Chapter Three Jamie
(I Swore it Wasn't Love)
Iwake him in time for the spectacular sunrise.
The sun is technically behind us, and I’m already sure the man next to me will be the most perfect thing I see all morning.
Still, the slow spread of color in the sky is something worth watching.
Mateo startles, confused and probably terribly stiff no matter how comfortable I’d tried to make myself while he slept against me.
And then he remembers where he is, and in that moment of unbearable honesty, his entire body relaxes as his tired eyes find mine.
For the rest of my life, on the very worst of days, I’ll beg myself to believe he saw something perfect, too.
“Were you worried it was a dream?” I ask.
“I never remember my dreams,” Mateo says, his voice raspy and easy to lose to the sound of the waves below us. “But I remember everything about last night.”
He wipes the sleep from his eyes and blinks toward the ocean without bothering to fix the messy ponytail barely resembling one now.
The fog will blur his view more than the exhaustion he’ll take home with him.
He stares for a while anyway, and I understand the compulsion.
I’ve been watching the horizon for a very long time.
I still barely understand my decision to bring him here, to a place I’ve made mine because I don’t always like to share. The goal was a longer conversation, I think. I didn’t expect the shooting star that dragged whispered vows across the sky. I didn’t expect the need to hear them again today.
I listen carefully, just in case.
Beachfront mornings aren’t new to me, so I easily drown out the chatter of the seagulls.
I know they’ve arrived by now, but I don’t care about the surfers gathering just north and south of where we sit.
A few wealthy homeowners may be sipping gourmet coffee from the comfort of the backyards above us, and they’re mostly uninteresting to me.
Mateo and I remain secluded in a bubble that has to burst, however gently it might happen.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing here,” I tell him.
I’d first said it hours ago, and everything had turned out fine then.
Great, even. My hopes are higher this morning, but it’s been years since I’ve dared to look up.
Mateo shifts beneath the blanket, and he lands further away.
His fingers are threaded through mine before I let any of my past take me from something that feels suspiciously like a future.
“Have you done this before?”
I smile, comforted by another echo. “You asked me that last night, and then I kissed you.”
“And this time?”
He rubs his thumb against the back of my hand, just like he had before, and I’m stunned that anything can feel so familiar to me already. I want to give him something back, but I think this view of the Pacific is all I’ve got.
“The sun is up.”
“And you’re not out,” he murmurs. “You’ve done this before, but nobody knows.”
Still not used to being this transparent when my facade has served me well, I flinch and become a coward again. “You don’t have to give me a ride back to the bar. I’ve kept you away from home long enough.”
“That wasn’t an accusation, Jamie. Just an observation I couldn’t censor after sleeping on a bench for a few hours.”
“I didn’t know how to let you leave. It was selfish to ask you to stay.”
“The bench thing wasn’t an accusation either,” Mateo says, and he turns toward me slowly enough that I don’t notice his free hand moving until he’s already pushing his hood away from my head again.
I don’t know how much I look like Jameson Sinclair this morning, but it became too late to hide a while ago.
When I close my eyes anyway, he combs his fingers through my hair.
“I was properly warned about your selfishness. I’m glad I stayed.
I’d do it all over again if you wanted me to.
And you don’t owe me an answer to a question I didn’t ask. ”
We’ve been careful about that—asking things and answering them—but I look into Mateo’s boundless brown eyes and I hate our caution. He might hate it too, but he lets go of my head and gives me time to put my words together.
“It’s probably a lot more complicated than whatever you’re thinking, but you’re right. It’s never been a thing for me—being out.”
“Are you married?”
I laugh and wonder how far the wind carries the sound. “No, definitely not married.”
Mateo chuckles too, but he quiets quickly. “You’ve kissed men.”
“Mmmm.”
“You’ve slept with some, too.”
“Mmmm.”
He stands then, gentle when he drops my hand and gives me all of his blanket.
I stare while he stretches, just a sliver of his happy trail visible for a second I won’t forget.
I have the eerie sense that our prolonged goodbye is going to hurt no matter what hopeful things we say.
When he turns toward the ocean to speak, I don’t feel any better.
“You know, nothing about your life has to get more complicated because you rescued me from a bar fight and bought me tacos.”
“Are tacos your big takeaway from last night?”
“I already told you, I remember everything,” he says.
I fold his blanket to keep myself from reaching for him while I argue a point I think we agree on. “I want it to count.”
“But the sun is up.”
“Yeah. And I think that could be okay.”
Mateo looks at me again. Studies me. Smiles and stays guarded. “Because you’re arrogant, and you’re ready for the whole world to see you?”
It’s not the right time to tell him I never really had a choice.
That I was still a child when strangers started to know my name.
I’ll be ready to talk about it someday, on this bench or anywhere he’ll agree to meet me, but it’s too much to promise this morning.
I can hear decades of locker room slurs, and I'm afraid of my future no matter how long those doors have been closed behind me.
I'm not lying about being willing to come out for him, but there's no good way to explain how messy it could get. That conversation will have to wait.
For now, I smile back instead. “You didn’t get to try the wings at Kai’s.”
“No, I didn’t,” Mateo agrees. “And I probably won’t have time to try them for a couple of weeks. It’s a busy time of year for me. But if you—”
When he doesn’t go on, I finish the thought I’d started. “I could give you my number. And you could give me yours.”
Mateo takes some time to answer, but when I begin to peel his hoodie over my head, his hand covers mine. “If we’re going to see each other again, you don’t have to return that while you’re still cold.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Do you only want dinner?” I ask, pulling my hand away to tuck it into the pocket he’s let me borrow.
“I want hammocks and frozen lakes.”
Fuck. My stomach turns with need, fear, and something as unfamiliar as hope. I breathe as though I feel nothing, but I’m sure I’m as transparent as I have been since I pinned Mateo to a stucco wall. Maybe he saw through me before that.
“We can figure out a good time to meet at the bar.”
“Because Kai is safer than the whole world,” he says.
I nod slowly and swallow around something that isn’t supposed to hurt. “Kai has always been safe, yeah. But that’s not—we can start at Kai’s and then we can go anywhere.”
“Anywhere?”
“Everywhere.”
I keep waiting for something to hit. Regret or cold feet or a hundred questions about why this one man has made me want to crack open every closed door.
How this one man could make me forget years of media training and handling meant to keep the public from spreading rumors too easy to believe.
I expect anxiety, or just basic concern for my family and all the castles I’ve built in the sand.
Nothing ever comes.
Harper stays at her mom’s until Sunday evening. I stay in Mateo’s hoodie for more of the weekend than late summer should allow. She starts her first year of high school on Monday. I start a dozen texts I don’t send but wish I could.
The unsent messages have nothing to do with regret or cold feet or questions or anxiety or concern. I’m still waiting for all of those things. No, I’ve only deleted those texts to give Mateo more time to deal with whatever busyness he’d warned me about.
I’ll give him close to forever if he needs it. And then we can meet for beer and wings.
“So, like, it sucks to be back at school because—school? And we’re just stupid freshmen, so whatever.
But also, only one of my classes fully blows, and it’s good to see people I didn’t hang with all summer, and I still sorta can’t believe that Mr. Z is exactly as awesome as everyone said he is, but that alone will make this year pretty bangin’. ”
“Mr. Z?” I ask, leaning against the kitchen counter that Wednesday afternoon and looking up from another message I probably won’t send.
Harper rolls her eyes just before she opens the fridge. “And you think I don’t listen to you?”
“That’s true often enough for you to forgive me now.” I set my phone aside and give her my undivided attention. “Mr. Z. He’s one of your teachers, right?”
“Gee, fantastic powers of deduction, dad. Glad you never got checked hard enough to forget that two plus two equals four.”
“Argument made. Tell me—again—about Mr. Z.”
She closes the refrigerator door with her shoulder and hops onto the island, her legs swinging while she tears into the first of five string cheese wrappers. I bend forward to steal one and wink when she tries to glare.