"Matteo would always be welcome to run into Valentine's room."
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All of my protests of not wanting to be totured by Valentina— busy with homework, her being away half of the time, me wanting to try by myself— are rejected. To be fair, the excuses were kind of dumb as my parents could work their way around it.
They say I can do my homework later in the night time or even with her. They say that Valentina also has dance lessons only two days a week and that she is very much free the other days. My dad shut down the part where I said that I could try to succeed by myself as another test comes up and I fail it.
Two weeks later, I am sitting in my room waiting for her to come over. I asked my parents if we could study in the living room but they had said that my twin sisters are going to be down there, jumping all around. Everything a teenaged guy would be happy about, I was not. I didn't want her to come up to my room, I didn't want to spend time with her. I didn't need her to show me how to do equations when I could figure it out by myself.
Only I can't.
I'm on my tenth time erasing the same equation as it doesn't match up with the answer I found online. How was this so difficult? It was just one equation, it couldn't be this complicating. I huff out a breath as I come up with the wrong answer again and my eyes go to the time on my phone.
The time shows that it has been twenty minutes since the time Valentina was supposed to be here. Sighing, I get off of my seat and grab my phone and I head downstairs. Surely, my sisters are playing with their toys on the floor, their giggles so loud. I smile as I turn the corner and head out to my backyard. It will be easier to go to her house this way.
I cross the distance and knock on the back door to her house. It takes a while for it to open but later it is opened and her mom is standing there with a smile on her face. "Matteo", she shouts at me and I put my hand up to her in a wave. "Are you here for Val?"
"Yeah", I answer and then force myself to make up the monotone answer by smiling harder. She nods at my expression and then says, "You know you don't have to knock around here. Go on, Val's in her room."
I nod and walk into the house and follow after her. She stops in the kitchen as I walk over to the staircase. It feels unfamilar as I walk up the stairs toward her room. I haven't been up here in a long time. It has been over a few years since the last time I went to her room. I find it at the end of the hallway and find the room left ajar.
I take a deep breath in and place my hand on her doorknob, ready to push it open. I do so slowly and am already talking before I do so. "Your parents agreed to this toturing session, bella", I say and stop short. The name rolled off of my tongue but that's not what stops me in my track. Valentina is laying on the bed, a person on top of her.
Holy shit, I walked into her making out with her boyfriend. She makes a deep noise from the kisses he was placing on her neck, her hand gripping his shoulder. I should look away, I should go. I should, yeah. I couldn't see this. I couldn't stand here and feel like this. It felt as though all of the emotions I pushed down the last couple of years threatened to come up again.
