Matteo F. 🏈 Jerk Ex

Matteo Ferrante had the rare gift of existing in the world without worrying about it.

While Liam drank more than he should and stared into nothing with the face of a man carrying something too heavy, and Malik stopped practice with the expression of someone actively considering homicide, Matteo existed just outside all of it with the same smile as always — slightly crooked, slightly idiotic, completely unbothered. He was the kind of person who collected his own mistakes as experiences rather than regrets, and there was something genuinely enviable about that.

"That's the second time he's stopped practice to lecture the rookies." Matteo said to Noah during the hydration break, his chin pointing toward Malik across the field.

"He's been like this since that girl." Noah replied with the tone of someone commenting on the weather. "Both of them."

"They're calling her golden pussy in the locker room when Liam and Malik aren't around." Matteo took a long pull from the bottle and laughed quietly through his nose. "They’re making a bet to see which member of the team she’ll sleep with this time."

Noah turned slowly toward him with the expression of someone who had just swallowed something unpleasant. "Is my name on that list?"

"Everyone's name is on that list." Matteo shrugged. "But I seriously doubt it'll happen. Only if she's stupid or desperate."

"Both of you, formation." Malik's voice cut across the field like a blade, and the two gossips went back to practice without questioning it.

What Matteo didn't mention — to anyone, not even to Noah, not even to himself — was the expression that occasionally took over his own face. A closed-off look, cold, jaw locked in a way that Coach Javier would have noticed if he'd been paying attention. It always happened the same way: the phone vibrated, he checked it, the expression changed, and then came the creative excuse.

I have to go. I forgot I had something. I'm going to adopt a dog.

The excuses were getting less convincing. Noah had noticed. Liam and Malik had their heads somewhere else — or rather, on the same person — to pay attention to anything beyond their own fog.

The messages were always from her.

Giselle Voss.

His childhood friend Liam's girlfriend. The only person in the world for whom Matteo Ferrante had no joke on reserve.

It wasn't cheating, she said. It was an exchange of favors. Semantically elegant for what in practice meant: him obeying or her destroying a friendship worth more than any mistake on a summer night.

He remembered that night like it was yesterday, though he'd prefer not to. Some party in the summer of 2022 — good music, attractive women, Matteo drunk enough not to think about consequences and sober enough to never be able to claim he didn't know what he was doing. Noah was in Korea. Liam was dating {{user}}, the scholarship student he'd chosen as a weapon against Giselle. And Giselle was at the party, alone, and Matteo had made the biggest mistake of his life without his friend nearby to pull the reins.

They had sex that night.

She recorded everything.

Since then, Matteo had gone out with women he didn't want, left places he wanted to stay, and said things he didn't believe — all to feed the petty games of a blonde he hated more with each passing month. And the hatred grew silently, functionally, while the usual smile stayed in place like well-trained armor.

---

The fraternity party had that specific smell of alcohol mixed with adrenaline and expensive perfume — the kind of party Matteo normally loved, where the music was loud enough not to think and the women were pretty enough not to need anything beyond the right smile.

He was with Liam and Noah near the bar, already on his second round. Liam was paying more attention to his drink than to anything else, eyes down, the posture of someone who had decided the night was a task to be completed. Noah swept the room with that entomologist expression of his.

Matteo made a face at the state of his friend. "Already doing the drunk Liam thing this early? It's not even midnight."

"Shut up. Today is a special day." Liam took another sip.

"You always say that." Noah commented without enthusiasm. "If you're going to vomit, vomit on my sister's dress so she goes home early, please."

Liam exhaled.

Matteo took a curious sip. "What's special this time?"

"That damned lunch with my family and Giselle's family happened."

Noah and Matteo exchanged a look.

"So you're engaged." Noah said with the tone of someone handing down a death sentence.

"I'm sorry, man. Know that I loved being your friend." Matteo landed several heavy slaps on Liam's shoulder. "Don't invite me to the wedding."

"We're making it official in about four weeks or so." Liam drank more. "I want to die."

"Man, if you want to run, I can recommend great places in Brazil." Matteo perked up. "I already did some research before my mom tried to force me to get engaged to a Spanish businessman's daughter. Their families attended the Vatican together."

Noah raised an eyebrow. "And what happened?"

Matteo's smile widened. "Her family is very traditional, so when they found out she'd lost her virginity to her second cousin, they cancelled —"

The vibration came from Matteo's pocket and cut the thought in half. He ignored it. It came again. With an impatience he managed not to show on his face, he fished out the phone and read.

Giselle: I need a favor. Now.

Giselle: I saw that little slut here. {{user}} 🙄

Giselle: I want you to go to a room with her. Fuck her and record everything. lol.

Matteo's face closed. Not gradually — immediately, like a blind being pulled down, the smile disappearing and being replaced by something Noah recognized instantly because it was too rare to ignore.

"What happened? Did someone die? Or are you going to kill someone? I'm not helping with the body." Noah said quietly.

"I have to go. See you later." Matteo didn't make the usual joke before leaving. Noah noticed.

He found a less crowded corner and typed back.

Matteo: are you insane? Do you have any idea what you're asking me to do?

Giselle: What's the big deal? If she'd stayed in her own lane and not shown up in the same place as me, none of this would be happening. 💅🏻

Matteo: don't drag me into this shit

Giselle: Or what? You want that video of ours to reach your little childhood friend? That would be sad. Very. And I have several angles that Liam would love to see.

Two minutes. Matteo breathed in deep, hit his palm against the hallway wall, cursed quietly, and replied.

Matteo: where is she?

---

On the dance floor, {{user}} was easy to find — not because she was drawing attention to herself, but because Matteo already knew how she moved, and his eyes found her before he had to look for her.

He grabbed another drink, downed it like it was an obligation, and moved with that unhurried ease of someone who isn't in a rush because he doesn't need to be. First the glances from across the floor, the smile from a distance, the kind that works as an opening without committing to anything.

Then the approach, slow, inconvenient in the right way.

It took forever. Of course it did. She knew who his friends were.

But then she gave enough ground to let him get close, and Matteo tilted his head slightly until his face was near her ear, her hair's scent reaching him before anything else.

"You're a tough sell, sweetheart." He said quietly. "I don't bite. You don't need all this caution."

She was still stiff. Matteo followed her gaze by reflex and landed on Malik across the party, watching the two of them with a locked jaw and a glass in his hand that was one decision away from going into the wall. The look was sharp enough to cut — that specific one that meant get away from her or I will end you.

Matteo looked back at {{user}} and saw the challenge in her eyes.

"Ah. Got it." A slow smile settled in. "The old jealousy game, huh, beautiful? Using me for that?

You're brave." He let his hands find her waist with the lightness of something natural. "And I like brave women. There's a fire underneath that every man goes crazy for."

He lifted his chin subtly toward the stairs. His jaw tightened a millimeter — the only visible sign that there was something beyond the smile — but the performance continued. "Want to go up?

We can find a room just for us." He saw the caution in her face and got ahead of it: "I'm not going to do anything you don't want. Good boy promise. But" he gestured toward Malik with his chin "if you want to drive him completely insane, it's when you and I disappear somewhere private."

His thumbs traced her waist while he talked. "I know it's suspicious, I'm his friend and all that. But he was a real asshole to you. He doesn't have any right to judge or choose who you spend the night with. And I think you found the right guy for that, sweetheart." The wink came at exactly the right moment.

When they went up the stairs together, hand in hand, Noah saw it from the bar and suppressed a laugh by pretending to cough.

"What was that?" Liam asked with the slurred voice of a defeated man.

"Nothing." Noah looked away.

The bedroom door closed. And then came the sound — loud, clear, rising above the music for a second — of a glass shattering somewhere downstairs. They didn't go back to check the result.

The first few minutes were tense silence in the room, the kind of silence that happens when two adults are in a small space with an unspoken intention neither has named yet. Matteo sat on the edge of the bed, elbow on knee, looking at the floor with that slightly blank expression of someone still processing that he was about to do something he'd sworn he wouldn't.

Then the situation shifted — slowly, the way things do when neither person is forcing it — and the atmosphere that settled in that room had that specific quality of something that had been waiting to happen.

What Matteo expected to be functional and fast was neither.

It was different in a way that didn't have an immediate name. Not just the performance — it was the quality of what was happening, the raw intensity of every movement, every sound, every response that made his pupils dilate wider than anything he'd consumed before. Matteo had slept with enough women to know the difference between good and extraordinary, and this was in a category he hadn't visited before.

It was extraordinary. It was uncontrollable. And the worst — or the best, he couldn't decide — was that he had completely forgotten about anything outside that room, that bed, that woman.

The recording. The message. Giselle.

All of it evaporated like smoke.

He stayed in that room longer than he'd planned. Much longer. And when the adrenaline finally started to come down, he was lying staring at the ceiling with an idiot smile on his face that he couldn't remove no matter how hard he tried.

The next morning, he walked {{user}} back to the dormitory. He stopped at her door, said goodbye attentively, and when the door closed he stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds with his hands in his pockets.

Then he went to his penthouse.

Threw himself on the sofa. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't shower. Could only stare at the ceiling and replay every moment of the previous night like a film he wanted to watch from beginning to end.

"I think this time I owe the devil a thank you for this." He murmured to the ceiling with a smile that belonged on someone much younger than he was.

The phone vibrated.

Matteo breathed in deep. "Speaking of the devil..."

Giselle: Where's the video? The photos? Send everything. 😘

Matteo: huh? oh... damn. I forgot.

Giselle: ...you're joking right now?

Matteo: No. I was drunk. Still am. You shouldn't ask things of a guy in vulnerable situations, you know?

He lied. He wasn't drunk. He hadn't thought about doing what she'd asked at any point during the previous night.

Giselle: Matteo Ferrante... 😒

Matteo: Look, I'll do it, okay? Sober. If I managed to get her in bed once, I can do it again.

And he did. Four times, to be exact. Every single one of them with his phone in the car, at home, anywhere that wasn't the same room as {{user}}. She was incredible and he was not going to ruin the best thing that had happened to him since AC Milan won Serie A in 2022.

---

On some random Tuesday after morning classes, Giselle appeared when he was walking into the men's bathroom. She grabbed his arm with force and pulled him inside, locking the door and checking the stalls with the efficiency of someone who had rehearsed this.

"What? Ow — don't touch the biceps, today was arm day at the gym —"

"Where's the video?!" she hissed with impatience. "You've been ignoring me for almost a week, Matteo."

He stepped back and crossed his arms. "There's no video coming. No photos. No favors of any kind from me. I'm done with this shit."

She stared at him. "Are you out of your mind? You know what I can do —"

"Do it." He gestured broadly toward the door. "Go ahead. Do whatever you want. I couldn't care less about that past bullshit anymore. If Liam doesn't understand, I think I'm old enough to deal with the consequences of our actions." His arms uncrossed and he stepped forward, slow, invading her space with the calm of someone who doesn't need to raise his voice to be taken seriously.

"Don't talk about her anymore. You hear me? I'm being serious this time. Leave her alone, Giselle." His expression went cold in a way that was unusual on Matteo Ferrante's normally relaxed face. "If I find out you're plotting something against {{user}} again, you're not going to like how I make threats. Because I follow through on them. Don't forget that four hundred million euros of the Voss family fortune are deposited in my father's bank. And accidents can happen in the blink of an eye."

Giselle swallowed.

"Get out of here. I need to piss."

She left with her nose in the air and poorly contained rage in her eyes. And when she turned left in the hallway, she saw {{user}} standing there. She held the gaze, glanced back at the men's bathroom door she'd just walked out of, and gave {{user}} a slow smile before walking away — leaving the scene open to whatever interpretation anyone wanted to make of it.

---

The afternoon practice was intense. Matteo was focused and quiet, things that weren't normal coming from him, and Noah noticed before anyone.

"Are you sick, Matteo?"

"He was really happy last week." Liam murmured while applying deodorant. "I want some of whatever that was. I need it urgently and in lifetime supply if I'm going to deal with pink for the rest of my life."

Malik's locker closed with force. He was in concentrated bad humor, barely speaking to anyone, and shot a sharp look at Matteo that said everything without saying anything.

Matteo rolled his eyes. Breathed in deep. Stood up from the bench even though he was only in socks and boxers and turned to Liam with a seriousness that made his friend stop what he was doing.

"Liam. I need to tell you something serious."

"Don't talk like that, I start thinking you killed one of my relatives."

"It's serious, man."

Liam finally looked at him for real. "Okay. Talk."

"I fucked Giselle at a party in the summer of 2022 when you guys weren't together." Matteo didn't look away. "I was drunk, without Noah to pull my reins because he was in Korea, and she was at the party."

The silence that settled in the locker room was the kind that occupies physical space. Even Malik's expression shifted.

"There's a video, there are photos." Matteo continued. "Your girlfriend was the one who recorded it and turned me into her errand boy for years while threatening to tell you. I got tired. So I'm telling you."

Almost a full minute of nothing but ambient sound. Then Liam opened his mouth with the low, controlled voice of someone making a very specific effort not to show what they were feeling.

"You have those videos? And the threatening messages. Everything."

Matteo nodded and approached slowly, unlocking the phone and handing it over for Liam to see.

Liam watched the videos. Examined the photos. Checked the dates. Read the conversations.

Everything.

Then he smiled.

It was minimal, it was fast, it was contained before he even knew it had appeared. "Send me everything. Now. No — I'll hold onto your phone. That's better."

"...what?" Matteo blinked.

Liam cleared his throat, pulled on his pants quickly and grabbed his shirt. "It's just... I'm... veeeery angry with you. Obviously. I need the evidence to confront Giselle, and to have a long conversation with her mother about principles..." he turned the phone screen toward Malik and Noah "and about calling off the engagement. Because her mother thinks she's a virgin. At most, she thinks Saint Giselle has only been with one man in her entire life."

A pause.

"Which is not the case."

Liam's face changed in a way Matteo hadn't seen in at least two years — lighter, like something that had been squeezing had suddenly loosened. He smiled. Smiled for real, with his eyes, the way people smile when something terrible stops being mandatory.

"Thank you." He grabbed the shirt, then corrected himself: "I mean, I hate you, man."

He walked out of the locker room almost running.

Malik and Noah stared at the empty space where Liam had been, then looked at Matteo.

Matteo was in boxers and socks, towel on his shoulder, hand on his hip, looking back at both of them with the expression of someone who had just understood something obvious. "Yeah. I think I should've said that a lot earlier."

---

That evening, when Liam finally returned the phone, Matteo messaged {{user}} with the schoolboy smile he couldn't suppress even though no one was watching.

*Matteo: Heyyyyyy myyyy beautiful kitty 😸😸😸

Matteo: Are you free today? I'm super free, extremely free. Totally free. For you.

He waited. Stared at the screen. Waited more. Five minutes that felt longer, the smile still in place, bare feet on the cold penthouse floor, heart beating at a slightly elevated rate he was actively ignoring.

Then she started typing.

Matteo straightened up on the sofa.

No.

A single no. Dry, direct, with no room for interpretation.

"What?" He said to himself, the screen in his hand, the smile frozen. "What do you mean ‘no’? No? What kind of word is that?"

Then came the block.

Matteo stared at the notification for longer than a grown man should. "No, no, no, no, please don't do this to me, beautiful."

He tried every channel available. Blocked, blocked, blocked. He went to her dormitory at eleven at night and knocked incessantly with no response. In class, on the rare occasions he could find her, she looked straight through him — a lamppost, an inconvenience, part of the furniture.

After a week of insisting with no result, Matteo tried what had always worked before. He went back to parties with the usual smile and the intention of burying this back wherever it had come from.

The first one was a redhead. Carla, Carina, something with a C. He took her to a room, laid her on the bed, spread her legs while saying what she wanted to hear. Then he unzipped, reached into his boxers, and found absolutely nothing happening.

Matteo looked down.

Looked at the girl.

Gave a laugh that came out more nervous than charming. "Hold on, beautiful. Give me a second."

He worked at it with focused attention while his abdominal muscles tensed involuntarily and an almost inaudible mantra left his mouth: "Come on, she's pretty, we're not going to disappoint the lady, wake up, man —"

Nothing.

"...is the problem me?" The girl looked at Matteo with an expression somewhere between confused and offended.

"What? No — of course not, beautiful." He sighed, put everything back in place. "I must just be... tired. A lot of tension from the games, we're close to the playoffs, anyway. Another time."

Another time never came, because Matteo Jr. didn't work even with pornography, which was a situation he had never considered as a real possibility at any point in his adult life. There was a genuine ache, real desire, but he couldn't get hard no matter what — except for one specific stimulus he had accidentally identified in the cafeteria when {{user}} passed on the other side of the hall and he was harder than stone in under two seconds.

Matteo Ferrante acknowledged that he was deeply, thoroughly screwed.

Noah recommended tadalafil.

Matteo told him to go fuck himself, but nearly considered it.

---

On Friday, in the hallway between class changes, a girl walked past in the opposite direction and Matteo felt the familiar and inconvenient physical response before he looked at her face.

It wasn't {{user}}.

But it was similar enough to take his thinking somewhere he wasn't proud of visiting.

From behind, on all fours, in a dark room, a pillow covering her face...

The idea installed itself before he decided to let it in.

---

The post-game party at one of the players' mansions was at the level of frenzy that only happened when the Falcons qualified for something important — loud music, everyone screaming, that collective adrenaline energy with nowhere to go but alcohol and poor judgment.

Matteo found the girl who looked like {{user}} without having to look very hard.

Getting her to a room was the easy part. Never on the first try — that was Matteo Ferrante's pride.

The difficult part came after, with the lights off, her on all fours on the bed, Matteo behind her with the most nervous smile he had ever worn in his own life.

"Come on. It's her. It's {{user}}." The mantra left his lips almost inaudibly while his hands found her hips and he closed his eyes and concentrated with an intensity he normally reserved for decisive games.

It worked.

The relief that spread across Matteo's face in that moment was genuinely pathetic and he knew it and didn't care. He put the condom on with a haste that didn't match his reputation and started, slow at first, then with more confidence as the rhythm settled and his head stopped sabotaging his body.

Minutes later, she wanted to change position.

"No." He murmured, automatic.

But he ended up giving in without meaning to, and now she was facing him with her face visible even in the dark, and Matteo closed his eyes with the firmness of someone making an active effort.

He focused on the hips, on the angle, on the rhythm that was working — and when she moaned he covered her mouth in a sequence of movements she probably interpreted as intensity but which was actually him trying not to register that this voice was not the right voice.

"Sshh..."

He leaned down to suck one of her breasts, teeth grazing lightly, and accelerated. He was reaching a point of no return after three weeks of involuntary abstinence, and his body was taking over the situation in a way he couldn't manage anymore.

"That's it... yes, I'm almost there..." he murmured against her skin, the movements becoming uncontrollable, his abdomen contracting.

Then it became completely uncontrollable.

"{{user}}... yes, aahh... fuck..." the moans came out loud, mixed with movements that didn't stop, his voice breaking in a way that was simultaneously the most pathetic and the most honest he had been in months.

Her sounds stopped abruptly.

"{{user}}? That's not my name —"

The pillow hit her face in a reflex motion.

"MATTEO, WHAT THE FUCK —"

"{{user}}, mmmhg, please come back to me... I miss you, baby... {{user}}... sweetheart..." he whimpered pathetically against her chest while the orgasm arrived with everything after weeks of being held back, his entire body contracting, his hips pressing to the end while he filled the condom with a disproportionate intensity he couldn't control.

When it was over, he collapsed.

His body gave out all at once, all the weight dropping over her with the grace of a man who had just used every available reserve. He stayed quiet. Didn't open his eyes. Didn't want to face the girl, the pillow, or any of the choices that had brought him to this moment.

"MATTEO WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" The girl finally pulled the pillow off her face.

But instead of continuing, she went completely silent.

Matteo registered the silence in the same second he understood it was the wrong kind — not the silence of someone preparing a speech, but the silence of someone who had seen something.

He looked back.

The door was open. {{user}} was standing in the doorway, frozen, her eyes moving from the bed to him and back to the bed with an expression he couldn't read but that made his stomach drop three floors.

"...beautiful kitty..."

He pulled out in a quick wet sound, removed the condom and threw it away in a sequence of movements he was executing on autopilot while his brain was somewhere else entirely.

He was single. He wasn't cheating on anyone. That much he knew.

But his heart hadn't received that memo.

"I can explain." He said, his voice coming out weaker than planned. "Depends. How long have you been standing there? You just got here, right? Say yes."