"It's—no, you don't have to—it was one night, and I—" He stops and squeezes his eyes shut. "It was one fucking night."
When I turn toward him on the bench, my knee lands against the top of his thigh. It should be enough for him to look at me again, but his eyes are still closed and I can't do anything but reach for the side of his head, my thumb tracing the curve of his eyebrow.
"You and I both know we're not here because of one night."
Jamie slowly surrenders to the eye contact we need. "Nothing really happened."
"Everything happened."
"And you still want hammocks and frozen lakes."
"In four years," I say, dropping my hand from his face.
I stand a second later because I don't want to stay here for more promises we shouldn't make. He follows my lead, but closes the distance between us, and I'm fiercely relieved we'll have to turn our backs on each other if we want to make it home.
But we don't go anywhere yet.
"Do you want to take your hoodie back now?" he asks.
"No," I answer, my fingertips already digging into the fabric at his sides. My hands cling to him there, and I think I'd scream if the ocean would care. "I want to kiss you. I want to hear all the different ways you can say my name. I want to tell you that you don't have tocome out, and I don't have to worry about my job, and neither of us has to worry about Harper, because we can come back to this bench over and over again—to this place where real life will leave us alone. I want somanythings, but no, I don't want my hoodie back."
Jamie hums and lets me see how much he struggles with his next exhale while he thinks of what else to say. I can’t tell whether he’s after pain or some relief from it, but then he reaches down to cover my hands with his, forcing me to let him go just as my first teardrop falls.
"Just remember, everyone loves you, Mr. Z. Or could, soon enough."
Relief. Pain.
“I know. And I could love them, too.”
Chapter Five: Jamie
(I Told Him Not to Miss Me)
"Yes, Harper! That's yours! Go, go, go!"
I'm silent as I drink from my water bottle and listen to Mateo cheer for my daughter. She'd busted her ass to make varsity, and to say I'm overwhelmed watching her hard work pay off would be a massive understatement. The first game of the season is almost over, and Harper's just beat two opposing players to the ball. She's dribbling up the far side of the field and—
"If her coach thinks she's doing a good job, maybe he should've let her play more," Danielle mutters.
I side-eye my ex, then return my attention to the team’s offensive push when I answer. "She's a freshman on a team full of talented players. She wasn't sure she'd be playing at all today, so these six or seven minutes are great. He'll probably give her varsity experience as a sub for a while, and she'll earn her way up from there."
"If she'd stayed in club soccer, she wouldn't need a few extra minutes of experience now."
"She decided to quit.Shedid," I say. "I wasn't going to stop her."
Danielle scoffs. "No, of course not."
I'm being baited, but while I'm no stranger to several versions of this fight, it's easy to distract myself with a glance at Mateo. It's been three months since he and I met—two and a half since he walked away from my hillside bench—and this is the closest I've been to him. Harper's success in his class has left me off the hook for the parent-teacher conferences others suffer. Picking her up from soccer practice hasn't required me to leave my car.
I'll be seeing him regularly now, from whatever distance will allow me to act as both attentive father and guarded egotist. Throughout my life, my selfishness has known few bounds. Now I'm afraid of being near the one man who could make me cross those last couple of lines. Harper deserves better, though. So does Mateo. He isn’t ready for us to be friends, and I’m not sure he’s wrong. I stay where I am and fracture from the inside out.
"He's kinda cute," Danielle muses. "The soccer coach. Maybe I could go talk to him about Harper after the game."
"You're not his type."
She crosses her arms defiantly. "Since when am I not someone's type? For fuck's sake, I wasyourtype even after you hated me."
The whistle blows. Harper's team celebrates. I take a long look at Mateo while I know he won't be looking at me. There's a handshake line and a chorus ofgood game, good game, good game. Some parents and friends move closer for congratulatory hugs, and it creates a barrier I can approach without crossing into anything dangerous.