The Coil (29 page)

“Oh, come on, Mattie….”

“No,” he ground out between clenched teeth, turning his body away sideways when Simon tried to reach for his hand. “I’m done, you hear me? I can’t wait for you anymore, not when it’s one step forward and then ten steps back. I thought—” His voice faltered slightly, and he swallowed hard. “I thought this was going somewhere, but I’m just kidding myself, aren’t I?” He clenched his jaw. “You can be so wonderful sometimes, just—just the best guy in the world, you know? But when push comes to shove, you let me down. You turn nasty.” He shook his head. “And I don’t need that shit.”

Simon’s mouth worked uselessly, unable to say anything for a second. “That’s not fair, Mattie.” His voice sounded weak and pleading even to him. “I—you don’t know what it’s like, you don’t
know
—”

“Oh, fuck you, Simon,” he said breathlessly. “You think you’re the only one who struggles? Stop using your kid as an excuse to keep me at a distance, because it’s
bullshit
. I’d be great with Jamie, and you know it. It’s you.
You’re
the problem. Either you’re too chickenshit to take a chance with me, or you just don’t care enough to.”

“I do want you,” he whispered. “I
—
I just don’t….” He trailed off, lost for words.

Mattie nodded and then turned away, taking a deep breath. When he looked at Simon again, his eyes shone with unshed tears, and he smiled without humor. “Screw you for leading me on,” he whispered. “And screw you for not having the balls to love me back.
Screw you
, Simon.”

“Simon?” Sarah appeared in the hallway, and much like his mother had, halted when noticing Mattie. “Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s Jamie. One of the boys pulled on his cape. You should probably come.”

Simon groaned and ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t move.

Sarah leaned around him, offering Mattie a shy smile. “Hi there, are you Mattie by any chance?”

Mattie looked back at Simon and shook his head once. “I’m nobody.” He turned and ignored Simon’s call as he slammed the front door closed behind him.

“
Fuck
,” Simon hissed.

“Simon, what did you—?”

Simon ignored her question, pushing past her and toward his son, who was calling for him.

Chapter Eight

S
IMON
stared at the blinking cursor. He’d been sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the open document for what felt like hours. The house was quiet. It had never bothered him before, but just recently it was all he could do to not turn on the stereo, TV, and radio just to not feel so alone. He supposed he could always go to the library, or find an Internet cafe to write in, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate there either. He sure as hell couldn’t go back to the diner, not after last time.

His voicemails went unanswered and his texts ignored. He’d taken one step into the diner three weeks ago, and Ty had more or less thrown him out—banning him, apparently—before he’d even made it to the sandwich counter. He hadn’t been there to work. His laptop had stayed home. He’d gone there in a desperate attempt to talk to Mattie, to apologize and beg him to just hear him out. Not that he even knew what to say.

He hated himself, pure and simple. He’d fucked up too many times with Mattie, and as the days had ticked by, he’d found he could no longer kid himself into thinking Mattie had overreacted. He’d strung him along and insulted him by keeping him away from his son. Neither had been deliberate, but that hardly mattered.

What made matters worse was that Jamie was picking up on his morose mood, but he could not shift the heavy feeling in his chest. He felt like he’d lost his best friend as well as his lover. He missed Mattie. He missed him so much that he just didn’t care about anything else. His usually pristine house was a mess. He hadn’t written more than a paragraph in the past four and a half weeks. He had his editor and Sarah breathing down his neck to get back into the swing of things—to get writing, to get Mattie back—to get on with his life either way. But he felt oddly stuck in place, unwilling to move on.

It’d been different with Tim. When Tim took off, he’d felt terrified, panicked even, at the thought of being alone. But being alone wasn’t the problem. It was no longer being a part of Mattie’s life that was killing him. He hated that Mattie doubted what it was he felt for him. He hated himself for not having had the balls to make it clear how much he adored the man. Now? Well, now Mattie was under the impression that, what? He’d been his plaything? Someone to pass the time with?

He leaned both elbows on the table and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’d fucked up so bad, and as a result he’d never felt so low in his life. He needed Mattie. He hated not speaking to him. He hated not knowing if he was okay or what was happening in his life. And he had no idea how to fix it.

“
Think
,” he ground out, his voice thick, his eyes blurry, and the heels of his hands damp as he leaned back in his chair with a sniff.

The timer on the oven went off, reminding him it was time to leave and pick up Jamie. He’d taken to setting the alarm after the one (and first) time he’d been late picking Jamie up from school a few days ago. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, much as he was now, not working but lost in thought, only to glance at the clock and realize he should have been at the school ten minutes previously. Needless to say he’d had a very unhappy five-year-old to answer to.

He closed his laptop and reached for his keys. It was frustrating, really, because he kept going back to one thing in particular Mattie had said.

“I’d be great with Jamie, and you know it. It’s you. You’re the problem. Either you’re too chickenshit to take a chance with me, or you just don’t care enough to.”

It struck him as frustrating because Mattie was right, but he’d also never been more wrong. He’d genuinely worried about allowing Mattie to get close to his son, for a number of reasons. But he
had
been using Jamie as an excuse to keep the pace of their relationship as slow as he had. He
was
a chickenshit. He was afraid of Mattie. He was afraid that this gorgeous, talented, younger man would one day just take off. He was afraid of not being enough. He was afraid of Jamie being
too
much. And, if he were honest, he was afraid of resenting his own son for potentially being the reason for losing someone else he loved.

But Jamie hadn’t pushed Mattie away. He had.

“Enough,” he growled, pulling on his jacket and tucking his phone and wallet into his pockets. “Enough of this bullshit.”

I
T
HAD
been a lonely, miserable four or so weeks. By rights he should be feeling high as a kite. A little over a year ago, he’d been almost completely illiterate. Now he had American high-school level academic skills and a general equivalency diploma to prove it. His boss, Don, had even allowed him to pick up some extra shifts waiting on tables for the first time. And as a result, he’d been able to pay Ty back, and even had enough cash for groceries and rent that month.

Then there was the biggie. He’d finished his entrance essay (which had ended up being far more personal than he’d originally planned) and portfolio, and in a fit of
“fuck this town and everyone in it”
he’d sent it off to the Art Institute of New York along with his transcripts.

He’d come so far. He’d worked his fucking
ass
off. And here he was, miserable. He missed Simon so much it literally hurt him, right in the chest like indigestion, and it made him feel pathetic. He missed his quiet nature and unsure smile. He missed how it felt to lie in bed with him. He missed making Simon blush. He missed that feeling of equality, of normalness that Simon and only Simon had given him.

He’d forced himself to ignore every voicemail and every text. He wanted more than anything to call Simon back and pretend that everything was normal. He wanted his happy bubble back. But he couldn’t do it to himself. He’d worked too hard on changing who he was and pulling that coil loose. To go back to Simon now, knowing that it wasn’t the lifesaving relationship he’d thought it was, would be the biggest step backward.

Instead, he was focusing on the normal stuff. He went to work; he still made the sandwiches but waited tables now too. He came home; he sketched and he painted until the lighting was too poor to continue. But most of the time, he’d catch himself thinking of Simon, wondering what he was up to, how his book was going, how Jamie was doing. No matter how much he wished it, he couldn’t turn off the feelings that had developed during their strange relationship.

Mattie was painting now, making use of his recently restocked supplies, and imagining what it would be like to actually go to New York and achieve everything that had seemed too much of a challenge a year ago. Just the thought of him, former illiterate prostitute, going to
college
. It was almost enough to make him smile. Almost.

There was a knock at his door, but he decided to ignore it. If it was a visitor they would have called him or buzzed. It could only be his landlord or a neighbor, and he didn’t feel like speaking to either. With no music or TV on in the background, it was easy to play possum.

There was a silence, lasting approximately ten seconds, before there was another knock at the door. He thought idly of one of the passages he’d liked by some dead guy that he’d studied for his English Lit test. Something about a bird, knock knocking at his chamber door.

“Mattie? Are you in?”

He dropped his paintbrush and felt his stomach drop. He wanted to run to the door, while feeling contradictorily annoyed that Simon had dared turn up at his apartment after several very obvious brush-offs.

“Mattie, please open the door?
Please
? I know you’re in. I just spoke to your neighbor.”

Mattie ran his hands over his face. Simon sounded terrible. He sounded unsure and a touch desperate. Instead of it being a turn off, it almost softened something inside of him.

Almost.

He strode over to the door, intent on firmly asking Simon to leave. He opened the door, and any words of dismissal escaped him. Simon stood there, a small Ninja Turtle backpack hanging over one arm and a small child wearing a cape in the other.

I
T
WAS
easier to get into the building than he’d thought it would be. He knew Mattie wouldn’t buzz him in if he were home, so he’d intended to either wait outside the building and ambush him, or plead with a neighbor to let him in. Fortunately, having a cute kid on his hip was apparently the easiest and fastest way to charm his way through the front doors.

Having made his way in, and with Mattie standing opposite him now, looking utterly shocked, all the carefully planned and rehearsed words left him. Simon couldn’t think of a thing to say, except…

“Hi.”
God, I’ve missed you.

“Hi.”
You bastard.

Simon cleared his throat. “Can I—can we come in? Please?” he asked quietly.

Mattie leveled him with a displeased look that made him swallow nervously. Perhaps this wasn’t going to work. Perhaps it really was over. But then Mattie sighed softly, glancing at Jamie and tilting his head as if to catch his gaze. Something that at that moment was not possible as Jamie clung to him, nervous in these new surroundings.

“Hi, Jamie. I don’t suppose you remember me?”

He felt Jamie’s head move under his chin, but he knew Jamie wouldn’t look Mattie in the eye. He could feel one small hand twisting the collar of his jacket nervously.

“You cut the crusts off my sandwich,” Jamie replied quietly.

Mattie’s smile changed from polite to genuinely quite enamored in a second flat, and Simon felt something inside of him unwind. He bounced Jamie gently on his hip, proud of his son for responding.

“That’s right, little guy.” Mattie glanced back at Simon, some of the warmth leaving his eyes to be replaced by wariness. He looked back at Jamie. “You know what, Jamie? I hear you don’t like to talk too much, and I also know that new places are a little scary for you, but that’s okay. How about you come on in with your dad, and I can show you around. Then I’ll make you one of those PBJ sandwiches? Would you like that?”

He could feel Jamie squirm a little restlessly against his hip, and he knew his child was conflicted. Jamie’s instincts were telling him to not reply and to say his numbers until his dad took him home to where his building blocks were. But all of the practicing they did about manners and the fact that his dad hadn’t taken him away was confusing him. Not to mention that, despite being autistic, Jamie was still a child and, at times, as curious as any other.

“No crusts?” he asked after some time, and Mattie’s smile in response could have lit up any room.

“I remember just how you like it.” He glanced at Simon and moved aside. “I’ll even give you a tour.”

“Thank you,” Simon said quietly and passed Mattie into the familiar surroundings. The entranceway led to the kitchen and living room, which was essentially one large divided room with a doorway leading to the bedroom.