Chapter Two Mateo #3
“Honestly? A lot of them have.” He pauses as if he wants to say more about that, but I can almost see the moment he changes his mind and makes this about me. “If you could use your wish to be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”
“I mean, it’s kind of hard for me to complain about the view I’ve got now, but if you’re suggesting there are better things to want—”
“Yes, Mateo. I’m pretty sure you can want more than what you already have.”
“Okay, then. I’d be on a different secluded beach. With sunshine. Hammocks—”
“Plural?”
I nudge his shoulder with mine. “I’m wanting more than I have, remember?”
“Okay,” he chuckles, nudging me back. “Anything else?”
“A good book and several Mai Tais,” I say. “And what about you? Where would you be?”
“Standing in front of a frozen lake.”
“You won’t be cold there?”
“Well, it’s not Mai Tai weather, but I’d be dressed for it.”
My shoulder. His. “Or you could borrow something warm from a man you’ve just met.”
There’s more I want to say. Or ask, really. A frozen lake is a hell of a wish for someone raised in Southern California, but maybe it’s as simple as that. A wish for something he’s never had.
Either way, I keep my mouth shut when he touches me.
His pinky hooks around mine on top of a blanket nobody in the world can see, and when I don’t flinch, Jamie keeps going.
It’s still careful, the way he takes my hand and threads our fingers together, and I wonder whether he keeps our hands resting on my thigh because it’s safer for him to be the one who will have to pull away.
I don’t care. I’ll give this beautiful stranger whatever he’ll allow himself to take, and then I’ll go home and pray for the chance to do it again.
“Do you let all the boys touch you after they buy you tacos?” he asks.
The levity feels out of place now, but I shrug. “Depends on how much I liked the tacos, I guess.”
“So, you liked them tonight?”
“I’ve liked everything tonight.”
My thumb arcs over the back of his hand in case it’s the extra reassurance he needs before the next several seconds are spent staring straight ahead, the silence brought to a gentle end when Jamie takes another deep breath.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re letting yourself get lost in something so much bigger than you and pretending your time here doesn’t count.”
He looks at me then. Really, really looks at me. “I want it to count.”
“So do I.”
“Mateo—”
I cut him off by pressing the fingers of my free hand to his lips, and his grip on me tightens almost imperceptibly in response.
Without the benefit of more light, I can’t see whether his troubled blue eyes have been overcome by black, but his mouth opens against my fingertips.
It’s not wide enough to suggest he has something to say, but the cockiest part of me thinks he’d let me slip them inside, even if it would be unfair to try.
“Have you done this before?” I ask.
In the next split second, I expect Jamie to close his mouth and frown or look away. Maybe let go of my hand. He could even stand and leave me all alone with the blanket and the arousal that warms my blood and kicks at my chest.
None of it happens, though.
I feel his fingers close around my wrist before he pulls my hand away from his mouth, and I barely have time to register his strength before he’s kissing me, the tenderness of it matched only by how goddamn sure he is.
His confidence probably answers my question, and for a long time, I don’t worry about it, both of us opening for each other when something more passive isn’t enough.
I don’t realize we’re not holding hands anymore until we have fistfuls of clothes and Jamie’s fingers are surprisingly light against my cheek.
He tastes vaguely of tacos and hope, and I think he could say the same about me.
When we take separate breaths again, our foreheads are pressed together, and I can feel him shake.
“Yeah, I’ve done this before, but it’s not—” Jamie trails off and steals the softest kiss before he goes on. “All the rides other people gave me—the places we went and the things we did—it wasn’t like this.”
“They were men, though?”
“They were everyone.”
“And they used you?”
“Hey, no, careful,” he warns. “Don’t believe for a second that I didn’t use them, too.
If this is—if you and I are doing anything here, I need you to understand how many of my lows have been my own damn fault.
There are things they’ve been right about, and they're—perfect moments don't last, Mateo.
Please don't sit here and pretend that's not true.”
This time I cut him off with a kiss, deep and devastating, my tongue dragging against his when he meets me there.
It feels too good to stop right away, and we don’t try, desperate little sounds offered back and forth.
I’m not sure how much time passes before the awkwardness of being turned sideways on a bench isn’t working for me anymore, the blanket already falling off our laps.
I grab it and pile it on the other side of me before I tug at Jamie, needier than I should be when nothing we’ve said tonight makes him any less of a stranger.
But I already know I want him to be more.
I’m not usually this careless. Not that I haven’t had my share of semi-anonymous encounters lasting a matter of minutes, but those were years ago, in situations that called for it.
Even before Jamie and I agreed to leave the alley behind, this was going to be something different for me, the spark between us impossible to smother against a stucco wall.
There’s danger now in holding too tightly to something that would need room—and plenty of time—to grow, but when I pull Jamie into my lap, he comes so willingly that I can’t be embarrassed by the moan I pass from my mouth to his.
He swallows it before he takes my blanket into his hands and drapes it over his shoulders, both of us shielded from the ocean breeze that’s grown sharper since we first sat down.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry,” I say, moaning again when Jamie bumps my hoodie aside with his nose and sucks the bare skin he’s uncovered. “Perfect moments don't last, but we can love them while they do.”
“In a hammock?”
“Anywhere.”
Jamie leans back at that, and the space between us is cold. “You barely know me, though. Once you get a closer look, you might change your mind.”
He’s not wrong, I suppose. And I’m not sure he means it literally, no matter how much he’s used his hat and my hoodie to hide tonight, but I take the chance I’ve been given now and I look.
Closely.
I’ve given up trying to figure out whether I should recognize him, though there’s some small part of me that pauses to consider the unwanted attention I’d draw at work if he’s anybody the kids would know.
But then he lets me push his hood away and run my fingers through his thick hair, and when I hold him there, he doesn’t close his eyes.
I use my other hand to trace the arc of an eyebrow, the shell of an ear, the slope of his nose, and the strong line of his jaw.
Jamie’s classically beautiful, but as much as I could stare at him until morning, I’m already convinced his looks are the least interesting thing about him.
I press a thumb to his chin when I open his mouth for mine, not because I want to kiss this pretty boy, but because I might get to know him better if I can taste him one more time.
And then another thousand times after that.
Eventually, I stop to nuzzle at his neck. “I believe that you’ve played a role in a lot of your lows, but what about the highs? Are you giving yourself credit for some of those, too?”
“You think I’m gonna say no, don’t you?”
“I think it would be stupid of me to assume anything about you is that simple, but I sure hope you don’t say no.”
“Yeah, I’ll take credit for some of the highs, too,” he says, his smile there and gone again. “I think I’ve made a decent number of my own decisions, for better or worse.”
“Agency’s good. It probably earned you some of the arrogant, selfish rap, too.”
“Probably.”
I bring him into another kiss, just because, and then look up at him. “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but of all the highs in your life, is there a number one? A single high that stands out as the very best?”
“Yes,” Jamie answers.
“That was fast. Do you also have a single lo—”
“Yes.”
“And that was even faster,” I say.
There’s a pause when I think he might tell me about them, but then he cocks his head. “Why do I feel like you don’t have a simple answer for either one?”
“Because I don’t have a simple answer for either one. I’ve had a lot of wonderful days—getting my degrees or my nieces and nephews being born. And yeah, obviously shitty ones too—breakups and funerals and that sort of thing. But I couldn’t pick one event. One memory.”
I yawn then, an obnoxiously exaggerated thing I can’t cover well enough.
Jamie is quick to laugh at me and then kiss the sleepy smile that must’ve been left behind.
It’s too good, again and still, all happy and tired and honest and smitten, so we don’t rush our way through it, even when every clock must be ticking.
I need to go home and sleep, and Jamie has to fetch his car from wherever he left it.
The beach has been closed since shortly after we arrived, and while I’m increasingly confident nobody will find us here, I’m not sure we have an actual reason to stay.
But I really, really don’t want to leave.
Jamie moves closer again, his arms—and the blanket—wrapped more tightly around me than before, and I know he’s clinging, too.
It’s silly, I think, when we can plan to have tacos next week and the week after that and the week after that.
We can spend afternoons on the beach or try dinner again at the same bar, and whatever desperation we feel tonight can be something we laugh at then.
We don’t pull away from each other though, our kisses close to promises we haven’t made, until my attempt at a deep breath turns into another ridiculous yawn.
Jamie doesn’t laugh this time, but he slowly slides off my lap and back onto the bench, extending his arm to make room for me against his side.
“Don’t go,” he whispers. “Not yet.”
I’m too big to do this, and I don’t care, resting my head on his shoulder while he rearranges the blanket over us. It’ll be fine for the few more minutes I’m here, my eyes closed while I rest with one last kiss pressed to the top of my head.
One last kiss.