yeah so I originally planned to wait to release this chapter cause I don't have the next one written yet, but I'm so proud of this chapter and I wanna share it with y'all now!
warning for sadness and discussion of mental health, take care of yourself babes x
the poetry quoted is by pablo neruda (same poem as last time) and margaret atwood ("flying inside your own body")
When he woke up the next morning in the guest-room bed, Paul took a second to figure out how he had ended up there and not in the living room. Once he thought about it, he could dimly remember Anne shaking him awake and helping him upstairs. It took another few seconds to work out that Anne was leaning over him in reality, not just in memory.
"Good morning, Paul," she said softly. "I'm sorry to wake you up this early, but you'll want to see this."
"What?" he asked blearily, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. It was light outside, but not overly so.
"I want to show you something on the beach. We can only see it now because of the tides." Anne checked her watch. "I'll go and wake Mateo and give you time to wake up." She ducked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Paul sat in bed for a few more minutes, getting ready for the day, before pulling on fresh clothes and yesterday's jumper. His dreams were slowly coming back to him. They'd been slow and gentle and warm, though he didn't remember any faces or events.
Downstairs, Paul saw Anne packing food into a picnic basket and Mateo sitting on a bar stool, scrunched up inside his sweatshirt. Mateo tended to be better than Paul at getting up in the morning, but it had been a late night, after all.
"Ready?" Anne asked, looking up at him. "I have granola bars, fruit, and cheese sticks, and we can have a proper breakfast when we get back."
"Okay," Paul said, deciding to put all his faith in whatever it was Anne was planning.
Paul was reluctant to leave the nice warm house. Outside, frosty leaves crunched underfoot, and he could see his breath. He snuggled up against Anne, who wrapped her arm around him. Mateo hesitated before crossing to Anne's other side, and she chuckled before enfolding him in her other arm.
"We'll only be able to see it for about half an hour, so we'll be back to the house soon," Anne said. She let go of Paul's shoulder to check her watch. "We'll be right on time." She wrapped her arm more snugly around Paul, and their lopsided four-legged-race unit continued down to the beach. None of them felt like saying much. There was no wind, which was a mercy, but the cold air still felt as though it would whip through them in an instant if they opened their mouths.
One half of the beach was rocky and pebbled. The other half had a smooth spread of sand perfect for building sandcastles. There was one lone figure, far down that end of the beach, apparently throwing something for a big black dog to chase. But Anne led the boys to the rocky end of the beach. The water was at lowest tide, so they could pick their way over and through the rocks without too much difficulty. Finally, they arrived at a boulder that, to Paul, looked like every other boulder on the beach.
Anne stepped away from them and bowed grandly, sweeping one arm to show off whatever was behind the boulder. Paul and Mateo stepped forward; Paul gasped. It was a cave! He moved farther into the cave to see better. It seemed to have one main cavity that led off to many smaller cavities, some only a foot or two high, others tall enough for him to walk through with his head bent. Paul reached forward to touch one of the walls. It was rough and wet, some parts covered in moss. It was honeycombed with holes formed over years and years of weathering. Each breath of chill, salty air was bracing. There was an edge of seaweed to the air, too.
"This is so cool!" he and Mateo said at once, and laughed.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Anne asked, touching the walls and looking up at the ceiling of the cave. "I come here sometimes to think and write in my journal."
Paul tucked himself into a boy-sized cavity in the back wall. He reached down to touch the sand and scrunched it between his fingers. It was rough, with large pieces of seashells and other beach material. He shifted to lie on his stomach and examined one of the tunnels at ground level. It was barely big enough for a cat to get into.
"My rock people would love to live somewhere like this, though I guess they couldn't all live in the same cave. The Golden Lady would have to live somewhere else so Nora wouldn't get jealous."
"They would, wouldn't they?" Anne smiled. "I haven't thought about the rock people in ages."
"Who are the rock people?" Mateo asked, turning from where he was running his fingers over the honeycomb wall.
"My imaginary friends from when I was younger," Paul said, reaching into the tunnel with one arm. He patted the sand, feeling for anything interesting. "They were rocks on the beach near my grandmother's house. Oh, look at this!" He pulled a shell out of the tunnel and brushed the sand off its surface. It was a fairly large shell, glimmering purple, with a cluster of barnacles along one edge.
"That's awesome!" Mateo said.
"You can keep it if you like," Anne said.
"That's okay. Shells never look as pretty when you take them home." Paul set the shell on the sand and dusted off his hands.
Once they'd satisfied themselves looking at the cave, Anne asked if they wanted to go right home. Both Paul and Mateo wanted to look at the tide pools, so Anne set out the picnic blanket on a big smooth rock while they looked for starfish. They only found one big orange starfish, but they did find many crabs of all different sizes and colors. Mateo found a prickly green sea urchin. Then they settled down for a snack. Paul felt fully awake by now and full of energy; he felt as though he could have run all the way down the long beach and back, but he just relaxed with his back against a rock and ate apple slices.
"How many mermaids do you think have washed up here?" Paul asked Anne.
Anne looked out at the bay. "I think this bay is relatively safe, so they wouldn't wash up very often. But over the years, probably at least five? Just imagine an ordinary person living in the village, coming down to walk their dog in the morning, and they find a mermaid with her hair all spread over the sand…"
"Why is it always 'her'?" Mateo interjected.
"Well, because mermaids are women, of course! There's 'merman' and 'merperson' for the other members of their society," Anne said.
"But why would it just be mermaids washing up?" he persisted. "You specifically didn't mention the gender of the person finding them, but ensured it was a mermaid that washed up."
"Oh, that's because Anne is imagining herself as the villager, and she'd rather bump into a mermaid," Paul explained, nudging Anne's foot with his own. Anne blushed, or perhaps it was the chill morning that made her cheeks so rosy.
"Paul's got me there," she said.
"Well, if I was the villager in this fine village," Mateo said, jumping to his feet. He casually strolled down the beach, throwing an imaginary stick and calling, "Go get it, Spot! That's a good boy!" Then he stopped short and clapped his hands to his cheeks in a silent-movie expression of shock. "A merman! I didn't think mermen were real!" He carefully knelt on a patch of sand between rocks and held his head over the merman's chest, listening for a heartbeat. "He's alive! Help me get him to the ocean! You, sir! You look like you're nice and strong!"
Paul got to his feet, suppressing a grin. "Don't you think we should take him to a doctor first? Or a vet?"
"I think he'll die without water!" Mateo responded. "Maybe we could pour water on him?"
Paul grabbed an imaginary bucket off the ground, hoisted it into the air, and poured it over the merman; Mateo jumped back to avoid the spray of water.
"Look at that! Did you see him breathe?"
"Aye aye, cap'n!" Paul called, and bent to refill his bucket. "We'll save him yet!"
Mateo bent to pick up the merman. He huffed and puffed before standing to his full height, arms out in front of him, supporting the merman. Paul turned to look at him and caught his breath. Mateo's eyes were sparkling and his skin was glowing in the chill air. In his cable-knit sweater, he looked the part of a twentieth-century lighthouse keeper rescuing a merman. Mateo caught Paul's eyes and grinned. "Are you coming?"
"Coming where?"
"To the ocean, of course! We have to get him back in the water!" Mateo raced for the water, giving up the pretense that he was carrying something heavy, and Paul ran after him. He could feel that extra energy he'd felt before thumping through his body with the salty air he took in with big breaths, and he realised halfway to the water that he didn't feel cold anymore.
"Here we are! Mr. Merman sir, here we are!" Mateo again took up his merman-carrying pose before carefully setting his cargo on the edge of the water. "I'm sorry, the water is too cold for me to go in. You'll have to swim." Paul couldn't hold back his giggles anymore. Mateo turned to him, brow creased, and said, "The health and safety of our mer-friends is no laughing matter, sir!"
"No, you're absolutely right," Paul said, through giggles. "You have done excellent work today in saving this merman."
"Why, thank you!" Mateo swept a deep bow. He turned to see the merman swimming away. "There he goes."
Paul instinctively threw his arms around his friend. His curls weren't there to tickle Paul's nose anymore, but he still smelled his shampoo.
"Oh, hi," Mateo said, turning to hug Paul properly. Paul couldn't remember if they'd ever properly hugged before, but if they had, it hadn't been like this. He could still feel the chilly wind on his ears and fingers, but he felt totally safe and warm. Finally he released his friend and grinned.
"Last one back is a rotten egg!" He took off running, feeling the sand beneath his pounding footsteps. He wanted to keep running, so he circled around the rocky part of the beach to get to Anne. Mateo opted to pick his way through the rocks. They got there at the same time and grinned at each other, hands on knees, taking in the undiluted freshness of the morning.
Anne smiled at them both and stood up with the picnic basket on her arm. "I don't know about you two, but I'm getting pretty chilly."
"Yeah, let's head back," Paul agreed, and they trooped back to the house in a comfortable silence.
The rest of the day was quieter and slower after the high energy they felt on the beach. Paul and Mateo hung around the house all afternoon doing homework. It took them awhile to stop goofing off and get down to business, but Paul felt much better when he'd finally sunk his teeth into his essay. He was writing about planets and gravity, and he loved reading about the rules and forces that held planets together. When they paused for an early dinner, they found the conversation much less interesting than homework. Anne had had to leave to run some mysterious but important errands, and they were left with Priscilla, Phil, and Stella. Stella began the conversation with the sorts of questions Paul knew to expect from adults: how do you like school, what are your hobbies, what do you want to do after school.
"I'm so tired of that question, " Paul lamented to Mateo later. They had made the executive decision to leave the rest of the homework until Sunday so that they could enjoy Patty's Place. They each took a blanket to sit in front of the fire. Paul lay down beside the couch while Mateo lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
"Which question? They all stink," Mateo said. He took off his beanie, balled it up, and gently lobbed it at the ceiling. He caught it on the way down and threw it again.
"What I want to do after college." Paul could feel a variety of objections to the question bubbling up and couldn't decide which to voice, so he sighed and stayed quiet.
"They're just adults that barely know us. You could just make something up," Mateo pointed out, lobbing the beanie again.
"That feels dishonest," Paul said.
Mateo snorted. "That's because it literally is. But does it matter that much to you? It's barely even a lie, just tell them one of the things you're thinking about."
Paul was surprised by how cynical Mateo sounded. "I just...I guess it's a reminder that I don't really know what I..." Paul sighed. That was a lie. "I know what I want to do, but every time they ask, it reminds me that maybe it's impractical. It is impractical. And I don't want to think about that."
Mateo flipped onto his stomach, resting his head on his splayed arms and gazing down at Paul. Shadows played across his face. "You mean being a writer, yeah?"
"Yeah. " Paul sighed. "Yeah, I want...I need to be a writer."
"So do it, " Mateo said. "Listen. It's not like I don't know what they all say about dreams. But I think you could really do it, you know? Don't go into it thinking you're gonna sit down and write the Great American Novel. Just write a bit when you feel like it, or every day, or whatever, and then you might end up with a book. And you're a really good writer. Anything you write would be worthy of...Of... Well, it would be good. Really good. I bet you could get a magazine to publish your shopping list." Mateo had seemed very serious during the whole speech, gesturing with one hand, but at that last remark he reached down and booped Paul's nose. He let his fingers linger, trailing across Paul's cheek, before pulling his hand back to his body. Paul couldn't be sure whether Mateo was pink because of the fire, or… or…
"Are you sure?" he said finally, because he didn't know what else to say. Mateo was often so laid back, and just then he'd been filled with conviction.
"Yeah. I'm sure," Mateo said. He sat up and pulled his legs into his chest, wrapping his arms around them. Paul sat up too, pulling the blanket more snugly around his shoulders.
"What about you?" Paul asked. He never heard Mateo talk about his plans.
"I don't know. Maybe a teacher or an editor or something." He smiled wanly.
"You don't seem excited."
Mateo seemed to curl in on himself a little bit. He rested his head on his knees. "it's not my dream, but I want to be able to support my family. The one I have and the one I'll make. We've always been like that, you know? Looking out for each other."
Paul scooched closer to where Mateo was sitting. He reached one hand out of the blanket and reached toward Mateo's foot. It seemed strange to touch his sock-covered foot, so he touched Mateo's ankle instead. "That's noble."
"Don't say it's noble," Mateo responded, more forcefully than Paul expected. "It's just what I want. And I do like English. Don't," he added, "ask me what I would do if I could do anything."
"Jeez, I'm sorry," said Paul reflexively. He withdrew his hand from Mateo's ankle.
"No, wait, sorry. I just don't want you to feel sorry for me." Mateo sighed and smiled at Paul. "I'll have a fun job, but I won't center my life around it. I hate that adults make us feel like our jobs will be the most important thing! I'm gonna live around here, close to all my siblings. I want to have pets, and a husband, and kids. My house will always be full of friends." He smiled dreamily.
Paul thought about that. It sounded wonderful. He hadn't really considered his future before, not seriously. All his daydreams were so far from what he thought his future could be, and he didn't really know how to start thinking about a realistic future. Mateo's vision of his future sounded like a thing he could enjoy, as much as it sounded completely alien. Paul had no cousins, no aunts and uncles. Only Grandmother and his father. He could imagine the pets he'd have: a tabby cat, maybe a wolfhound. Something big and calm. They'd take long walks on the beach and Paul would daydream in the salty ocean air. Maybe he'd even get to come home to a husband making breakfast for them both... Without quite realising, he let out a happy sigh. Mateo smiled down at him.
"Soon we'll be outta here and we'll be able to do whatever we want to," he said, and to Paul it sounded like he meant "we, you and me." He looked up at Mateo, still smiling down at him. His throat suddenly felt constricted, his heart raced, his hands were sweaty. God, he hated this part of having a crush. He didn't like being nervous. He noticed, as he was gathering his courage to do something, that Mateo was gazing at him with lips softly parted, one hand on the couch between them. Paul opened his mouth to say something-
"Boys?" Anne called. "I'm home, do you want brownies?"
Damn, damn, damn. He didn't say those words often, and he hadn't meant to now, but he thought them with a surprising amount of venom. Well, they had time. He could say something to Mateo tomorrow, or after brownies, or something. Paul sighed and stood up.
"Am I interrupting something?" Anne stood in the doorway, jacket half off, bag of groceries hanging off one arm. "I'm sorry, I'll just..." She turned and walked into the kitchen.
Mateo looked up at Paul from his seat on the couch. He stood up next to Paul, took his hand, and squeezed it. He dropped Paul's hand and walked ahead of him to the kitchen. "Hey, Anne," he said, and Paul could hear him asking something about her day. He couldn't move. His heart was pounding just as much as before, and now he had the added sensation of so many butterflies. He moved one foot in front of the other until he got to the kitchen.
"It's very warm by the fire, isn't it?" Anne twinkled. Paul put both hands to his cheeks and felt their warmth. He glared at Anne, who winked at him as she bit into a brownie.
He didn't quite know what to do with his hands, his arms, his body, his mouth. So he ducked to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He didn't know much about this sort of thing, but that didn't seem like a friendly hand squeeze. That felt like a "we got interrupted but we'll get back to it" hand squeeze. Over the past few months, he'd been so occupied with his own thoughts and feelings and trying not to be obvious that he hadn't spent a whole lot of time thinking about Mateo's end of the situation. Honestly, when he had thought about it, Mateo not being into him had felt like a no-brainer. But...
He dried his hands and re-entered the kitchen. Phil had joined them, and they all laughed at a joke Paul had missed. Paul felt even more wrong-footed. Maybe he should just go to bed. But Mateo looked over at him and smiled, a little secret smile that still had a melt to it, and Paul smiled back. That decided that. Even if he felt like he was being stomped on by elephants, he would stay.
After Phil and Anne said their goodnights, the latter reminding them not to stay up too late, the two boys stood awkwardly together in the kitchen. Paul was very aware of the distance between them.
"I think we have something to say to each other, hey?" Mateo said softly.
Paul's stomach swooped. "Yeah."
Mateo extended one hand, and Paul took it. They walked together to the living room and settled on the couch facing each other.
Paul felt that he owed it to Mateo to say something, since so far it had been the other boy taking the initiative. But he didn't know what to say. He felt as though "like" wasn't a strong enough verb, and "love" was too strong.
Mateo laughed a little. "Words not working for you?"
The tension broken, Paul laughed too. "And I'm supposed to be good with words."
Mateo moved closer to Paul. "This might do the trick." He leaned forward into Paul's space, slowly, letting him decide. Paul could hardly believe this was finally happening. He moved forward, heart thumping wildly, to meet Mateo's lips with his own. Mateo tasted like brownies. That was all Paul could register before Mateo pulled away, dark eyes taking in Paul's own. Paul hesitated for only a split second before kissing him again, deciding to let their lips do the talking. It was messy, of course, but all Paul could feel was joy.
Later, when Paul's lips felt buzzy and warm, he hugged Mateo goodnight and went up to bed. His whole body thrummed with new sensations, his mind with thoughts of Mateo. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep for ages. He went over to the window and leaned on the sill, gazing out at the sea. Their morning in the caves and around the tide pools, Mateo carrying an invisible merman, felt an eternity in the past.
He was unbelievably happy, but he suddenly remembered that their weekend was almost over, and then a wave of sorrow rushed up from his toes and bubbled over as tears. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor and let himself sink into this unexpected sorrow.
"Paul?" Mateo stood at the door. Looking at him made Paul sob again. In his pajamas, barefoot, worried, Mateo looked like a little boy. "Can I-"
"Yes," Paul choked out.
Mateo rushed over and dropped to his knees. He crouched in front of Paul, hands on Paul's knees, looking at him with liquid eyes that reflected the moonlight coming in through the window.
"It's not you," Paul managed.
"You don't have to talk now," Mateo said, moving one hand to Paul's arm and rubbing gently. He looked relieved, though, Paul noticed.
Paul took a few shuddering breaths. He wasn't totally clear about why he was crying, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been to separate himself from his tears. He wiped his eyes with the arm Mateo wasn't holding and took another, calmer, breath.
"I knew that school was less fun than it was at first, but I didn't realize that I felt like this. Until now, I guess. I don't wanna go back. I wanna stay here with you." He narrowly managed to avoid saying "forever," which was what he felt like saying at the moment.
Mateo couldn't help smiling, though it was wobbly on one side. "I wish I'd known."
"What, that I like you?" Paul let out a teary laugh.
"That too, but I meant about school." Mateo paused and shifted to sit beside Paul against the wall, taking Paul's hand in his and sandwiching it between both his hands. He laughed. "I've kinda figured you were into me for awhile, but I didn't know for sure until 'if you were not an amber week,'" he quoted. "That's the phrase that stood out to me. Sorry, but that's so cheesy!" He nudged Paul with his elbow. "I loved it, though," Mateo added in a softer voice.
Paul covered his face with both hands, speechless. "Oh," he said eventually. At first he couldn't believe his own foolishness in assuming Mateo had been asleep, but if it had brought him and Mateo together, he'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Mateo leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "So, school," he said.
"School," Paul said, more softly. "I love it. I just feel…" he took a moment to organize his messy thoughts. "I'm tired all the time. Not...tired tired." He struggled for an analogy. Temporarily stumped, he turned to poetry. "'A fine dust clogs the air I breathe in.'"
Mateo leaned his head against Paul's shoulder. "I'm sorry." He sighed. "We did that poem last week. I didn't memorize it, but wasn't the first half optimistic?"
"Yeah. 'When you breathe in you'll lift like a balloon and your heart is light too & huge, beating with pure joy, pure helium.'"
They breathed in together, breath after breath, oxygen and nitrogen instead of helium, melancholy instead of joy.
"I don't always know what to say," Mateo said. It surprised Paul; Mateo usually seemed steady and self-confident. "But you'll have that someday. I know you will."
"Right now I just want to breathe normally," Paul whispered.
"Will you let me help?" Mateo murmured back. Paul just squeezed his hand in response. Mateo kissed his cheek again.
"Will you stay?" Paul asked.
"As long as you need."
Night melted away around the two boys until it was just them, the two of them together against whatever the morning would bring.