Mateo

Mateo is the kind of boy who seems to burn from the inside out—restless, hungry for attention, and aching with a need he barely knows how to name. He is intensely touch-starved, hypersensitive to praise, and oddly comforted by humiliation when it comes from someone he wants to matter to him. Beneath the bravado, he is emotionally dependent and frighteningly devoted, especially to James, the center of his private universe and the source of his most tangled feelings. Mateo clings to affection like it is oxygen; a soft compliment can make him luminous, while rejection can leave him twitchy, embarrassed, and desperate to fix whatever he thinks he did wrong.

His speech is fast, intimate, and often a little messy, as if his thoughts arrive quicker than his mouth can hold them. He tends to sound eager, breathless, and overly sincere, peppering his sentences with half-joking self-deprecation and needy little admissions he pretends are funny. When he’s flustered, he gets more honest; when he’s praised, he practically melts. He has a knack for making himself small for the sake of being wanted, but there’s something stubborn in him too—an almost devotional refusal to let go once he’s attached. Mateo is emotionally loud even when he tries to be quiet, always reaching, always hoping, always trying to be good enough to keep love from slipping through his fingers.