Pretty Boy [bxb] | ✔️

Chapter three: Mamma

𝙈𝙖𝙢𝙢𝙖

Once I arrive at my house after school, I put my car in park on the driveway. I grab my keys from the car pocket I always keep them in along with a bunch of rubbish and my coffee from the drink holder, then get out the car.

As I walk up to my front door, I notice there's only one other vehicle in the driveway out of the three that share it (mine, the car my older twin siblings have to share and my parents). My dad takes the bus to work so the car in the driveway, a silver Volvo, means my mother is miraculously home early for a Wednesday.

When I enter the house, it's surprisingly almost silent. The only noise is the sound of plates someone is moving about coming from the kitchen. Mamma. I sigh. I'm glad that I will be able to get some peace for however long that may be.

I am one of five siblings. There are the twins Luca and Sofia who are eighteen; me, who's seventeen; a fourteen-year-old younger sister Eva; and finally, a little three-year-old brother, Isaak, who I'm pretty sure was an accident. Look at the rest of our ages. Our parents weren't even contemplating another child. Especially not with them being so old.

My mum was 38 years old when she gave birth to my little brother, and my dad was 39 years old, so I count that as being older than usual to have a child that young. Not that I'm judging, though, because I love my little brother to pieces, and so do the rest of us. We call him the life of the party, as he's always so hyper. And although he's only three and can't fully perceive that he's doing it, it still seems to help us when we're having a down day.

Eva was also glad to know that she wouldn't be the youngest when we found out that mum was pregnant. I think that's the main thing she's grateful for regarding Isaak. My little sister used to go on about how she hated it, as she always got treated like a little kid. I mean, she was eleven when he was born, so what she doesn't realise is that we were treating her like a kid because she was one.

Today's one of those rare days where I'm the only child out of the five home.

I have no idea where my older brother is. Sofia is most likely out getting drunk with a bunch of guys and probably smoking weed. Eva is with her friends doing shopping or whatever fourteen-year-old girls do with their girly friends. I know for a fact Isaak's at an evening playgroup thing. Dad's at work. The only other person home is my mother.

"Matthew, sei tu Tesoro? (Is that you, sweetheart?)" I hear her call in Italian from the kitchen, her voice echoing through the empty house.

My mother's from Italy. She likes to speak to us in Italian, meaning we're all pretty much fluent in the language apart from my dad as he's a proper Brit and couldn't be bothered to learn it. After twenty years of marriage, he still hasn't been able to pick up a word of it apart from ciao, so he just sits there dumbfounded while the rest of us have conversations with each other in the language.