37. Alberto
37
ALBERTO
A lberto was a beautiful boy.
From the moment of his birth, it was settled. His appearance was a constant cause of wonder, one he was well aware of. In fact, he had known since he was old enough to understand words.
From dawn to dusk, friends, co-workers and relatives of his parents would come forward, one after the other, to pay homage to his mother and father. Old men grinning, ladies swooning, wave after wave of faceless strangers marvelled at his features, all of them with the same words on their lips.
“My God. What a beautiful boy.”
So much like…
After their lovemaking, sleep took him almost by surprise. When at last he woke, still curled up on Mathias’s chest, the open window offered him the tinkle of laughter of children playing on the beach, and Mathias… Mathias was holding on to him as if he were afraid he would leave again through that very same window.
So, no, Alberto did not quite know yet how to broach the subject. What would happen afterwards? Would the light dim in Mathias’s beautiful eyes?
Would he wait for him?
Would Alberto wait if he were in his place ?
“Wake up, Mathias,” Alberto whispered, pressing a kiss to his cheekbone. Mathias did so, slowly, with a languid smile. Alberto felt his stomach lilt.
“I want to go to the beach.”
Mathias stretched out his hand to cup his face. “Let’s go to the beach, then.”
What did Alberto say again? Defanged .
They left through the front door this time. It was clear they had overslept. The afternoon was late already and surprisingly warm. As they strolled alongside the shore, Alberto, who had taken only half his medication that morning, allowed himself to be distracted by the sights. A group of teenage girls reading magazines. Toddlers shrieking in laughter as they pushed around a beach ball, their parents’ eyes lovingly fixed on them. A few feet away, an old man was watching the horizon with his dog in his arms.
Alberto and Mathias walked on, their hands lightly brushing against each other’s with each step. When the wind carried to them the laughter of a young couple splashing about in the waves, Alberto slowed his pace to watch them. The guy was hot, but not nearly as hot as Mathias. The girl seemed to agree, her gaze briefly sweeping over Alberto’s face to linger on Mathias’s golden arms.
The fool who held Alberto’s heart at ransom didn’t notice, too busy kicking seaweed clumps out of his way, his expression clear of worry. Alberto leaned in and kissed his cheek, and in return was granted an open smile.
In the afternoon sun, Mathias’s hazel eyes were almost pure gold. In the darker hour, they would turn amber—and pleading, most likely. Alberto had the feeling neither of them were actually human, but other. Incompatible with this amount of love. His heart ached at the thought.
Nearby, a friendly-faced vendor was selling French fries, the smell turning Alberto’s stomach. Sadness rolled in waves within him. He felt he was drowning again.
“What will happen to the pictures in the basement?” Mathias then asked, catching him by surprise.
“What? Why?”
“You’re going to move, right?”
“Yes.”
“You know where yet?”
“Only that we’re staying in Paris. ”
Alberto caught the flash of relief in Mathias’s eyes, his stomach twisting painfully.
“So, what will happen to the pictures in the basement?” Mathias stopped walking, bringing their promenade to an end. “Will you hang them in your new place?”
Alberto studied his face. He was so loath to hurt him. There was only one other person he would be willing to upend the world for.
“It’s my mother who wanted to keep them. If it were up to me, I would have already tossed them away. So, I’m probably going to toss them away.”
“Don’t.” Mathias took his hand. “Don’t make your mother sad. It’s the worst feeling in the world.”
Alberto retrieved his hand and immediately regretted it. Mathias looked so lonely whenever his thoughts drifted back to his mother. Alberto spoke kindly, his hands moving on their own to rest on Mathias’s chest. “What you told your mother that day… at the hospital. The thing that’s haunting you. I’m sure it wasn’t as horrible as you think.”
“No, it was.” Mathias’s expression soured but his tone remained gentle. “I have to live with it now, for the rest of my life.”
“Would you tell me what you said? Is that okay?”
Mathias nodded. “I don’t mind telling you. I want you to know who I am.”
“Mati…”
This time, the sound of his nickname brought pain to Mathias’s eyes. His shoulders sagging, he turned his face away. “I told her she was abandoning me, and Dad, and Elisa, so I couldn’t understand why she felt it was okay to make jokes about it. It’s a shit thing to say to a dying person. She needed me. I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
Alberto flinched at the harshness of his words. It pained him to imagine what they had in common was an acute self-loathing. “I think you do,” he said, sounding shy again.
Mathias gave him a clipped smile. “You’re way kinder than you let on, you know. It’s even scary at times. I don’t think you ever made your mother cry.”
“I did worse. I made her faint, once.”
The sight of Mathias’s dumbfounded expression was amusing enough for Alberto not to regret his confession. But he was experiencing a profound need to speak up, to reciprocate Mathias’s candour. Open the door, just an inch, and experience the warmth of mutual sympathy .
“You’re not joking?” Mathias asked, his brow furrowed.
“Nope. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Don’t speak like that.” Mathias’s frown deepened. “You’re not allowed to die, ever.”
Alberto did as he always wanted to and pressed his finger right in the centre of Mathias’s forehead until the latter’s scowl turned into a smile. His hand was snatched and kissed before it was released.
Alberto was loved.
“When I was younger, Mamma took me to a former colleague of hers for my first attempt at modelling. But I was bad, so bad… You should have seen the look on her face. Like she couldn’t fathom that anyone could be so bad at this.”
Perhaps he had misread her reaction that time as well. Perhaps she was simply sad for him, for his inability to smile, even then. Perhaps if he had not been missing the voice he had since reclaimed, they would have left the studio that time. And never returned.
“The third session we did together, Mamma thought I couldn’t relax with her hovering around nervously, as she tends to do. She changed her approach and left us between men , as she said. The photographer was famous, but he didn’t act like it. He was kind to me. I confessed I was nervous, and he was really sweet about it. He said…” Alberto trailed off, doubt rising in his mind. Where was he going with this?
“What did he say, pollito ?” Mathias asked softly, and unhelpfully. Hisfingers reached toward Alberto’s wrist and made but the briefest contact. That simple touch was enough to bring Alberto back to his senses.
“He said ‘Third time’s the charm.’ I didn’t know this one. It made me laugh at the time.”
“And did it work?”
Alberto gave Mathias a long look. He didn’t feel like answering. He searched for his next words with a frown. “One of us got what they wanted.”
Mathias’s smile froze at the edges. “What does that mean?”
“Well…” Alberto gave a practised little shrug. “Don’t you love the pictures?”
“Oh!” Mathias’s expression relaxed. “It was those pictures! He took them after his pep talk.”
Alberto acquiesced with a nod.
“I still think about them, sometimes… Your little face in the basement. ”
“Pervert.”
“Don’t joke about that stuff!” Mathias made a grimace of disgust. “It’s not like that… It’s like… It’s like he captured your innocence perfectly.”
With a dry laugh, Alberto briefly pressed himself into Mathias’s side. His lupetto was so good. Nothing to be afraid of. “Yes… he was artful that way. But guess what? I wasn’t impressed. Since he warned me my mother wouldn’t get it, and since I didn’t want to make her cry, that’s how I got the brilliant idea of shaving my head. Right before the next shoot.” He did a little bow. “Hence the nickname...”
“Britney,” Mathias breathed, his eyes flickering.
“With the scar on the back of my skull, I looked like Frankenstein’s pet, so when Mamma saw me, she didn’t cry, but she fainted. And weirdly enough, she put all the blame on her husband Martin. I didn’t get it until last night, but he was kind of an asshole, and she might have thought he gave me the clippers on purpose. And that’s how I ended up moving back to France, to her new friend Dimitri’s house.” Alberto paused, wondering. “What the hell was up with that? It never occurred me to ask. It was around this time I just stopped caring about everything. Just like that. ”
Alberto had nothing more to add. He waited for Mathias’s reaction. Mathias appeared lost in dark thoughts of his own, his hands searching for his pockets despite having left his hoodie at The Cabin. Already missing his smile, Alberto eagerly changed the subject.
“Do you want to know something cool?”
“Huh?” Mathias returned to reality with a start. “Oh, yes. Always.”
“I asked my mother last night. About her, and your dad. And they are truly friends.”
It took a moment for the information to reach Mathias’s brain, but the results were worth it: the coveted smile returned larger than before. “Truly, truly?”
“Truly, truly. They met at one of those useless parent-teacher meetings and realised they were both as miserable as their children. Isn’t that neat?”
“Oh…”
“So, don’t worry. You can keep fucking me like a wild beast day and night, it won’t be awkward a bit.”
“Christ, pollito .” Mathias’s cheeks darkened from embarrassment—or something else. He stepped away from Alberto. “That mouth of yours! ”
“You love it, admit it.”
Mathias seemed about to say something, but he pressed his lips together instead. Silence stretched between them, unnatural this time. Looking at him, Alberto’s stomach twisted again, and the pain brought a grimace to his face.
“Are you okay, Alberto?” Mathias asked in a muted voice. “I feel like… I feel like something’s not okay.”
Alberto scanned their surroundings. They were far from being alone, but they were also isolated enough that they wouldn’t be overheard. “Let’s sit down. There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Mathias immediately tensed. His gaze drifted toward the ocean before falling back on Alberto’s face. “Okay.” The hint of resignation in his voice gripped Alberto’s chest with guilt, but he too was concerned, stretched taut by the weight of his expectations. What would happen once the words had left his mouth?
Would he wait for him?
Would Alberto wait if he were in his place?
“Thank you. For taking me here. I really like this place.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Mathias said. “You can stay as long as you want.”
“I can’t. I’m leaving tomorrow with my mother.”
Mathias’s expression fell, the corners of his mouth turning down.
“I have to go,” Alberto said too quickly. “I can’t just wish everything away, and we can’t just keep using sex as some sort of messed up therapy, because it clearly wasn’t working.”
“Is that what we were doing?” Mathias sounded surprised.
“What did you think we were doing?”
“I have no idea… I just wanted to be close to you. Any way you’d let me.”
“You got pretty close,” Alberto teased.
Mathias wasn’t amused. His brow was furrowed, his lips had turned pale. “But are you going back to Colette?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Is it because of Kayvin?” And there was a sudden flash of hope in Mathias’s eyes. “Because if it’s because of Kayvin, you don’t need to. He’s been expelled.”
Alberto had every intention of saying his piece. But this particular bit of news made him lose the train of his thoughts. “Kayvin has been expelled? Seriously? Why? ”
“Why?” Mathias leaned away with a stunned look. “I know he threatened you. Joy told me she overheard him.”
“Oh.”
“She won’t say what Kayvin told you. But I’ve been wondering?—”
“There’s no point talking about that.” Alberto didn’t want to revisit that conversation, which he suspected had pried open the door he had so carefully kept locked in his mind. “But I never complained, and it happened outside of school, so…”
“Kayvin had a history of threatening others, he punched Eric last year, and there were already complaints against him. But somehow, whatever he said to you was bad enough that Van Bergen lost it when Joy finally told him. Kayvin was gone the same day.” Mathias waited a moment before adding, “School’s kinda okay without him. Eric’s captain of the football team again. You should stay.”
Alberto rolled his eyes. “Oh well, if Eric is captain…”
“Okay, okay.” Mathias held up his hands with a half-smile. “You’re really not going to tell me what Kayvin said to you?”
“No. And it has nothing to do with Kayvin. I’m just going away.”
Mathias said nothing for a while, his gaze fixed on the ocean, no doubt battling thoughts about the best way to react to all this. A bitter taste rose in Alberto’s throat, and he swallowed with a grimace.
“You really think that’s what you were doing with me, then?” Mathias spoke at last. “Sex as therapy?”
“I’m not sure,” Alberto said. “But despite what my good friend Berko says, sex is definitely not a viable form of therapy. For me, at least.”
Mathias’s gaze darkened, but he kept silent, his head dipped between his knees. “You want to go back to Meudon?”
“Not Meudon. Somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet. Somewhere nice. Somewhere I can get better. I want to live without meds, or at least without that constant feeling I’m in the shadows. Mamma said I’d get a new therapist, a good one this time, and?—”
“A new long-legged friend who distributes blowjobs behind dumpsters.”
Alberto was forced to snicker. “Look at you. You’re so possessive.”
“I know. I know. It’s just…” Mathias closed his eyes. “I just told you that I loved you.”
“I know. ”
“And you’re saying that you’re leaving.”
“I’m leaving to get better so I have a better chance at…” Life . “Everything.”
Mathias shot him a quick glance.
“So we have a better chance.”
“We?” Mathias hung his head. He didn’t appear to believe him. The thought threatened to shatter Alberto’s fragile confidence.
“And if you have a mind to you know, wait…” he offered anyway, a tinge of fear in his voice. “Then maybe, we can… when I come back…”
“Oh.” Mathias lifted his head. “You want me to wait?”
Alberto hesitated. His face was burning, his stomach was in knots. One more word, and it would be done. He would know.
“Yes.”
Alberto waited. His blood pounded in his ears, relentlessly. His vision was filled with the sand covering Mathias’s sneakers. The grains seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heart.
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
“All right then,” Mathias said. “That’s settled.”
“You—”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He knew.
The unbearable amount of tension Alberto had been carrying — since Mathias’s confession, since the note, since the visit, perhaps even since that first fateful kiss — left Alberto so abruptly, he became lightheaded. “I should be sitting,” he said, his arse already firmly settled on the sand. He gripped Mathias’s bicep for support. “Really?” he dared, just to make sure.
Mathias was smiling. There was sorrow in his eyes, and a deep affection Alberto was still unfamiliar with. He patted his hand, then linked their fingers together. “Whatever you want, Alberto. Whatever you need.”
A sudden arrival of tears threatened to turn this scene into another embarrassing memory. Alberto promptly wiped them with the back of his hand before Mathias could notice, and doing so, he caught sight of the French fries shack waiting for customers. The smell was no longer turning his stomach.
“You know what?” Alberto said, perplexed. “I’m feeling hungry.”
The notion of feeding Alberto always seemed to make Mathias perk up for some reason. “Really? Do you want me to make you something? I could?—”
Alberto motioned toward the shack.
“Junk food?” Mathias asked, shocked. “You want junk food?”
“I really do.”
Mathias didn’t say more. He sprung up to his feet in a cloud of sand. “Be right back.”
He returned shortly after with a steaming portion of fries wrapped in greasy paper and doused in both ketchup and mayo. Alberto couldn’t remember the last time he ate anything like this, if ever. He stared at his portion with an adoration that could have made Mathias jealous.
“Don’t tell my mother how much I wanted this, okay?”
With an amused snort, Mathias crouched by his side and leaned in to kiss him.
Alberto froze when their lips met. He immediately looked over his shoulder. “Wait!”
“What?” Mathias was smiling. “No one knows us here.”
Alberto flattened his hand against his chest and gently pushed him away. “You’re not afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Getting beat up.”
Mathias shook his head. “Let them come,” he said, holding up his fist. “I’ll introduce them to my gay agenda.”
The nonchalant confidence with which he spoke gave Alberto pause. He realised his mouth had fallen open again. “I’m not gone yet.”
“I know.”
“We still have time.”
“Okay…”
“Let’s eat fast, and you can have your way with me again.” Alberto arched his eyebrow suggestively. “Think you can take me?”
The light in Mathias’s eyes brightened, the big bad wolf within rearing its sensual head again. Alberto shoved a handful of fries into his own mouth to avoid telling him the stupid sappy thing seeking release from his chest. The sudden burst of flavour hitting his tongue elicited from him a gasp of surprise. So deliciously indecent, he salivated.
“It’s better than sex,” Alberto said, mildly astonished.
“No, it’s not,” Mathias replied with an aggrieved expression. He turned away from Alberto. “Not sex with you, anyway. ”
His wounded tone made Alberto laugh. When Mathias glanced at him next, his smile had extended to his eyes, warm and soft.
Alas, the wildlife had other plans. Alberto had not enjoyed more than a handful of fries before a bastard French seagull swooped down from the sky and snatched the entire packet from his hands.
“That fucker!” Mathias burst out, rising to chase after him.
Staring at his empty hands, Alberto couldn’t help laughing. “Leave it, Mathias. It’s not worth the trouble.”
“Oh, it’s definitely worth it.” Mathias’s eyes were burning. “I’m not gonna let it get away with this!”
As Mathias wasted time and energy—better spent in bed—hopping after the expert seagull who was no doubt laughing at him, Alberto remained seated, watching.
He remembered the house in Napoli. The fluttering curtains, the floral scent of Mamma’s locks. The gilded mirror reflecting her face, all black and blue. He remembered the fear, his heart pounding through his chest so hard he could see it, crouching at the bottom of the antique wardrobe, waiting for the violence to end, and for his mother’s quiet sobs to begin. He remembered two dark eyes bearing down on him before his vision turned black. He remembered floating for a long, long time. He remembered a journey on a train, the dazzling swagger of Martin, horror films, Philip’s smile, and the flash of his camera. The heat of his breath on his neck. The neon lights. The crack in the mirror. The handprint, visible, and the moment he turned away. He remembered the clippers, the way Stasia laughed at his scar the first time they met on her manicured lawn. He remembered Eric’s coldness, the scorn in his eye, the way he strolled away. He remembered Zak’s sharp tone as he said, “I heard that,” and the way Michael’s hand reached out to him. Are you okay?
His eyelids fluttered closed. Unseen by all, Alberto’s chest rose and fell evenly.
He saw it. All .
He saw himself sitting in a cosy room, flowers in bloom, telling a blonde woman about his secrets. He saw his departure, Mamma driving, the radio on, her radiant smile to come home to. He saw himself rushing forward in a straight line, falling again in Mathias’s arms. And then the roller coaster. The sex, the fights, the meals shared face-to-face. Secrets whispered in the night. More sex, more fights, a horrible breakup that would leave them both scarred, amputated. He saw himself rise from the wreckage again, and again, Mathias’s hand holding on to his. He saw the cake, the guests, the moment they glimpsed each other. Superior. I do. I do . He saw all that, and more.
A short distance away, out of breath, Mathias had given up but wore a triumphant look, his fist lifted over his head. Three fries clutched within it. He looked like a god, backlit by a setting sun.
Alberto saw him, and he smiled.
A real smile.
The End