MATEO || bxb

- 3 -

| Mateo |

When I was four, I made a friend in year one and the rest was history as they say. Adrian Morris used to be short with too much hair and big teeth that took him 14 years to grow into.

I wanted to play with the building blocks and snatched them out of his hand during playtime one day and as punishment our teacher made us clean up together. Turns out we both had a love for Pokemon, though that love slowly fizzled out over the years as we found other things to occupy us. Anyhow, Pokemon brought us together and nothing's been able to keep us apart since.

And the Morris family had become like my second family, especially as I got older. My parents' divorce had hit me hard and what hit harder was that I would have to stay with my mum while my dad moved to a whole other country. It sucked. I had always been much closer to my dad and the divide between my mum and myself had only grown more apparent the more time we had to spend in each other's company alone. Mum stopped even trying to be a mother after a while and I very much stopped trying to be her son.

It doesn't even matter anymore. She's got a whole other family she can try again with. In all fairness, she seems to be a good mother to her boyfriend's kids. I just don't care. I needed her to be a mother for me, not anyone else.

But I still had the Morris family, so everything wasn't so bad.

But I'd been nervous about seeing Cam again. After everything that happened, we hadn't really talked. I didn't want to pressure him or overwhelm him, so I had given him space though I thought about him every day. I always asked Adrian for updates, but maybe I shouldn't have kept my distance as I had. I wanted him to feel comfortable enough to come to me if he needed me again, but I was starting to think maybe I had just made him feel abandoned and uncomfortable instead.

He still looked so sad when I saw him again. I wanted to make him not so sad anymore, however I could.

I couldn't sleep that first night back at the Morris house. I was in Adrian's bed - we'd been friends for so long that it didn't feel awkward to share a bed even after I told him I was bi a few years ago - and all I could think about was Cam. He'd missed dinner and I'd made a stupid joke about cocks, and I didn't know what was triggering for him and what wasn't. I felt stupid.

And then I heard a door opening in the hallway and footsteps going down the stairs. It was Cam because, as strange as it was, I'd slept over enough times that I knew who someone was by their footsteps alone. I'm not so sure I could say that for the people in my own house. They were practically strangers, and this felt more like it was my true home.

It was late and I wondered what had kept him up. Was it the same reason he didn't come down to eat? Was it because of me?

I was worried about him. I always worried. The nights when I couldn't sleep it was always him on my mind. Wondering if he was alone, if he was sad, if he felt unsafe.

I'd been the one to find him that night. Been the one to pry that guy off him. Wiped away his tears and pulled his clothes back on so I could take him away from that house, far far away. I wanted to kill that guy for what he had done, whoever he was. Wanted to keep punching his face in until I hit raw bone, no matter what consequences I would have to face. But Cam's cries had gotten louder, and I knew I had to make a choice between whether I brought vengeance or comfort. I decided Cam needed comfort more than anything. The sound of his cries still haunted me to this day.

I decided I'd see how long Cam was downstairs for. If it was too long, then I'd go check up on him. I didn't want there to be this great distance between us anymore. Without a whole ocean separating us, I was going to stop being a coward like I'd been all year and talk to him. It didn't have to be about that night. I just wanted to talk. I wanted to hear him happy again, to see a smile on his face. I'd never been as close to him as I was to Ade, but he was still family. He was still important to me. And it wasn't just that night that had made me think about him as much as I began to. It was, in truth, that whole summer.