Chapter Seven Jamie #2
"I'll have more free time once the school year's over. And I'm guessing you'll be all over the L.A. games until their playoff run is up."
Maybe I should be excited by the implication that he's caught any of my on-air appearances, but I only hear the excuses he's making. Taylor's sister scrapes her fingernails over my chest, and I think I'm wanted and wanted and wanted.
My goodbye to Mateo is barely a breath. When he's gone, I glance toward the family room, and whatever everyone's busy with there. Swallowing more beer is a challenge around the lump in my throat, but I manage eventually when I'm just drunk enough to smile.
"Hey, there's that pretty face," she coos. Her name might be Bailey, but I'm not sure I care when she curls a hand around my side. "You didn't look happy during that call."
Indignation flares, but she's probably right. "It's over now."
"Good, then come down to the basement. My friend and I are bored, and she'll like your pretty face a lot."
I go. They both like a lot of things about me.
I give far more than I take, by choice or by default, but it can't last forever.
Nothing ever does. And when I finally return to my guest room, I take a shower and jerk off to thoughts of the man who missed me enough to call from the middle of a carnival.
Mateo is busy until the end of the school year. I'm busy with Stanley Cup hype amid some unexpected success and the reminder that L.A. hasn't done this well since the year I won the Conn Smythe. I text him and he texts me, but little of it makes a difference.
As soon as it's officially summer, and hockey’s behind me again, Danielle takes Harper to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.
I swim more laps than I can count. A few days later, I drive to Vegas for a bachelor party and a few nights in clubs that offer a very different kind of therapy.
It takes me a while to recover after I’m back home, and I turn to the pool again, swimming naked this time because I was too lazy to go upstairs for swim trunks.
I’m feeling as dramatic as the night I ran away to Kai’s, but once I’m underwater, I’m not sure I want to give up my house anymore.
I’m not sure I want to give up the bench.
I’m just pulling myself out of the pool when I hear the doorbell through the patio doors I left open an hour ago.
I’m not expecting anyone, but I hurry to pat myself dry.
Then I fight with cotton sweatpants that don’t move well over damp skin.
Once I’m halfway decent, I consider finding my phone to check my security app, but a scavenger hunt doesn't interest me.
The doorbell rings again as I pass the kitchen, and I swear out loud.
I’m not convinced I'll actually answer the door, but I've got a peephole for a reason, and I shuffle close enough to use it.
After blinking and refocusing, my first reaction is confused elation.
My second is skepticism. My third is something pathetic, and it clings to me when I open the door.
And then I wait too long to speak.
"Can I come in?" Mateo asks, after I've done nothing but stare.
My hair is dripping onto my shoulders, and I look down at my bare chest and gray sweatpants, the fabric darkened by the spots where I wasn’t completely dry.
Then I rub my hand over the scruff on my jaw, fully aware he looks better unshaven than I do.
He waits patiently, and uses the time to look at my bare chest and gray sweatpants too, close to sheepish when I shrug and back up.
With the door closed behind us, I wave him toward the rest of the house. "I should probably get dressed. Or more dressed, I guess. If you're staying."
"I'd like to."
I nod and let him help himself to my kitchen or the great room or wherever else he’d like to be.
In my bedroom, I dry my hair better and find a t-shirt to wear.
I'm careful to check for holes Mateo could be tempted to touch, because I know that's not why he's here.
Then I look down at my sweatpants and realize I'm hurt and confused enough to want to tempt him somehow, so I stop before changing into my jeans.
He showed up unannounced. If he sees more of me than he wants to, he can leave unannounced, too.
When I get back downstairs, I find him facing the patio doors to stare at my backyard—or past it, to a horizon we know well—and it finally hits me he’s never been in my house before.
It sucks that it’s taken so long, and I don’t know what Mateo wants from me today.
I watch him comb a hand through his hair, and I do the same to mine.
“Didn’t feel like climbing up from the rocks?”
“Seemed even more presumptuous than ringing the doorbell without an invitation,” he answers without turning around.
“You don’t need an invitation. Ever.” I pause and cross the room. “How long did you sit in your car before you made it to the front door?”
“Long enough to think about throwing my car into reverse and never telling you I was here.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He huffs. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d catch me on a security camera.”
I’m close enough to stare over his shoulder, but I keep several inches between us. “You’re not here to go skinny-dipping with me.”
“I’m not here for the view either.”
"Are you here to end this?"
Mateo whips around to look at me, his brown eyes ready to swallow me whole. "End this? I—is that what you—"
He stops talking, and if I'm supposed to finish his sentence, I fail, dropping my gaze instead.
There are too many directions this conversation could go, and at least half of them would haunt me.
Whatever low moments I've had, most of them have happened away from home.
I'm not eager to bring one inside today.
His shorts show off muscular thighs, not unlike the ones I've seen in a lifetime of locker rooms. I look away to study a scar on the palm of my hand.
"Got this when I was nine. Grabbed a teammate's skate, blade first, because I wasn't thinking. I do that a lot—not thinking things through. I've never learned."
"And you're the one who bleeds and scars," Mateo starts, surprising me when he takes my hand and presses his thumb to a 30-year-old wound. "I assume your teammate was fine."
I swallow all the sounds that will remind him we’re not supposed to touch.
I frown because I think I was trying to make a point about how my recklessness hurts the people around me.
He's still holding me like he knows I'm about to fuck up again, and with my warning ignored—and my impulsivity still high—I stumble toward another mistake.
"You know Harper isn't here, don't you?" I ask. "You know nobody is here to catch us. You know we could close our eyes and jump and fuck it all up. You know that if you’re not ending this, we have enough privacy to get away with things we’ve waited two years to have."
"Yes, I know. But I'm not here to close my eyes and get away with anything, and I'm not here to end this. Not really."
"Not really?" I echo, pulling my hand back while my heart screams.
"My grandfather is sick, and my grandmother needs help around the house.
They live about two hours away, and I'm on summer break, so I'm—" He pauses to take a deep breath and never looks away.
"Everyone else has kids or work, but going away right now won't mess with my job. I can stay there for a while."
"You're leaving."
"For a while," Mateo says again.
"And you came over to tell me in person."
"I came over to see you before I go. I miss you and I'm tired of not saying that."
I look toward the backyard, and a bench I can’t see. "I miss you too, but what happens if we’re not going to lie about that? We’re friends who haven’t spent any time together—"
“In a year, like you said when you were in New York.”
“So what changes if we tell the truth?”
"I'll be gone the rest of the summer," Mateo says, and I don’t care that he’s ignored my question when I’m distracted by hair I want to tuck behind his ear. "There's a chance I won't see you again until after school starts."
"Harper will be a junior."
"It should be a good season for us."
He's talking about soccer, but I want the us to mean more.
Almost two years ago, we drove away from Kai's and toward the rest of our lives, and it still feels so far from where we are now.
Something good would be great, but I expect Harper's team to succeed where Mateo and I can't. I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for the man I so badly want to stay.
Of course, his plans to leave mean I have little to lose by asking for exactly that.
"Don't go."
"Jamie—"
"I don't mean to your grandparents' house," I say. "But now. Here. You're gonna walk away anyway, so spend the day with me first. Give us something more to miss. Give us a different way to hurt. Let us fuck up with our eyes wide open."
There's so much happening when a few expressions play across his face, and I can't predict what he'll do.
He's mad at me for wanting to cross this small line.
He wants us to cross them all. He's sorry that this will be the last time we see each other for weeks.
Months. He's hopeful an afternoon at my house will lead to fewer regrets than whatever happened among mirrors and canyons.
He knows very few people say no to me. He thinks he should be one of them, even when he's desperate for the same delicate pain he already knows.
Mateo looks me up and down, then glances over his shoulder to squint at the summer sun. I can't take my eyes off him right away, this man close to surrendering to borrowed time because I've asked, and we both know he could've said goodbye on the phone.
“Let’s sit by the pool,” he finally says. “We can talk.”