I Can Hear Your Voice

f o u r

March 19th.
6:42 p.m.

[Luka's POV]

Mate.

Luka today was very normal. He acted how Luka normally acted. He was shy and quiet, bashful and innocent with wide and cheery expressions. His day was normal except for the abrupt warm gaze Matteo gazed at him with and the suddenly relaxed and un-bordered way his friends interacted with him. But Luka was Luka. He was naive. He was innocent. He ignored the shocked stares and the whispering down the hallways. He didn't notice that people didn't regard him as indifferently anymore, and how amiable the teachers were to him. He didn't notice anything.

But I did.

Warmth spread through my chest when I thought about Matteo. He was funny, witty, and very...melodramatic, but he didn't act much different than he did during Spanish yesterday when I suddenly came up beside him and Ian in his group. Not one of my best moments, I have to say. Why did I have to go and alarm them? Gosh.

But whenever he thinks back to his words, "'Mate'" I feel confusion and a welling apprehension in the pit of my stomach. An existence called, "mates" should be kept quiet and safe inside the boundaries of my mind, not projecting itself into reality. But I heard him.

And I'm not stupid.

I know I've already said this, but anyone with a reasonable IQ, has already seen multiple hints pointing towards said thing, and has a certain amount of skepticism towards life—they'd be dumb enough not to come to their own conclusion. I wasn't ready though to tell myself that my life was probably boiled down to a dramatic teen werewolf story. I'll admit, I don't mind the idea of having a mate, they're someone out of billions of people in the world but manage to get matched with you. What couldn't be more secure with a Moon Goddess in the sky matching you up more than...what? Tinder? But all the stories I've read disregard common sense and the cliche is pumped into those stories like they're steroids. Seriously, turn down the flexing. We all know your werewolf bxb story is as cliche as they get out there, we get it (I whole heartedly agree with Yohan). If the signs in my life are all pointing in a glaringly obvious direction, though, I hope it isn't what it is at all.

A sense of deja vu over took me as I was once again met with the red front door of my house. I laugh inwardly. What, instead of seeing my mom getting ready to hook up, will it be my dad instead? I open the front door once again and the familiar stale and cold air washes over me. I felt lonely. So unbearably lonely. I'm always used to this feeling but Matteo and his friends made the dark that much darker.

"Ahh, Me llamo Ian."

"Me llamo Marie!"

"...Me llamo Liam."

"Me llamo Matteo." Matteo said as he glanced warmly at me. I blushed and I felt warmth gush over my icy veins—the vestiges of shock and fear hasn't worn off even after a couple of hours and it was almost the end of school, only about 10 minutes left of class. Something was strange though. Inside me something loosened when I was around Matteo, and it wasn't so hard to force bashfulness or blushing in front of him anymore. I felt like crying at that moment because I've never...realized the weight of my own facade and it felt like a mountain off my shoulders, and it caught me so off guard at that moment. Granted that I have to watch my reaction to some things and I still have to act innocent...basically a white lotus. But for once, I don't have to pretend so much. For once.

For once.

"Como te llamas, Monsieur?" Matteo's voice rumbled. I laughed as my eyes crinkled into smiles. "Señor, Eso fue francés." His eyes narrowed with a concentrated look on his face as he searched his memory for the buried Spanish in his mind. Something I've learned about Matteo these past few hours since lunch: He's forgetful. Or maybe it's that he's just not good at remembering stuff at all, period. The only classes he gets good grades in are in Math and English; he doesn't have to use his memory to remember that one colonial Englishman he has to write another report on, or that one string of molecules of some shit for science. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he woke up one day and forgot his own name. Just his name, nothing else.