26. The Other Guy
26
THE OTHER GUY
I t was well after 9 p.m. when Eric banged on Mathias’s front door. Still dressed in his gym clothes, Mathias opened the door with a frown.
“I told you I was busy tonight.”
Eric pursed his lips, his gaze lingering on Mathias’s bare arms. “You said you were going boxing, and now you’re back. Come on, let’s get Zak and go to the movies.”
“Pass.”
“Why?” Eric’s nostrils flared. “Don’t tell me you’re going to bed this early on a Friday night.” When Mathias didn’t react, Eric pushed him aside and stepped into his home. “That’s it, Matt. I’m tired of you spending the holidays cooped up in here alone.”
“I’m not alo— Hey!”
Eric was already dashing toward his bedroom, with Mathias on his tail. “There better be someone hiding in here, or I swear—” He shoved the door open and stopped. “Oh… It’s empty.”
“What the hell, Eric?” Mathias tried to slam the door shut, but Eric kicked it open.
“Were you replacing your bed?” He let himself in and laughed at the chaos reigning in Mathias’s room.
“Fixing it, actually.”
Tired of the squeaking and creaking that only got worse after he and Alberto last saw each other, Mathias had ordered a new set of slats for the frame. When he removed the mattress earlier, he found underneath a small black lock. LOCK AWAY , the engraving said on the back. It obviously belonged to Alberto, who hid it under there for some reason, as he had done before. Mathias once searched for his hi?-?fi remote for days, thinking it lost, before he found it hidden under the same mattress. Why? Mathias knew better than to assume there was no explanation for Alberto’s bizarre behavior. Now here he was with a lock and no key. He was still obsessing over the absence of the key when Eric had started banging on his door.
“How does that happen?” Eric was asking, his tone sly. “How d’you break it?”
Mathias exhaled a sigh. “As you can see, I’m busy. So, unless you wanna help…”
“I always want to help. So, tell me: Did you fail your entrance exam this week?”
Mathias hesitated. “No, it went well, I think.”
He showed up on time, did what he was told without questions and in order. Neither awful nor extraordinary, in his opinion, he had passed the test, but he couldn’t be certain until the school wrote back to him to let him know.
“You would have told me if something went wrong, right?” Eric asked.
“Sure.”
“I don’t believe you.” A muscle twitched in Eric’s jaw. “I want to know why you’ve been ignoring me for a week. I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
“Then suit yourself, but you’ll find the place a bit lonely. My dad’s away for the weekend, and my sister’s at a sleepover.” Mathias pointed at the door. “But I have shit to do, so you can let yourself out?—? after you fix my bed.”
“Don’t!” His arms outstretched, Eric stood in the doorway. “Don’t shut me out.”
“You’re the one blocking my way out.”
“Wait!”
The earnestness in Eric’s eyes was unbearable. That same look probably wore Zak down until he capitulated and accepted him as a clingy boyfriend. He probably used the same trick on everyone. Look at me, I’m so cute! Matt, Matt! I love you!
That bastard.
Yet, Mathias averted his eyes, his face hot. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and closed his fist around the small lock until the pain numbed his palm. “If I asked you to go somewhere with me,” he said in a gruff voice, “would you? Just you and me, without Zak. Would you?”
Eric’s eyes briefly narrowed, betraying his surprise. “Of course, where do you want to go?”
“Home,” he said, before shaking his head. “I mean, my former hometown.”
The smug expression Eric then adopted irritated him, but in the end, he said nothing.
An hour later, after an unmemorable train ride, the two of them stood outside an apartment building in Massy. Because he wasn’t ringing the intercom, Eric leaned into Mathias’s space until the other snarled at him.
“So, what’s happening?” Eric asked once he’d stopped laughing. “Why did you absolutely need me to come?”
“I never said I absolutely needed you to come.”
“That’s what I heard anyway.”
Mathias lit up a cigarette and patted his shoulder. Eric returned the gesture with a warm smile.
“This is Sylvain’s place,” Mathias said. “We used to go to the same school and we hung out together with the same guys, before I punched one of them when he… said something he shouldn’t have. This week, Sylvain texted me to invite me to this party.”
“A party? That’s it?” Eric wrinkled his nose. “Sometimes, I really don’t understand why you insist on keeping the most banal things so hush hush. I canceled on Zak to be here, and now he’s having a pajama party without me!”
Mathias glared at him. “For once I invite you somewhere… You see Zak every day. You probably see him every night too!”
“Not in his special pajamas, no I don’t! They’re called special for a reason!” Eric jerked his head. “You know what? I’m going back.” He made to turn away, but Mathias clasped a hand on his shoulder.
“Wait! It’s not just a party, I swear. There’s someone here I need to talk to, and I’d prefer if the others don’t notice me slip away.”
Eric turned around and glanced up at the rows of windows above with a perplexed expression. “Okay, I’ll stay.”
“I need you to create a diversion,” Mathias said, serious. “Keep them busy so that I can be alone with that person.” He added after a beat, “They’ve never met an American. Play along, they’ll think you’re Jack Bauer or something.”
“Sure.” Eric gave a nod. “Who’s Jack Bauer?”
“For fuck’s sake! Do you only watch Disney movies or what?”
Sylvain’s mouth fell open in shock when he opened the door a few minutes later, the quiet hallway suddenly alive with French rap music. “I didn’t expect you to come,” he said. “But I’m glad, honestly!”
Mathias took sight of the old crowd gathered in the living room and asked hurriedly, “Does Clément still live here?”
Pushing his long hair away from his face, Sylvain laughed and frowned at the same time. “Yeah. He should be back from work soon, but he’s not going to hang out with us much. He’s gonna pilfer a bottle of vodka and drink it alone in his room. What do you need him for anyway? He’s all out of weed, he said. Hey, man!” Sylvain finally noticed Eric, who introduced himself in French. He shook his offered hand. “Do you guys want some beer?”
“Wait, wait.” Mathias craned his neck toward the others. “What about Mathieu, is he here?”
After a pause, Sylvain gave him a knowing smile. “Nope, he’s working tonight, and it’s better this way. He hasn’t forgotten that punch. He probably never will.” He suddenly became serious. “I get it, though. I’m dating Daphnée now, and I wouldn’t let anyone talk that way about her.” Noticing the alarm in Mathias’s eyes, he added, “Don’t worry, she’s not here either. No chicks tonight. Cocks only.”
That last line had Eric giggling like an overexcited dolphin. As they followed Sylvain into the living room, he nudged Mathias with his elbow and whispered, “Straight guys, amirite?”
“What?” Mathias pulled him to his side. “Stop talking, get over here.”
“Yes, sir.”
With the relief that he wouldn’t have to face another one of his demons tonight, Mathias introduced Eric to his former school friends, purposefully letting him know he was American. That was enough for them to get interested. Once each of them had shaken Mathias’s hand and listened to his monosyllabic answers, Eric was deemed the funnier of the two, and that was before he even told them he was a proper football player. Mathias let him take over while he leaned against the wall by the kitchen and drank liquid courage in the form of whisky and coke, his free hand absently clutching the lock in his pocket.
It took some time, but eventually, Mathias felt someone’s eyes on him, and he turned around. With his pale skin, his round baby-blue eyes, and his blondish hair combed back in a good boy haircut, Sylvain’s stepbrother looked the same as he ever did. Hopelessly vulnerable and kind, too kind. Mathias’s lips instinctively stretched at the sight of him, and the pressure in his chest eased when he received a smile back.
“ Mathias Rodin ,” Clément said, stepping out of the shadows. “Here’s one person I never thought I’d see again.” The genuine sweetness in his expression was much more than what Mathias expected… or deserved, in his opinion. He felt exposed, and he dipped his head like a told-off child.
Clément and Sylvain had been thrown together at the age of eleven, when their parents got married and moved together into Sylvain’s apartment. At school, Sylvain was the stocky, sporty one, competitive and popular. Clément was the opposite. Awkward and soft-spoken, he would have preferred not to be noticed at all. For a long time, Sylvain pretended he didn’t know him, but eventually, people found out they lived together. Sylvain resented that, and he never lifted a finger to defend his stepbrother when the boys at school ultimately decided Clément was bullying material. To this day, Mathias couldn’t help wondering how he could have wasted so much time hanging out with those guys, and therein lay the root of the problem: wasn’t he, after all, one of them?
His fist closing around the lock in his pocket, Mathias signaled Eric with a quick nod, who immediately launched himself into a tirade in English, and in an unwarranted southern accent. Mathias left him to do his thing and walked over to Clément, noticing, up close, that he hadn’t grown much since he last saw him and was significantly shorter than him. Yet, when he addressed him, it was with his eyes on his shoes.
“Can we talk? Alone?”
Clément took a moment to reply. “Sure… Come to my room, we’ll have a joint together, like old times.” He pointed at Mathias’s empty drink. “I’ll get you a refill as well.”
Mathias wordlessly followed him down the corridor. Back in the living room, Eric’s bad impression of a cowboy caused general laughter. At least Mathias could count on his friend to keep the others busy.
Clément invited him to step into his tidy bedroom. When Mathias caught him locking the door behind them, he gave a sheepish smile. “Wouldn’t want to be caught alone with the school fag ,” he said, a hint of bitterness in his tone .
Mathias’s eyebrows drew together. “Do they still call you that?”
With an exaggerated shrug, Clément shuffled to his desk and leaned against it. “I am, in fact, gay, so… they were never wrong.” From his shirt pocket, he removed a joint and waved it in front of Mathias, who tilted his head toward the door.
“But... won’t it look suspicious if I’m locked in a room with you?”
“God, you’re right!” Clément pounced forward. “I didn’t think about that, I’m sorry. I?—”
“That’s fine.” Mathias caught his wrist before he reached the door. “I don’t care what they think.”
His gaze lingering on Mathias’s hand, Clément’s expression grew dumbfounded. “Let’s have something to drink, shall we?” He pointed at the improvised mini bar on top of his shelf. “I can even make us some Old Fashioneds.”
“That’s actually my favorite drink,” Mathias said.
Clément turned his face away. “I know.”
As he applied himself to make their drinks with slightly clumsy fingers, Mathias stood silently in the middle of the room. There were no posters on Clément’s walls. No clutter lying around either. It was familiar to Alberto’s room, except it was a fraction of the size, and the walls here were painted in much darker shades of purples and grays, with matching bedding. Mathias felt at ease in this room, even with the memory of Alberto gnawing at his stomach like a bad indigestion.
Clément gave Mathias his drink and perched himself on top of his desk. Now his eyes were at the same level as his, which made talking easier, somehow. He took a generous swig of his drink before he spoke.
“I always wondered, Mathias. Did you punch that guy because you thought he was wrong, or right?”
Mathias blinked at him. Clément laughed, revealing faint dimples and slightly crooked teeth. “I guess I’ve always wanted to ask, and now that you’re inexplicably here… I’m afraid I’ll never get another chance.”
“I also came here,” Mathias said, “to talk about that.” As he spoke, he rolled the lock between his fingers in his pocket.
Clément watched him, his gaze soft. “I’m really happy to see you, you know?”
“You are?”
“That seems to surprise you. But listen to me, I’m being so rude! Tell me, how’s life? How have you been since, you know…”
The last punch .
Mathias emptied half the contents of his drink in one gulp. “I’m okay.” It felt odd to say the words, but more so to be able to talk to someone from his past. And especially Clément, whose warm welcome was unexpected, to say the least. That must have been why his voice came out sounding so muted. “My new school is mostly rich kids. I thought I’d hate them all at first—some are really the worst clichés you can think of. But I’ve made some good friends. I mean, I’ve made one good friend?—”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
The question stunned Mathias, and he must have looked dumb, because Clément laughed behind his fist. “Don’t look so shocked. I used to wonder whether you were… you know, and now you show up after all this time, you don’t flinch when I tell you I’m gay, and you’re okay being locked in my bedroom with me?—”
“You used to wonder about me? Why?”
Clément stopped laughing, a flush creeping up his cheeks. “I don’t know. You never called me names, for one. For years now, everyone’s been calling me the same stuff, but not you, not once. You went as far as punching a guy for making fun of me, so…”
Mathias knocked back the rest of his drink and, drawing closer, flung it to the side. The glass spun endlessly on the surface of the desk in an irritating clatter until Clément laid his hand flat on top of it and there was silence again.
Unnerving silence.
“I just don’t like bullies,” Mathias said.
“Is that why you punched him, Mathias?” There was a glint in Clément’s eyes. “You punched a guy twice your size because you don’t like bullies? Or…”
“Or what?” Mathias held his gaze. “You know why I punched him.” He added resentfully, “And he wasn’t twice my size, he was?—”
“Big. And you knocked him down on his ass because he called me a fag.”
“… Yes.”
“It’s not the first time you heard them talk like that about me, I’m sure. You never punched him before, so what was different that time? It was because you knew, right? You knew it was true, and?—”
“Because I felt bad.”
“Why?” Clément leaned forward. “Why did you feel bad?”
Mathias tried to remember how it was back then. The memories were blurry, shifting shadows he couldn’t grasp, except for a face, clear in his mind.
“My mom, she was sick. I was angry with the world. And I was dating Daphnée…”
“Oh yes, Daphnée.” A hint of distaste laced Clément’s voice. “That’s it? Nothing else?” Mathias’s hesitation inspired him to hand over his drink to him. Mathias thanked him and took a careful sip.
“The gymnasium. I felt bad about the gymnasium. It was an accumulation, really. When he started talking, I just… I felt I owed you that, at least.”
“So, it did happen, then. The gymnasium. It wasn’t in my head.” Clément let out a quiet laugh. “This should make me so happy, but, instead, it just makes me sad.”
Mathias took a step closer. “I just remembered recently. I’ve been?—”
“Good, because I never had the chance to forget?—”
“—thinking about you.”
Clément was shaking his head, then he processed Mathias’s words, his eyes lighting up. “You’ve been thinking about me?” When Mathias nodded, he groaned and shifted in his seat. “There’s no point hiding it now; we’re not kids anymore. I’ve had a crush on you since the first year of collège? 1 .?”
Mathias had been suspecting that for a while now.
“That’s a long time,” he said softly.
“I’m sure you understand why.”
Now, that’s the part he never understood. He blinked cluelessly until Clément puffed out a laugh.
“You weren’t like the others. You were good at everything, kind to everyone. Your best friend was a girl, and it wasn’t a secret either. You were proud of Daphnée, even when people were making fun of you two.”
“I wasn’t—” Mathias shook his head. “I wasn’t good at everything. And I wasn’t popular at all.”
“I didn’t care about that! You don’t remember? You would pick me when no one would in sports team. And you would steer assholes away from me, time and time again. You did, I saw you. And you, you would smile at me when nobody else would… ”
“I was just trying to be nice.”
Clément unexpectedly seized his hands, and Mathias almost dropped his glass. “You are nice, Mathias. You’re nice. So nice that I started thinking… maybe you liked me, too.” He seemed to realize what he had done and released him just as abruptly. “Until that day in quatrième ?? 2 , at the gymnasium. Do you…” He bit his lip. “What do you remember?”
There was laughter somewhere in the apartment. Mathias thought of Eric playing the idiot to buy him time. He couldn’t afford to pussyfoot around. He had to get going.
“We were left to clean up after handball,” he said. “It was pouring when we came out. We took refuge under the covered courtyard.”
“And?”
“I thought you wanted to kiss me. It was written all over you.”
“And…”
Mathias’s shoulder lifted in a half-shrug. “I thought you were cute that day. You wanted to kiss me. I felt I could kiss you too.”
There was a silence. Clément was watching Mathias through squinted eyes, his mouth twisting in a displeased—but sort of cute—pout. “So, why didn’t you? Because I’d been waiting for so long…”
Mathias lowered his eyes. “I didn’t want to deal with the consequences.”
“Of… being gay? Even with your?—”
“No.” He looked up. “Of having to disappoint you.”
“Why?” Clément’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What does it mean?”
“I wanted to kiss you, that’s true. I was curious about it. But I wasn’t into you the way you were into me. I thought if I kissed you, then I’d have to be with you, and I didn’t want to do that.”
Mathias’s admission had Clément looking stumped for a moment before his shoulders sagged. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, barely audible.
When he was a kid, Mathias never worried about saying the wrong thing. He didn’t have to. One day, everything changed. One day, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and it seemed everything that came out of his mouth was not what people wanted to hear. But now, he couldn’t hide anymore, he had to own it. Even if his words were painful to Clément, he owed him—and himself—the truth .
“I’m sorry,” Mathias said. “I really am. Because I really did like you. You’re nice. So, I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.”
Clément let out a sigh. “No, you’re actually everything I want you to be, that’s the problem.”
“It’s not only that. I came here because… I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for frightening you.”
“Frightening me?”
“You never spoke to me again after that punch.”
The snort of laughter that followed wasn’t what Mathias expected. While he stared at him with round eyes, Clément snatched his drink back and finished it before discarding it to the side.
“Mathias, you adorable idiot. That wasn’t because I was afraid of you. That was self-preservation! Yes, you went overboard when you punched that guy in the face because he insulted me. But from my point of view, you were a hero. After that incident, I was even more in love with you than before.” With another laugh, Clément seized Mathias’s hands again. “I avoided you to protect my own heart, or I would have been at risk to follow you around like a lovestruck puppy, and then people would have started making assumptions about you too. About being… a fag .”
Mathias squeezed his hands. Briefly. “I’m not a fag.”
“Apparently not.”
“Neither are you.”
There was a pause, then Clément slowly smiled. “You did like me, even if only a little. You felt like kissing me that day.”
Mathias gave a small nod. “I felt like kissing you that day.”
Even now, Clément was cute. He had a lovely smile. And he had a pretty neck, long and slender, and a flat chest. Mathias definitely had a thing for those. Sure, he was blond. But Alberto’s beautiful dark locks came with even darker secrets, so no, thank you.
Clément wouldn’t call Mathias an asshole. Clément loved him since they were kids. Clément was such a good idea.
So when he playfully hooked his foot behind Mathias’s knee and brought him closer, between his legs, Mathias said nothing and stared into the hopeful face in front of him.