7. Diaz
Diaz
Ihad nearly gotten over today’s baking experience from hell by the time I crawled into bed. Unfortunately, that was only because I was too focused on actively sweating to death in my coffin-sized cabin.
The air conditioning unit had crapped out just after midnight—too early for me to already be asleep, but too late to contact Lolly and Bernice without me feeling like a piece of shit.
As a result, I was melting. Actually melting.
Tomorrow morning, when production would come to collect me, they’d find nothing but a greasy puddle and a pair of silk boxers. Because yes, I dressed for comfort and style. Even in bed.
You never knew when your hot neighbor might come knocking for a three a.m. cup of sugar. Or a good dicking.
The fan on the nightstand oscillated in sad little circles, pushing around the same hot air with all the determination of a dying Roomba.
Damn, the Pacific Northwest had ruined me.
The summers in San Juan were brutal, and the winters weren’t much better.
I was talking about the kind of humidity that made your shirt stick to your spine—before breakfast, I might add—and asphalt warm enough to cook an egg.
But after three years in Portland, the mild, Oregonian summers and blessedly reliable central air had officially broken me.
I flopped an arm over my face and groaned. My siblings would revoke my Boricua card if they caught me acting like this over a little heat.
Sleep was a lost cause anyway.
Every time I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help but see Matty’s face on that path outside our cabins. His flushed cheeks, the hurt in his eyes, the way his voice had cracked when he’d called himself an idiot for falling for me—that last one had hurt more than the rest.
That was because underneath all that anger, beyond the embarrassment and confusion, there’d been something worse.
Sincerity.
Matty had meant every word.
He’d trusted me. Opened himself up to feelings he clearly hadn’t expected. And somewhere along the way, I had managed to make him question whether any of it had been real.
And I couldn’t blame him.
I did hide behind charm and jokes and easy smiles. Always had. Even before Mami had died.
After she was gone, I’d learned fast that grief got quieter when somebody kept the room laughing. From that point on, I became the fixer, the guy who could lift the mood in even the tensest situations.
By high school, it had been second nature.
By the time I’d gotten drafted, it might as well have been muscle memory.
Baseball clubhouses practically rewarded that kind of thing. Every team needed comic relief, that person willing to keep things loose in the locker room after ugly losses and make an idiot of themselves for the sake of whatever TikTok trend the social media team had come up with that week
And the truth was, I liked being that guy.
I liked making people feel good. It gave me purpose in a way I didn’t entirely know how to explain.
But it also took a lot out of me.
I needed something that was just mine, something that didn’t feel like a performance.
Enter the wonderful world of fucked-up fanfiction.
Fanfic had started as an emotional outlet, a place where I could say the things I couldn’t otherwise out loud. I hadn’t thought it would blow up. I’d never thought Matty, of all people, would find it.
And when he’d started texting me back . . . fuck. It’d been the best and scariest thing that had ever happened to me.
Matty had seen beyond my act. And frankly, I didn’t know whether that terrified me or made me want him even more.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. There was no way I could last in here, alone with my thoughts any longer. Especially not when it felt like the inside of a fucking sauna.
I pulled on a clean T-shirt and stepped outside.
The night air was still warm, but at least it was moving. Crickets chirped softly from the trees, and a low hoo-hoo echoed through the darkness.
Hold up. Was that an owl?
I stared out toward the tree line like the Blair Witch herself might come sprinting out of it. Great. My life had officially crossed into horror movie territory.
It wasn’t fair. I had spent the better part of twenty years mainlining rom-coms. Although, now that I thought about it, the setups were nearly identical.
Forced proximity in a remote location? Check.
Embarrassing mishaps in the kitchen? Check.
Sexual tension so thick you could spread it on toast? Checkity-check check check.
Honestly, the only real difference between a rom-com and a slasher flick was whether the main characters ended up making out or getting murdered. And with my luck, the odds didn’t look good.
My gaze drifted left.
Matty’s cabin light was still on.
I stared at his window for a long moment. Part of me wanted to knock; the other told me to leave him be.
He had already laid everything out, so the least I could do was give him grace to process it without showing up at his door in the middle of the night like some lovesick idiot.
Right?
Anyone? Bueller?
I stood there debating with myself for another minute before finally crossing the few feet separating our cabins. When I knocked on his door, it opened almost immediately.
Matty stood there in nothing but a pair of cotton sweatpants.
“Hey,” I said, voice rough.
“Hey.”
His hair looked damp, curling a little at the ends like he’d showered recently, and the waistband of his joggers hung low enough on his hips to make me briefly forget my own name. My gaze dipped lower before I could stop it, tracing over the line of his stomach.
“You gonna tell me why you knocked on my door at . . . 2:17?” he drawled sleepily.
My eyes shot back up.
“My A/C died.”
Matty stared at me for a beat. “Okay.”
“I suffered bravely for two hours before resorting to this.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I know you’re pissed with me, but I was hoping . . .”
“You want to use me for my air conditioning?”
I blinked. “In short, yes.”
He stepped aside without hesitation.
I crossed the threshold and breathed a sigh of relief. If my cabin were an oven, his was a deep freezer.
“I can take the floor,” I offered.
Matty rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. The bed’s big enough for the two of us. Well, three.”
He gestured toward the dog curled up at the head of the bed, half of her body concealed by pillows.
I nodded. “I’m surprised you’re still awake.”
“Yeah. I was, uh, reading.”
There it was again. That Matty Miller signature blush.
He looked like a little boy who had just been caught sneaking cookies. Although, something told me it was a bit more scandalous than that.
“Must be one hell of a book.”
Matty’s ears went pinker. “It’s . . . for Nessa’s book club.”
I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. “You read romance novels?”
“Don’t you dare give me shit,” he muttered. “Not after all the rom-coms you’ve made us watch for M&M nights.”
I held my hands up in front of me. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Matty shot me a look that said he didn’t believe me for a second, then headed toward the bed. “I hope you don’t mind the right side.”
“Works for me.”
I climbed in opposite his side, the cool sheets a welcoming relief against my overheated skin. Mo gave me a quick sniff before settling between us and curling up like a little, furry croissant.
Matty clicked off the bedside lamp.
For a moment, we just lay there in the dark, side by side, separated by mere inches.
And a wiener dog.
“Gotta say,” I murmured, breaking the silence. “I had you pegged as more of a nightshirt to bed kind of guy.”
Matty huffed a quiet laugh. “A nightshirt? What am I, Ebenezer Scrooge?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’ve got the whole . . . buttoned up, Southern gentleman thing going for you. Feels possible.”
“In what universe?”
“In this one.” I turned my head so I could just make out his outline in the dark. “You bake with your granny’s handwritten recipe cards and say things like ‘let’s not dillydally.’”
“I have never said dillydally in my life.”
“You absolutely have,” I pressed.
“Have not.”
Mo let out a sleepy snort, like even she knew he was lying.
God, this felt nice. Too nice.
The tension from earlier hadn’t disappeared completely, but it had softened around the edges, settling into something quieter.
After a moment, Matty spoke quietly into the darkness. “I’m sorry I let loose on you like that. Earlier, on the path.”
“You had every right to.”
“Still.” He exhaled slowly. “I don’t usually lose it like that.”
I thought about the way his hands had trembled outside the barn, the panic in his eyes after the cookie box had collapsed.
“No?” I asked gently.
He was quiet, long enough that I wondered if he’d answer at all.
Finally, he said, “I kinda have a thing for perfectionism. It’s something I’ve worked on in therapy for a long time.”
The honesty in his voice caught me off guard.
Not because I thought he was incapable of vulnerability, but because it sounded so . . . practiced. Like he’d had to drag every word out of himself one painful inch at a time.
“My dad is . . .” He paused. “Not cruel. I wanna make that clear. Everything he does, he does for his family.”
“But,” I coaxed softly.
“But nothing is ever done halfway on our farm.” His laugh held no humor. “If a fence needs fixing, you fix it right the first time. If you’re tired, you work faster. If you fail at something, you figure out what you did wrong so you don’t do it again.”
I turned back toward the ceiling and listened quietly.
“When we were kids, he used to say there were two types of people in this world. The kind folks could rely on and the kind they couldn’t. And somehow my brain translated that into if you mess up, people stop loving you.”
Something in my chest tightened.
“Fuck, Matty.”
“I know that’s not what he meant,” he added quickly. “But once baseball entered the picture, it got worse.”
“Because you were good?”
“Because I was good and people noticed.” His voice turned rough around the edges. “And when people notice you for being good at something, you start feeling like you can’t afford to fail them.”
Well, damn. I understood that far too well.