Page 32 of Serving Bunt

Diaz

Ihad nearly gotten over today’s baking experience from hell by the time I crawled into bed. Unfortunately, that was only because I was too focused on actively sweating to death in my coffin-sized cabin.

The air conditioning unit had crapped out just after midnight—too early for me to already be asleep, but too late to contact Lolly and Bernice without me feeling like a piece of shit.

As a result, I was melting. Actually melting.

Tomorrow morning, when production would come to collect me, they’d find nothing but a greasy puddle and a pair of silk boxers. Because yes, I dressed for comfort and style. Even in bed.

You never knew when your hot neighbor might come knocking for a three a.m. cup of sugar. Or a good dicking.

The fan on the nightstand oscillated in sad little circles, pushing around the same hot air with all the determination of a dying Roomba.

Damn, the Pacific Northwest had ruined me.

The summers in San Juan were brutal, and the winters weren’t much better. I was talking about the kind of humidity that made your shirt stick to your spine—before breakfast, I might add—and asphalt warm enough to cook an egg. But after three years in Portland, the mild, Oregonian summers and blessedly reliable central air had officially broken me.

I flopped an arm over my face and groaned. My siblings would revoke my Boricua card if they caught me acting like this over a little heat.

Sleep was a lost cause anyway.

Every time I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help but see Matty’s face on that path outside our cabins. His flushed cheeks, the hurt in his eyes, the way his voice had cracked when he’d called himself an idiot for falling for me—that last one had hurt more than the rest.

That was because underneath all that anger, beyond the embarrassment and confusion, there’d been something worse.

Sincerity.

Matty had meant every word.

He’d trusted me. Opened himself up to feelings he clearly hadn’t expected. And somewhere along the way, I had managed to make him question whether any of it had been real.

And I couldn’t blame him.

I did hide behind charm and jokes and easy smiles. Always had. Even before Mami had died.

After she was gone, I’d learned fast that grief got quieter when somebody kept the room laughing. From that point on, I became the fixer, the guy who could lift the mood in even the tensest situations.

By high school, it had been second nature.

By the time I’d gotten drafted, it might as well have been muscle memory.

Baseball clubhouses practically rewarded that kind of thing. Every team needed comic relief, that person willing to keep things loose in the locker room after ugly losses and make an idiot of themselves for the sake of whatever TikTok trend the social media team had come up with that week

And the truth was, I liked being that guy.

I liked making people feel good. It gave me purpose in a way I didn’t entirely know how to explain.

But it also took a lot out of me.

I needed something that was just mine, something that didn’t feel like a performance.

Enter the wonderful world of fucked-up fanfiction.

Fanfic had started as an emotional outlet, a place where I could say the things I couldn’t otherwise out loud. I hadn’t thought it would blow up. I’d never thought Matty, of all people, would find it.

And when he’d started texting me back . . . fuck. It’d been the best and scariest thing that had ever happened to me.

Matty had seen beyond my act. And frankly, I didn’t know whether that terrified me or made me want him even more.