royal_musings | Being There for New Friends [for Shelby]

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Being There for New Friends [for Shelby]

It had been a while since she'd been back in the US - not since she'd finally gone over to make peace with everything that'd happen. Since then, Piper had been staying at either Adonis' stupid and ridiculous penthouse or the house that she'd promise to return more often. But it was okay. More importantly she was okay. Or would be.

She had made a decision to herself around Halloween, that she would return to the places that she'd put off for so long, being too afraid of the memories that had haunted her on occasion.

Truth be told, Piper had hesitated on taking Shelby up on her offer of visiting. It was one thing to meet in the Nexus where whoever may be still out for Piper's blood decidedly wasn't but it was another to bring any potential trouble to Shelby's literal front door. Which was why when she decided to visit Indianapolis, a city she hadn't been to in a number of years, she opted to stay at least the first night in a hotel in downtown Indianapolis. This gave her plenty of time to get a good feel of the city and see if it was a hotbed of supernatural activity - or if she'd have anything to worry about. She didn't get this far by being laxed in her own personal safety. Piper was sure that most ended up closer to Chicago which was only a few hours away.

Once she was settled into her room, somewhere around mid afternoon, Piper pulled out her phone and shot a text over to Shelby.

Hey, I know this is random but I'm in Indianapolis for a few days. Are you free for dinner and/or drinks?

She didn't want to put pressure on the other woman by any means, especially since it was her who randomly showed up in town.

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"It does help when you know the person for as long as you have. It makes it easier to tease and not take it so personal on either end," Piper agreed with a little grin. Smartass and sarcastic comments were essentially Piper's MO with most people and it never mattered how long she knew the person.

Piper laughed and took another bite of her food. "To be fair, I definitely relate to that feeling of getting older," she mused. "What all has been going on since we last talked?" She got the feeling a ton had happened since Halloween but she wasn't going to press the issue if Shelby didn't want to talk just now. She was glad to see that the two had obviously made up since Shelby came to the Nexus upset.

"A lot. Too much," Shelby admitted. It was always important for her to take the first week after the season completely off and decompress, to switch back into being a normal person. Two weeks later now and she'd still not gotten that space. She was going to keep trying until she did.

"Peter moved in, officially," she commented. "I signed a new three-year contract with Team Penske. Decided to put off starting a family. And I broke up with my boyfriend." You had to love how she just slid that last one in there like it was nothing and was obviously trying to pretend it was fine.

Of course as the words left her mouth she didn't realize if she had told Piper about her fertility issues either so this conversation might be about to get very heavy. She took another long drink of her soda hoping she didn't just kill all the buzz.

"Well shit," Piper said with a small laugh, after Shelby went through the list of things and sat back in her chair. She wasn't laughing at Shelby. It just reminded her of herself when she was younger with something always happening. "I'm not laughing at you, truly. That's a lot for any one person to go through. I can relate."

"Congratulations on the new permanent roommate," she said glancing over at Peter with a smile then looked at Shelby. "And congratulations on the new contract." Considering how Shelby was talking that evening, Piper had a feeling that the woman would have a hard time leaving her team.

At the mention of putting off starting a family, she hadn't been told of the fertility issues but that was fine too. "As for the other two, I'm sorry to hear that." She recalled Shelby saying something about wanting to retire so she could start a family by forty. As far as she was concerned, it wasn't anyone's business but Shelby's. If she thought it was the right choice for her, then that's what mattered. "How are you doing with all of that," she asked, looking at her perhaps a touch more seriously than she'd been before. "The breakup and putting off starting a family that is."

"I'm working through it. Doing my best to get by."

That was the short answer. The full answer was much longer and a lot more emotionally complicated, which meant she wasn't going to spill it at the dinner table. Peter had already heard all of that, maybe too much, and Shelby wasn't going to make him listen to it again while she told it to Piper. Especially since the latest thing on her mind involved him.

But he was smart enough to know that as he pushed back from the table, starting to clear up. "Let me take care of the dishes," he suggested. "Why don't you two go downstairs and I'll catch up."

Normally Shelby would help him with the cleanup as well. But he was offering her an out, knowing there wasn't any way for her to answer that question that wasn't awkward. Piper would even notice him put his hand on her back as he stood up just to remind her that he was there, and he understood.

"Yeah, of course," she said, her tone a little more muted than before. "Come on, Piper, I'll show you the bar we have down in the basement."

Her house had come with a fully furnished basement that she had turned into a hangout space with a full bar and a pool table. Every trophy Shelby had won sat protected in cases along one wall, while the others were decorated with photos from her career. It was the place where she could just chill and appreciate everything that she had accomplished.

That was to be expected and truth be told, if that's where she left it, Piper would respect that as well. After all, she wasn't one to overly share in general. "Thank you, Peter. It was delicious," she said, truly meaning that. It had been one of her favorites. As they made her way down the stairs, Piper took in the home and the basement. Despite not knowing her as well as others, the home felt very much like Shelby's style.

"Your home is very you," she said with a smile.

She settled into one of the chairs and looked at her with a smile. "If you don't want to go through it again, I respect that. But I am here if you need to talk it out with someone."

"I just didn't want to make him listen to it again because it feels like all he's been doing is listening to me go on." Shelby chuckled softly. She used Peter as a sounding board, and he didn't mind doing it, but she felt like she had unloaded on him enough for the time being.

"It's just been crazy. I found out that I don't have enough eggs left to wait to have a baby the way I'd planned," she said, running a hand through her hair. "I thought about finding a donor and I actually had two people who volunteered, but I realized - God, this still sounds so selfish - that I'm not ready to leave my career yet. I don't want to give it up."

She exhaled.

"So I signed a new contract extension, and that was the beginning of the end of my relationship. Derrick wants to prioritize his career and he said he wasn't ready to have a family if I wanted one. So, you know, first relationship I've had in four years - the first one that's really meant something - and I get dumped."

She glanced up at the doorway for a second as if she wondered if her best friend was about to come downstairs and hear this. Satisfied that he wasn't she exhaled.

"I told Peter, and he kissed me. And I kissed him. And we are just not talking about it because I can't talk about anything anymore. I just need everything to be normal."

"I highly doubt Peter minds," Piper mused with a smile, if his actions upstairs was any indication. She sympathized with Shelby, knowing that having a family was important for her and to not have that guarantee would be hard.

Piper shook her head at the mention of being selfish. "It's not selfish at all," she disagreed. "You have to do what's best for you and your career is important to you. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make you selfish; you simply have other priorities."

She nodded and gave her a sympathetic smile at when she mentioned her breakup with Derrick. Just when she was going to open her mouth, Shelby explained that Peter had kissed her and then Piper hummed. "Ah, all that upstairs now makes a lot more sense," she mused. Not that friends weren't like that because lord knew, she and Adonis clearly weren't a couple but they worked together close enough that it could be taken like that sometimes. There was love there between Peter and Shelby and it clearly showed between the two of them.

"Getting dumped is never easy," she started. "And you're allowed to feel upset and/or hurt by it." Hell, she had no room to talk. She hadn't truly dated since David and that was a decade ago. "Well, it looks to me that you've settled into a new normal and that's not bad," Piper said with a gentle smile. "For now, it seems to me that there doesn't need to be any words said. He seems to understand you and the situation very well."

"He does. He's always been understanding." Shelby nodded.

Part of that was Peter's personality; he was that kind of person who had empathy for others and never minded being leaned on. The other part of that was that they'd come up together. They'd started their careers as a team and even though they were no longer working as one, they still had that familiarity with each other of going back almost a decade.

"I just never knew he felt that way about me," she admitted. "I mean, I used to have a thing for him ages ago, but that was a crush and...I don't even know if it's just something that happened in an emotional moment or...And I don't want to ask. I can't upset the only other close relationship I have right now. I can't take that stress."

She was emotionally spent at the moment. And who else was she going to talk to, Shane? He was the last person she should be taking personal advice from. A self-described asshole who wasn't dating and didn't want kids.

"Everything in my life has changed in two weeks. I've signed what might be my final contract. Decided I'm going to gamble with my future in order to be successful right now. And now I don't know how to feel about him except I know I do care."

She had put aside those feelings for a long time and now were they an actual possibility? If they were, did she still feel that same way? Could she take that risk, because they'd never be able to go back again? Unlike her and Derrick, who could patch things up, too much emotion had been invested in her and Peter's friendship to go back if they crossed that line.

"I'm just glad he hasn't brought it up."

Piper understood that. Who would want to upset the apple cart when you already had so many other things going on?

After a moment, Piper tilted her head and looked at her. "Is there a rush to get into another relationship," she asked. "There's clearly a lot of care and respect from both of you toward each other and the situation. You don't really have to rush into anything or make any big grand decisions about a relationship right now. Just let it unfold how it's going to unfold."

She smiled. "I bet he feels the way you do or he understands where your head is at." And likely knows it may not be the right time to discuss things like that. "When you're friends with someone for so long, they sometimes know you better than you know yourself."

"There isn't, no."

Shelby shook her head. She'd only been in love twice in her life, and ohly just gotten out of the first truly meaningful relationship that she'd had (high school didn't really count). She didn't need to jump right back into that again. Especially not with someone whom she'd just now been able to repair her friendship with in the first place.

They'd have to talk about it eventually. They knew that. There was nowhere to hide now that they lived in the same house. But they were in a sort of silent agreement that neither was ready to discuss it. She was in shock and Peter himself seemed surprised that he'd done it; she wasn't sure if it had sunk in for him yet either.

"He's an incredible guy. Fixing our friendship has been so good for me. I don't need to mess that up. Actually, I'd like to stop messing everything up and just get back to normal."

A glance around the room. "As normal as my life is I guess."

"Then that's what ultimately matters," Piper said, watching her. "Take the time for your friendship. All those websites say that any good relationship is built on a solid friendship first and foremost."

Piper's mouth quirked up. "I'm the wrong one to talk about any kind of normal. Even before my life was twisted upside down, I thought normal was highly overrated," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. Course, to be fair, Piper's life was never meant to be normal. She'd had hopes that she'd find some sort of stability but that was still to be seen.

"But you'll get there, if that's what you wish and work toward. Hopefully from here it'll smooth out for you both."

"My life stopped being normal when I won the pole for the Indy 500 as a rookie."

Shelby chuckled and walked toward one of the cases where that pole award still sat. She had been the first woman to ever lead the field to green at the 500, and the first rookie to do so in more than 10 years. And she'd done that with Peter, who'd had almost as much of a heart attack as she did.

"Wait for it, by the way," she says. "He's giving us space and then he's going to recommend dessert."

Until that moment, though, she leaned up against the pool table. "This is my equivalent of a man-cave. All the trophies are down here except for the Astor Cups. You saw those upstairs. I have so much other hardware it all had to go somewhere so this seemed like a good place. It was just a pain in the ass to get the pool table and the piano down the stairs!"

"That's fair," she agreed with a grin and watched her. "I knew I wasn't normal when I accidentally set my dad's dresser on fire," Piper admitted. To be fair, her Mom had just passed and she hadn't been in her right frame of mind. It had been the first time she'd realized what she could do.

Piper laughed. "I will always take dessert," she said with a shrug. It was nice though, that comfortable way the two worked together.

She nodded. "I can see that. It makes sense and a good place to have it." It was representative of everything Shelby had worked hard toward and that was to be respected.

"I was in a car that was on fire once. Not my fault, but rallycross was a weird sport."

Shelby laughed. She had test-driven a Global Rallycross car for Michael Andretti and had no idea that such a thing was considered a contact sport. That league no longer existed, but it had been fun to attempt something new. She was always game for a new challenge.

"I feel like life is going in a big circle," she admitted, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. "Going forward has meant getting back to terms with my past. I don't know if that means I'm spinning my wheels, no pun intended, or maybe I had it right the first time and I'm just now having to learn that lesson."

"I can imagine," Piper said with a smile and looked around. It was interesting the different lives they led that had lead them to a place like the Nexus.

She hummed. "It does seem to do that," she agreed. "Usually, I've found that sometimes you have to go the one way, learn all you can from it before going on the path that you were meant to go on." She wasn't always sure on how that pertained to her own life but she'd always been a bit more stubborn when it came to herself.

"Maybe so." Shelby nodded again. "All I know is that the two people who've made me happiest over the last few months are people who've been in my life for years. It makes me think of what else I might have let pass me by. Or maybe that's just me getting older."

She knew this would all come to an end eventually. Drivers didn't race forever. New generations came on to replace them and challenge their records. She just wanted to stay on top as long as she possibly could and not say she had left anything on the table. Shelby knew that she'd accomplished things that were incredible and she wasn't going to stop until she said she was done.

"What about you?" she asked after a moment. "What are you going to do next?"

Piper stayed silent for a moment as she considered that. "I'd say recognizing it is part of getting older. You're more aware of it as you older. It's what I chalk it up to in any case."

She shrugged a shoulder with a smile. "From here, I'll head to New Orleans. I have some unfinished business in the city and need to make peace with a couple of things and people. After that, I'm not honestly sure and for once, that's okay. It's a nice change of pace. I'll probably head back to London for Christmas." She had a lot of soul searching to do on this trip and hoped the drive will help clear her head a bit. There was an offer that Adonis gave her of helping him out but she wasn't sure that was what she wanted right now. It was, however, something she was keeping in her back pocket.

"London's lovely at Christmas. Or it was. I haven't lived there in like ten years." Shelby chuckled. She had been there for four years when she was racing for Aston Martin, but those days were long gone. Like everything in her life, it was just a stepping stone to get her where she was today.

Which was why this all unsettled her so much. Shelby had a lot of friends in racing and spent time with them on a regular basis. But having a romantic relationship, and a family, she had always seen as things to be put off. She wanted to focus on her career and also not to short-change the people closest to her. But Derrick and Peter had taught her there was a way to balance those two things and now she didn't want to go back to being alone.

"If you need to talk while you're on the road, I'll be here," she said. She had no plans to go anywhere. "Also, how do you feel about cake? Before I start showing you a bunch of trophies you don't need to know all the stories about."

Her mouth quirked up. "I haven't either but I've heard that they still do it right," Piper agreed. She'd tried to stay away from London for the last ten years. She loved the city. It was her second home but because of that, she'd had the hardest time going back where she'd spent the most time with Jordan and David. "It's always been my second home so I figure, I should go and do it right this year." It would be nice to spend the holiday with a friend.

"Thanks, Shelby. I appreciate that," Piper said. "You know, in some ways, you'd think having magic would make life simpler but it really doesn't. But that's really just life in a nutshell. Oh, I love cake."

"There's a black forest cake upstairs."

So before Shelby could lapse into stories about how she earned this trophy or where that photo was from, things she didn't think Piper was interested in, she forced herself to pull away from nostalgia and head back upstairs. Her roommate, having done the dishes, was now sitting on the couch channel-surfing. He gave her a look to see if she was okay and she nodded that she was.

"Where's the cake?" she asked, as if to completely move off any serious topics of conversation.

"Sentences you don't get to say often enough." Peter stood and headed for the kitchen which, for the first time, made the height discrepancy between him and Shelby more obvious. At just over 5'5" she was nine inches shorter than her best friend, which made them look even more cute or ridiculous depending on how you looked at it. Especially since Shelby had never learned how to run in heels.

"Sounds delicious," she smiled and followed the other woman up the stairs.

Piper watched the two together, how they communicated without words needing to be said and the height difference. It was adorable. Even if they hadn't communicated it out loud to each other, Piper could tell how much they obviously cared for each other. Whether that was care and love for a friend or a potential romantic partner, time would tell. But either way, Piper always thought it was good to find that person who knew you like that.

"Hopefully, you'll get to relax now for the next couple of months," she said to Shelby. "Decompress and do things that you like to do in your free time. In between the busy holidays."

"Mostly eating," Shelby could admit as Peter went to get the leftover cake out of the fridge. "Not that I'm going to get fat or anything but I'm on a diet most of the year so I like to indulge when I'm finally allowed to."

She was lucky in that she had a decent diet that didn't require her to count calories or eat a bunch of bland things. She just had to use a bit of common sense. But still, she would relish the opportunity to be able to eat whatever she wanted, and maybe try out a few new recipes, especially around the holidays.

Plus, now that she had someone else in the house, she'd want to make sure he was taken care of. It was fine to stop by the Taco Bell drive-thru when she was living alone but she was trying to make more of an effort since they were pretty much stuck with each other. The current state of the world had precluded even things like going out to dinner unless they ordered takeout.

"Does your job really give you breaks or is that a year-round thing?" she asked. Of course she knew what Piper was really referring to but the question was valid either way.

"That's fair. I'd say that's good though that you have time where you don't have to be so strict about what you eat," Piper agreed with a grin. "Honestly, dessert is the one thing I never have a problem indulging in."

She ultimately worked the sugar off anyway.

Piper considered the question for a moment. "Honestly, it's dependent on what's going on. Sometimes, there are breaks and lulls but it's an always on call sort of thing." Some people never cared if it was a holiday, birthday or anniversary and in fact enjoyed making a ruckus on those days simply because they could.

Shelby nodded. "We race from March until September. Add in preseason testing and fitness, and it's basically January till September. It's a lifestyle, not really a career."

Not that she minded. She was so single-minded, and so focused on her trade, that she didn't have anything else pulling her away. As long as she got the holidays off to spend with her loved ones Shelby was fine with being immersed in work. Even on her days off she was watching other races or thinking about what was going to happen next.

She turned to help Peter get the cake onto the table and then relaxed in her chair. "This is pretty much all I've been doing since I was ten, though, so maybe I'm just wired this way. Part of the reason this breakup sucks so much is I've only had three boyfriends and I'm 34."

Piper smiled. "I can absolutely relate to that." She had, at one point, considered going for an actual career and was working toward it. Until... everything happened. "It's not so bad though. If it's something you've always known and it's in your very bones, it doesn't feel like a job. It's just part of life. What I do, is what I've always known on some level." Which would be hard to explain to Peter who didn't know her situation.

"That's understandable," she agreed. "I've been in your shoes. I'm about your age and I've had two serious boyfriends. I haven't been in a serious relationship since my last boyfriend." Course, she had spent that time avenging his and Jordan's deaths so she'd had more important things on her mind than finding someone else to be with. She had been sure she was going to spend at least most of her life with him and not being able to was still hard to consider.

Being There for New Friends [for Shelby]

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