Chapter Seven Jamie #3
I slip past him to open the door and lead us into the backyard.
I’m not sure what he had in mind—there are patio chairs around a table or lounge chairs lined up poolside—but I lower myself to the stone surrounding the pool.
I tug my sweatpants up to my thighs before putting my feet in the water, and it exposes scars I hadn’t expected him to see like this.
There’s more than one way to fuck up an afternoon together.
Mateo sits next to me and looks at my leg without pretending otherwise. “I guess swimming helps, even after all these years. Low-impact, as a physical benefit. Almost meditative, as an emotional one.”
“Maybe I just like being naked out here.”
“Maybe you do,” he smiles, his feet slowly kicking back and forth. "So, did you really spend spring break at Taylor McKeon's house?"
"Did you really look me up online?"
"I wanted to know who your other friends were."
The bitch in me wants to say something about still not having those, but if I can't let Mateo go, I at least need to avoid old arguments with him.
Then there's a flare of panic when I remember Taylor's sister and her friend and a basement nowhere near as warm as the shower I took afterward, but I don't think I've been lured into a trap.
"What did the internet have to say?"
"A lot about your rivalry, on and off the ice. A recap of how he set records about ten years before you came along to break them, and how his success with women might've been the one way he had you beat, no matter how much the league plastered your face everywhere."
"He and Danielle slept together once."
Mateo's quick huff of surprise is gentle. "Really?"
"Really," I say. "He'd retired. I was still playing. There was a gift basket in my hotel room that night with a card that read, 'You scored just fine on the ice, but I did even better in your bedroom.'"
"Holy shit."
"It was whatever. By that time, scoring on the ice mattered more to me." I look up at a cloudless sky and push away the past. "Was there anything about Taylor's big announcement?"
"That he'll be coaching for New Jersey next season? Yeah, I don't follow hockey news closely, but it sounded like it had been rumored for a while."
"It had been."
He's quiet after that, and I don't believe for a second it's because he's bored with the conversation we're having.
We've talked about my hockey career enough times, and Mateo is only slowing now so he can navigate around the bruises we've already leaned on.
Then he reaches for my hand, and our fingers slide together.
I'll let him lean against whatever he wants.
Mateo knows it, too. "You've never mentioned wanting to coach before. You've only talked about how much you miss playing."
"It's not much more likely than another run for the Cup."
"Why not? Taylor McKeon wasn’t a saint."
"He was always a dick, but I was the known troublemaker.
Like you said, women were the only place he had me beat," I say.
"Not much of a liability when I was leading the league in points and getting us into the playoffs year after year, but I can't think of many people who'd take a chance on me to be a responsible coach. "
"You're a responsible parent," he argues.
"And it's not like you're causing any problems during the live broadcasts you join, or when you're taking pictures with fans.
Hell, most of your teammates praised your leadership as captain.
Would it be that hard to believe you still have all the knowledge and talent, and less of the attitude the league and press loved to market for their own good? "
"I don't know. Are you going to call the owners and GMs to ask?"
Mateo sighs, but he's still holding my hand too tenderly for me to think I've lost him.
“You really never took anyone down the hill from here?”
“Mmmm, not the way you’re thinking, no.”
"Harper?"
"She was the exception, but she doesn't actually know it's there," I say. "I'd take her for walks on the beach when she was a baby, and then use the shortcut to get back up here. Sometimes I'd just sit there with her and slow everything down."
"But you stopped as she got older?"
"I don't need my wild child and her friends playing on the side of a cliff, no matter how small it might be. I'm not stupid—if she finds it, she finds it—but it's difficult to see from here if you don't already know where to look, and they rarely hang out on the rocks below."
"Danielle lived here a long time, right?" Mateo asks. "She wasn't a fan?"
"Danielle's not really the hiking type. And you know that's not an actual hike, and I know that's not an actual hike, but she never cared to see for herself.
I never cared to change her mind. She wasn't—" I shake my head, a sad laugh escaping before I go on.
"She was a one-night stand who took years to leave. "
"Isn't that what I am now?"
"You're the furthest thing from it."
"Because you brought me there."
And yeah. Probably because of that.
“Do you want a beer?” I ask, letting his comment fall to the water untouched before I scramble away from him without waiting for an answer. “Oh, hey, did you hear Harper has a boyfriend? Aidan? Brayden—”
“Stop,” Mateo interrupts with a laugh that catches me at the patio door. “It’ll take you forever to get there that way. It’s Zaiden.”
I grab a couple of bottles from the fridge and pop them open before I return to his side. In the thirty seconds I was gone, he took off his shirt, and since I’m at least as bold as he is, I hand him the beer and do the same.
“He’s a good guy?” I ask instead. “Zaiden?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Mateo takes a long pull from the bottle, then drifts from story to story about Harper and Zaiden, together and separately.
Minutes later, I’m telling him about the girls who’d come to the rink and flirt with my team when we were young and too dumb to flirt back. He laughs through memories of his own high school mishaps and then returns to some of the funniest teenage dating disasters he’s seen as a teacher.
“What’s the wackiest happy ending you saw from any of those stories?” I ask, stupidly in love with moments like this.
“Ah, well. There was this kid who wanted to ask his crush to the homecoming dance, and to say he had a flair for the dramatic would be an understatement. He wasn’t my student, but the girl was, so he interrupted my second period class dressed as Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride.
He launched an amended monologue about beauty and true love—accent and everything—and I’m pretty sure his endgame plan had something to do with—”
“‘As you wish’?”
“Exactly,” Mateo laughs again. “Anyway, he had two big problems that day. One, the slits in the mask were too small for him to see through properly. Two, his crush looked a lot like her best friend.”
I nearly choke on my beer. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. His very theatrical invitation was delivered to the wrong girl. A girl who happened to have a crush on him and said yes immediately. But this poor guy’s best friend had a crush on that girl, and the best friend was in the class watching it all unfold, so he turned to the original crush—the one who was supposed to be invited to homecoming—and he asked her.
Basically, two sets of best friends swapped would-be dates for the dance, all in the span of a couple of minutes during second period honors English. ”
“But there was a happy ending?”
“That was almost six years ago, and last I heard, both accidental couples were still together. Almost inconceivable.”
I do choke on my beer that time, and Mateo and I are doubled over for a long time, wiping away tears as quickly as they fall. The temptation to kiss him is as strong as ever, but then I yawn unexpectedly and start to sober.
“Sorry,” I say, covering my mouth with the back of my hand and quieting us both.
He takes a few deep breaths, facing the ocean we can’t see from where we sit. “We'll still talk—when I'm with my grandparents, I want us to talk.”
"I've never wanted us to stop."
"I know."
“How do you feel about going to take care of a man who probably wouldn’t do the same for you?”
“Definitely wouldn’t,” he corrects. “And it’s for my grandmother more than anything. Being around him will mean taking more verbal abuse than I'd accept from anyone else, but there's little I wouldn't do for her, and my being there will give the rest of my family a break, too.”
I sigh. "If he's used to being strong, and now he's not, that'll make everything harder for you."
"It's all harder on her. I'll be fine."
"Will you tell me if you're not?"
"I don’t remember whether we’re supposed to lie to each other anymore," Mateo says, pressing his bare shoulder against mine.
“No more lying.”
“Then I will tell you if I'm not fine. Will you tell me what else you want to know?”
"When you're gone?"
I don't get an answer right away. Mateo cocks his head when I yawn again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just haven’t slept much the past few nights.”
“Then let’s go back inside. I saw that sectional, and I’ve got no doubt it’s as comfortable as it looks.”
Just like I’d done before fetching the beer, he stands without waiting for me to respond and uses my towel to dry his legs before he puts his shirt back on. I follow his lead, and then we go inside together. Mateo moves to lie on his side with enough space left for me.
“What are we doing?” I ask, my voice barely a rasp as I look down at him. “I don’t actually want to fuck this up. I want you to come back when the summer is over.”
“I’ll come back. But lying hasn’t worked for us, and staying apart hasn’t worked for us, so maybe we can figure out how to do this right.”
I’ve been carefully silent about how I’ve longed for this closeness more than anything we could do while wearing nothing at all.
He doesn't need me to say I miss the casually intimate contact with teammates more than years of sex with strangers.
He doesn't need me to tell him that the memory of this afternoon will help get me through the next few months.
But maybe he’s seen right through me and will give this to me anyway.
“The right way is cuddling on my couch?”
“I’m still not trying to get away with anything,” he promises. “But I want to hold you, and you want us to tell the truth. So, what else do you want to know—now, not when I'm gone?”
I blink once or twice, then grab a nearby throw blanket and lie down, my back pressed to his chest. Our legs slot together with no real effort, then he wraps an arm around my waist and nuzzles hair that must smell of chlorine.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“No,” Mateo says.
“No?”
“I think love requires a little more time.”
“Why did you agree to drive me to the food truck that night?”
“Because I think love requires a little more time.”
I’m grateful to be facing away from him when I squeeze my eyes shut and do my best to breathe. “And you stayed until morning.”
“Just like today, you asked me to.”
“What will happen when the waiting is over? When we can always stay, and we don’t stop at a kiss?”
Mateo’s lips graze the back of my neck, or maybe I’m imagining broken rules. Either way, the heat of his answer raises goosebumps on my skin.
“We can do anything you want, but I want you to be loud. I want to make you loud.”
“I want us to go slow,” I tell him.
“Okay. We can do that. We can be loud and slow.”
"You think about it a lot, don't you? I'm not the only one?"
"Of course not," he murmurs. "I think about it all the time."
It’s simple and honest, and now that we’ve said that much, I don’t feel his mouth anymore.
I’m curious and aroused, and I want details from a man who's probably done it all.
I also know we have to stop talking about a night that's still two years away. The rest can stay confined to my dreams, or the nights I’m wide awake and stroking myself off.
I'm worried we've pushed today's boundaries as far as they will go.
"Do you like disaster movies?"
"Sure. Are we going to watch one?"
"If you'll stay a little longer."
"I will."
He stays long enough for us to watch a few. Pizza gets delivered somewhere among them. I find better pillows for us. Mateo borrows a pair of sweatpants. He massages my leg. I try not to cry.
He stays until morning because we want to believe it's that easy. We won't remind each other why it's hard.