MATEO || bxb

- 23 -

| Camden |

When I woke up, I was still in Mateo's arms, and he was asleep too. I'd been brave when I climbed on top of him, but I just didn't want to sleep anywhere else. His heartbeat was like a sweet lullaby carrying me to sleep on a cloud. I could still hear that heartbeat now, my cheek pressed against his chest. How calming a heartbeat could be, to know another person was alive, blood travelling through veins and neurons firing between brain cells.

I laid there on top of him for I don't know how much longer. I didn't want to wake him and felt content continuing to listen to the steady rhythm coming from his chest. But soon I found arms tightening around my back and Mateo's voice as a whisper, "Hey, you awake?"

"Mmhmm." I didn't have it in me to give him a proper response. In this moment, even though his arms kept me trapped against him, I felt free.

"Woah, we slept for like 4 hours," Mateo said his voice a little croaky. I looked up and he'd grabbed his phone from the nightstand and held it in his hand.

"Really?" I asked. The rest of the world rushing back to me, my moment of peace disturbed and a feeling of griminess from the plane overtaking me. "Ugh, I feel gross. I shouldn't have slept on you. I have plane germs all over me."

Mateo chuckled. "It's fine. I didn't think about it."

"Well, I'm gonna go take a shower," I replied getting up.

Mateo gave me some sign of acknowledgment that I didn't pay attention to as I grabbed a towel and went to the bathroom I shared with my brother.

As I stood under the showerhead, the water washing away all the grime I felt from the day's journey, I found another moment of peace. I closed my eyes and let the water drown me as if I stood under a waterfall, forgetting everything else. Sometimes when I used this bathroom, I'd be reminded of when Mateo had been in the tub with me on the worst day of my life as I cried into his arm. Today all I thought of were those arms. Not the crying or the pain or the unimaginable dirtiness I'd felt then, but his arms holding me. His hands rubbing my skin in the most soothing of ways; the way his chest felt against my bare back clothed but solid, impenetrable. Then I thought of how it felt to kiss Mateo, his lips softer than marshmallows, his arms around me pushing me into him. The piercing he now had on one of his nipples, his laugh that transported me to other dimensions, his smile and his eyes when they fixated on me like there was nothing else in all the world he wanted to look at.

And then I opened my eyes and looked down at myself and found myself in an awkward predicament that I didn't know how to deal with these days. I quickly turned the water to its most freezing setting and shocked myself out of it. It was only in the last few months that I'd managed to start feeling this excited, this turned on again, enough for my little friend to start saying hello. There'd been a couple times where I'd tried to touch myself, but I soon gave up with this weird feeling of wrongness always coming over me in the end.

Frustrated, I turned the water off and left the shower, only to my dismay realising that I hadn't brought any clothes in with me. Great. Now I'd have to go back in only my towel.

Tentatively, I pushed open my bedroom door and peeked my head inside to see where Mateo was. I'd hoped he would have gotten bored and left to find Adrian, but he was still there on my bed, watching something on his phone.

"Umm... Mateo," I called feeling embarrassed.

He turned to look at me and squinted trying to figure out what I was doing. "Cam. Why you hiding behind the door?"

"I forgot my clothes. Can you... can you like stand in the corner and face away so I can change?"

It's not that I particularly minded him seeing my chest, but standing in just a towel felt too intimate, especially after what had happened in the shower.