Page 40 of Summer Lessons

“Yeah. Whenever I was bad.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Mason rasped. “That was her choice—she had no right to inflict it on you.”

“But, you know. I’m the reason her life was so hard.”

“Terry?” Mason said, hoping he wasn’t moaning. He hurt. Hisentire bodyhurt.

“Yeah?”

“You’re awesome. You’re… there is so much more to you than what your mother tells you. You just need to get out of the house more to see it.” Augh! Terry should have been having quickies with a counselor or a psychologist or someone who knew the words—anyonewho knew the words. Every second they were on the phone, Mason felt like he walked a tightrope between what he should say and what he wanted to blurt out. What he wanted to blurt out was “Get the hell out of there, move into your own apartment, leave her to rot, then come date me!” Which would have suited all of Mason’s needs perfectly, but Mason was starting to figure out that he’d had a lot of his needs met already, and this wasn’t about himat all.

“Huh.”

“I hate that word.”

Terry laughed. “Sorry—I just don’t have any others. That was… that was a really nice compliment. You know we’re going to have to play together without actually practicing as a team, right?”

A total non sequitur, but Mason was so damned glad to move away from the hard stuff. “Well, like you said, let me sub for the defenders. I can’t do too much harm there, right?”

“Mason, we’re gonna get creamed—I told you that. But you can’t feel bad about it. See, when I first started playing, I was afraid Skipper was gonna yell at me for fucking up so badly, because we couldn’t win forshit, right? But Skipper was like, ‘Dude, we’re out here getting exercise, we have a beer after practice, we get to play like little kids—what’s to worry about?’ So I’m telling you, yeah, we’ll lose. But it’s not… wait!” He sounded excited. “It’sexactlylike golf. It’s like, ‘Who cares whatactuallyhappened in the game, as long as the scorecards say we can play together again!’”

Mason found himself smiling. God, when he was a kid, he’d imagined it would all be that simple. “That’s excellent,” he said, feeling optimistic in spite of the rain hammering at the roof. “We’ll be like the Bad News Bears.”

“I’ve seen that movie!” And again he sounded excited. “Although the older one was like… whoa. They let kidssmokein that movie, and you’re like damn, shit was messed up a long time ago.”

Mason had to laugh. “Yeah—remember, I wasborna long time ago.”

“What’s the thing about the age, anyway?” Impatience tinged his voice. “I said you were hot.”

“I guess… I just thought my life would be settled by now, you know?” Oh God—Mason’s early midlife crisis was going to bore him, and that would be it.

“Well, maybe you’re lucky. Maybe if it had settled the way you’d planned earlier, that would have sucked, but if it settles the way it isnow, there will be no suck, and you’ll have a better life.”

The wind gusted and the rain poured—and Mason relaxed, happy. “I can’t argue with you,” he said, his voice an awed whisper. At that moment the lights flickered and went off entirely. Oh hell. “Terry, I’m going to go check on Dane, okay?”

“Did your lights go out?”

“Yeah,” Mason soothed, getting out of bed. “Do you get nervous when that happens?”

“Sounds like a total pussy thing when I say it, doesn’t it?”

“No. Actually, Dane doesn’t like it either.” He padded to his doorway and the lightning flashed, and he screamed and fell back into his room.

Dane screamed and started to laugh, anxiety turning it into a cackle. “Mason?”

“Jesus, Dane, you scared me to death!”

“Well, youknowI’m a big baby in the dark!”

“Yeah, well, so is Terry. C’mon. Crawl in. If I put the phone on the charger before I go to sleep, it should wake us up in the morning.”

Dane docilely followed him back into the bedroom. “I turned everything off, so it’s not going to all blast on in fifteen minutes.”

And Terry said, “So you’re just going to let him crawl into bed with you?”

“Since we were kids, yeah. Mom let him do it until he was sixteen years old.”

“Which was pretty funny when Dad got up to pee and wasn’t expecting me,” Dane chuckled.