Chapter Three Jamie #3
The bar isn’t open yet, so I text when I’m headed toward the alley. I don’t remember the last time I hung out with Kai with nobody else around, and I’m grateful for the privacy we’ll have this morning. I'm also grateful he'll be busy with inventory and kitchen prep.
“Two weekends in a row?” Kai says, pushing the back door open just enough for me to catch it and follow him back inside. “What’s the special occasion?”
“I’ve got plans for a third.”
He’s moving quickly, but I’ve said enough for him to throw a look over his shoulder. “Alone or with someone?”
“With someone.”
“Keep talking.”
Kai doesn’t stop walking until we’re in the bar’s kitchen. I move to lean against a stack of food crates that seems to always be here, even if I’m sure they come and go, but he waves for me to sit on the counter. He disappears into cold storage, but he’s back by the time I continue.
“It will probably be Saturday night, and I know you’ll be slammed.”
“Absofuckinglutely,” he laughs, eggs, cheese, and bacon tossed next to me. “But if you’re bringing a plus one, it doesn’t matter what I’m up to, does it?”
“I meant ‘you’ as in the bar, not ‘you’ as in you.”
“Ah, of course. Because if you wanted to talk to me, you’ve got my number, my email, my home address, all my socials, my passwords, my birth date, my blood type—”
“Some of those have nothing to do with talking to you,” I interrupt. “But you’ve made your point, and I know I suck. I suck now and I’ve sucked for at least the past five years.”
Kai laughs again and warms a couple of skillets. “At least. But seriously, you’re here. Talk.”
“Last week, after I left—”
“With your damsel in distress.”
“He was definitely not that,” I snort. “But yes, I dragged him with me when I ran.”
He’s busy with a few different things on the stove, but he could handle them in his sleep. “And then you didn’t let him back in.”
I nod because Kai knows this much. I’d paid him back for the half-drunk beers and the food Mateo and I never ate.
And because I’d felt the need to explain something, I’d told Kai that Mateo and I had been mid-conversation and decided to grab tacos while we finished talking.
It’s strange when the truth fails to capture anything honest.
“We ended up at the beach, actually.”
“The beach?”
“The bench,” I sigh, pausing to appreciate the smell of bacon and ignore the rumble in my stomach.
Kai pulls a plate from the shelf in front of him and nods. “Your broken ass could’ve walked to half a dozen places from here—at least a couple of which have tacos—but instead you drove toward your house and ended up at the ocean.”
“Yeah.”
Before he can show off the puzzle he’s put together too quickly, Kai hands me a plate stacked with a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I look down at the food and back up at him, a frown enough for him to answer my unspoken question.
“You haven’t stopped shaking since you got here. You’re nervous about the story you’re about to tell, which we both know is fucking stupid, but at least I’m not getting your selfie smile or media lies. And because you’re nervous, you didn’t eat this morning. Now you’re going to.”
I shake my head. “I don’t even think I’m hungry.”
“Bullshit. Eat the sandwich. If talking to me really makes you sick, you know where the bathroom is.”
“You know it’s not like that.”
“And you know you won't shock me with anything you’re about to say,” Kai argues back. “I’ll admit the bench was a slight surprise, but take a bite and tell me the rest.”
I skip almost everything that matters, because even my best friend doesn’t need to see every bruise and the boldest ways I want to heal them. I take a couple of bites too, because he deserves to see something.
“I wanted more time with him—Mateo—so I had him drive us down there. We ate tacos and talked, and it still wasn’t enough. He didn’t recognize me, even when he couldn’t stop staring, and I needed him to keep looking.”
“Oh, come on, J,” Kai says, stealing a bite of the sandwich he made and dropping it back onto my plate before he talks with his mouth full. “You’ve gone unrecognized before, even by people in your bed. That’s not what made him different.”
I nearly choke at the thought of Mateo in my bed, and how calm Kai is about my wanting him there. “It never went that far.”
“Ah, so that’s what made him different.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Kai snorts. “I’m beginning to wonder whether you say that to everyone.”
“But you don’t care?” I ask.
“Not in whatever way you’re still freaking out about, no. And years after one very specific rumor, combined with—oh, let’s see—actually knowing you, you can’t think this is news to me.”
I give up on the sandwich with a couple of bites to go and set the plate next to me on the counter. “We’ve never, ever talked about any of that.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Okay, yeah, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what it is about him. It was one night. And yes, I got to be Jamie, and hold Mateo’s hand, and talk about wishes like I was a kid again, but it was still one night.”
Once he’s finished my sandwich, Kai starts in on the dishes he shouldn’t have to do this early in his day and looks sideways at me. “How long did you stay on the bench?”
“’Til morning,” I whisper, clearing my throat when there’s more to say.
“The thing is, I didn’t want to let him go, but there was no hurry either.
We kissed, but it felt like we’d have the rest of our lives for everything else.
We didn’t even say that to each other, and he would’ve let me go if I’d asked him to.
He told me nothing had to change—that he didn’t have to complicate my life—but it felt like we were making promises to each other.
Like we were telling each other we want this to be the beginning of everything.
And I don’t think I believed in that sort of thing. ”
“Love at first sight?”
I wave him off quickly. “God, no. It’s not that. It just matters. Wanting more than a night matters.”
“Right, okay,” Kai smiles. “So, now we’re back to where we began. The bar will be slammed on Saturday. You’re bringing a date anyway. Did you want me to run out and buy some fancy wine glasses for his Sam Adams or—”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d save a couple of stools for us. Which, yeah, is probably a bigger ask than fancy wine glasses.”
“You know, even without throwing your money around, you could get a nice table for two—maybe a corner booth, even—in a place that doesn’t specialize in beer and bad decisions.”
“I know,” I say, watching as Kai moves close to me again.
For two guys who have been best friends forever, we’ve never touched much.
I don’t know whether that’s on me or him, though I’m willing to accept the blame.
I think back to all my years on the ice and in locker rooms or at our hotels.
Back then, I was surrounded by teammates who had few physical boundaries, and I was often the object of circumstantial affection.
In the middle of a celebration because I was the one who’d scored.
Arms draped across my shoulders because I was the one who’d draw the most women at a club.
Embraced by men who’d never be Jameson Sinclair because breathing the same air might’ve been enough for them to believe they once came close.
And I can’t say I didn’t care. I’ve always loved to be loved, however I could get it.
But I’m not sure whether Kai noticed when I said I’d held Mateo’s hand.
If he did, I’m not sure he understood how foreign that kind of intimacy is to me.
It’s probably a difficult thing for anyone to imagine when years of internet chatter—and so many paparazzi pictures—have had me wrapped around one beautiful woman or another.
But sex isn’t the same thing as wanting someone who sees through you to press their skin to yours.
Kai reaches for my knee now, and it’s enough to make me miss something that isn’t mine yet.
“You're gonna pretend the two of you are just friends here,” he says. “You're gonna pretend it doesn’t matter.”
The tip of my thumb grazes his. “No. I don’t want to pretend anything anymore. I just haven’t figured out where else to take this version of me.”
“It’s not a version of you, J. It’s just you.”