

The idea of creating that charity project was his last shot at trying to find himself again, at trying to bring something to life that represented the best he had inside of him. And alongside of it, you came along - and you changed everything for Lewis. 

The man felt weak at the knees when his eyes landed on you. He couldn’t even believe that it was possible for him to be in the presence of something so precious and gracious as you. Genuinely, the prettiest thing he has ever seen. 

You two got along, better than maybe you even expected or wanted to. But you too can’t deny you felt when your lips touched, when you felt his toned arms around your waist. And it also hurts you to admit this, but maybe you took a leap of faith that you shouldn’t have taken. Maybe you got too into the flirting, the kissing, sharing sheets and touches that you should have never shared. Maybe you got yourself inside of a hole that was deeper than you knew about at the time. 

You noticed the way Lewis looked at you, you realized he was way too softer around you, always trying to make plans, flying back and forth to see you for just some extra hours. But maybe you read all of it wrong. 

You were just having fun, trying not to get too attached to someone as volatile as him. There’s no way you could trust him to that extent, especially with all of your bad experiences, and with the way you perceive love nowadays. 

And that’s the whole point. In moments that you could’ve read as a simple “I love you”, Lewis would shout “I love you madly”. Where he could say “I would die for your bones”, he actually would mean “I would die for your flesh”. If he would ever tell you “this is forever”, he would scratch that and correct it, saying “this is where never”, wishing he could love you in a world where roses would never die, in a world of faith, free of errors. 

But, unfortunately, finding you in such a troubled time of your life, was a mistake. And that’s basically how everything happened: you missed yourself and were looking for yourself. Trying to grasp a hold of the girl you once used to be. And Lewis didn’t fit that side of your life and adventure, trying to capture your happiness. 

For you, it was just a fling; for him, it was everything he ever dreamed of finding. And that exposes clearly that you’re not as compatible as you both thought you were.  

You never said you loved him. Whenever he expected emotional reactions from you, you always replied in a practical way. If you said you were free on Friday, Lewis would interpret that as if you were making up time for him. If you said you enjoyed having coffee with him, he would assume that you felt the exact same way he felt towards you. 

And slowly, he starts realizing that you never gave him all that he was envisioning for his future. He was just filling the blank spaces you left, so he would feel whole. Not because he is naive, but because something, deep down inside of him, feels desperate to believe in that kind of love again. 

Whenever you would cancel some plan you had with him, he would feel devastated. You never understood the dimension of the sacrifices that he would make to see you. Because you never felt the same way about him.

Putting all the pieces together, Lewis realizes one thing: everything that he loved about you, everything that made him dream about a future by your side, were things that he made up in his mind. You never told him you wanted to marry. You never said you wanted to build a life by his side, you never saw him as the man of your dreams. It was him. He was the one completing your sentences, trying to guess your train of thought, assuming what you might feel. 

You just put an end to it. On a regular day, like it was nothing. Said it didn’t make sense to you to keep seeing him. You didn’t even shed a tear, and while those words were leaving your mouth so effortlessly, you were crashing Lewis’ world down. He swallowed hard, nodding at your words, saying that he understands your side and agrees with you. But on the inside, he was losing the last thread of something that he wished to hold so strongly - a future by your side. 

The collapse of a reality that he painted by himself was harder to swallow than he could ever imagine. Now, there’s songs that he can’t listen to anymore, because they remind him of you. His house feels emptier, darker, because you stole all the light from all the rooms, carrying it around with you. Everything changed because you disappeared, but the space you left is still there. He’s surrounded by silence and not even the loudest of songs and laughs can fill the void left by your absence. 

Lewis thinks, and overthinks at night. Maybe this is all on him. Maybe he didn’t know how to hold an angel like you, he didn’t know how to captivate you in the best way. Maybe he wasn’t enough for you. For quite some time, the man tears himself down, with questions and assumptions that make him question his own worth. What did he do wrong? When was the exact moment that made him lose you? When did you stop loving him? Truth being told, Lewis was so lost in his own life, trying to find himself as well, that, once you showed up, he held on to you as if you were a miracle, pure in front of his eyes, showing up in his path for a reason. 

His mistake was treating you like the cure to all his pain. As if you had appeared to save him - never realizing that he had to be the one saving himself. Lewis could try and do everything that crossed his mind. He could go for a run, he could create new projects, he could meet new people. He could do everything to try and distract himself from the emptiness that he senses every hour of every day, pooling inside of his soul. It doesn’t work, because, for the first time in so long, he needs to be the one looking inside of himself, and figure out all the mess that’s ruining his idea of self.

And now, everything feels even worse, because nothing is special after the magnitude of losing his heart to you. 

You were the one who made him believe that there was more to life than just F1, for him. You made him believe in a soul connection, in a future, in sharing every piece of his life and mind with someone who actually understood him, and made him feel seen, heard, and cared for. 

It’s like he can only see black and white now, as if you stole all the colours from his reality. He hates to feel this way, he hates to feed self-destructive thoughts. But the man gets stuck on the exact same question, every night: what’s the point of even living, if he’s only ever missing you every day of his life? 

But at the same time, Lewis realizes something powerful: you couldn't have broken something you never knew had been placed in your hands. You had no idea Lewis poured all of his heart into you. And maybe it’s none of your fault, maybe Lewis just misread your existence next to him. 

Instead of questioning “when did you stop loving me?”, the driver starts asking himself “did I mistake you for a sign from God?”, because maybe you were supposed to teach him something. You just weren’t meant to stay longer. And that was another one of his mistakes: he stopped seeing you, for what you were, for your wills. He just continuously saw the version of you that he created in his head. 

And, no matter how long the man would pray, that woman wasn’t real. And now, he is forced to face the aching truth, and he needs to move on from it. The man laughs bitterly, as the words that his mum once said to him echo in his brain: “You won't have learned anything until you've learned the burden - or the blessing - of being expendable”.

Right now, it feels like Lewis’ last months were spent loving you loudly from the other side of the world, while not having the courage and strength to tell you that he loved you to your face. 

He doesn’t know if you, by any chance, could have stayed if he had done things differently. And he beats himself up, thinking of all the possibilities, of all the ‘if’s’ that still live inside of his mind. But everything is pointless, now. 

And, as if he was packing a bag, the man picks up the pieces of his heart, trying to mend it carefully. 

- Give in, my heart. We’ve both fought hard enough. - The man speaks to himself, caressing his chest, craving some comfort and nestle, some tears escaping his eyes.  - And let life come to an end. We weren’t cowards, we did what we could. - he closes his eyes, accepting his reality, embracing the shadows that hold him to sleep, giving his mind a break for a few hours, wishing that you could have just finished him, so he wouldn’t have to be on this earth once you decide to love someone else, sparing him from the unbearable certainty that one day, someone else would become everything he had dreamed of being - even if the biggest disappointment the man feels right now, it’s on himself. 

Because, at the end of the day, he needed you to be something you never claimed to be.