C22 Chapter 21 - Matteo

He spends Valentine’s Day in the club with his friends because they’re having a special 'single's only' event suggested by Isabella a few days ago, and since Aurora didn’t want to have her birthday there, they hosted “Valentine’s Dead”. It was a huge success.

Everybody got dressed up and the club was packed, Aleksi was there with his usual deliveries, and everyone was happy. Things were back to normal.

Now that it’s way past midnight and Matteo is on the way home in a taxi, he remembers that it’s the 15th. Which means Aurora just turned 18 and celebrated somewhere else in New York, since she was going to the school in the city.

“Hello? Happy birthday!” he says, still pumped from the cocaine.

“Thank youuu” Aurora says on the other line, slurring her words.

“Where are you?”

“With a friend.”

“Who?”

She sighs into the phone. “You don’t know him.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Raisa looks at him from the other side of the taxi. Matteo looks at her for a moment before turning his head back to look out the window. The streets are still covered in snow and it’s cold outside. He left the club without a jacket because he couldn’t feel the cold from the alcohol and drugs.

“Don’t start Matteo. Marco has already asked like ten times and now I think dad is onto something. Let me enjoy becoming an adult.”

“As if you’re an adult.” Matteo snorts. “Anyway, take care of yourself, okay?”

“I always do.” She says. “Have a good night.” She says in a tone that lets Matteo know she knows he’s with a girl headed back from the club.

“I will. You too. But I want you at the club next month.”

“Promise.”

He hangs up and looks at Raisa. She’s on her phone, hands shaking as she texts someone.

“Hey.” He says and she looks up at him, smiling as he leans closer to kiss her. Raisa kisses too aggressively for Matteo’s taste, but she’s crazy in bed because there’s nothing she wouldn’t do. Plus, her nipples are pierced, which is something Matteo has never experienced before. He also knows that she’s beginning to fall for the idea of him, and it won’t end well for her if she makes it into something more.

Raisa straddles him without any regard for the driver and starts kissing down the left side of his neck. He slips his hand under her black dress to find that she’s not even wearing underwear. He knows she’s got daddy issues, especially since her father died and is maybe

trying to live out her fantasies through him. Matteo just lets her, by fucking her real good until she can’t breathe, then actually listening to her problems when she talks.

He never asks her out on purpose, which is one of the things he’s started doing so the girls he hooks up won't make it into something more, but somehow it still happens. He could go the continuous one-night-stand mode (which worked for a few months until he realized he wasn’t even satisfied), and he could try to get it up for random prostitutes or girls he picked up without even knowing their names.

She moans into his ear in the elevator and he unzips her dress before they even enter his apartment. One minute later she’s naked, straddling him on the couch in the living room, looking over his shoulder at the view of the city. He sucks on her pierced nipple, focusing on getting it up with all the cocaine and alcohol in his system. Without him even asking her, she gets on her knees in front of him and smiles.

The reason he prefers having a few “fuck-buddies” as he likes to call them, is because they already know each other’s body so it’s more pleasurable than having a new person every single time. And if he wakes up next to them, he at least wants to know who they are. Trust is also an important part, ever since one of his one-night stands stole two of his watches and posted about it on Twitter in 2018.

He had to come to terms with the fact that anyone who would google his name would see how much money his family has. The statistics on the internet didn’t even showcase a quarter of the wealth he knew his father had acquired over the years.

He goes to sleep an hour later, after having had sex for forty minutes and taking a shower afterwards. A part of him wishes she’d be gone by the time he wakes up.

***

Two weeks later on the last weekend of February, Aurora finally agrees to come out and celebrate that she was eighteen with her ‘family’, as Matteo had put it.

“Shut up, you sound like dad.” She told him, which was kind of a slap in the face. But she came, wearing a white sundress and sunglasses.

They have their corner in the VIP area and there are more people at the table than usual, two of them which he doesn’t really recognize, probably friends of friends. He spots Valentina talking to Isabella and Raisa so he walks over there.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Anything interesting happened in class yesterday?” he asks after knocking their glasses together.

Valentina takes a sip before answering. “Depends on what you mean by interesting. But if you’re asking whether I took notes, then, as usual, yes I did. But I forgot to send them to you, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“That’s alright, I don’t really understand them anyway. They’re not even entire sentences. And some abbreviations don’t even make sense.”

Valentina takes another sip from her straw. “I mean, I take my notes so I can understand them. If I know I can make a longer word shorter, I’ll just write the abbreviation.”

“Yes, but I can’t understand it.” Matteo says, mimicking her gesture and placing a hand on his chest.

She smiles. “Which one?”

“All of them.”

Valentina rolls her eyes. “Do you want me to solve your problem?”

Matteo is taken aback. “Uh, no.”

Valentina looks at him questioningly, and the fact that he’s speechless takes Matteo by surprise. He usually doesn’t have to fill the silence himself.

Raisa starts talking to him then and he loses his train of thought, leaving the conversation be for the moment so he can focus on Raisa. He wouldn’t try to talk to Valentina again if it hadn’t been for his father calling him earlier that day, asking why he hasn’t gone to classes for the past two weeks. He doesn’t care enough, but his father does, so he asks Valentina if she wants to do a line in the staff room.

Valentina downs her drink and grabs a bottle of water, then motions towards the door in the back. “Lead the way then.” She smirks.