Page 39 of Meet You Half Way
“And do you think he is okay with who you are?”
“I get the impression he would stand by me, yeah,” I said.
“Well then. Dante might be a good place for you to start, Mateo,” Jamie told me, rising to his feet and waiting for me to do the same.
CHAPTER 16
jamie
Mateo had taken me by surprise today. It was not often that someone was able to shock me but he had, shocked me down to my very core. Not only because he had finally been the one to reach out to me, and not just because his car was broken down, but he’d opened up to me in a way that I doubted he’d done with many other people before.
Seeing him sitting there in the café, so open and vulnerable with me had rocked me right to my centre, leaving me feeling like I needed to scoot over to the other side of the booth and hold him in my arms. I’d done the next best thing and invited him back to my place although I hoped I’d conveyed sufficiently enough that I did not mean for sex. He looked like he could do with a little coddling today and that was something that needed to be done with my arms and not my cock.
And that was why I found myself walking along the beach on a dusky late afternoon with the most beautiful guy on the entire coast at my side. The weather had turned this week and the sky was grey, the waves a murky reflection of the storm clouds that were whipping in from offshore. And yet I felt entirely invigorated, at peace, serene and calm as Mateo walked at myside, the same feeling of tranquillity slowly coming over him the longer we walked.
We’d ditched our shoes on the sand a mile back and there really was nothing like getting the sand between your toes for a moment of reflection. Mateo still managed to look like a catwalk model with his linen shirt flapping in the breeze and those snug chinos showing him off in all the right places. But I got the strong impression Mateo could wear hessian sacks and make them look like high fashion.
“When I was a kid my dad used to bring me and my older sisters down here to the South Coast to go sailing. He’d hire a yacht or a small boat and the five of us would spend hours out on these waters,” I spoke. We hadn’t said much but the silences had been companionable and I hadn’t felt the need to break them.
“That sounds fun. Where did you grow up?”
“Just up in Wollongong,” I told him. “Me with my three older sisters who treated me as you can only imagine.”
“And your mum?”
“Yes, Mum was there too. She never came out on the water with us though. Never did get her sea legs.”
“I never had any brothers or sisters,” Mateo commented.
“Believe me, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be,” I grinned. “There was a big age gap between the three girls and me so by the time I came along I was pretty much just a doll to them. The things they used to make me do and wear. I’m glad we didn’t have too much photographic evidence.”
“That’s a shame,” he chuckled. “I wouldn’t have minded seeing you all dolled up in a dress.”
“Makeup too. Sometimes my hair if it was long enough to pull into a hair tie.”
“Maybe you were born into the wrong family. I’m pretty sure I would have loved that kind of attention,” Mateo grinned.
I laughed. “Of course you would. You would have looked a hell of a lot prettier than I did too.”
“Yeah, that square cut jaw and broad shoulders do not exactly lend themselves to pretty dresses and makeup.”
“The shoulders weren’t always so broad,” I told him, liking the way his eyes traced across my skin.
“I can imagine. Are they all still there? Up in Wollongong?”
“We’re all scattered far and wide these days. Mum and Dad are still there but my sisters are all over the place. Louise is the closest in age to me and she lives in Berlin.”
“And were your parents okay with … you know? You?” he asked quietly, eyes dropping to the ground.
“Yeah, they were okay about it, Mateo,” I told him. “I think I laid the groundwork pretty early on for them though. I got caught kissing one of the boys in my kindy class and my teacher of course told my folks. They thought it was pretty amusing at the time but they didn’t blink an eyelid when I brought home a boy in high school.”
“You’re lucky,” he said.
“I know I am,” I agreed, reaching over and squeezing his hand. He squeezed back and then shocked me even more when he didn’t let go. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself, walking along the beach, holding Mateo’s hand. But I threaded my fingers through his, pulling him closer and smiling when he came easily. I mean, the beach was all but deserted at this hour and with this approaching weather but it sparked a light inside me anyway.
We walked until the water met the cliffs and then we stood and watched the waves crashing against the rocks, me with my arms around Mateo, him leaning against my chest, feeling my heart expand impossibly higher. The wind suddenly whipped in off the coast and Mateo shivered in my arms. I dropped my hand down his arm, threading our fingers back together and thenturned back the way we had come, his hand still in mine and me feeling like I didn’t know how to explain, only that it was clear that all I wanted was to one day hope to make this beautiful boy truly mine.
We dropped hands when we made it back to our shoes and then walked back to my apartment, stopping at the local Vietnamese restaurant for takeaway. The wind was really blowing the storm in from the ocean by then and we felt the first big drops of fat rain just as we neared my apartment.
