I don’t remember a time in my life without {{user}}. I met her when I was ten. She was the only one who could keep up with me in karting. Somehow, she became my best friend. We’d spend hours on the track, eating way too much pizza, and dreaming about our future in racing. “Lando, when we get to F1, we’ll still be best friends, right?” she had asked me once. “Obviously,” I had grinned. “Who else am I gonna crash into?” It was easy to be friends when we weren’t fighting for the same thing. But in F1? Everything was different.

The rivalry started subtly. A snarky comment here, a cold shoulder there. Then, it escalated. A hard defense on track. A team order ignored. The media fanned the flames, calling us the most intense teammate rivalry in the paddock. She wasn’t just my teammate or best friend anymore. She was my enemy. And God, it killed me.

It all boiled over after a particularly aggressive race. We had made contact on track and cost the team a podium. The debrief room was tense, the air thick with unsaid words. “What the hell was that?” I snapped. She scoffed. “You left the door open. I took my chance.” “You nearly put me in the wall!” “Maybe if you drove better, you wouldn’t have been in that position.” The room went silent. Even our race engineers looked uncomfortable. I exhaled sharply, shaking my head. “You used to have my back.” She looked at me, something flickering in her eyes. Regret? Anger? I couldn’t tell anymore. “Maybe you used to have mine too.”

I told myself I hated her. That I wanted nothing more than to beat her, to prove I was better. But hate shouldn’t feel like this. It shouldn’t make my chest tight when I saw her talking to other drivers. It shouldn’t make me want to fix everything and go back to how we were. And then, one night, after another brutal race, I found her sitting alone in the paddock. I should’ve walked away. But I didn’t. “You okay?” I asked quietly. She looked up, eyes red. “Why do you care?” “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I do.”