Chapter Fourteen Mateo #3
"Not being the good company you expected," I say, shaking my head at my coffee.
Logan reaches down, his fingertips under my chin until I look up at him again. "Everything was fine until you couldn't sleep. Let me wear you out today, and we'll see how tonight goes, okay?"
There are easy ways to interpret what he's said, and I have no doubt he's done it intentionally, almost a bitter and kind game of chicken.
We're only friends, but the definition of friendship has been blurry to me for so damn long.
I've been promised no strings attached, so I could take any of the things being offered and go home without a debt, but I don't know what I want.
For now, I simply nod.
While I use the communal bathroom and change into jeans, Logan makes us breakfast, and it surprises me because I know we're both used to grabbing coffee and running out the door in the morning.
I take the time he gives me to keep breathing and watch the campground stir.
There's no way for me to check for texts or hockey scores, and I make peace with that as well as I can.
Later, with our boots on, and Logan looking better than I could've imagined in his flannel and beanie, we go for a hike around the lake just out of sight from where we slept.
It's a beautiful morning, and there's no need for us to talk about it or anything else.
I get lost in the sight of the water and think about the last time I vacationed next to a lake, also with a man who knows what I sound like when I come.
I must make a noise, because Logan turns to look at me, but I can't explain, and he gives up on me after a few seconds.
We stop several minutes later for water and shade, and while Logan drinks, I watch a droplet of sweat slide down his neck. I want to taste it, but it's unfair of me to want things here, so I only trace its path with my finger and stop when I reach the collar of his shirt.
"Sorry," I say again.
"For?" he asks again.
"Thinking you're pretty."
It sounds like I'm apologizing for the mixed signals, and I suppose that's true. But I'm angry with myself for using that word when it belongs to someone else. It has since the night Jamie and I met.
I push off the tree I've been leaning against and continue walking.
Back at the campsite, we make sandwiches for lunch and eat our weight in fruit.
He's set up two hammocks, also borrowed from his brother and sister-in-law, and we let the food settle while we read books we’d brought along.
Then, because we're camping or because he knows how good he looks doing it, Logan crouches next to my hammock and asks me to go kayaking with him.
And sometimes—maybe too often—it's unfathomable to say no to him.
So, we spend the afternoon in the sun as it reflects off the chilly lake water.
We talk about our families and our jobs and other safe topics we've covered before.
On some level, it's all bullshit, but it brings us back to the afternoons we ran errands and the evenings we went out to dinner.
It allows us to ignore the nights we spent in his bed, and how easy it would be to do that when we're on a camping trip we might not have thought through.
After kayaking around the lake, we return to the shore.
After returning to the shore, we splash each other senseless.
After splashing each other senseless, we return to the campsite.
And after returning to the campsite, we change into something dry and we make dinner together and we rest. It's only when we're side by side in our chairs, warmed by the fire and made safe by the night sky, that we talk about something real.
"Was that Jameson Sinclair at your grandmother's funeral?" Logan asks, a mug of spiked hot chocolate in his hand.
"Yes."
"He's not a family friend."
It's a statement, not a question. I drink, then respond. "His daughter was in my freshman honors class, and then in my AP class as a senior. She also played varsity soccer all four years."
"How many other students' parents were there that day?"
That one's a question, but it doesn't need to be. "None."
"But you and he had become friends."
"I know him better as Jamie, yes."
If Logan's lining up dominoes, I've already knocked the first couple of them down, and everything else will fall quickly. He pauses as if he might walk away before he witnesses the mess he's asked me to make, but then he goes on.
"It was hockey season. I'm not a big fan or anything, but I know enough to understand that he was supposed to be in Texas that night."
"You know enough to have recognized him, too."
Logan makes a face at his hot chocolate. "I may have jerked off to his underwear ads a time or two."
He and probably a ridiculous number of other queer men who were paying more attention than I was. Of course, that puts him an important step ahead of me, and I wonder whether getting off to Jamie before we met might've been enough reason to keep from wanting impossible things with him after.
"Yes, he was supposed to be in Texas," I say when Logan's looking at me again. "I had told him I wished he could be there, but I didn't expect it to happen. That was a surprise."
"A good one?"
I raise my eyebrow. "I just said I wished he could be there."
"Right."
"We're not together. We're not—a couple."
"I didn't ask that, but—"
"But yes, he's the reason I wasn't available over the summer."
It's a lot to say to someone who could spill to all the gossip sites tomorrow, but I trust Logan more than that. Maybe even more so when he slowly swallows more liquor and chocolate, and then makes gentle, gentle eye contact.
"It's not like whatever you and I had, though. The casual fucking we did, whenever it worked out that way. You and Jameson Sinc—Jamie—are different."
I want to laugh or cry at how perfectly he's understated that, but I just smile sadly. "Yes."
Logan changes the subject then, and going to sleep separately and together is a lot like the night before.
It's also not much like it at all, despite the distant voices and more crickets.
Logan had set out to wear me out, and he's done just that, so when I listen to him breathe, I only last a few seconds before he'll have to listen to me instead.
In the morning, I tell him I don't want to leave.
We spend the next few days busy with a mix of the same activities—hiking and reading and kayaking and drinking by the fire—and I have fun for the first time in a while.
I love getting sweaty and dirty, and washing it away with a shitty campground shower.
My hair is usually pulled into a little bun, but I'm as careless as I've ever been, the rest of the world kept inside a phone I haven't turned on all week.
I breathe easily every morning and sleep dreamlessly every night, and the decisions I make are guided only by how I feel in that exact moment.
It's why I'm facing Logan now, in our tent on our last night here.
We're looking at each other, unafraid of all the things I think we should fear, and I barely blink as I begin to unzip my sleeping bag.
The sound would be embarrassingly loud if I were embarrassed, this silly thing giving away my intention with every inch it's lowered, but I don't stop until it's somewhere around my knees.
It's cold, but there are blankets nearby if we need them later.
I'm not all that worried about the temperature at the moment.
I reach for Logan's sleeping bag next, and we haven't looked away, but he's the first to speak.
"You don't have to do this."
"I know."
He licks his lips, then sighs. "I don't want you to stop."
"I know."
Neither of us has shaved since we arrived, and when we're finally too close to keep staring, his face feels so fucking good against mine.
I ease back only to spit into my hand before I reach for him, and he doesn't hesitate before he does the same and reaches for me, the two of us still fully covered except for where the waistbands of our sweatpants have been shoved out of the way.
This will be fast and messy and mostly silent and entirely selfish, but Logan takes what I can give, and we kiss until I don't need him to be somebody else.
We kiss long after we both come.