the sun always rises || dybala

01: charlene

lunedi 15:37

Paulo finds her pretty, no—beautiful.

It's not just any girl he's met in the streets—it's his English tutor.

The tutor his own club assigned to him in order to make the team more marketable around the world, more versatile. When Paulo thought of an English tutor, he envisioned a middle-aged woman with curly dirty blonde hair, glasses, pale skin wearing a blue vest over a red sweater. He didn't want to deal with the troubles of a tutor and enhancing his poor English skills, he was initially reluctant to the idea.

Then he actually met her.

She was probably around his age, olive skin, short black hair with the top of it tied off into a tiny ponytail, grey eyes wearing a black long sleeve and god, Paulo thought she was so pretty.

She was Charlene. Just Charlene, that's what she introduced herself as. In her monotone and emotionless voice, she was just Charlene, and he was just Paulo.

"Hi, I am Paulo Dybala. Juego para—"

"No, say it in English, Paulo."

But he was struggling to speak English consistently. He knew a few phrases here and there, but it was never really consistent.

He sighed, trying for the umpteenth time to say Hi, I am Paulo Dybala. I play for the Serie A club Juventus. It's a simple thing to say, but he can't even get it right the fifth time. His hand runs through his hair, slumping back on the back of his chair as he tries to translate it in his head and say it correctly this time.

"Hi, I am Paulo Dyba...Dy-ba-la and juego—mierda," he huffs in defeat, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Mierda."

"Um," Charlene says awkwardly, trying to ignore the fact that it's been twelve minutes since Paulo's been trying to say this one sentence, and there's still more she has to teach. It's been half an hour of him trying to get himself together and say it correctly. "Try again. And then we could go over the homework for tonight."

Sometimes he just wants to give up and leave. And he thought he had fine English skills when in reality, they're pretty shit.

"I want to go home," he says instead but in perfect English, better than the simple phrase she asked him to do.

Charlene sighs, checking the time before picking out a piece of paper from her black and white Juventus themed folder. "I guess you can go home now. I don't know how long it took you to try and get the phrase right, but just do the homework, and we'll review again on Wednesday," she tells him, handing him the sheet of paper.

It's a simple worksheet, something Paulo can handle, but he's a bit in a fumble right now because he doesn't really want to leave. He doesn't want to leave without getting a date with Charlene.

But he has a girlfriend—Antonella and only God knows what she'd do if she found out he cheated on her.

This time, Paulo leaves.

//

mercoledì 16:02

Paulo did the homework.

Well, with the help of Google Translate, he hands over the paper to Charlene who sits right in front of him, looking over the answers while tapping the tip of her mechanical pencil on the surface of the table.

He's a bit nervous of her expression. She doesn't seem to have a distinct look, but it makes him a antsy in his seat because he actually hopes that he did better than he did last time with his homework. Last time, he had bullshitted the entire thing and got about half of the worksheet wrong, setting him back quite a while but this time, he actually took the time to read and look back on his notes. Maybe it's not one hundred percent correct, but at least he made the effort.