“I know,” he says, turning towards me, leaning on his elbow and propping his head up with his hand. “I’m confusing you, right? You don’t understand my intentions. You don’t know what I’m doing. Why are we having sex?”
“I don’t know.” I laugh again. “I really don’t.”
“That’s because you’re trying to get the answer without trying to understand the process of how to find it.”
I just look at him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you seriously trying to say you’re confusing me with sex to teach me a lesson in math?”
“Your question,” he says, ignoring that statement, “is something along the lines of, what am I doing? But that’s the wrong question. Your real question is, why am I doing it?”
“You’ve been fucking with me on purpose.”
“And the answer you’re so desperate to find is, because Mateo likes me. You want that to be the answer so bad, you stick around, letting me do all these things, with the hope that I’ll eventually say it.”
“You did say it. A few times, at least.”
“But you didn’t believe me.”
“Why should I? You were lying.”
“How do you know I was lying?”
“You told me you made that story up yesterday.”
“So maybe the question is, why did I make that story up?”
“To come in front of me? Put me off my guard? Get off? I don’t know.”
“Do you really think I just go around making up fantasies with every girl I meet so I can come in front of them?”
He stares at me. Those green eyes looking into me. Searching inside of me. Seeing through me like I’m a gaping hole.
“Why are you doing it, Mateo?”
“Tell me why I’m doing it, Shannon.”
I could fight it out with him. Point out all the ways that he’s being an asshole. How he’s confusing me and making things difficult. But there’s only one real answer to that question, and it’s very simple. “You like me.”
“And?” he prods. “That’s not all. I can show you I like you a million different ways. I could just rescue you from the rain or feed you lasagna if all I wanted to do was show you I like you.”
I give up. He really does win. Maybe he’s an evil genius and he pulled this plan out of his ass after the fact. He is some kind of physicist, right? He’s probably capable. But he was there the morning I lost my shit with Bowman and confessed that I was half-assing my way through school. He started the inappropriate touching the first time we met by stretching his legs out under the table. He fucked me in the classroom the very next day. He had me off my half-assing game from the moment he plunked that folder down on Bowman’s desk to this very second. And he did it all with an end in mind.
“I can’t understand the answer to my problem unless I understand the process of working it out. Are you my problem, Mateo? Or my answer?”
“Which do you want me to be?”
“Both.”
“Fuck,” he yells, lying back on the blanket and holding his hands out towards the sky like he’s giving thanks. “Holy fuck.” And then he laughs. “Finally.”
“You are the biggest asshole ever.”
“Thank you,” he says, still laughing.
“I think I hate you right now.”
“I don’t care,” he says, turning over on his stomach and resting his head in his hands so he can see my face. ”You’ll love me in the end.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Do you want to hear the real story of how I first saw you?”
We’ve been lying here in silence for a few minutes. I’ve been looking up at the stars and he’s been looking at me. I guess he figured I needed a little time to wrap my head around his methods. “Yes,” I say, still lost in thought.
“I was sitting on my porch, rebuilding the carburetor for the Camaro. This was last month.”
I turn over on my stomach and rest my cheek on my hands so I can watch him as he talks.
“And I saw this girl come out of the gate from the apartments across Broadway. She was wearing a black leather jacket that screamed chick and don’t fuck with me at the same time. I haven’t seen you wear it again, but I dig the belt.”
“It’s too hot here,” I say. “I’m used to the cold.”
“And she had on some ripped jeans and black Chucks,” he says, picking up one of my shoes and waving it for a second. “Her long brown hair was fanning out behind her, blowing in the wind. And she was walking across the bridge over the 5 like she was the boss of the world.”
I chuckle at that image.
“Like she was daring it to come mess with her, she had a lesson to teach it. You told me you felt invisible when that girl spoke to you in Spanish, right? Like she talked to you before, but she never saw you. And that day it was all too much. She missed it. She missed everything that made you you. But she didn’t talk to you in Spanish because she missed you, Shannon. You’re an unmissable girl. You’re a fucking explosion in a bottle waiting to happen. People talk to you because they can’t help but see you.”