the sun always rises || dybala

06: behind the curtains

martedì 15:45

You have three missed call from Anto

Swipe. Clear.

You have one voicemail from Anto

Swipe. Clear.

You have one new message from Charlene

Open.

charlene
Hi paulo don't forget to do your homework

"Hey Charlene, I did my homework." Paulo practically barged into her "office" (not really an office, just a room the club gave her), homework in his hands, and a tray of pink frosted sugar cookies.

Charlene almost got a heart attack by the way Paulo barged into her room, it was only a minute after she sent him that text. "Oh my God, Paulo, you almost gave me a heart attack."

"Like in a good way, or a bad way?"

"You scared me."

"Shit, sorry," he have her a sorry grin and took a seat next to her.

When he thinks of it, Charlene must be really bored being stuck in this room. It's literally the size of a cubicle, maybe a bit bigger, but it's just white, and all Charlene has to entertain herself is her laptop.

She doesn't really walk out and about—she's gets to work and gets work done. For her, it's just about going to work, working, and then going home. Paulo probably only sees her once a day, and that's if she's walking back to her office from getting lunch, but other than that she doesn't leave the room at all.

But she looks better than yesterday, cooling his nerves. In fact, she looks the same as ever—tired.

He's never really noticed, but he remembers when he said that she doesn't look like a Charlene, but now she does and nothing has changed. Maybe she's just rubbing off on him, or maybe he's just the human brain doing it's magic. Whatever it is, Paulo doesn't mind.

He hands her the homework, which is surprisingly complete considering how much of a tantrum he threw yesterday. It was just using conjunctions and other adjectives in sentences, but apparently it was his "weakness" as he put it. But Charlene thought he was just bullshitting her.

"So?" he asked, leaning closer to the Croat. "Did I do good? I didn't use Google translate, I promise! Not this time!"

"Paulo, I'll tell you tomorrow, I have work to do." She placed the paper in the drawer and continued her work on her laptop.

"You're just scrolling on Twitter."

"I finished early. And translating all the Juventus articles kind of get repetitive," she sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "It's the same thing over and over."

"So...stuff about me?" He bat his eyelashes just to make her crack the slightest of smiles. He likes it when she smiles—it's just so heartwarming and leaves a nice happy feeling in his chest knowing he made such an amazing girl smile.

Her cheeks turned into a light pink color that you couldn't even see but Paulo did. "Basically, yeah. Something about you being a small guy."

"Um—what?" Small guy? Paulo was pretty tall!

Well, he's probably nine or eight inches taller than Charlene, but he doesn't think he's so short! He's like average height! (Charlene's very short, so he probably is short.)