Page 75 of Summer Lessons
“Of course not,” he said, equable and calm, like Mason hadn’t just fucked him savagely, like a thing. “You’re the only one who ever treated me like a person,” he said. “But that’s ’cause you’re decent. When you’re decent, you don’t want anyone to see you hurt like that.” A sweet, sad smile flitted across his face. “You trusted me, right?”
Mason nodded, out of words. “Yeah,” he said, his voice fractured. He took a deep breath, and his chin wobbled. He tried to push himself up so he could go to the bathroom and pull himself together.
“Right?” Terry said softly. “You trust me?”
“Yeah,” he said again, his voice broken completely. Oh God, he wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom. Terry wriggled up on the bedspread, so Mason was even with his chest, and palmed Mason’s head forward.
“Trust me,” Terry urged. “C’mon, Mason. Trust me.”
The first sob broke, the total helplessness, the pain of watching his brother in pain, the stupid unfairness of Mason’s beautiful baby brother and the mental illness that sank its claws into him when Dane needed his sanity the most.
A flurry of sobs, a waterfall of broken, gasping tears, and Terry held him through them all, not saying much, just held him, kissing his temple, telling Mason without words that it was going to be okay.
Mason never remembered getting up and showering after that, or eating lunch either. They spent a couple of hours sweeping off the back porch and getting it ready for spring so they could sit out on the patio and eat, and then they went back inside and watched movies. Mason didn’t say much, and Terry filled in the silence with chatter.
When they crawled into bed that night, Terry didn’t move on him, didn’t try to arouse him, just lay quietly in his arms for a minute.
“How you doing?” he asked into the darkness.
Mason closed his eyes and did an internal assessment.
“The only thing holding me together right now is you,” he said honestly.
Terry hmphed. “That’s probably bullshit,” he declared. Then he kissed Mason just hard enough for tongues to get involved. He pulled back and said, “But it was a nice thing to say. Thanks, Mace.” He touched Mason’s cheek. “I hope you feel better in the morning.”
Mason did—and he knew the truth.
It hadn’t been bullshit at all, and it made him a little achy inside. Terry had the strength to hold Mason together when he needed it. Now he just needed to find the strength to do the same thing for himself.
The Short Months
DANE IMPROVED.Not overnight, but slowly and steadily, with a lot of help from Carpenter. Terry helped Mason when he could—but that fragile sense of togetherness was just not in a place to get stronger.
By the middle of April, they had established a rhythm. It wasn’t agreatrhythm, but there was just enough music and sex in it to keep Mason from begging for more.
Practice on Thursday, if they didn’t have a game that day, where they agreed on the lunch that Terry brought him the next day. On those days Terry started wearing jeans without holes and one of two polo shirts, as well as tennis shoes and Mason’s sweater. Mike didn’t stop him at the gate anymore, and Mrs. Bradford simply assumed that Mason’s lunch would be walking in the door sometime between twelve thirty and one thirty, the bearer sporting a bemused smile that never went away.
There was always a game on Saturday unless they were between seasons. Mason couldn’t figure out what an actual soccer season was in this league—it seemed to be about six weeks, with a week in between, but he couldn’t be sure. His ankle held, though, and that was good. As much as he enjoyed watching Terry play, it was a lot more fun to be involved—even if he was still a big gawky old guy who let more goals through than he kicked back into play.
Terry came home with him Saturday night. That was nonnegotiable. Terry turned off his phone as soon as he came to the game and didn’t turn it on again until he and Mason left the next day to work on the house while Julie was at church or with friends or torturing small animals and the occasional child. (Mason couldn’t be sure about that last one, but he was pretty sure all bad things came from Terry’s mother, and not complaining about that during their weekends together was becoming more and more difficult.)
By mid-April, the floors of Terry’s house were sound and laid with hardwood; the bathrooms were recaulked, resealed, retiled, and repainted; the siding was repainted; the roof was retarred; and the driveway cement repaired. Every room in the house had a new coat of paint and had endured a hearty scrubbing of all the dirt in all the corners; some even had new curtains.
Whether or not they’d all been able to make it to help with the weekend makeover, Carpenter and Skipper ate lunch in Mason’s office every Monday, where they rehashed their weekends and talked about what else needed to be done before Terry could make his bid for freedom.
It was at one of these luncheons that Carpenter stated the obvious.
“So, like, our last chore is going to be to move Terry out of his mom’s house. Does he have an apartment picked yet?”
Mason put down his fork. They were eating hamburgers from Chili’s today, Skipper’s treat, and Mason’s had been dripping in wing sauce. He’d needed a fork and a knife if he wasn’t going to completely destroy the shirt he was wearing.
“Uh, no,” he said, feeling stupid. He’d known this was coming.Knownthis was coming. But the last thing they needed to do was fix and seal the eaves, and that was their job this Sunday.
It was time to set Terry free.
“Don’t look so depressed!” Carpenter said, althoughhelooked depressed enough for the both of them. Dane’s mood swings were finally getting better—but it was a rough road. Carpenter had been taking him to his therapy and psychiatry appointments every week. Mason wasn’t sure what their relationship was at this point, but given that Dane had no filter about his personal life and he had nowordsabout what he and Carpenter were, Mason would put actual money down on Dane not knowing either.
But Carpenter had lost at least fifty pounds over the past six months, and Mason bet that thirty of them were stress and worry over a guy hewasn’tdating.