Chapter Seventeen Jamie #2
He doesn't drag those two words into a longer sentence.
I don't need him to. Eleven years ago, that night began to mean one thing.
Five years after that, it meant a second thing too, but I already know he was there for that one.
I frown and lean away because there's been a lot of fucking time to have this conversation.
I almost sit on the dock out of spite. Then my cheeks warm, and I close my eyes as I seethe over the injury that left me alone in my best friend's bar the night I met Mateo, and gave him the power to ruin my life every single day since.
"Sophie and I were there," he amends. "It was the only game we went to that season, and I can't believe we saw—actually, no. I barely saw it at all. But the sound you made. I think I knew even then that I'd never, ever forget that sound."
"I've always been too loud."
It's a hell of a thing to say to the man who figured out how to keep me quiet with a couple of well-placed fingers. He probably isn't interested in swapping one set of memories for another.
"It wasn't the volume. It was the sorrow."
I want to argue Mateo's choice of words, but only because I'm pissed he's spent so much time remembering me that way. "You should've told me."
"Maybe," he says. "But it seemed like an awkward thing to bring up at back-to-school night."
"And every night since?"
Mateo shrugs. "I didn't want to bind myself to the night you lost the love of your life, especially if I was going to spend forever competing with it."
"You're not competing with it."
"Yes, I am."
Yes, he is. I should apologize, but it won't matter much when he's going to fly home and I'm going to return to arenas full of people who know me by my full name.
I should apologize, but I'm still unhappy, so I take the coffee back from him and soothe myself with it while he admires a view I don't think he'll have for a while.
I should apologize, and I do, but I make sure it hurts us both.
"Sorry this isn't a Mai Tai," I say, holding up the mug.
"Sorry the lake isn't frozen."
He walks away from me then. I can't help but turn to watch him because he's the view I won't have for a while.
When the dock is over more land than water, Mateo makes the small jump off the side and moves toward the lake again.
The sun isn't high enough in the sky for him to enjoy wading right now, but that doesn't appear to be his goal.
He squats when he's close enough to touch the water.
Maybe he just needs to confirm my wish has no chance of coming true today.
I call to him from where I stand. "You have something else to say."
Mateo slowly pulls his fingers back and wipes them on his jacket. He's even slower when he stands to face me. I don't like that I'm above him like this, but maybe he's felt like I've had the higher ground all along. I'd bet millions the opposite is true.
"I think Harper knows. About us."
"About us?" I growl. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"New Year's Day. You and I weren't talking, but I'd just spent so much time with my family, and I needed—I went to the bench. It was as close as I could—"
"Yeah," I interrupt. "I get it. I've done it."
"She was there," he says. And if I want time to process that detail, he doesn't give it to me. "I don't think she was nearly as surprised to see me as she should've been. And then we talked about you and about me, and she was so—I don't know—calm."
Calm. A lot like she was when she asked me whether I'd thought about bringing someone special on vacation. And when she asked whether I was avoiding bringing Mateo because I thought she'd have a problem with it.
All of that could've been about my good friend. Whatever she said to Mateo could've been about his good friend. But he thinks Harper knows something, and I don't think he's wrong.
But I've been in pain since I woke up and I can't let it go.
"We're friends, Mateo." I spit the word and become stupidly soft around his name. "She knows we're friends. She's calm about us being friends. That's a good thing. And unless you plan to tell her you just became the first man to fuck her dad, there's nothing else to know."
Whatever other points he was going to make get lost before they make it to his open mouth, everything derailed when he sputters. "The first? That's not—you said you—there were others—"
He looks past me, toward the house. I'm not sure whether he's worried someone will overhear us or whether he's just remembering what it felt like to fuck me into the mattress.
It felt pretty amazing to me, and if we weren't so busy saying goodbye, I think I'd beg him to do it again.
We are busy though, and I wave my hand dismissively.
"Yes, there were others, but I—I was being literal," I explain. "It was always easier for me to—with anonymous hookups, I’d never—just you."
Whatever I've barely said covers a lot of our relationship. He's heard enough to understand that I've drawn meaningless lines with meaningless men for the sake of something I've called simple. Blowjobs have gone both ways, but nothing else ever did. Until last night.
"You should've told me," Mateo hisses.
"Maybe."
He's so frustrated with me, and he scrubs a hand over his face. "Is there anything you want me to do about Harper?"
"There's nothing to do. Nothing. We have waited and waited and waited, and after all this time, you think my daughter knows something?
About what?" I'm deeply in love with him, but he showed up here and let us take things from each other that weren't ours to have.
For just a second, I hate him for it. I exhale as slowly as I can before I go on, but I can't stop my voice from cracking. "Mateo. There's nothing to know."
It takes an impressively long time before he looks away from me.
When that happens, he leaves the rest behind, too.
His steps are measured—not quite a dead man walking, but it feels suspiciously close enough.
I stay where I am because I can't chase him today.
I'm still watching when he reaches the opposite side of the dock, closer to his way out.
He needs to leave, and I don't think witnessing it is any better than when I thought he'd disappeared in my sleep, but it means I see the moment he stops and turns around.
The scratch marks on my chest sting, but he can't see them.
Maybe he thinks I'm due a little more pain.
He walks back to me, and those seconds take forever to pass, but I don't have anywhere else to be unless Taylor's waiting for a recap of my morning.
I raise an eyebrow, cockier than I have been all week.
Then Mateo breaks me when he wraps me in his arms and holds me there. My sob stays between us, and he presses his mouth to the side of my head.
"I love you."
"Yeah," I choke. "I know."
We don't talk at all after that. We don't call each other. We don't record voice notes. We don't even text. For the first time since we met, I'm not sure whether I'll see him again.
And I don't know how to make him promise he'll come back when I'm the one so far from home.
Anyone looking closely enough could tell I've always been needy, despite the crowds who called me arrogant my entire career.
My ego came with raw talent and near-flawless looks, but I've surrounded myself with people wearing my jersey or wearing nothing at all because I love the attention I get.
It's loud, or it's quiet, and it feeds me so I don't have to go hungry.
But these days, the wrong things are quieter and worse things are growing louder.
I consume it all out of habit because otherwise I feel like I'm starving.
And really, most people have never looked.
I pick up my phone and pretend I'm close to the one who did.
Mateo always paid attention to me, but it was never quiet or loud or about hockey or how hot I am, even when he called me pretty. Before he knew I was needy, he wanted to know everything else. Then he stayed, and he waited. After I begged him a hundred times, he kept me around for a hundred more.
I put the phone back down because August becomes September, and September becomes October, and another hockey season starts.
Mateo's been busy with school for a while.
There's time for me to catch a couple of Harper's games, and she catches a couple of mine.
On a road trip that includes a swing through California, I spend as much time with Kai as I can.
I haven't always been a good friend, and I'm running low on those these days.
I see my parents when they want to see me.
October becomes November, and November becomes December.
Taylor and I are the first two and last two at every practice or meeting or game, and I'm grateful for something to rely on.
That morning at the lake house, when I slipped back inside, he was in his bedroom again.
Our mugs were clean and a new pot of coffee was brewing as though nobody had been in the kitchen at all.
We've never talked about why Mateo showed up late one night. I don't have a good enough answer to give him, and saying thank you wouldn't make much sense.
I love my team. I have a decent relationship with most of them, but the stars—the ones who make highlight reels and headlines like mine—gravitate to Taylor on the days they need more than a teammate or friend.
I stay on the ice with players who won't set records or get selected to an All-Star team.
While they're comfortable with their roles, they still want to get better.
They lean on the veterans more than they lean on me, and that's how it should be, but my time with them reminds me of things I loved way back when.
The buzz they carry to and from the locker room is a feeling I've lost and found.