Chapter 3: Travel

                                    

                                          
Casey kept her eyes ahead, glancing for the shortest moment at his face as he paced down the unfamiliar hallway in her direction. She kept walking, straining her ears to detect any nearby footsteps other than her own and his. It was nearly 10pm and she was so tired, but she'd stayed back late anyway, preferring to complete her duties now rather than come back to the track again in the morning.
                          
She was heading back from the garage through the main pit building to find a taxi back to her hotel. Though she hadn't realised he was still there too.
                          
She didn't know how to behave around him anymore, everything was so confusing. She looked up at him again as they were about to pass each other and gave him a small smile.
                          
She gasped sharply as his hand flew out and grabbed shoulder, roughly pushing her up against the wall behind her. Her heart thumped wildly as she felt his body press against hers and flatten her against the wall. Their foreheads met and his eyes locked on hers for a moment before he leaned in.
                          
She slid her arms around the back of his neck and grabbed a handful of hair, twisting it in her grasp and pulling him in closer as his lips met hers. A very familiar stomach-dropping feeling tore through her and she quickly tightened her hold on him. After a moment she paused to breathe, pulling out of the kiss just enough to bite his lip gently.
                          
Suddenly she heard the sound of a distant voice somewhere down the labyrinth of hallways and in an instant he had released her and was striding away. She watched him disappear around a corner before leaning her head back against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut.
                          
Casey lurched into a sitting position and stared ahead with wild, bleary eyes. 
                          
Three... two... one... she counted in her head, reasonably certain by the time she got to one that she wasn't dead. In a fashionably late kind of way, last night decided to catch up with her only a split second later and her head suddenly felt like it was physically increasing and decreasing in size as it throbbed. With a strangled gasp, she realised she was, albeit up the wrong way, sitting in her hotel bed.
                          
She panted briefly before frantically trying to remember where the pain killers were in her hotel room. Gingerly, she lifted herself off her bed and headed for the kitchenette, quickly grabbing a half-full glass of water that had been sitting there since who-knows-when and snatching up a mercifully nearby packet of pain medication. She slumped her way to the bathroom and took a shower, sitting on the floor and hanging her head under the water as she waited for the pain to dull.
                          
A solid forty minutes later, she had managed to get dressed and find shoes before grabbing her back-pack and easing out of her hotel door. She checked her phone idly as she waited at the elevator. Nothing particularly interesting was on there. She tapped on the photos app and grimaced as she opened the last taken photo to full screen. It was a picture of Evan staring into the camera with a huge grin on his face, making a thumb gesture towards a woman leaning over the table next to him, her cleavage was nearly dropping out of her silky dress entirely. The woman's attention was averted to someone outside the edge of the photo. One guess who that'd be!
                          
Casey didn't remember the woman's face and flicked to the next photo. It was of the same thing, except with a completely different woman in the background. Evan looked hilarious, gesturing to this new woman who stood directly next to him and yet was completely ignoring him, oblivious even to the photo being taken. Her attention was clearly captured by someone further down the table.
                          
She continued flicking through the photos faster; there was a bit of a random woman theme going on with the odd picture of the other crew members scattered between. No tragic selfies though, she thought, giving herself 10 imaginary gold stars. The elevator dinged and she stashed her phone in her pocket and raised her eyebrows as the sore sight of Evan came into view. He was leaning against the back wall of the elevator, sunglasses on, with his head tilted back towards the roof.
                          
She stepped into the elevator without a word and stood next to him, stuffing her hands in her pockets and smirking at the floor.
                          
"Don't start," he seethed.
                          
"I wasn't going to-"
                          
"Uh-uh!" he tutted sharply, cutting her off.
                          
She bit her lip and gloried in the fact that her pain had been conquered by a measly tablet, "I told you you should have stopped after the Tequila!" she blurted out after a moment of silence. Evan hissed and turned his head away.
                          
The elevator dinged again and the doors swept open, revealing an awaiting Harry and Brand.
                          
"You survived your first after-party!" Harry hollered, stepping into the elevator and shaking Casey's shoulder. Brand looked on smugly as he surveyed the sorry sight before him.
                          
"You know Case, I was expecting you to look worse. Well done!" he chirped.
                          
"Aww!" she replied sarcastically, hiding a small smile.
                          
"Make the noise stop, please," Evan grizzled from her right.
                          
"What's that Evan?" Harry practically yelled. Casey couldn't see Evan's eyes, but she knew they would be squeezed shut.
                          
"Did you take any pain killers even?" she asked as she nudged Evan with her elbow.
                          
"Couldn't find any," came his abrupt reply.
                          
She shook her head in amazement, surprised he'd made it this far without any. The elevator dinged again and the robotic voice announced they had reached ground level. The four of them shuffled out into the lobby and through the main doors, walking towards the shuttle meeting point in the nearby hotel car-park.
                          
Casey looked up at the bus as they approached. It looked full of sullen, sleepy faces. Next to the bus a few of the team's official Infiniti cars were lining up as their inhabitants talked to each other out of their windows. The cars were, of course, reserved for drivers and upper management, while everyone else was loaded into a mixture of shuttle buses and minivans.
                          
"Good morning!" a German-accented voice called from one of the cars. Casey looked over to spot Sebastian looking towards them over the roof of his car as he unlocked the door. He gave her and Evan a knowing grin before sliding into his seat and starting the ignition.
                          
Harry and Brand chuckled to themselves and Casey tried to imagine the glare that must have been gracing Evan's features. The four of them boarded the nearest shuttle bus and took various leftover seats. A few moments later, they were all being whisked back to Albert Park for the last time for 2014. The next day a portion of the team would fly home, while some would go back to headquarters in the UK, and others would go straight on to Malaysia - the next stop on the Grand Prix calendar. It generally depended on their role in the team and scheduling as to what they had to do, and it changed all the time. For this gap, Casey's role didn't require her to go back to headquarters and since she hated flying (because it was so incredibly uncomfortable and boring), she figured she'd volunteer to go straight on to the new location and help with the preliminary set up of the garage.
                          
That day was long and hot. They completely dismantled the two cars and truckload after truckload of equipment was packed up and driven away to Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport. Casey could feel the sweat dripping down her back as she heaved a heavy tool box on to a trolley. She wiped a greasy hand across her forehead and reached for her water bottle. It was some kind of unexpected miracle that her headache hadn't returned at all. Evan on the other hand was nowhere to be seen, but nobody had seemed to notice and she wasn't about to say anything. She'd go and look for him at the end of the day though, just to make sure he was still breathing. 
                          
The evening came and went quickly as everyone retired to their hotel rooms in a heap of exhaustion. Casey had eventually found Evan asleep in a changing room at the track and after a solid 20 minutes of negotiation, had managed to get him up and back to the hotel. She'd then packed her bag up and set her alarm for 3am before finally retiring to bed for the night. Evan was going straight on to Malaysia too, they would be sitting on the plane together. She hoped his mood would be back to normal by then or it was looking like it'd be a rather long and sulky flight.