Chapter 4 Mateo
Chapter four
Mateo
This was a bad idea.
The thought ran through my head like the refrain of a catchy song as I drove across King’s Bay to the address Jake had given me.
The residential street he lived on was quiet, so different than my apartment building at nine at night.
There was always music playing from my neighbor’s apartment, laughter coming through the thin walls as he entertained a friend or whatever he did over there.
Jake’s street didn’t look like it suffered from thin walls.
The houses were nice. They reminded me a little of my childhood home with their manicured lawns and perfectly trimmed gardens.
One of the houses I passed had a literal picket fence.
This was a bad idea.
His neighborhood was filled with people who had their lives together.
He had his life together. He had a daughter.
A daughter who was one of my students. For all I knew, I was going to show up, and he was going to have a long-term partner answer the door that I’d never heard of.
It wasn’t a bad idea because of where I was going or who I knew lived there.
It was a bad idea because I was having a hard time not thinking about Jake Porter.
That should have been reason enough to cancel.
Instead, I pulled into his driveway. His house was cute: a single-story brick ranch with shutters and a small porch with white columns.
There was a privacy fence surrounding his backyard.
There were only a few lights on, and he’d told me to text when I got there instead of knocking or ringing the doorbell.
I assumed that was because Emerson was in bed.
I sent the text message from the porch, and a few moments later, he opened the door.
There was something about seeing him in the ambient lighting of his own house, dressed comfortably with his sandy brown curls ruffled, that made my heart flutter.
He motioned for me to come in and stepped aside to let me pass.
I waited as he closed and locked the front door behind me and followed him into the living room.
My eyes moved around the room. An off-white sectional with a small table took up most of the space.
His laptop was already open on the table, and the television mounted on the wall was paused on an episode of a sitcom I loved.
Signs of Emerson were all around the room.
A pink and black polka-dotted backpack and a small pair of shoes were sitting in the corner, the light blue jacket I saw at least twice a week draped over them.
There were framed pictures of her on the wall, charting her growth.
Next to his laptop was a notebook and a fluffy pink pen that I could only assume belonged to his daughter and not to him.
There were other things too: little signs of life and clutter that made the space look lived in and comfortable.
“You gonna have a seat?” Jake asked, looking at me from where he sat in one corner of the couch.
I chuckled nervously and took a seat next to him, making sure to leave some room between us.
I didn’t need to be too close. It would only fuel the very wrong thoughts I’d been having about the older man.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and waited for him to speak.
An awkward silence hummed in the air around us.
I drew in a deep breath and heard him do the same. “Okay, so…”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t know why this is weird.”
I had a few ideas, but they were solely on my side. I didn’t dare to think that any of it was mutual. He had never once given off the impression that those thoughts were reciprocated. “Maybe we should just… I don’t know, get started?”
It felt like a bad match on Swyper. I’d had more than a few awkward hookups from that app, particularly when I was younger and more active on it. There was a reason I’d stopped using that disaster of a dating app.
“Yeah. We can do that.”
“Where did we leave off?” I remembered there was a full list he’d written out, but I didn’t remember what had been on it.
He pulled up the list and angled the laptop toward me.
I couldn’t see the words. I moved closer to the computer, which meant moving closer to him.
I could feel the heat radiating off him and drew in a deep breath.
That was a mistake. I could smell his body wash, something woodsy and expensive.
I wished I could stop breathing. Too bad I knew that wasn’t a possibility.
He seemed completely unaffected.
“We were going down the list,” he started. “We discussed Buddy Night, and I think you mentioned doing more than one. Any thoughts on making it a week?”
The conversation flowed from there as we worked through the nitty gritty details of Buddy Week. He helped me choose the dates and told me he’d create some graphics to advertise it, possibly some fliers to hand out to the parents.
“That hopefully will solve some of the future revenue issues,” he started. “We still need to think of something that can put a cash infusion into your accounts.”
“A cash infusion sounds good,” I agreed.
The dojo bank accounts were getting low.
There was barely enough to pay the monthly fees for our rented storefront, and outside of raising the prices, I couldn’t think of any other way to make up the difference.
That would still only get us so far. “You don’t happen to have any ideas for that on your list, right? ”
Jake’s shoulders slumped. I took that as a no.
“I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure how realistic any of them will be.
” I didn’t like the disappointment in his voice.
I didn’t want him to feel like he was letting me down.
He was doing so much. He was meeting with me on his own time.
I admired all the effort he was putting into this.
I wanted to hear his ideas.
At least, I did until he told me the first few.
He was right that they weren’t realistic.
A lot of them needed more community involvement than was practical for a small dojo.
I didn’t have any connections to people who owned restaurants to have a fundraiser night.
I didn’t think that having a fundraiser at a bar was really on brand, even if I did know a few people who worked at the bars in King’s Bay.
It just didn’t go with the values I was putting in place for my students.
I wanted to save the dojo, but not if it meant compromising the values I taught in it.
“I’ve got a few—”
“Sensei Mat!” A small voice interrupted, followed by a blur of pink and a collision.
I was knocked backward into the couch, and the sound of Emerson’s chatter filled the room.
“I thought I heard Daddy talking to someone, but I didn’t think that he had anyone over.
So, I thought it might be the TV, but then I decided I wanted some water, and you’re here. What are you doing here?”
“Your dad and I are working on something,” I told her quietly, looking over her head at Jake.
For a moment, Jake had a softness on his face that I’d never seen before.
Then I blinked, and that affection was replaced by amusement.
I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.
If there was any softness in his expression, it would’ve been about his daughter.
I told myself this over and over again, but there was the smallest glimmer of something that felt almost like hope that maybe it was directed at me.
That glimmer of hope was washed away by the harsh reality of it all.
I was his daughter’s sensei.
Inappropriate.
“Why don’t we get you that water and get you back to bed,” Jake suggested, reaching over to peel his daughter off me.
“But I wanna see Sensei Mat,” she whined, clinging tighter to my shoulders.
“You’ll see me in a few days,” I reminded her. “And if you come a few minutes early, I can help run through your kata. I know you’ve been working really hard on it.”
“I think I actually know it all now. I can show you!” Her bright blue eyes glimmered with excitement as she bounced off my lap. She scampered to the middle of the living room and stood in ready stance.
She was just about to make the first move when Jake scooped her up.
“No way, little lady,” he scolded, carrying her out of the room.
I could hear her laughing as her dad carried her into the kitchen.
I listened as the water ran. I heard a few snippets of conversation between them, but I couldn’t make out any specific details. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
Jake was gone for five more minutes, five minutes where I sat awkwardly in his living room and waited.
I thought about pulling out my phone, but I didn’t want him to think I was bored.
Instead, I read and re-read his list. There was one idea that looked promising, and when he finally came back, I had it highlighted.
“Why haven’t we talked about this one?” I asked, motioning to the words on the screen.
“The silent auction?” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. “It would require the same kind of community outreach that some of the other ideas needed. It didn’t seem practical.”
While his points were logical, they weren’t exactly correct.
“It’s a silent auction,” I pointed out. “I have things that we can auction off for the students, and we can get donations from the other parents. We could possibly talk to a restaurant or two to donate evenings out. One of my friends has done a few for the animal shelter, and he might know who we can talk to for that.” That was different than requesting someone to host a fundraiser for the dojo.
It would require some community outreach, but it wasn’t too much. I could get my friends to help me.
Ideas began to bloom in my head. I thought of ways we could expand his idea, grow it into something big enough to make a difference.
“We could make a whole night of it,” I thought out loud.
“I’ve been thinking about doing a parents’ night out at the dojo where the kids come and play games for a few hours.
Kind of like a party. We could have this in conjunction with it. ”
“So, you like the idea?” he asked. I could hear the excitement creeping into his words.
The way his dark eyes sparkled reminded me of his daughter.
It was pure, unfiltered joy. I wasn’t used to people who wore their heart on their sleeve the way that he did, and I liked that it didn’t leave me guessing.
It also scared me, because what if I hadn’t imagined the soft way he’d looked at me and Emerson earlier?
That was a dangerous path to travel. I steered my thoughts back to where they needed to be: the silent auction and the party.
“Like it? I think it’s amazing, and we should go with it.”
He pulled his computer closer to him and began rapidly typing questions. He was muttering under his breath as he typed, but I couldn’t make out the words he was saying. I fought the urge to ask him what he was typing, what he was saying, but held my tongue.
When he finally finished, he angled his computer toward me.
The questions were all simple. The first ones questioned when and where the event would be held. I only had the answer for where. I thought it was obvious that the event would be held at the dojo. He had other questions too, ones that required more discussion.
We started at the beginning and worked our way through the list of questions.
I noticed that the more we talked, the closer we inched together.
By the time we reached the end of the list, I was barely able to focus on anything but the light pressure of his knee against my leg.
My mouth was getting dry, and I knew it had nothing to do with all the talking we’d done.
It was all about his knee pressed against mine.
It was all about the smell of his body wash on the air.
Avoiding the physical attraction between us becoming impossible, which meant hanging out with him was going to become impossible.
Too bad we had an entire event to plan.