"EVERYONE STAND UP AND GIVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE."
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
Mateo looked around.
Everything was black. Not dark. Black. No walls and no floor and no ceiling, a black that went out in every direction with no edge for his eyes to catch on. He turned in a slow circle. There was nothing. There was the voice that had just spoken, fading now, and there was the black, and there was him standing in the middle of it with no memory of how he had arrived.
His heart was doing something strange. Confusion was sitting in his chest, the specific confusion of a person who knew they were somewhere they should not be and could not work out where that was.
"What is—"
"AHHH WE DID IT."
The scream hit him from the front.
He spun.
Messi.
Messi was there, suddenly, where a half-second ago there had been nothing, and Messi was ecstatic. His whole face was open. His eyes were wet and bright at the same time. He had both of Mateo's hands gripped in his own and he was shaking them up and down, jumping slightly on the spot, the celebration of a man who had been waiting his entire life for something and had just been told it had arrived.
"We did it. We did it. Ahhh, Mateo, we did it."
Mateo stared at him.
The confusion was still there but it could not survive in the face of that much joy. He felt his own mouth pulling up at the corners before his brain had caught up to why. He started laughing, the bewildered laugh of a person laughing because the person in front of them is laughing.
"Hahaha. We did it. What. What did we do?"
Messi did not seem to hear the question. He was still going.
"I cannot believe it. I cannot believe we actually did it."
Then he stopped.
The jumping stopped. The shaking of the hands stopped. The smile stayed but something behind it changed, settled, deepened into something more serious.
"Mateo."
Mateo froze.
He stood up straight without deciding to. He did not say anything. He just looked.
Messi was still smiling, but the smile had tears sitting in it now, the eyes gone red at the rims, the face of a man holding two enormous things at the same time and somehow carrying both.
"I know this season was a roller coaster."
He said it slow.
"I know how much stress you carried. I know the things I asked of you. I know I kept you in it, all of it, every hard part, when I could have shielded you from some of it. And I am sorry for that. I am."
"No, no, no." Mateo was already shaking his head. "I wanted that. I wanted to be in it. I—"
Messi shook his head back at him.
"It does not matter now."
He took a breath.
"It does not matter now. Because we did it."
He looked at Mateo, and the look was the look of a man saying the thing he had been carrying for a long time and had not let himself say.
"I am happy I got to play with you. Do you understand that? Out of everything. Out of all of this. I am happy that I got to share a pitch with you. That when they write about this season, your name and my name are going to be in the same sentences. That is not a small thing to me. That is one of the things I am most grateful for in my entire career."
Mateo's chest was doing the strange thing again. A different strange thing.
Some part of him, some small honest part that he would not have admitted to out loud, was waiting. Waiting for Messi to say a specific thing. The thing every boy who had grown up with a poster on his wall wanted the man on the poster to say. He hated that he was waiting for it. He could not stop waiting for it.
"You are my hero."
Messi said it.
He said it plainly, no performance, it was a fact, someone saying something they have known for a while.
Mateo's whole face went hot.
"No. No, you—" His hand came up, waving, the words tripping over each other. "You are the hero. You are. I grew up watching you. You are the one. Not me. You—"
Messi laughed at that, the small warm laugh of someone watching a person they love fail to accept a gift.
Then he pulled him in.
He wrapped both arms around Mateo and held him, and Mateo froze in the hold, his own arms hanging at his sides for a second before they came up around Messi's back.
"Thank you, Mateo."
The words went into the side of his head.
Mateo was dazed. He could not find anything to say.
Messi pulled back enough to look at him. The tears had come properly now, sitting on the rims and not falling, the red eyes and the wide smile occupying the same face at the same time.
"It is thanks to you that I got to live this dream. It is thanks to you that I was able to keep my promise."
He smiled.
"We did it."
A pause.
"We brought the Champions League back to Camp Nou."
The black around them was not black anymore.
Mateo's head snapped up.
"What. What did you just say?"
Messi was just smiling at him.
Mateo was staring at him like he could not believe his own ears, like the words had gone in and refused to make sense, like the sentence was too big to fit through the door of his understanding.
And then the stage was there.
It had not been there a half-second ago and now it was, a stage that had assembled itself out of the black, lit up, in front of him, a microphone standing at the centre of it.
"GIVE IT UP FOR THE MVP. THE BEST PLAYER AND WINNER OF THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE AND LA LIGA OF THE 20/21 SEASON."
The voice boomed across everything.
Mateo turned in place, lost.
"Wait. Wait. What is—"
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
He turned.
Messi was still there, still facing him, the smile on his face now calm, now certain, now the smile of a man handing something to the person he had decided it belonged to.
"Go."
One word.
Mateo looked at him.
Messi nodded toward the stage.
"Go."
Mateo walked out onto the stage.
AHHHHHHHHH.
The sound hit him like a wall of water.
It came from everywhere at once, a roar that was not one voice but a hundred thousand voices, screaming, shrieking, the high overlapping shriek of a crowd that had lost its mind.
"AHHHHHH."
"MATEOOOO."
"AHHHHHHHHH."
He stood at the top of the stage steps and below him was a sea. He could not see the end of it. People packed shoulder to shoulder to the horizon in every direction, the blaugrana stretching out until it became a single moving colour, scarves above heads, flags, banners, hands, all of it in motion, all of it screaming his name.
He started walking down.
He came down the steps slowly, his eyes moving across the crowd, and the crowd was not a crowd anymore. It was faces. Individual faces, picked out of the sea, clapping, smiling, looking at him.
"Grandma Manuela," he muttered. "Grandpa Francisco."
The elderly couple at the front of one section just kept clapping, smiling up at him, the proud unhurried clap of old people who had told everyone they knew that the boy on the stage was a family friend.
A scream came from his side. He turned.
Alejandro. Javi. Rosa. Óscar López. The whole row of them, the La Masia staff, the people who had raised him inside the building, all of them on their feet Uncle Hugo was also among them.
"WE KNEW YOU COULD DO IT."
"WE ALWAYS KNEW."
He smiled at them.
"Guys."
He kept walking.
Then he saw his team. Araujo. Busquets. Alba. Piqué. The whole Barcelona side, lined up, cheering, Piqué with both fists in the air and his mouth open in a roar Mateo could not pick out of the larger roar.
Mateo laughed at them.
He turned his head again.
"NEXT TIME WE WILL BE UP THERE WITH YOU."
"DON'T FALL OFF THE STAGE."
Gavi. Pedri. Balde. Fermín. Casado. The boys. All of them together, clapping, screaming, Gavi already heckling him before he had even reached the bottom.
Mateo laughed properly now.
"Let's go."
The energy off them was electric. He could have stayed there. He kept walking.
"Congrats, Mateo."
He heard it.
Despite the screaming. Despite the roar of a hundred thousand people. He heard that one voice, low, clear, cutting through all of it the way one specific voice always cuts through everything when it is the voice you have learned to listen for.
He turned.
Olivia.
She was clapping. Slow. Methodical. Her hands coming together in a rhythm that was somehow separate from the chaos around her, and everything else in the stadium seemed to slow down to match her, the screaming dropping into a hum, the motion going soft at the edges. She was smiling at him. She was glowing, lit from somewhere he could not locate, and her eyes were on him and only on him.
He felt himself falling into it. The trance of it. The world going quiet around the one fixed point of her.
"Mi nene."
Another voice.
He looked ahead.
He was at the microphone now. He had not noticed arriving at it. The Champions League trophy was in his hands, heavy and cold and real, and in front of him, in the front row, was his family.
His grandmother. The one who had just called out to him. My baby.
"YEAHHHHH. LET'S GO. VISCA BARÇA."
His uncle was covered head to toe in paint, blaugrana from his hair to his shoes, swinging his shirt over his head, bare-chested and screaming.
"WOOO. CONGRATS, KIDDO."
His aunt Nora beside him, screaming and cheering.
Then Aina, doing the cheeky thing she always did, calling out "congrats, I guess" while a smile too big for the words spread across her whole face.
Beside her, his uncle Andrew and his other aunt Josepa, both cheering, Andrew clapping and shouting "CONGRATS, KIDDO," his aunt just screaming a long wordless "ARGHHHH" into the noise.
Mateo laughed.
"Hahaha."
Then his parents.
They came forward, standing at the front, holding onto each other, his mother's hand wrapped around his father's arm.
They said something. It was short. He almost did not catch it over everything.
"We are so proud of you, honey."
His mother.
"You are the best son a man could ask for."
His father.
Mateo's throat closed.
"Mom. Dad."
He could barely get the words out. The emotion was rising in him now, climbing, threatening to come up and over. Then,
"Mi rey."
He stopped.
He stopped on his tracks.
He looked forward, just past his family, and there, standing where a half-second ago there had been no one, in the familiar faded cotton shirt, the worn work trousers, the scuffed leather boots, the simple flat cap pulled low over a sun-weathered face.
"Avi."
The emotion that had been threatening to burst was already out.
It came up his throat and into his eyes and over, and Mateo stood at the microphone with the trophy in his hands and stared at his grandfather, who was not supposed to be here, who could not be here, who was standing in the front row of the Camp Nou looking up at him.
His grandfather just smiled at him.
"I am so proud of you, mi campeón."
The old man's voice was exactly as he remembered it. Exactly. Down to the smallest catch in it.
"Look around."
A small gesture, one hand turning out toward the sea of people.
"Look around. This is all for you."
Mateo turned.
He turned away from the microphone and away from his family and away from his grandfather, and he looked out at the crowd, the impossible crowd, the hundred thousand people who had filled the Camp Nou to its highest row, and he heard them.
He heard all of them.
"KING."
"KING."
"KING."
"KING."
"KING."
"KING."
.
..
...
....
"King."
"King."
"King."
The chant was slowing. Dragging. Going thick and slurred at the edges, the syllables stretching, the rhythm coming apart.
"What is this dude doing?"
Pedri stood at the end of the bed, looking down.
Mateo was flat on his back, eyes shut, dead asleep, and his right hand was up in the air clapping at nothing, his other hand shaking an invisible hand, his mouth moving around the same word over and over in the small slurred mumble of a boy deep in a dream.
"King. King. King."
He was chanting in his sleep.
Pedri stood there for a second longer, watching his teammate clap and mumble and shake hands with no one, and then his face cracked.
"Hahaha."
He clamped a hand over his mouth.
Then he reached into his pocket.
"Ooh. I have to record this."
He pulled his phone out, fumbling slightly because he was already laughing too hard to hold it steady, and tapped the record button, and pointed the camera at Mateo King, future of FC Barcelona, lying flat on his back clapping at the ceiling and whispering his own name.
"King. King. King."
"Hahahaha. He'll never live this down.
Ding-ding, ding-ding-ding…
"Hey Siri. Hey Siri, answer my call for me."
Mateo came out of the bathroom with the towel around his body, scrubbing at his head with one corner of it. There was not much head to scrub. The low cut he had got the week before meant the towel did its work fast, and he was already done by the time he made it across the room.
The phone kept ringing.
He groaned.
"I thought I set this thing."
He grumbled something else under his breath, grabbed the iPhone 11 off the side, and looked down at the screen. Water from the shower was still on his eyelids, dropping off them, streaming down his face. He blinked it away and read the name.
Olivia.
"Hey, Olivia."
He answered it, tapped it onto speaker, and dropped the phone face-up on the bed as he crossed to the wardrobe.
Her voice came through the speaker.
"Hey."
A pause.
"Are you done?"
Mateo pulled out a pair of trackpants, looked at them, shook his head, and dropped them back onto the shelf.
"Yeah. I'm just about to be."
He reached past the trackpants and pulled out a pair of black Nike trousers, the smart-casual kind, tapered, the kind you could wear somewhere and not look like you had rolled out of training. He nodded at them once and stepped into them, then started moving things around looking for a shirt.
"Do you know where Pedri wants us to go?"
Her voice came through the speaker as she continued.
"He didn't say. He just said we should wear clothes that are smart."
Mateo pulled out a white plain t-shirt and nodded at it.
"I think he mentioned something about an amusement park."
"For real?"
The surprise in her voice was very apparent.
Mateo smiled as he pulled the shirt over his head.
"Yeah."
He tugged it down, then paused.
"Wait. Are you also in your room? Why the call?"
"No. Unlike you, we are all already outside. Aina and Pedri are in the car waiting."
A small pause.
"As for me. Well. Just look out your window."
He was applying his perfume and body spray, then his lotion, moving through the small fast routine of a boy who had done it a thousand times, when the last sentence landed.
He stopped.
He went to the window.
He pushed it open and looked down.
Olivia was outside, standing on the path below, wearing jeans and a crop top, one hand holding her phone to her ear. She tilted her head up at him and smiled, her free hand coming up to wave.
Mateo smiled.
"I'll be with you shortly."
He turned back to the wardrobe. He picked up his cap. He picked up his G-Shock and pushed it onto his wrist. He grabbed his phone off the bed.
...
"King. King. King."
In the car, Mateo, sitting in the front seat, heard it. Aina had put her head forward between the two front seats and was chanting it directly into the side of his head.
He looked at Pedri.
"Dude. You told her?"
Pedri just laughed, eyes on the road, driving.
Olivia, in the back seat, leaned in.
"What's that?"
"Nothing," Mateo said.
At the same time, Aina laughed and pulled out her phone.
"You need to watch this video."
Mateo whipped his head around fast, almost shouting.
"You gave her the video too?"
He turned back to face Pedri.
"Dudeee."
Pedri just laughed.
"And the guys, also the team group chat too."
"That's a lie."
Mateo had his phone out before he had finished saying it. He opened the team group chat. He saw Pedri's message, and under it the replies, the laughing emojis, the rows of crying-laughing faces from half the first team.
"No way."
He dropped the phone in his lap.
He looked at Pedri.
"Not cool. Oooh, I am so getting back at you."
Pedri was laughing properly now. Giggles started up from the back seat.
"Wait." Olivia, through the giggles. "Is he chanting his own name?" She kept laughing. "Why?"
Aina was laughing too. "Tell me about it."
"Send me that video."
Mateo groaned.
"Okay. Okay. Can we change the topic now?"
He waited a beat.
"Let's talk about the amusement park."
"Amusement park?"
Aina sat up, surprised.
Pedri shot Mateo a look. "Bro. Why?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Mateo said, shunning him, talking over him. "So what is it about anyway?"
Aina shot up in her seat.
"Are we really going to an amusement park? Oooh, it's been forever."
She kept going.
"I haven't been to one since—"
She looked at Olivia. The two of them started talking at the same time, smiles and laughs landing on top of each other.
"Since we went on the set of Bizaardvark, when Jake broke his leg on that ride."
They were both laughing.
"Jake?" Mateo said.
Olivia, still smiling, looked at him.
"He was our co-star on the show."
She tilted her head.
"I wonder what he is up to."
Aina laughed. "Wasn't he saying how he wanted to be a boxer or something?"
"A boxer?" Pedri said.
Aina shook her head.
"Forget about all that. Let's talk about this amusement park."
Pedri nodded.
"Well. I haven't been there either." He flicked the indicator. "My elder brother went with some friends. He said it was new and it was fun, so I just felt like it would be great for all of us to go."
And like that the conversation kept rolling, the four of them moving through it the way friends move through a car ride, and not even fifteen minutes later the group, two boys and two girls, pulled into a parking lot.
"Wowww."
All of them said it at once as they reached the vicinity.
From here, from the car, they could already see it. The rides reaching up into the sky, the great looping steel of them, the tallest of them climbing higher than anything around it. The whole place looked insane, lit and moving and enormous against the afternoon.
"When did all this get here?" Mateo said.
As a local, he could not remember any of it.
Getting down from the car, Pedri and Mateo made sure they were covered up a bit, the cap pulled low and the mask on, and made their way inside.
"Hello. I made a reservation for four. Ultra Band VIP Ticket and experience."
The receptionist perked up a bit at that.
"Name?"
"Fernando González," Pedri said.
He turned to Aina, standing beside him, and mouthed my brother. Aina nodded.
The receptionist tapped at her screen.
"I can see it here. Four Ultra Band tickets for a Mr Fernando González."
She brought out the bands, gold, rubbery, elastic, and handed the first one across.
"Your personal tour guide will be with you shortly. There is a show at 3pm, and you are entitled to front-row seats for it if you would like to watch."
Pedri collected the bands. "We'll see. Thank you."
The receptionist continued.
"Keep the band on at all times. If you want to step out at any point, you can. Just show the band on the way back in and we will let you through, whatever you are in the middle of." She smiled. "Welcome to PortAventura World."
Pedri stepped back and handed the bands out one by one. The others slipped them over their wrists as they waited for the guide.
"I saw online that with these bands on, we can skip the lines and head straight to the front."
Mateo collected his, smiling.
"Nice."
Olivia frowned slightly as she pulled hers on.
"That doesn't seem really fair to the others in the line."
Aina shrugged.
"I mean, he paid for the experience, right?"
Pedri smiled. "Right."
Mateo looked at Olivia.
"I mean. Would you want to be standing in line?"
Olivia finished pulling her band on.
"I guess not."
Mateo smiled.
"Exactly."
He looked down at the band on his right wrist and a thought arrived.
I guess, now that I think about it.
He looked at Pedri.
This dude is a millionaire, right?
Then he caught the thought.
Wait. I'm a millionaire too.
He looked down at the band again.
My bank account is not reflecting that, though.
He filed it.
I need to hit up Uncle Andrew about this.
While he was thinking it, their guide arrived. A man named Chinedu. He came over, introduced himself, and started walking them inside.
"This here is one of our main avenues," Chinedu said, gesturing as they walked. He pointed out sections, the food stalls, the snack carts, the layout, the placing of everything, moving them through the entrance plaza with the easy patter of a man who had done this tour a thousand times.
Then, without missing a beat:
"So. Where would you all like to head to first?"
Mateo pointed. He pointed at the biggest roller coaster they could see in the distance, the one that climbed up past everything.
"Right there."
Chinedu followed the point.
"Ahh. The Red Force. Excellent choice."
"Oooh, I need to get on that one," Mateo said.
"Why do you want to go on the biggest one first?" Aina said.
"Wow." Olivia, looking up at it. "That thing is huge."
Pedri looked at the guide.
"So can we go on it?"
"Of course," Chinedu said.
Mateo grinned. "Then what are we waiting for?"
Chinedu laughed.
"I get the excitement. I do. But I have found, over the years, that it is best if you go in a straight line."
He started listing them off, his voice picking up as he went, the rides of PortAventura World coming out of him in a building sequence.
"You start small. You warm the body up. Then you move to the next. The drops get a little bigger. The loops come in. The g-force starts to introduce itself. By the third or fourth ride your blood is up, your heart is going, there is electricity moving through you that was not there when you walked in."
His voice was climbing now, the dramatic pitch of a man who genuinely loved this part.
"And then. Then, with that rush, with that electricity flowing through every part of you, you walk to the Red Force. And you strap in. And it launches. And you realise just how empty everything else was. The high reaches a place you can never reach again. Everything you rode before becomes a disappointment, because nothing will ever feel like that again, and you understand, in that moment, that you can never be the same person you were before you got on it."
The four of them were staring at him. Eyes sparkling. Even Olivia, who had been a little nervous a moment ago, was now fully, openly excited.
Chinedu relaxed. He smiled and then shrugged.
"And, you know. It is also just more straightforward. And we do not need to keep moving up and down the park."
...
"Oh, come on. Why are they cutting the line?"
"I have been here over an hour."
"This is bullshit."
People were complaining all down the queue as the group of four moved behind Chinedu, walking past the whole line and straight to the front.
Chinedu reached the worker at the gate.
"Hey. Diego. Ultras." He jerked a thumb back at the group.
Diego, the worker, just nodded and opened the lift gate to let them through.
"Wait, really? You're letting them in?"
"How is this fair?"
The complaints kept coming. Pedri and Aina walked straight through. Olivia walked a little faster, head lowered. Mateo, at the back, just walked.
He reached the front. A man in the front of the line was complaining loudly.
"Is this how you do business? I have been—"
Mateo, passing him, just raised one hand and pointed at the gold band on his wrist.
Then he walked through.
Diego closed the lift behind him.
"What now?" the man shouted.
Diego just said, "Ride's full."
The beauty of capitalism was felt that day.
Cut lines. Merry-go-rounds that spun until the sky tilted. The big swinging pirate ship. The drop towers that left their stomachs forty feet above their bodies. The happy screams. The dark indoor ride where something jumped out and Olivia jumped sideways straight into Mateo's arms and stayed there a beat too long before either of them said anything about it. The disorientation of stepping off something spinning onto ground that would not hold still. Pictures. The ecstatic kind where everyone was mid-scream. More pictures. The kind where they all pretended to be calm and ruined it laughing. Near passing out on one of the loops. High altitude, low altitude, the launch that pinned them to their seats and emptied their lungs. Cotton candy. Face paint. More pictures.
And like that, two hours went by.
grrrr… grrrr…
"Ooff. That doesn't sound good."
Mateo had a hand on his stomach.
"Are you good?"
Olivia, with the face paint of a panda across her cheeks and nose, was looking at him, worried.
Mateo grimaced.
"Yeah. Seems that corndog didn't agree with me."
He looked around. He spotted a bench a little way off.
"I just need to sit for a bit."
"Ooh, okay. Let me help you."
Olivia moved to take his arm.
"Livie. Livie."
They turned their heads. Aina and Pedri were over by one of the fountains, Aina waving Olivia over.
"Come take a picture."
Olivia waved back. "I'm good. Let me help him."
"Go." Mateo nudged her. "Don't worry, I'm good. I just need to sit for a bit."
"No, let me—"
"No. For real. I'm good."
He stood up straight to prove it.
"The bench is right there. I'm good. Go take your pictures."
She looked over at Aina, then back at him.
"I'm not—"
"Goo. I'm good."
He pushed her gently off in the direction of the fountain, laughing.
She went.
"Okay then."
He made his way to the bench and lowered himself onto it.
"Arghhh."
He sat back and let his weight rest into it. After a moment he glanced to the side.
There was someone else sitting at the other end of the bench. A guy, around the same age as him, holding a cotton candy, looking around the park.
The guy noticed him looking. The two of them nodded at each other.
"You good?" the guy asked.
Mateo looked at him and nodded.
"Corndogs."
The guy nodded slowly.
"Noted. I'm gonna steer clear of there."
Mateo scoffed.
"You better."
The guy laughed.
Then Mateo noticed something. The guy was wearing a gold band too, the same Ultra Band, but he was pulling it out from his wrist, stretching the elastic and letting it snap back against his skin, over and over. Nervous. The repetitive small action of a person who had nowhere to put their nerves. Mateo had seen many people like that from his days in the academy.
Mateo looked at it.
"Nervous?"
"What?"
The guy followed Mateo's eyes down to his own hand, where he was still picking and snapping the band.
"Ooh. That."
Mateo laughed.
"I get it. The rides can be scary, but—"
"Oh no, no, no."
The guy was already laughing, shaking his head before Mateo could finish.
"It's not the rides."
He sat back against the bench.
"It's, ehm. Something else."
He paused thinking looking like he was deciding whether to talk or not.
"I registered for a competition." His words came out broken, halting, the rhythm of someone who did not usually talk about this out loud. "Well, the big one is in June, but I registered for a smaller one here, like a prep run. That one is in two days. That's why I came here. To clear my head."
He lay back along the bench and sighed.
"I guess it's not working."
He sighed again. Then everything started spiralling
"This was all a mistake. I shouldn't have registered this year. They told me I should register next year instead. I should have just listened to them."
"How would you know?"
The voice came pointed cutting into his doubt filled words.
The guy sat up.
"Pardon?"
He looked at Mateo, properly this time. He could not see much of him, the cap pulled low, the mask, but he could see the eyes. And the eyes were doing something. There was an intensity in them, a steadiness, that did not match the casual slouch of the boy who had told him to avoid the corndogs sixty seconds ago.
"I said, how would you know?"
Mateo shrugged.
"Sorry if I'm being rude. But to me it seems like you've quit before you even started."
He let that sit.
"See, I don't really know you. But I mean, if you registered for it in the first place, that means a part of you thinks you're ready. At least to some degree. And if that's the case, then this pity party isn't going to help anything."
He looked at the guy.
"From where I'm sitting, the only person holding you back right now is yourself."
The guy was stunned for a moment.
Then he started laughing.
"Yeah. I guess you're right."
Mateo smirked a little.
"I tend to be. Most times."
The guy laughed harder.
"And modest, too."
"It's a blessing"
They both started laughing.
Then the guy went quiet. He looked up at the sky.
"Your only enemy is yourself."
He said it the way you say a thing you have come to believe.
Mateo went still.
"Wait. What did you just say?"
The guy glanced over.
"Ooh, sorry. It's, ehm, a saying. Something I stumbled on and have been using for a while now."
He smiled and repeated it.
"Your only enemy is—"
"Yourself."
Mateo finished it with him. They landed the last word at the same time.
The guy looked at him, smiling.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's it." He laughed. "I know it's cheesy, but I kind of like it."
Mateo laughed.
"Haha. It's fine. Actually, it's a saying my grandfather used to say to me growing up."
"Wait. For real?"
"I'm telling you." Just then,
"Mateo. Are you okay?"
While they were laughing, a voice came across. Mateo turned and saw Olivia near the fountain, waving him over.
"Yeah. I'm good now. Coming."
He stood up. He looked back at the guy.
"Well. I gotta go."
"Yeah. For sure."
The guy looked at him.
"It was nice talking to you. Truly. It really helped. I needed that."
Mateo smiled. He held out his hand.
"Mateo."
The guy smiled and took it.
"Carlos."
A/N
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