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"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he asked.
Valentina felt like she was going to throw up. She didn't know why. The feeling came so suddenly. Maybe it was the alcohol. Yeah, that's it. She just drank too much and that was making her sick—definitely not the look on Steve's face.
Despite feeling like she was going to barf at the moment, somehow she thought Steve still looked worse. His eyebrows were impossibly tight and cinched together. The wrinkle between them might as well have split the skin down the middle. His bottom lip was screwed in a strange shape, like a frown and a grimace combined. He looked like he was in physical pain.
"Um..." she stuttered at a loss for words. Valentina looked back to the staircase where Billy had chosen to lean against the railing with his large arms crossed over his bare chest and an impatient look on his face. She looked back to Steve. He looked like he'd shit himself in the mere second she looked away. She finished, "Going upstairs."
"With Billy?" Steve didn't miss a beat.
Valentina went to open her mouth again, but she shut it just as fast. She had no more words to say. She didn't even know what to say. The entire English dictionary was complete nonsense in her brain. There were no words. No apologies or explanations as to why she was going upstairs, alone, with Billy. She just was.
"Yeah. Is that a problem?"
It was Steve's turn to fall silent. But his eyes didn't fall to where Billy stood on the stairs. They remained on Valentina and her quivering eyelids. He was intimidating her without even trying to. She wasn't scared of him per say, but she was scared of what was about to happen. Valentina hated feeling lost and confused, but she was both of those things and more right now. She had no idea what was going on.
She was pretending like everything was okay, though. Those walls that she built up were coming back even higher. As usual, the Valentina that Steve knew all too well was making an appearance. She was using anger and humor to distract him from what was really going on. She was trying to frustrate him so that he'd walk away and the conversation would end.
But Steve had had enough of girls trying to blame him for things tonight, so he wasn't putting up with it from the one girl he actually wanted to fix things with.
"And what if it is?" he challenged. Valentina's face dropped just barely, but he saw it. Of course he saw it.
He wasn't supposed to answer her question. There wasn't supposed to be a problem. She just wanted him to go away. She just wanted it to stop. She wanted to go upstairs with Billy and let him distract her from all the problems in the world. She wanted to let her body consume her mind until she melted into a pile of mush.
