Chapter One

Valentine

"You sure 'bout this?" said the hoarse voice leaning against the wall a few feet away from my bed.

"yeah, I'm pretty sure about this," I replied confidently, dropping all that's holding me back all these years.

The tall man tramped through the moonlit darkness of my room as he began unbuttoning his shirt as well as keeping his eye contact with me.

"Okay then, here I come," he muttered, bringing his shirtless self to me.

I grabbed his belt and pulled him closer to me as I began unbuckling it. I quickly pulled his zipper down, and as the excitement grew hotter, he pulled his pants down for me, revealing only his boxers. He cupped my face and started putting his lips on mine. I was expecting him to go the rough route, as savage as he desired to, as hard as he wanted to, but I ended up disappointed that he went the soft and tender route. It was too soft, too eased like the exact way he kissed me for the first time. I almost thought he still believed that I wasn't yet ready for this, but I've already made my decision. I kissed him back, letting my tongue slither out of my mouth in order to locate his own tongue. I had to do it my own way. I gave him a piece of what he's been deprived of for the past two months that we've been going out. I kissed him like a hungry wolf, intense and ardent. I noticed how surprised he was about it, which is somewhat turning me on, and it ultimately urged him to reciprocate the same energy I was giving off. I took my shirt off for him as he began kissing my neck, going slowly to my adam's apple.

"You like it rough, huh" he moved away from the kiss and pushed my chest that I was thrown lying spread eagle on the bed. The growing sexual excitement made him quickly remove my shoes and pull my pants off, leaving only my boxers.

"You think you can handle me," I trailed heavily breathing as I grabbed his arms, and with much enough force, I slammed him on the bed. I swiftly sat on top of him and then began kissing his lips passionately, going to his neck and then going down to his nipples. Our skins rubbed together like they harmonize, sharing the heat and pleasure coursing through our bodies.

"Oh shit," I heard him moan out of pleasure, bluntly indicating that I was performing the exact way he wanted it. I began slipping my hand inside his boxers and finally started stroking his shaft. I was about to pull down the only fabric left on him when he grabbed my arm and toppled me down. I was switched under him this time.

We continued getting steamy through the night, gloriously playing with pleasure, but when I woke up the next morning, he was gone. The empty space next to me still felt warm, which means he just left seconds ago, but I didn't even bother trying to run after him. He already got what he wants, and I'm guessing he will be avoiding me from this moment on or probably staying out of my sight for as long as he can. I thought he was different from most of the guys that are hitting on me but even until now, the word stupid is still clinging to me. He was just like all the nine other guys that I've dated. Out of those nine guys that I went out with, he was just the third guy that I had sex with, and little did I know he will be last.

Days went, months rolled, and years flipped, leading me up to this moment.

Nobody ever bothered to let me remember how terrible Mondays are. I woke up five minutes earlier than the alarm that I've set, which to me is unexpectedly a first in five years. I only just started working a few days ago, and yet I still keep forgetting the lingering fact that I'm already a working adult. I opted to take a cold shower today since my hangover is starting to kick me in the butt. It always feels refreshing to let out the cold water touch my skin and replenish the moisture it had lost from drinking booze and partying all fucking night.

Living in this big ass house, I feel like I just volunteered to solitary confinement most of the time, and it is depressingly overwhelming to me. It's quite funny that my dad and we almost never see each other even if we live in this very same house, and although that shit has been the case ever since I was still in high school, things are pretty much different now that I'm officially out of college. I've got to do my shit now on my own without the usual support from dad. I've got to buckle up, for the responsibility is getting tougher and tougher. The worst thing about it is I have no other choice but to eat burned, if not, terribly cooked food all of the time. Sometimes when I don't feel like cooking stuff, I skip the dishes and order pizza or Chinese food or whatever's available for delivery. Dad and Vincent are very talented cooks, but how come I did not inherit that kind of skillset. I know I can always learn it, but I feel like cooking isn't just for me.

The thing about Monday is that everyone has their own version of Monday-morning faces: sagging, gaunt braced, resigned, ugly. Some are still yawning like they needed thirty minutes more of sleep; some shoulders were sloppy, almost like they've been carrying heavy weight all their lives. The streets were populated with crawling Monday-morning faces, which prompted me to pause for a brief moment to look at my face in the mirror. Nah, I look good. I continued driving.

I found little but still enough solace in my office the same moment that I sat down on my chair. The past five days spent in the corners of this lonely and claustrophobic box had been very exhausting with such information overloading inside my head, and now that the workload has dwindled, I can finally be at rest. I let my eyes roam around the emptiness of the room again, but this time my eyes were carefully scrutinizing the four corners. I started finding the space to be rather confining with a depressingly somber ambiance. The walls appeared disgustingly tedious as the last inhabitant looked like he ransacked the place, taking all of his own stuff with him the moment they transferred him.

Ivana, heavily catching her breath, barged into the room, holding a cup of brewed coffee that I know she just bought from some random shop out there on her left hand and a thick expanding folder containing some paper works on her right. Her oversized bag that is probably filled with a lot of unnecessary stuff is dangling over her shoulder, and her hair is a fucking mess.

"I'm so sorry I was late," She muttered as I watched her struggle as she laid down the cup of coffee first, then the folder on the table. "I had to wait for the babysitter before leaving home."

"Motherhood is really that hard, huh," I replied, ultimately grabbing the cup of coffee.

"Exactly, I can't even sleep for an hour straight. I have to wake up at midnight to shush little Axelle, and don't get me started on the poop" Ivana sighed and sat down at the chair placed in front of me as she pulls out a rubber band from her bag. "I should've just let that stupid guy seed on my face."

"Or, you should've just swallowed it."

"Eww, that's nasty."

"Is it?" I asked.

"Don't tell me you've already tried it," Ivana gave me a disgusted look.

"Nope. But someone did swallow mine," I replied. I almost want to laugh, but it was not funny.

"Oh, tell me about it."

"Nah, I'm not telling you anything" I shook my head.

"Is it Jay? Is it Nikolai? Is it Codey?"

"I'm not telling you," I just remembered that Ivana knows everything about me. She knows about my sex life, my love life, my family life, almost everything.

"I think it's probably Nikolai. That guy is nasty."

"What are these?" I asked, pointing out at the folder that she brought.

"The list of applicants," She replied quickly. I grabbed the folder and started flipping the papers. "We need four service crews, four waiters, and two cooks for the re-opening of the South Bailey branch."

"Okay, but this is a lot of applicants, don't you think."

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we also need five waiters and two service crews for the New Shire branch."

"Have you already checked them?"

"Yup and those are all the qualified ones, but we still need to conduct the initial interview."

Ivana and I went to the same college. She was the first one to approach me when she saw me looking rather overwhelmed and confused at the lobby of the university. I just didn't want to see anyone from the high school that I went to, so I looked for the only university that I think no one from my Alma matter will attend to, and yet she was there. I wasn't really planning on going to college. I just lost my direction in life, everything seemed pointless, but my dad and Vincent forced me to. Ivana approached me with the clear intentions of checking how I've been after everything and explaining what the things that I didn't know about are, but I did my best to avoid her until the third week where she just cornered me. We basically played hide and seek, and I thought she's not going to catch up to me, but it wasn't about the speed. She's way smarter than me.

We ended up being friends up to the point where I basically had to talk to her to act as my girlfriend. I did truly came out to the whole campus during high school, but that unfortunate event kicked me back to the closet. I was afraid to love again, and so Ivana became my protection. I always get angry at times when other guys blatantly flirt with me at school.

College taught me a lot of things and let me experience a whole new extraordinary level of burnout that I'd never expected, but it didn't hinder me from partying hard as fuck. I literally spent my college years as a student by day and a party monster by night. Maybe it's because I just want to be distracted from the terrible things that happened to me. Maybe I just want to find healing from meeting other people, highly wishing that I find someone who can love me the exact way I want to be loved. I didn't realize that I was going deeper and deeper, and I began to define happiness as being drunk all night and hangover all day. I took pleasure from this world's elements, such as; drunkenness, smoking, wild parties, sex.