"Not really?" I echo, pulling my hand back while my heart screams.
"My grandfather is sick, and my grandmother needs help around the house. They live about two hours away, and I'm on summer break, so I'm—" He pauses to take a deep breath and never looks away. "Everyone else has kids or work, but going away right now won't mess with my job. I can stay there for a while."
"You're leaving."
"For a while," Mateo says again.
"And you came over to tell me in person."
"I came over to see you before I go. I miss you and I'm tired of not saying that."
I look toward the backyard, and a bench I can’t see. "I miss youtoo, but what happens if we’re not going to lie about that? We’re friends who haven’t spent any time together—"
“In a year, like you said when you were in New York.”
“So what changes if we tell the truth?”
"I'll be gone the rest of the summer," Mateo says, and I don’t care that he’s ignored my question when I’m distracted by hair I want to tuck behind his ear. "There's a chance I won't see you again until after school starts."
"Harper will be a junior."
"It should be a good season for us."
He's talking about soccer, but I want theusto mean more. Almost two years ago, we drove away from Kai's and toward the rest of our lives, and it still feels so far from where we are now. Something good would be great, but I expect Harper's team to succeed where Mateo and I can't. I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for the man I so badly want to stay.
Of course, his plans to leave mean I have little to lose by asking for exactly that.
"Don't go."
"Jamie—"
"I don't mean to your grandparents' house," I say. "But now. Here. You're gonna walk away anyway, so spend the day with me first. Give us something more to miss. Give us a different way to hurt. Let us fuck up with our eyes wide open."
There's so much happening when a few expressions play across his face, and I can't predict what he'll do. He's mad at me for wanting to cross this small line. He wants us to cross them all. He's sorry that this will be the last time we see each other for weeks. Months. He's hopeful an afternoon at my house will lead to fewer regrets than whatever happened among mirrors and canyons. He knows very few people say no to me. He thinks he should be one of them, even whenhe's desperate for the same delicate pain he already knows.
Mateo looks me up and down, then glances over his shoulder to squint at the summer sun. I can't take my eyes off him right away, this man close to surrendering to borrowed time because I've asked, and we both know he could've said goodbye on the phone.
“Let’s sit by the pool,” he finally says. “We can talk.”
I slip past him to open the door and lead us into the backyard. I’m not sure what he had in mind—there are patio chairs around a table or lounge chairs lined up poolside—but I lower myself to the stone surrounding the pool. I tug my sweatpants up to my thighs before putting my feet in the water, and it exposes scars I hadn’t expected him to see like this. There’s more than one way to fuck up an afternoon together.
Mateo sits next to me and looks at my leg without pretending otherwise. “I guess swimming helps, even after all these years. Low-impact, as a physical benefit. Almost meditative, as an emotional one.”
“Maybe I just like being naked out here.”
“Maybe you do,” he smiles, his feet slowly kicking back and forth. "So, did you really spend spring break at Taylor McKeon's house?"
"Did you really look me up online?"
"I wanted to know who your other friends were."
The bitch in me wants to say something about still not having those, but if I can't let Mateo go, I at least need to avoid old arguments with him. Then there's a flare of panic when I remember Taylor's sister and her friend and a basement nowhere near as warm as the shower I took afterward, but I don't think I've been lured into a trap.
"What did the internet have to say?"
"A lot about your rivalry, on and off the ice. A recap of how he set records about ten years before you came along to break them, and how his success with women might've been the one way hehad you beat, no matter how much the league plastered your face everywhere."
"He and Danielle slept together once."