Page 76 of Summer Lessons
Sort of like Mason’s worry was over a guy he wasn’t dating either.
“I… I don’t know what’s going to happen after he gets an apartment,” Mason confessed, feeling foolish. Having these people as friends the past four months had become one of the biggest blessings. The foolishness came from hisownhang-ups, about being older, about having more experience, about having an education.
The fact was, Skip and Carpenter couldn’t have given a shit about Mason’s supposed privileges—they treated him like a human. When Mason sounded like a peevish child or a sex-happy high school student, they just nodded like that was all okay.
No judgments here.
Mason was a fan.
“What do you mean, what will happen?” Skip asked, squinting. He’d gotten a veggie burger for himself, and Mason thought he’d ask for the same next time. He was still trying hard to lose the fifteen pounds he’d gained when he’d hurt himself.
“Why’s he going to want to hang out with me anymore?” Mason asked, trying to leech the self-pity out of the words. “I mean, I’m great now when he’s looking for two nights a week, but he’s going to realize he can go out for a beer after work, and that he doesn’t have to be home any time he doesn’t want to.” He gestured with his fork. “Maybe he wants a cat. We’ll have to work to accommodate the cat. But it’s going to take over his life. He won’t have time to call me because of the cat, and then he’ll forget to call me, and right now we’ve got a rhythm.”
“You’ve got a rhythm with a cat?” Carpenter asked, obviously not keeping up.
“No!” Mason stabbed viciously at his burger and broke off a tine of the plastic. “I’ve got a rhythm withTerry. I think it’s the only reason he remembers to come over. It’s Friday, so we do lunch. It’s Thursday, so we do practice. It’s Saturday, so we do each other. I mean I don’t blame him—living with that woman has fucked him over. All he can think of is the next thing that will get him out of the house and getheroff his back. She’s such a vicious noise in his head that he doesn’t have time for his own thoughts.”
“Oh my God, you’re right,” Carpenter said, entranced. “I’ve been trying to figure him out since November, but I think you’ve got it!”
“I’m totally impressed,” Skipper said, equally wide-eyed. “I just thought he was a fuckin’ squirrel.”
“He is, and that’s why,” Mason said, his stomach roiling. “I’m over it—I like his squirrelly-ness—but it’s gonna fuck me in the end.”
“But Mason—”
He couldn’t listen to Carpenter right now. His worry was too busy gushing out of his brain. “So right now the only reason that squirrel comes back to me is because I’m in the right spot in the maze. He’s got the maze set up, he’s got treats set up so he can get through it—I’m his weekend treat. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’m what he lives for.”
“That’s fair,” Skipper conceded. “So then what’s the prob—”
Oh! Couldn’t they see? Mason waved his maimed fork around some more. “What’s going to happen when that’s all gone, right? No maze, no rhythm, no reason to call Mason, Mason and Terry are no longer a thing!”
He gestured so hard his fork flew out of his fingers. Carpenter ducked, and it hit the wall behind him. Mason grabbed a napkin and soaked it in water from his bottle before getting up to wipe off the splat.
“So I have to help him do that,” he said into the rather stunned silence.
“But… why?” Skipper asked, voice pulsing a little like Mason’s heart.
The napkin started disintegrating, and Mason gave it up, throwing the pieces into the trash can by the door and hoping the custodian wouldn’t hate him for the mess.
“Because,” he said, staring blindly at the napkin muck against the ecru paint. “Because I want him happy and free. It’s no good if I say, ‘Oh, here you are, happy and free, but here’s that minicage you built when you were miserable. Let’s stay here.’”
He sighed and stalked back to his seat.
Carpenter handed him a new set of plasticware, and Mason broke it out in the sudden silence and tried to start again.
“He’ll come back when the dust settles,” Skipper said sincerely. “You’ll still be the best part of his life.”
“But you’re right,” Carpenter added.
Mason looked up and met his eyes and recognized the sympathy of one soul to another. It was the same look they exchanged when Carpenter was talking a moody, bitchy,hurtfulDane into the car, one insult and carrot on the stick at a time.
“I’m right?” He hated being right.
“He’s got to figure out what life is like when nobody expects anything from him. It’s… I mean, you want a grown-up. Grown-up relationships are choices. You can’t choose your parents—but you can choose your friends and….” Underneath Carpenter’s scruffy beard, Mason might have seen a flush. “Lovers,” he said hastily, like the word was sacred. “Boyfriends. Significant others. Whatever.”
“Is it really a choice?” Mason asked, looking at him with meaning. “Because I used to think so. I’d meet a guy, date a guy, take the relationship in increments. But this didn’t feel like I chose it. It felt like… like I’d beenwaitingfor this one person to wander into my life and make me feel good. And once he showed up, there was no choice at all.”
Carpenter leveled a tortured look at him, and Mason returned it. Yeah, Mason didn’t know the answer to Carpenter and Dane either—but he knew love when he saw it. Whatever it was they were doing, Carpenter needed to own up to that.