65 Matheio

"No…" Matheio muttered, his voice barely above a whisper as he stared at his feet at his reflection in the marble floor. 'I don't want that…' he thought as tears formed at the end of his bright eyes.

"What was that?" Julian asked mockingly.

"NO!" Matheio screamed, looking up at Julian as tears rolled down his cheeks in a steady stream, "I DON'T WANNA WEAR THAT, DADDY!"

Julian's heart fell to the ground and he threw the outfit onto the ground, quickly bending down to hugging Matheio.

"Matheio… are you ok?"Julian asked, his voice low and calm, softly whispering into Matheio's ears.

"Please don't make me wear that, daddy," Matheio cried, his voice trembling as he pressed his head into Julian's chest, letting go of the phone in his hand to tightly hold Julian.

"Please don't put that on me," he begged, the tears continuing to roll down his eyes, "please don't."

"No… don't cry," Julian coaxed, his voice starting to waver, "it's ok Matheio, I won't put it on you."

"Please no," Matheio continued to sob, Julian's words getting through his ears but not getting through his tears.

"It's ok," Julian coaxed, hugging Matheio tighter.

Gradis listened to the sounds of crying and the accompanying words of comfort, trying her best not to let her face scrunch up in disgust anymore than it already was. She was sick of hearing those sounds and even more sick of hearing people trying to console others. It was pathetic. The tears were pathetic and trying to console others was pathetic. She hated crying herself, and despised herself further every time she let a tear run down her face, not because of how vulnerable she would seem, but because she had no blanket to cover her while she cried. She would never admit that though.

Tears had never been something in her family, and will never be, so no matter how long she had known someone, or how much interest she had in them, the moment she saw a tear running down their face, her memories of them were shattered and she would walk away without looking back. There was no space for tears in her life. Not on herself, or on the people around her and she would live for that motto for the rest of her life, keeping her past in the past and never allowing it to move into the future.

Yet… she left the phone on and stayed on the call as the song of sadness and consolation rang out from her phone. Once again, she found it herself unable to walk away like she did before and couldn't cut ties with them. Julian's soft words on the other side of the phone didn't cease to stop and neither did Matheio's but she continued to listen, wanting to run away as the disgust on her face grew stronger, but unable to step away as the face she saw before the phone hit the ground replayed in her mind. The pained hazel eyes of Matheio seemed to paint themself in her mind, filling her heart with an emotion she didn't want to have.

'1:50,' she thought to herself, reading the time on her phone, then dragged her eyes to the length of call, 'I wasted an hour of my life on this. How repulsive.'

"Gradis?" Julian called out, picking up the phone and looking at the screen. He let out a small smile when he saw Gradis' face, "ah… you're still here."

Gradis immediately pushed aside the disgust on her face and copied the emotion on Julian's face, "yea…"

Julian stared for a moment before sighing, "He fell asleep. I think all the stress from today wore him out… gimme a second."

"Hmm," Gradis nodded.

She heard a slight grunt from Julian, which she assumed was from him lifting up Matheio as the POV from her camera had shifted to show the bottom of Julian's face. A few seconds into listening to the light taps of footsteps, the shuffles of something being placed on a bed could be heard.

Julian's hand reached down on the phone and lifted it up to show his face, sadness still lingering in his eyes. It lifted a bit when Gradis gave a reassuring smile.

He propped the phone on a pillow and let it lean on the head of the bed before he began taking the grizzly bear onesie off its hanger.

They sat in silence while he began to undress Matheio and unbutton the onesie.

"He's going to be so mad at me when he finds out I did this to him while you were watching," Julian chuckled.

"Haha, I can see that," Gradis laughed, her laughter short and they were consumed by the tense silence once again.

"I'm sure you want to know what happened back there," Julian muttered while slipping Matheio's lean leg into one leg of the onesie.

"Will I be given permission to know about it if I am?" Gradis asked.

"It doesn't really matter… I was bound to tell you one day if we continued the way we were going to,"

"Ah…"

"July 7,"

"What?"

"The day Matheio was adopted,"

"Oh,"

"That's why I didn't contact you that much after our date, I found out about Matheio and dad's plan the next day and had to prepare the documents to bring him home,"

"Oh! That makes sense.. that must have been a lot of work for you,"

"Yup, that was the work I was drowning in," Julian laughed, "can you believe the amount of work that was for me? Especially since my father wouldn't allow me to share it with others since I am the oldest child."

"Haha, I can, since I am in charge of a company myself," Gradis giggled, "it's a week then, right?"

"Hmm," Julian smiled, "it's been a little while."