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“Yup,” he said when he recovered, clearly fibbing his ass off. “Lots of ice, babe. Tons.”
“You sure it will be enough?”
Matty’s dark eyes sparkled before he leaned in to kiss me on the lips. His surfboard smacked mine and it fell out of my hands.
The soundtrack of my friends’ Minion-sounding “oooohs” and “aaaahs” and Joan’s “aren’t they so cute!” behind us only emboldened Matty to deepen the kiss.
“It will never be enough,” was Matty’s husky reply.
My face felt hot as I rushed to pick up my board and follow Matty down to the beach, because what else was I supposed to do but act like a complete fool around the guy who dared to steal my heart?
MATTHIAS
If someone had asked me if I could have an actual good time at an EDM concert without consuming drugs or alcohol, the old me would have scoffed without hesitation.
Now, however, the new me knew better. Because Ciaran’s birthday bash was amazing.
The music was hot, the dancing hotter, and the laughter and joy and pleasure of seeing everyone having the time of their life was fun.
Filipe hung out in the pool after his grill master duties were complete, like usual, while Joan dance-flirted with everyone under the sun. Every time she saw Ciaran, she’d peck him on the cheek and tell him what a cutie-pie he was.
His blushing never failed to make me smile.
In short, my endorphins were living their best life.
I didn’t need uppers or downers to feel in control of my life.
Was it easy? No. Did I have bad days? Yes.
But I was putting in the effort, one lap at a time, like Ciaran suggested.
Watching Ciaran dance and goof off with his long-time best friends, who were cool as shit, was like watching the sun rise, because it was perfect and almost life changing.
I’d been giving my life a lot of thought. Dr. Nance called it introspection where we’d try to find and address the black holes in my life.
“There’s no spackling in this line of business, Matty,” Dr. Nance told me early on. “Not if you do it right. You can’t stick a Band-Aid over it. You have to want to do the deep, and often difficult, work of identifying your triggers. Once we know the triggers, we can work on unlearning some of the habits you utilize when dealing with the situations you’ve been subconsciously avoiding.”
Like my unhealthy obsession with being the best.
Like my single-minded focus on earning a spot on the National swim team.
Like my goal of avoiding affection.
I tried to explain to Dr. Nance that I’d met Ciaran, that I wasn’t avoiding affection at all.
But that’s not what Dr. Nance meant.
Because what it really boiled down to was my fear of rejection. Through deep work over many sessions, we’d uncovered that my mother’s untimely death fed into a fear of being rejected by anyone who loved me. Which meant I didn’t let anyone in. On top of that, Dante moving to Singapore when I was a teenager apparently reinforced this concept in my subconscious mind.
This, in turn, revealed deeper layers as to why I leaned into risky behavior—dares, substance abuse, random hookups, fencing black market contraband—to mask those fears. If I didn’t care, then they didn’t care, and thus the fear of rejection was avoided.
So, yeah, it was a mess and we were just scratching the surface. I had a lot of work to do.
Meeting Ciaran helped. He came into my life at the right time.
But Dr. Nance warned me not to use Ciaran’s love as a crutch to avoid doing the additional heavy lifting.
“I know you love him,” Dr. Nance said during a session where I’d cried my heart out. “And that he loves you. But, Matty, do you love yourself?”
