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“I don’t mind Antonelli. He seems like a good person. I simply don’t choose to associate myself with him. He is a very people person, like a dog, and he’s loud… and annoying.”
The video looped again on Oliver Bearman’s phone, the morning bright and clear, unlike his friend’s face, and he cackled at the way Kimi Antonelli, on the other side of the sofa, rolled his eyes, expression more exhausted now rather than spiteful.
“It’s not even half true! I’m not loud!”
“Then why are you screaming?”
“BECAUSE IT IS UNFAIR! How has one interview caused her to go viral?” Kimi turned over hastily, almost falling off but instead rolled backwards into the pillows as Ollie shoved him back by the taller boy’s leg.
“It’s viral because people now think she’s rude and extremely insensitive—I see that as a win for you. People are defending you.” Kimi stood up, ignoring his friend’s comment, brushing back his hair out of frustration, and turned back to Ollie, face scrunching up in disgust.
“I don’t get Toto. She’s a walking controversy, and people are making ridiculous conclusions, the press are going crazy, and she’s probably inside her room, indifferent.”
Ollie’s eyes suddenly brightened, and it slid down into a small smile as he stood up and slowly walked away. “You’re offended, aren’t you, Andrea?”
“Like heck I am.”
“You are.”
“Ollie, where are you going?”
Slam. The front door shuts, and on the other side, Ollie’s muffled voice fades. “Places, Kimi.”
——
“Antonelli…”
“He’s pretty public with himself?”
“I don’t particularly like him.”
“I try not to be close to him.”
“He’s fine, just not for me.”
“UGHHH MAX!”
Kimi clicks off the phone, jaw clenching before he breathed deeply.
“Is there a problem, mate?” Max asks and turns from his place by the stove. Kimi, sprawled on his friend’s, or older brother basically, couch, had an arm over his eyes, brows knit in irritation.
“Am I… that annoying? It’s getting to my nerves, all that ‘Aesop’s actual statement’ and crap. It’s barely true, Max.”
“I don’t think you are annoying. However, a lot of us think Aesop isn’t a particular… you know, people pleaser. She is cruelly honest, and I deeply respect that.” Finally shutting the stove, Max sits beside Kimi. “You’d have to understand that sometimes, people get upset over something, and they will say another thing about it.”
“I haven’t even done anything to her.”
“Really?” A brief moment of silence tells Max everything, and he chuckles before turning back to his cooking.
Kimi’s mind flashes back to the last three times he pranked her this week. Well, damn. He didn’t think it would get to her that hard. “Well.”
“Well indeed. However, Oscar has spoken to her, and he thinks she’s a talented little girl.”
“Little? All that’s left is for her to swear at me on live TV.”
“Maybe all she needs is a little, you know, social nudge”.
And nudge Aesop did. To Kimi, the next day, on the race, while on wheels, which both gave them a DNF. She disappeared before Kimi could even confront her about it. Toto approached him first, finding the boy on the bathroom floor, head in his hands.
“Kimi, it’s alright. It was an accident.”
“I don’t understand, I WAS SO FAR FROM HER!” The younger boy’s hands shot up and almost smacked Toto’s face, but the older just held them back, and pulled Kimi into a proper sitting position, an arm around the boy’s shoulders.
“She is just a rookie, one can make mistakes Kimi,” Toto had told him, but Kimi’s face only twisted in response.
The hallway to Kimi’s hotel room stood silent, and as he made his way back to his room, his mind spun with everything everyone was saying, all piling up like his junk mail—all useless to the feelings cooped inside his chest.
His door slammed closed behind him, and he plopped into an armchair, laying back to rest his eyes.
The hotel, large as it was, lay silent and lonely, though not for long. The doorbell rang, and Kimi, groaning like an upset rat, and rats don’t groan, got up and answered it. As soon as he saw the wretched girl, Aesop DeCafs herself, standing by the doorway, he slammed it back closed, except the slam was never heard, and even louder, a crack of thick wood against a force, a slender hand shoving it back open.
“Before you make your ridiculous conclusions, I do not stand here like a dog, begging for some attention. I am here to clear something that apparently has been bothering you.”
Aesop made her way in, looked around at, to her, a mess one called a hotel room, and turned back and shoved flowers into Kimi’s hands.
“I apologize. For the race.”
Frozen on his stop by the door, Kimi finally drew a proper word out after getting poked by a rose thorn.
“Ah, ow.” Sticking his finger in his mouth, he plopped the flowers onto the counter, fully facing the girl who was shorter than him by barely 2 inches—stupid heels, indeed. “First of all, that’s alright. Second, chocolates will do, I don’t think roses and carnations are necessary.”
“Statistics say at least eighty percent of men only receive flowers at their grave. I enjoy pulling down stayistics, and how glad these carnations were to feel Kimi Antonelli’s hands, of all people.” Kimi swore he almost saw her smirk, but it faded as fast as the sun had set.
“Creepy as hell.”
“Do you have a ‘vaas’?”
“A what?”
“A ‘vaas’, dingo.”
“A…’vaas’? You mean a vase?”
A scowl misted its way onto Aesop’s face, and Kimi’s smile brightened, and the perfect picture of “cat and dog” evolved itself onto them that very evening.
“Are you insulting my English that is equally as bad as yours?”
“I wouldn’t say equally…”
“Shut up and listen.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did you call me?”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind. Look, I know you watched the interviews, and you have thoughts—I bet 10 pounds they are not nice—but I need to say some crap so you feel crappy, and enough that the press knows you feel crappy and don’t start rumors.”
“Rumors of what?”
“That we are together? Have you not seen the articles? I suppose it has been deleted. You are very ignorant, not very smart, and your attention span is faulty.”
“What?”
“Put the flowers in the ‘vaas’.”
“Vase.”
“WILL YOU-“
“Doing it.” The soft thrashing of the water from the faucet filled the glass vase halfway, and leaves dropped onto it’s surface as the stems were dipped delicately onto the clear liquid. Behind Kimi, Aesop watched the boy, and, satisfied with the carnations in fruitful positions, her mouth curved into an unfamiliar smile.
“I do hope you forgive me. For the words I said. I know it bothered you,” her face remained impassive, and yet she scrutinized for any hidden emotion in his expression, but she could not see anything other than sincerity.
“I do. Thank you. For this. I appreciate it.”
Sighing in relief, she recalls Oliver Bearman refusing to leave her front door until she agreed to offer an apology. “Your friend, the tall one, is more annoying than you are.”
“Ollie?”
“Like a noisy bird, with the ‘twee twee’ sound, like the washing machine after it is done with your clothes.”
The girl turned to leave, but Kimi chased her, leaping across the counter, making his phone leap off from it, startling them both. Aesop, a hand on her temple, stared with a grimace on her face at the phone that was somehow still intact.
“Stupid and clumsy, wonderful combination, not recommended for the orchestra.”
“Uhm, stay for dinner?” Taking one good look at Kimi’s disheveled hair, tangled in some corner, and his pleading face that resembled a baby baboon, Aesop hastily turns around to leave.
“No, I have a headache. I think I will go back now.”
“Pasta can solve that.” It makes her pause. He was too kind, too eager—‘too sweet’, she vaguely thought.
“Pasta solves everything.”
“Yes, thank God someone understands. Nobody understands that Italian food is the best…”
“Mm-hmm.”
“…because not everything is about savory and salty stuff, it’s in the pasta sauce, and pasta…”
“Mm-hmm.”
“…I’m really glad you like pasta, and Italian food.”
“It’s the best.”
“I know! And every other food is like second place and, bomp bomp bomp, a little lower…”
“JUST COOK THE DANG PASTA!”
“Okay. Stay here.”
“I will.” Slumping on the sofa, back to the kitchen, not noticing Kimi’s wide smile as he grabbed a pan, Aesop flips down her phone that vibrated with an unknown caller. “Do it faster, Tonelli.”
“It’s Kimi.”
“Fine. Kimi.”