Chapter 6: A New World
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Matthew woke in Jake’s arms, the solid warmth of another body against his own so unfamiliar it took him a moment to remember. The pale dawn light seeped around the edges of his blinds, striping the rumpled comforter and illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. It had really happened.
Jake was already awake, watching him with a softness that made Matthew’s chest ache. The usual guarded tension in his jaw was gone, replaced by the most genuine, uncomplicated smile Matthew had seen on him since he’d returned. “You’re cute when you sleep,” Jake murmured, his voice rough with sleep.
“I think you’re cute all the time,” Matthew said, the words slipping out before his brain could censor them.
They were startlingly, wonderfully true. Jake’s smile deepened, and he leaned in to kiss him, a slow, languid exploration that tasted of morning. He pulled Matthew closer, fitting their bodies together under the sheets, and Matthew became acutely aware of the hard line of Jake’s erection pressing against the back of his thigh. Jake stilled, pulling his hips back just an inch.
“Sorry,” he whispered against Matthew’s neck, his breath hot. “Morning wood. Ignore it.”
“It’s… noticeable,” Matthew said, a nervous laugh escaping him. He shifted to face Jake, the gravity of their situation settling over the quiet room. “How are we going to do this, Jake?”
Jake’s dark eyes grew serious, the shadow of his old pain flickering behind them. “We have to be careful,” he said, his voice low. “Saul and my mom can’t know. Not like this.”
Matthew nodded, the weight of that secrecy a cold stone in his stomach. He thought of his father’s stern expectations, of Eleanor’s worried glances. “I agree. And… I need to go slow. Physically.” He looked down, tracing a thread on the sheet. “This is all new for me.”
A complex emotion crossed Jake’s face—understanding, patience, and a hint of that old, protective fierceness. He brought a hand up to Matthew’s cheek, his thumb brushing his skin. “I promise,” Jake said, the words simple and heavy. “I won’t push you. Not ever.”
Downstairs, a door slammed, followed by the robust sound of Saul clearing his throat. The real world announced its presence with the bang of a cabinet and the gurgle of the coffeemaker. The spell in the dim room shattered.
“Shit,” Jake breathed, already rolling away, putting a careful foot of space between them on the mattress.
“We should get up,” Matthew whispered, but he didn’t move, memorizing the lines of Jake’s profile in the fragile light.
“Yeah.” Jake sat up, running a hand through his dark, sleep-tousled hair. He looked back at Matthew, and for a second, the fear was plain in his eyes. “Slow is good. Careful is necessary.” He said it like he was convincing himself, a mantra born from a different, disastrous relationship. “We just have to be normal today.”
“What’s normal?” Matthew asked, sitting up as the smell of brewing coffee drifted under his door.
Jake stood, stretching, the lean muscles of his back taut. He threw a wry glance over his shoulder. “You go pack for your fancy future. I’ll go pretend I have one.” He moved toward the door, his movements already shifting back into the guarded rhythm Matthew knew too well. The boy from moments ago was receding, leaving the familiar, hollowed-out version in his place.
But as he touched the doorknob, he paused, looking at Matthew one more time. The genuine smile returned, just for a second. “And we breathe,” Jake said softly. Then he opened the bedroom door and slipped into the hallway’s bright, revealing light, leaving Matthew alone with the imprint of his warmth and the terrifying, exhilarating promise of what they had begun.
Then he opened the bedroom door and slipped into the hallway’s bright, revealing light, leaving Matthew alone with the imprint of his warmth and the terrifying, exhilarating promise of what they had begun.
The day was a careful pantomime. Over waffles, Saul’s voice was a steady drumbeat of pragmatic concern. “The community college’s fall registration opens next week, Jake. You need to be ready with your transcripts.” Jake just nodded, pushing syrup around his plate with a studied concentration. “I’m looking into it, Saul. I’ve got some emails out.”
When Saul turned to ask Matthew about his packing progress, Jake caught Matthew’s eye over the orange juice carton. A quick, conspiratorial wink, there and gone so fast Matthew wondered if he’d imagined it. His skin tingled. Eleanor sliced more strawberries, her gaze drifting between them with a quiet, maternal anxiety she couldn’t name.
Matthew retreated to his room after breakfast, claiming a need to sort through books. He opened his sketchbook, intending to draw the oak tree outside his window. The trunk elongated, the branches thinned, and the shading beneath them resolved not into leaves, but into the sharp angle of a jawline, the deep set of familiar eyes. He slammed the book shut, a giddy, reckless laughter bubbling in his throat. He was eighteen and in love, and it felt like stepping off a cliff into warm, rushing air.
Later, as he carried laundry downstairs, he passed Jake in the hall. “Bored yet?” Jake murmured, not breaking stride. His fingers, hidden from the kitchen’s sightline, brushed fleetingly against Matthew’s wrist. The contact was electric, a spark that traveled straight to Matthew’s ribs.
“Immensely,” Matthew whispered back, his voice cracking slightly.
In the living room that evening, Saul’s interrogation resumed. “A job, then. Flipping burgers builds character.” Jake, slouched in the armchair, stared at a documentary about shipwrecks. “I’m working on it. Got a call back from the bookstore in town.” It was probably a lie. The tension in the room was a third presence, stalwart and uncomfortable.
“Just show some initiative, son.” Saul’s word ‘son’ hung in the air, a heavy, complicated thing.
“I am,” Jake said, the words tight. He didn’t look away from the glowing screen where a rusted hull sat on the ocean floor.
Finally, the house settled into the deep quiet of midnight. A floorboard creaked upstairs, a faucet hissed off. Matthew counted to three hundred, his heart thudding against the spring of his mattress. Then he padded across the hall, the wood cool under his feet, and knocked softly on Jake’s door.
It opened instantly. Jake pulled him inside, into the dark, and into a kiss that tasted of mint toothpaste and desperation. The door clicked shut. They stumbled back toward the bed, a tangle of limbs and muffled laughter, and landed in a heap on the comforter.
They kissed until Matthew’s lips felt swollen and his mind was blissfully blank, until the only points of reality were Jake’s hands in his hair and the solid weight of him. Jake broke away, breathing hard, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “We need to stop,” he rasped. “Right now. Before I… before this goes somewhere we can’t rewind from.”
Matthew nodded, his own breath coming in short pulls. He shifted, curling into Jake’s side, tucking his head beneath Jake’s chin. He nuzzled there, inhaling the scent of his skin—laundry soap and something uniquely, essentially Jake. Jake’s arm came around him, heavy and secure.
“This okay?” Jake asked, his voice a rumble in his chest.
“Yeah.”
Jake reached for his laptop on the nightstand, the bluish light illuminating his sharp features. He queued up an old noir film, the volume low. They lay like that, entwined, as shadows flickered across the walls and a cynical detective narrated his plight. Matthew traced idle patterns on Jake’s t-shirt.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Matthew confessed into the quiet. “The... protocol. I’ve never had anyone before. Not a girlfriend. Definitely not a boyfriend.”
Jake’s chin rested on the top of his head. “You’re doing it,” he said softly. “This is it. And it’s perfect.” He squeezed him gently. “I just like being close to you. However that looks.”
Matthew closed his eyes, committing it all to memory: the sound of his breathing, the rhythm of his heart, the rough texture of his cotton shirt against Matthew’s cheek. He tried to freeze the moment, to press it between the pages of his mind like a keepsake.
“We’re both insane, you know,” Jake whispered into his hair, a hint of awe in his voice.
“I don’t care.” Matthew’s reply was immediate, muffled against his chest. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Jake was silent for a long moment. The detective on screen lit a cigarette. “Me too,” he finally said, the words so quiet they were almost lost under the film’s soundtrack. He pressed his lips to Matthew’s temple. “God, me too.”
Matthew felt the exact moment Jake’s breathing deepened into sleep, the arm around him going slack but never letting go. He stayed awake a while longer, listening, holding onto the insanity, and savoring the quiet, joyful freefall.
He stayed awake a while longer, listening, holding onto the insanity, and savoring the quiet, joyful freefall.
When he woke, the other side of the bed was cool and empty. Disorientation pinched him, followed by a dull panic that yesterday had been a dream. Sunlight cut sharp lines across the floor. Downstairs, a cabinet closed with a definitive thud.
Matthew pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, his body aching with a pleasant unfamiliarity. The house hummed with a different silence. In the kitchen, he found a note from Eleanor propped against the toaster, written in her looping script: Had to open the shop early for a wedding order. Your dad’s at the office. There’s fruit. Love you both.
He sliced a banana onto a bowl of cereal, the crunch absurdly loud. Through the window over the sink, he saw movement in the backyard. Jake was swimming again, cutting through the blue water with a relentless, practiced rhythm.
Matthew carried his bowl to the patio table and sat. He didn’t feel embarrassed to watch now. He felt proprietary, and the feeling was a warm current under his ribs. Jake’s body, slick and pale in the water, was a fascinating landscape of shifting muscle and tendon.
His mind, unhelpfully, began to wander. He wanted to touch that skin while it was wet. He wanted to feel all of that focused energy turn toward him. The desire was a sharp, physical pull low in his stomach.
It immediately tangled with a nest of fears. What if he didn’t know what he was doing? Beyond kissing, beyond just lying together, he was a blank page. The few times he’d secretly watched gay porn, it had seemed like a performance, all gymnastic intensity and staged sounds. It looked like a language he didn’t speak, a test he would inevitably fail. What if his clumsiness made Jake’s feelings evaporate?
Jake finished a lap and paused at the far edge, hanging on the wall, his chest heaving. He pushed his wet hair back and noticed Matthew. He didn’t wave. He just looked, his expression unreadable from this distance. Then he hoisted himself out of the pool in one fluid motion.
Water sluiced off him. He grabbed a towel from a lounger and dried his face and hair as he walked over, his footsteps leaving dark prints on the concrete. Droplets gleamed in the hollow of his throat, on the dusting of dark hair across his chest. Matthew’s mouth went dry.
“Hey,” Jake said, his voice a little rough from exertion.
“Hey.” Matthew’s own voice sounded faint.
Jake stopped in front of him. He smelled of chlorine and clean sweat. He leaned down, placed a damp hand on the table beside Matthew’s bowl for balance, and pressed his lips to Matthew’s. The kiss was cool and tasted faintly of chemicals. It was over in a second.
Matthew’s hand lifted almost on its own, his fingers sliding up the curve of Jake’s bare bicep. The skin was cool, but the muscle beneath was firm and alive with heat. The simple contact sent a tremor through him, a flock of butterflies released behind his sternum.
Jake smiled, a real one that reached his eyes. He straightened, rubbing the towel over his head. “This is gonna drive me insane, you know. Sitting around here.”
“Yeah.” Matthew could only manage the single syllable, his brain short-circuiting from the touch.
“Wanna get out of here?” Jake asked, tossing the towel over a chair. “Just drive. No destination.”
The idea was a lifeline. Away from the empty, watching house. Away from the pool and the bedrooms and all the places their secrecy felt heaviest. “God, yes,” Matthew said, the words tumbling out. “Let me just get dressed. For real dressed.”
“Meet you at the car in ten,” Jake said, and the spark of a plan, a shared secret adventure, flashed between them.
Upstairs, Matthew moved quickly, pulling on jeans and grabbing a hoodie. The nervous energy was still there, buzzing under his skin, but it was fused with a pure, soaring excitement. They were stepping out of the frozen portrait of their home, if only for a few hours. They were going somewhere, together. He didn’t know where, and it didn’t matter at all.