Page 20 of Meet You Half Way
ME:
This is Jamie btw.
I waited all of a minute before my phone lit up with a ping and I was as pathetic as you might imagine as I scrambled to read it.
MATEO:
Did Rob give you my number?
I smiled inwardly at that response. I hardly knew the guy but that just seemed such a typical Mateo reply that I felt a little welling of fondness in my gut.
ME:
A good journalist never reveals
his sources.
MATEO:
I’ll take that as a yes.
ME:
Take it how you will as long as you
take up my offer for a drink?
Bubbles appeared. Bubbles went. Bubbles appeared again and I wondered when I had stopped breathing.
MATEO:
Where? And when.
ME:
I can meet you somewhere in Espy?
Tonight? Tomorrow?
My heart waited up in my throat while Mateo drew out his response in the cruellest of ways. I was getting the strong impression that he liked having guys fall all over their feet over him. I was probably no better than all the others who had come before me. Still, I couldn’t avoid the clammy hands and heart palpitations as his responsefinallycame through.
MATEO:
I can do a coffee in Ives
tomorrow morning.
Okay. That was something I could live with even though I hadn’t failed to note that he didn’t want to meet up in his home town. Or at night time. I’d been prepared to drive up from Sorrento to meet him wherever or whenever he wanted but I could do a coffee at Ives Inlet. It was the town wedged in between Sorrento and Esperance anyway so it made sense.
ME:
Sounds perfect. I’ll meet you half way.
10am. Cat’s Cradle?
He didn’t reply again but he put a little love heart response over my text so I took that as his agreement and tried to get my heart rate to settle down. Lucky I kept the AED machine around in case of emergencies but I had a feeling my current case of arrythmia had nothing to do with a medical episode and everything to do with the way Mateo, whose last name I didn’t even know, made my heart race.
Time to rectify that tomorrow over a nice cup of morning coffee.
