Page 68 of Hamartia

And he’s asleep in the next room.

I realize it’s the first love song I’ve ever written.

Mase calls me the night before I’m due to leave for Colorado. Voice weird and weighty like he would rather be doing literally anything else but this. I pay little attention to it, too wrapped up in Jae. He was due back soon and I’d had this awful antsy feeling all day.

He’d been a little weird this morning. Distant. It had taken most of the day, but I think I’d figured out what it was: he was starting to pull back. To make arrangements for when he went home to Korea. Maybe I should start doing the same. But the wordshappier than I can remember feeling in a long time. Warm and happy, feellike a reason to cling on.Like they’rea life raft in the middle of a dark ocean. I don’t even know if after four days together, or rather four nights because his days were packed full beyond belief, if it was still even true. Did I still make him feel like that? I’d never ask.

“So, I guess we should talk,” Mason starts with.

“Yeah, I guess we should.” I wait him out because yeah, he might have made the first move and called, but he was still an asshole.

“Are you seriously this pissed about what I said about Cleo’s brother?”

“You think that’s what this is about?”

“Isn’t it?” His voice sounds a little uncertain now.

“I mean yeah. And no. You were out of order, man. I’m not having that shit in our band, Mase.”

He scoffs a little at that. “Our band?Feels like your fucking band a lot of the time, Rapha. Now you’re gonna tell me what to say? What to think?”

I ignore most of that. “Yeah. If you’re gonna think like a fucking red neck, I’m gonna call you out on it.”

“Well, I am a red neck, my dude. What do you want me to do about it?” He smooths out his Arkansas drawl most of the time, but he lays it on thick now.

“This what you called for? Cause I’ve got shit to do, man.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “But you best fix your fucking attitude before we’re back in the studio, cause this isn’t gonna fly.”

He sighs, loudly. “What’s going on with you and Cam?”

The change of direction brings me up hard like whiplash, tilting the hairs on the back of my neck.

“What are you talking about?”

“She called me,” he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. It isn’t. “Told me to talk to you as you ‘might need a friend right now’. I guess you didn’t tell her about our little fight.”

No, I hadn’t told her, because I’d been avoiding her.

“So, you’re what, my girlfriend’sbestienow, dude?”

“No but, she’s under the illusion we’re friends, I guess.”

“Yeah? You tell her aboutour little fightthen? What you said about Asher?”

He does another of his sighs. “We’ve been friends for nearly six years Rapha, you know I’m not a fucking homophobe.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, you do!” he growls. “It’s just words, man. I don’t give a shit about any of that, okay, Jesus. Let it go.”

“Okay, how about this. You tell Cleo what you called her brother—Cleo who fucks women by the way—and if she’s cool with it, then I guess I am too. Tell your bestie Cam too while you’re at it and let me know if she still thinks you’re a stand-up guy.”

“You’re acting like an idiot, man. This shit never bothered you this much before.”

“Yeah, well, it does now.”

“Fine. Well, now I know.”

“Fine,” I snap.