MATEO || bxb

- 4 -

| Camden |

Things weren't as awkward or as weird as I thought they would be when Mateo had showed up in the kitchen that night. We both seemed to have not talked to each other for silly reasons which we thought were the right thing. I was glad we had talked now.

And, somehow, I was waiting for him to come back down to get in his car with him and go God knows where. I should be scared, or I would have been, were it anyone else, but it was Mateo. In my heart I knew there was no safer place than beside him, even alone.

"Right, you ready?" he asked as he came down the stairs. He spoke quietly so as not to wake anyone else up. I wondered what had kept him awake tonight.

"Yeah," I replied just as quietly. "Where are we gonna go?" I realised I had agreed to go for a drive with him without knowing what our destination was.

"Uh, well what times the sunrise?" he asked.

"I think close to 5," I replied. I'd been awake many times as the sun rose and watched as it got lighter earlier and earlier in the last couple months.

"Okay, well we only have a few hours to kill then. But I thought we could go up the forest path to where there's that good view of the sunrise, with the benches 'n stuff," Mateo said. He wanted us to watch the sunrise?

"Okay," I nodded. I felt happy, I think. "But how are we gonna kill the time?"

"I don't know. Let's just go there now and we'll play some music and I'll tell you about Spain or something?"

"Sure."

Mateo Perez. His name felt like a song on my lips. A promise. A hope. I repeated his name on my head as we walked to his car. The sunrise with Mateo. Music with Mateo. Stories with Mateo.

Mateo. Mateo. Mateo.

The car ride wasn't long, or maybe it was, but it didn't feel like it. He talked about his dad a little. Leonardo had been refurbishing his mother's old home after she passed, and Mateo had been helping him out to earn some money while he was there. Apparently, it was a big job with the house being stripped almost bare, some foundations removed, and new foundations put in.

"You could come with me next summer, maybe. You and Ade. My dad misses you guys," Mateo said.

I missed his dad too. When I was little and mum and dad were out somewhere, it was Mateo's dad that always agreed to babysit me and my brother. Mateo's mum, Samantha, never paid much mind to us, but Leonardo had always looked after us. He'd always make our dinner a little too spicy because he thought it important that we had a spice tolerance but then he would give us a whole tub of ice cream for dessert as long as we didn't tell our parents. He used to join in with the silly games we would all play and when Adrian and Mateo went off to play on their own, because Adrian didn't want his little brother around all the time, Leonardo would always keep me company so that I wasn't alone. He was like the fun uncle, or maybe a second father in a way.

"Yeah, umm that would be nice actually. I'd love to see the house," I said.

"It will definitely be done by then as well. I'll show you my room. We practically finished that before I came home. Looks pretty sick if I do say so myself."

"Alright, I'll take your word for it."

"I wonder if we'll be in the same accom at uni," he said. The streetlights illuminated his eyes for a moment when I turned to look at him and he turned to look at me. "I hope we are."

"Yeah?" I asked. I hoped we were too. I wanted to be near him. Needed to be near him in fact. The more I was in his presence now the calmer I was feeling I realised. I needed Mateo the same way I needed to breathe. It was like he was the only thing keeping me alive in this moment in his car in one of those nights where yet again I couldn't sleep.