Chapter 19 #2
And now they’re both deeply embarrassed in a way that doesn’t entirely make sense, and apologizing over one another.
Topher cuts them off by pressing the small bottle into Mateo’s hand, a premixed old fashioned. “I just thought maybe we could have a drink?”
“I would love to have alcohol right now,” Mateo says with too much feeling, taking the bottle and retreating across the room with it. Desperate for something to do with his body, he takes one of the low oval chairs by the window.
Topher takes another bottle from the fridge and wanders closer, looking out the window.
Neither of them says anything for a few sips before Topher breaks the silence. “Sorry about today. This probably isn’t what you thought you were signing on for.”
Despite the exchange of ten incoherent apologies a moment ago, this one flips the irritated switch in Mateo’s brain.
“Nothing that happened today was your fault. Not a moment of it. You’re cursed.
And your dad’s an asshole. And whoever’s doing this is the one who needs to apologize and then sit on a steel spike and spin while I kick them repeatedly in the dick. ”
Topher goggles at him a moment, and then that baby deer smile flickers and an exhale that sounds suspiciously like a laugh happens. “Descriptive.”
“Ophelia could have done better. She’s the queen of blue humor,” Mateo says. If this thing is happening between Topher and her, he might as well act like a proper wingman.
“You’ve been pretty funny so far,” Topher says politely.
Blessedly, it gives Mateo an avenue of conversation. Flashing his teeth, he says, “I think you’re confusing humor with the affected self-defense mechanisms of the average underpaid retail worker. Perhaps undetectable at your yearly income rate.”
It came out harsher than he’d meant it, but Topher doesn’t look offended as he replies. “What’s the threshold, do you think? Under 80k?”
Surprised and a little delighted that Topher’s willing to joke, Mateo smirks and leans forward. “Wow. 80k? Can’t even guess a low salary. I thought you were good at math. You saw what Doris was offering hourly.”
Topher grimaces, obviously doing that math. “Oh no. Right. Okay. Much lower. Got it.” He takes a sip of his drink, humming a little into it and stepping closer, looking seriously contemplative. “So how does it work? Do you think if I divest enough, at some point, I’ll just become funny?”
“Like a survival instinct?”
Topher nods.
“Absolutely,” Mateo relaxes a little, liking this stupid hypothetical and that Topher’s playing along so thoroughly. “Though, that’s only one of many retail worker self-defense types.”
Maybe getting a little booze into Topher helps him relax. Instead of stuttering and goggling, he rises to the challenge. “What’s another type?”
“You know when you go to the grocery store or the drugstore or whatever?” Mateo pauses and squints at Topher, unable to imagine him shopping. “Wait. Do you actually get your own prescriptions and stuff? Do you grocery shop?”
Smiling around a sip, Topher nods.
“Okay, so you know how that conversation’s always excruciatingly chipper? Like the cashier’s stoked about everything you’re buying, and the holidays, and the weather?”
“That’s a type?”
Mateo nods emphatically. “That conversation’s painful, right? Like all you wanna do is stop having it, pay as fast as you can, and leave? It’s the most powerful type.”
Another startled little laugh escapes Topher.
“I don’t want that one. I’d be too good at it.
” He makes his eyes really wide—like really—smiling too hard, borderline manic.
When he speaks, his tone’s a little higher pitched and breathless.
“Oh wow. We had this? Wow. I’ve never tried this one.
Is this new? I’ve tried all the brands. That green one, that one’s the best. I can’t believe they made a new one.
Oh, I’m so excited. I’m going to get one at lunch.
Where did you see this? Aisle five? Wow. ”
“Oh my god,” Mateo says, not expecting an impersonation, let alone one so horrifically believable. “I have shivers. You are too good at that. I’d take my own life right there at the counter. That had to be based on a real checkout. What were you buying?”
“A canned coffee,” Topher says, dropping the insane eyes but the smile lingers as he takes a step closer and sets his drink on the desk beside Mateo.
“Classic,” Mateo says, while realizing there’s a lot of visible thigh when Topher moves.
A quick scan of the room, and he spots Topher’s clothing neatly folded and stacked on the bed.
Because Topher hadn’t packed anything from home, he’d come with them change-of-clothes-less, and he’d just gotten out of a shower.
Meaning Topher doesn’t have anything on under that robe.
He turns back to Topher, only to find him closer still, right in front of him, the height of the seat Mateo’s in making him below Topher’s eye-level for the first time. Topher’s just standing there, smiling, looking down at him, ass naked under that robe.
It’s a wild thought to have right before Topher leans down and presses lips to his.
If asked before this moment how Topher might kiss, Mateo would have said: a bird peck.
Or: a total miss. Possibly: no kiss at all and Topher would combust at the thought.
He’d have also said: Topher initiating said hypothetical kiss was impossible.
A thing of fiction. Ridiculous. And, lastly, he’d have said: Why the hell are you asking me? I’ve got nothing to do with it.
But the warm press of lips is happening to him, unhurried and disconcertingly self-confident, with a hint of something spiced from his cocktail.
When Topher finally leans back from the kiss, Mateo’s not sure if his mouth had done anything during it—not sure what it’s doing now either.
His brain is the sound of a train braking, the scream of five thousand feet of metal against metal, taking an eternity to shed the inertia to come to a full stop.
Topher’s still just, like, right there, staring at Mateo, except Mateo’s not great at this sort of thing—thing being feelings, affections, or physical anything. He avoids these things when at all possible, and he’s got no idea how he walked right into this.
It’s so quiet he can hear outer space.
Someone should say something.
Probably him. The kiss was Topher saying something.
No response is forthcoming. The train is still going top speed. It’s blown through the brakes. It’s out of control. It’s going to derail. “What’s happening?” is what Mateo lands on, which is the actual fucking worst. At least his tone is confusion and not bone-deep hysteria.
“You’re so funny. And nice. And hot,” Topher says softly, undeterred by Mateo’s notably bad reactions to everything happening. “So, I kissed you.”
Hearing Topher say the thing he’d just done makes Mateo’s chest, neck, and ears heat like a simultaneous and instantaneous sunburn. The calm execution and response from Topher is making it worse, knocking Mateo wholly off balance when he was struggling here to begin with.
“Ophelia?” is what Mateo asks next, looking toward the closed door like he can see her from here. He’s not even forming a proper question, trying to communicate through desperation his conceptual confusion because Topher obviously likes Ophelia.
“She’s really cool,” Topher says, the usual quiver slipping into his words as he adds. “But I think you’re really amazing.” This important message conveyed; Topher backs up a step.
It’s the ideal moment for Mateo to say something. Anything. Maybe even have a thought. Except his train has finally ground to a full stop, and it’s a total loss. No one has survived. He can’t think of what to say or do here.
Eyes slowly widening, something in Mateo’s frozen-rabbit manner registers to Topher.
“Were you not …? Is this not …?” Topher starts and stops, unable to land on what exactly he wants to ask there, the situation getting so much worse as Mateo’s stunned demeanor combines with Topher’s frantic realization that only one of them was prepared for that.
He backs up another couple steps, hands raised in surrender, eyes their widest yet.
“I’m so sorry! I thought—I misread—because it’s so late! I wasn’t trying to—”
They’re both going to die here if Mateo doesn’t get out of this room.
“It’s okay!” he says in a tone he hopes sounds okay, moving swiftly toward the door with a hand up in a dorky wave goodbye for some reason.
“Good talk. Good drink. Good—” What in the actual fuck was he about to say there?
“—night,” he finishes, stepping out and solidly closing the door behind him.
The only noise in the suite is the soft whir of traffic filtering in from the cracked open balcony, Ophelia’s hair visible through the glass. Mateo stands there, back to Topher’s door and gaze traveling to Ophelia again and again as though her passed out form can help.
A booty call. Topher thought that was a booty call—because it’s, like, 2 AM.
Meaning Topher thought Mateo was of the booty-call variety.
Also meaning Topher himself is of the booty-call variety.
And by the transitive properties of all that, it means Topher is down for a booty-call from Mateo.
Does anyone even say booty-call anymore?
That is the least important detail but is easier to think about, so he lets that stress him out too.
Wait. Ophelia’s visit was only twenty minutes ago. Had they had the same confusion, or was it somehow only Mateo giving down-to-fornicate energy?
What in the actual hell is today?
He puts a finger to his lips, mimicking the pressure of Topher’s lips and then flushes again because it’s a weird thing to do.
Okay. So. He’d misread that. Like, a lot.
Which is … something.
Something he’s not going to deal with right now because it doesn’t change anything. Not really. Maybe. Probably. Ophelia doesn’t want to leave. And Topher—despite whatever the fuck just happened there—still needs help. If they’re in this, he’ll be in it all the way.
Even if it means accelerating his own condition.
Starting toward the balcony, he has every intention of curling back up with Ophelia to wait for the sun, but jolts to a stop as he reaches for the handle. Turning slowly toward his room, the soft pull of his mom’s spell book tucked in his bag startles something hungry in his blood.
And then he’s in his room, cross-legged on the bed, no memory of walking across the suite or closing and locking his door.
The spell book is comfortably open in his lap, to a page filled with his mother’s small, neat script.
With dry-mouthed alarm, his eyes slide over the words, trying to make sense of them.
He can only read every third or fourth word, his spoken Spanish shit but his reading is even worse.
But eventually he understands.
It’s a summoning spell.
So very carefully he closes the spell book, puts it back in his bag, and stuffs it into the closet safe.