Page 8 of Summer Lessons
“What a douche nugget. You want I should take a hit out on him? I work with some really unsavory people at the restaurant—they know people.”
Mason laughed, feeling the burn behind his eyes. “I’m sure they do,” he said, loving his little brother so much in that moment that he forgave him completely for coming along as a baby and sucking all of the attention from Mason. “And no—it’s okay. He doesn’t make that much as a graphic artist—”
“He’s not that good, Mace. He’s not. I mean, I never told you this, but I used to bring your guys’ holiday cards into school and have the real graphic artists make fun of them. They enjoyed that. They enjoyed that a lot.”
And the laughter burbled up, unstoppable, much like Dane himself. Dane was just as odd a duck as Mason was, but Dane made that work for him. He wore his hair messy and his beard neat, and the fine lines developing in the corners of his big brown eyes were mostly from laughter and a little bit from confusion—Dane’s love life was less conventional than Mason’s in that he wore his condition of singleness like a beacon, right up until a sudden passion sucked him away from his family, his studies, his bills, and his common sense. After he almost got kicked out of school—and changed his major for the third time—his parents had given him a good talking-to and then pulled him toward a shrink.
With a few memorable glitches, Dane had taken to his new medication regimen like a champ, and the last four years of pre-veterinary school had been much less turbulent. But Dane was still not looking for a permanent lover, and Mason worried about him.
Until right now, when it appeared Dane had the right idea all along.
“So,” Dane said, taking another drink. “I got accepted to Davis.”
“For veterinary school?” The school was famous for that field. “That’s awesome!” He smiled at his brother in relief—good news. He’d needed it.
“And I’m going to move out of Mom and Dad’s house and be all on my own far away.” Dane looked at him calmly and blinked his wide-set brown eyes at his big brother, and Mason looked at his little brother and understood.
“Are you worried?” he asked, wishing Dane all the happiness in the world but knowing that sometimes happiness was so much harder than it sounded. Bipolar disorder was never going away, and Dane put on a good game face, but balancing his meds had been a big fat pain in the ass. Having a combo now that even allowed him a sip of Scotch was a victory, and Mason would totally trade places with him if he could. Mason didn’t need friends or lovers—God knew he managed to fuck up any combination of the two. But Dane deserved it all.
“Yes,” Dane said, smiling briefly so Mason would know he was serious. “Yes, I’m worried. Mom and Dad are… you know. Mom and Dad.”
“Awesome,” Mason said quietly, because who could argue.
“Yeah. And Mom has this way of making me remember my meds without nagging, and Dad has this way of just grounding me when something has triggered me and I need to take that one pill for the really bad days, and….” He shook his head. “And is it stupid that Ilikenot going off the deep end? That Ilikeknowing that if I lose my shit, someone will be there to catch me?”
“No,” Mason said. “Not at all.”
Dane looked up at him briefly and swished his glass around. “So, can you leave all this behind and catch me?”
And that’s how Mason decided to move to Sacramento with his little brother so Dane could go to school and Mason could get a new job and they’d both know that somebody was there to catch them.
But sometimes your little brother isn’t the person who needs to catch you. And sometimes you need to be ready to catch somebody else.
So, Five Minutes Ago
“HE WAScute,” Dane said as he and Mason got into the car. They were parked in front of a modest house in a tiny Citrus Heights suburb, where Mason’s friend Skip had thrown a lovely Christmas party for his friends on his rec league soccer team—and Mason and Dane.
“Skipper?” Mason asked wistfully, because yeah, Skip was cute. Six foot three, blond, blue-eyed, with this sort of open kindness in his face that forgave anything—even Mason’s inappropriate come-on when Mason first called him for tech service.
Some things never changed, and Mason’s foot-in-mouth disease was one of them.
“I’ve met Skipper,” Dane said dryly as Mason started the car. “I thought he was cute then, but he was taken then. Still taken now.”
Mason grunted, not wanting to talk about his crush. “And Richie is a good match for him,” he admitted, feeling gracious.
“If anyone hurts Skip, Richie will kill them and stuff their body in a car trunk and put the car in a crusher,” Dane said matter-of-factly. “The guy’s like an arctic shrew—he looks cute and fuzzy, but if you put him and three other shrews in a bucket with the lid on, when you open the bucket the next day, there’s going to be a fat Richie and a whole lot of blood.”
Mason’s eyes widened. “Did you take your meds today?” he asked, a little panicked because it was the holiday season and things had gotten hectic. They were driving down to Redwood City tomorrow to spend Christmas with their parents, and Dane had endured a grueling series of finals that had ended two weeks before.
“Yes, Mason, I took my meds!” Dane waved his hands. “You’re missing the point.”
“And what’s the point?” Mason piloted the Lexus SUV through the small neighborhood. He’d had a sedan before they moved, but just like with the house in Walnut and Ira and his job at Bent-Co, Mason wasn’t sorry to see the change. He was now vice president of product quality at Tesko Tech. He still didn’t actually know what he did, and he was sadly still in a lot of meetings. He made enough to pay the mortgage on a decent-size house in Fair Oaks, and his commute to work wasn’t bad. Dane’s commute to school was heinous—he left early three days a week and came home after eight—but Mason made sure he didn’t have to work during his last few years of school.
Well, he’d made some money on the Walnut Creek house, and he had nobody to support. If you couldn’t spoil the shit out of your little brother, what was your purpose in life?
“The point was, that Jefferson guy—”
“Terry Jefferson?” Because Mason and Jefferson had talked for quite a bit while Jefferson’s mother sort of hunkered in the background, glaring at them.