Chapter Eight Mateo #2
I get waved forward then, and I don't get to hear an answer to a question that's already made me sick.
My stomach is no better by the time I leave, but the echo of Vicki Gallagher's voice is only in my head.
Sophie has other plans, so I can't drag her out for too much tequila, and I don't think Kai can help with this one.
After a lonely drink at my apartment that night, I almost text Logan.
I think I might be willing to drive two hours to ruin so many things.
In the end, I don't go anywhere, but it takes me until the weekend to text Jamie.
Will you please meet me at the bench tonight?
He's there before I am, and I'm not surprised.
His response to my request hadn't been met with the flurry of questions I'd expect from someone who didn't know what I might have to say.
He hadn't asked me to come to the house instead, nor had he begged for a meeting on neutral ground.
Jamie had simply suggested a time—after dark again—and there's a chance he's been waiting here for a while.
But he's wearing my hoodie, and I hadn't seen that coming.
"Do you want it back now?" he asks, his voice complemented by the waves below.
"No."
Jamie nods and lifts the blanket draped over his lap so I can join him beneath it.
It hadn't occurred to me to bring one, even on a night that calls for it, but he's prepared for this.
I sigh and make myself as comfortable as I can, stopping short of taking his hand when we're pressed close together.
Then neither of us speaks for a while, my ears catching muted sounds the wind could've carried from anywhere, though I'm curious about whether Harper is home tonight. I stare at the ocean and don't ask.
"I slept with Melanie Bishop."
There it is.
And already knowing helps nothing. Nor does my equal share of guilt.
I still can't turn to him. "On prom night."
"Yes." It wasn't a question for him to answer, but he keeps going. "That was the only time. I know you've worried about it before, but there wasn't—it was just this once."
"So far?"
Jamie reaches for my jaw, rough with me in a way that holds my attention when he forces me to meet his somber blue eyes.
The moonlight leaves shadows just beneath them, but it's possible he's been sleeping as badly as I have been, and maybe the shadows were already there.
When he seems certain I won't look away, his fingers roam selfishly and soothingly, over my lips and across my cheek and into the hair I've left down because I know he likes it that way.
"My kid went to prom, and it was so—it was such a milestone.
I kept thinking about how fast she's growing up, and I wished for a second that time would just slow down.
" He frowns and his grip on my hair tightens until he reminds himself to relax.
"But I also don't want it to slow down at all, because I want to be with you.
And it's stupid because I don't have control of it either way. Time will pass no matter what I want."
"It will, yeah."
He lets his hand fall away as he takes a deep breath.
"After Harper was gone, I showered, and I had a couple of drinks, and I was just restless.
I knew you were at the dance too, and Kai was slammed at work, and I felt like I was crawling out of my skin.
Then Melanie called with this sad, lonely drawl that made too much sense. When she invited me over, I went."
Whatever conflict Jamie felt about time passing was unlikely to have been true for Melanie. Her daughter's a senior, and unless there's someone special she's been waiting for, she had nothing to hold her back. She'd had her sights on Jamie for years, and prom night gave her little to lose.
Still, he's here with me now.
"You needed each other," I tell him.
Jamie rubs at the shadows under his eyes. "What are we doing?"
"Waiting."
"Are we? Have you been out there waiting for me as well as I'm waiting for you?"
"I'm not sure waiting for each other ever included a vow of celibacy," I say. "In a perfect world, maybe. But we're imperfect adults who keep talking about what we want, and imagining what we want, but not actually getting what we want. Four years was always going to be a very long time."
His next exhale is full of resignation. "Fuck. You slept with someone, too."
"We're imperfect adults," I say again. "Not characters in a rom-com."
"Anybody I know?"
"No."
"What's his name?"
"Come on, Jamie. You don't need to—"
"Please," he interrupts.
"Logan."
"Are the two of you still a thing?"
"No."
"He'd be stupid not to want more."
"Melanie Bishop isn't stupid," I murmur.
"Melanie Bishop wanted orgasms and clout."
"And who better to provide both?"
That's unfair of me, but Jamie doesn't argue the point, cautious but intentional when he finds my hand under the blanket and holds me there. It's different from the first time we were here, but so much the same, and we're silent for a while before either of us disrupts this painful peace.
It's Jamie, using my hoodie as his armor. "It's been three messy years. What are we doing?"
He's already asked me that, and I've already answered, but there's another question if I listen closely, and I squeeze his hand when I respond again.
"We've got one more year left. Do you still want to wait?"
"We're back to that morning," Jamie says. "When we admitted we wanted everything, everywhere."
"But back then, I didn't understand why it was going to be so hard for you. Now I know who you are, and I may not be familiar with your fame, but I’ve heard all the slurs before. I know how headlines work. Those problems won’t be solved by Harper's graduation. That'll only let me off the hook."
Jamie snorts. "No, it won't. Everyone will be all over you and the boring life you love. Fame by proxy."
"What if I love something else more? Someone else?"
I'm looking at him when he swallows, slow to make eye contact with me, even in the dark. He doesn't pull away, but I wonder if that's because he doesn't know where he'd go. We need to talk, and escaping to his gorgeous house won't take care of that problem unless he wants to bring me with him.
It might be less intimate than this bench, but our words are better drowned down here.
"Do you? Is that even possible?"
"Whether it was possible that first night was a fair question, but now?
Of course it's possible. I don't need to have slept with you to know how I feel about you.
" I pause and comb my hair back from my face, a pointless act when the wind insists on knocking it loose.
"But if you're asking, I guess that answers the question of how you feel about me. "
"It answers nothing, and I hate that you think it does."
I drop my head back and stare at the sky for a few seconds, just to clear my head. "There will be people who support you, too. It won't all be bad, right?"
"Sure."
"Do you still have an agent?"
"Nah. When I couldn't play, and all my endorsement deals ended, there wasn't—I didn't really need an advocate, right?" There's a pause, but I know Jamie wants that question to be rhetorical, and I fight myself to let it go. "I've got an attorney who can look at paperwork when I need her to."
"But your fans. And your team."
"I don't have a team," Jamie snaps, frustrated by a loss he's mourned for years, and finally taking his hand away from mine.
"And I don't know. There are Pride nights, and more than one player has spoken up to support those, but the actual fallout of Jameson Sinclair being a confirmed bisexual? Which, of course, people won't say—"
"You'll be gay to them, and the Melanie Bishops of the world will weep."
"Exactly. So, there will be a frenzy about that, no matter how long it's been since I was in a locker room.
Questions about teammates and secret apps and who knew about me and who else might be gay.
Digging into any inappropriate thing I ever said or did.
What lines I crossed. Will I still be invited to signings?
Eh, probably? Whatever the reason for it, I'd continue to draw a crowd for a while. Being a guest commentator? It'll come down to the money I make them or cost them. The press will be reliably terrible to me, except for a few more reputable journalists who have always been kind. The league? They’ll remain officially uninvolved in the private life of a former player who hasn’t done a little dance for them in years. "
I sigh. "Without a team—without a contractual obligation and the ties either side would risk severing—you'll be in the middle of a public tug of war.
Stuck between the fans and teammates who stand by you, and those who love your name but will only use it until they want to distance themselves from it. "
"I wish I had that obligation, though. Fuck, I just want to be in the middle of it again. I want the sounds and smells and love and hate and a choice about losing it all. I never had a choice."
My stomach winds itself into an ugly little knot when his voice breaks, my blood running cold in a way that has nothing to do with a late night at the beach.
It hits me hard that the night I last saw him play—the worst night of his life—is the only reason I'm sitting next to him now.
Without that injury, he would've been preparing for the season instead of drinking at Kai's.
His appearance at Harper's back-to-school night might've been possible that September, but a relationship with me?
All the wanting and waiting we've shared for the past three years?
Jamie would've had his choice back then.
And it wouldn't have been me.
I almost say so out loud, but I choke on it, and wonder whether I could risk everything right now for the chance to have a single night in his bed, rules be damned. It already feels like I'll regret staying where I am.