Page 9 of Summer Lessons
“Is Jefferson’s first name Terry? Because all the soccer guys are like… like last-names only. I swear I heard Skip call his own boyfriend Scoggins when he was talking about their last game.”
Mason laughed. “Yeah, so what did you call Clay?”
“Clay’s straight,” Dane mumbled, but the car got suddenly heated and Mason started to doubt if that was true.
“As far as I know, so is Jefferson.”
“Bisexual is a thing, you know,” Dane said with dignity. “I’ve harbored embarrassing feelings towards women sometimes.”
“Why would you be embarrassed about that?” Mason asked, laughing. Mason was pretty much a 5.8 on the Kinsey scale—but Dane could be a 3 or 4 easy.
“Because my type is usually, like, my fortyish severe female professors. It’s weird.”
Mason shook his head and tried to negotiate through the patchy fog between Citrus Heights and Fair Oaks. “Yes, yes, it is.”
“Thanks, Mace, for helping me accept myself.”
“Oh, I’m totally there,” Mason laughed. “I totally accept that you’re weird.”
“Okay, so I’m weird. But that doesn’t mean that Terry—”
“Jefferson.”
“Okay, Jefferson, wasn’t putting out… feelers.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Mason hung a left on Madison in fog so thick he couldn’t see much on the other side of the intersection. Like everyone else driving at twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve, he was taking a lot on faith.
Dane started doing an impression of the young man who had brought Mason a napkin full of cookies as they’d stood around the fire pit in Skip’s backyard.
“‘Gee, Mason, you have some decent muscles for a guy who claims he only golfs. Are you sure you don’t run too?’ ‘Well yes, Jefferson, I do run, but I feel like a lazy bum for not running marathons because that seems to be a thing here in Sacramento.’ ‘Well gee willickers, Mr. Hayes, you could always join Skip’s soccer team if you’re looking for more exercise. Skipper would behappyto have you, because then I could get laid and you and me could stop crushing over the tall oblivious blond guy!’”
At this point Mason was laughing so hard he was afraid he’d wreck the car. “Oh my God, Dane, you are so full of shit!”
“I am not,” Dane replied mildly. “I can’t believe you can’t see it either.”
Mason thought carefully back to those few hours of huddling around the fire pit, drinking hot chocolate and talking.
And Terry Jefferson, who looked like a kid—and hell, was even younger than Dane—with carefully streaked brown hair worn in one of those wedges that would go back into a tiny bun on the top of his head if he wanted to.
Tonight it had hung partially in his brown eyes, and he’d had a way of looking out from under it at Mason that made Mason forget about Skipper entirely for a moment.
It had also made him remember Logan the perfidious waiter and that one night of really awesome sex that had set him back about two grand.
It had been the best sex of Mason’s life, honestly, but it had also been one of the best lessons.
Still….
Terry Jefferson had the flirty easiness of Logan the perfidious waiter, but he also had a shy way of biting his lip when Mason paid attention to him, and a narrow, rectangular harlequin’s face, with a slender jaw and dark brown eyes over a pert, irreverent nose. He looked like he enjoyed the flirting, and he was good at it, but he didn’t get much practice at it. In his head, Mason replayed his conversation outside under the stars that night, before the low fog had rolled in.
“So, would you consider playing soccer?” Jefferson had looked sideways at him through that wedge-cut hair, his hands buried in the kangaroo pocket of his Sac State sweatshirt. “Skipper always needs more people.”
“Well, I’m sort of the old man of the group,” Mason said, looking around. “I didn’t realize how young Schipperke was when we first started talking.” Yup—Dane was probably one of the oldest here, at not-quite-thirty, and besides Jefferson’s mother, who hung back on one of the patio chairs, swaddled in blankets so thoroughly that Mason couldn’t get a bead on her appearance, that left Mason as the oldest. “I’m afraid I’d hold you all back.”
Jefferson laughed and pulled his wedge back, letting Mason see his warm brown eyes. “Naw, man—it’s not like that. We just play to play, really—winning’s, like, a perk. We enjoy it, but we like the friends better.”
Mason smiled, feeling like a grade-schooler. “Really? I mean… I’m sort of a social nightmare, but I’d love to play a sport.” He’d played soccer as a kid—until he’d told Tommy Perkins that the nylon soccer shorts made his penis get large if he forgot to wear his jock, and suddenly nobody invited him to their birthday parties anymore.
“A social nightmare?” Jefferson cocked his head almost coyly and moved closer to the fire pit, shivering. It was around forty degrees out in Skipper’s backyard, and Jefferson was wearing cargo shorts, because he was apparently one of those men’s men who didn’t care about pneumonia. Mason took a side step to give him more room, and Jefferson… moved closer. Mason had to stop scooting because he was about to get really friendly with Dane’s friend Carpenter, and Carpenter claimed he wasn’t gay, so Mason didn’t want to freak him out.