Page 95 of Summer Lessons
“Maybe not,” Carpenter said, giving Mason a gentle pat on the top of the head. “Maybe he just needs to see. You know. It’s not the suit or the car or the kickass house. Mason’s pretty awesome just because he’s Mason. And Terry’s what Mason wants, so he’s got to be special too.”
“You’re going to leave the IT pool, aren’t you?” Skip asked, sadness in his voice.
Mason glanced up. “Poor Schipperke,” he said, heart twisting. “Don’t worry. I think Clay’s point is that he’s not going to leave his friends behind.”
Skip shrugged like it was no big deal. “I know, I know. We’ll always have soccer.”
Mason made a sound. Oh God. Terry was going to be playing soccer. He was going to be trying to spot that big play and learning where he was supposed to be on the field. Skip and Mason had been working with him since February—Terry was getting to be an amazing player. Even Mason had been getting fitter and quicker. He’d managed to find the sweet spot on the side of his foot, the one that would make the ball his bitch.
Mason really loved playing soccer.
But he couldn’t.
“Skip?” he said helplessly. Oh fuck. He’d enjoyed having the guys here. It had been the peer group he’d never had. For once he’d been with a group of guys who didn’t censure his words, or judge him on his lack of taste in beer, or expect him to have food he didn’t know the name of.
Skip glared at him. “Really?”
“I’ll take his place,” Dane said calmly, and everybody at the table stared at him. He took a sip of his own imported beer and shrugged. “Just a season. I’ll be out of school—nothing to do but play with Holly and Jason and be on the team.” He smiled with false brightness. “It’ll be fun!”
“You hate soccer,” Mason and Carpenter said, almost in tandem.
“Let him miss you,” Dane said, his voice hard. “Let him look for you every Saturday and see me there instead. You want him to figure out what he wants? That’ll do the trick.”
“You know,” Mason said, hoping Dane realized this, “he might not want me.”
Dane shrugged, looking fierce. “Then he’s not worth you, Mason. I’ve watched you try to build a life with loser after loser. They weren’t worth your time. Unless a guy is throwing himself at your feet, trying to romance you like you were God’s gift to cosmopolitan gay, don’t fucking bother. If Terry comes back, I want him to come back humble. He needs to know who’s been waiting for him.” Dane dashed the back of his hand across his eyes. “I certainly do.”
Carpenter wrapped an arm around his back, and they listened to the night—air conditioners humming, frogs screaming their hearts out from the creek, faraway traffic noises. In that moment Mason felt really small.
He thought that would be it—party over. But Skip and Richie stayed to clean up the rest of the food, and when they all went in, they stayed to watchGuardians of the Galaxyon cable. And thenThe Man from U.N.C.L.E…. AndTheAvengers.
They all fell asleep during that last one, and Mason woke up in the early morning on the floor of his living room, listening to four other men snoring and farting, and saw the dog pawing at the sliding glass door to the backyard.
Mason took the dog outside and let him run around and relieve himself in the rapidly heating day. He thought about cooking breakfast for his friends and maybe going shopping and planning a meal—something nice he hadn’t cooked for a while—and inviting people over for something besides a hamburger cookout.
Thought about how his new project at work was something worthwhile, and maybe he should pay attention to what he was doing there when he was just doing what he was supposed to because that’s what his job description said.
Thought that it was working—he was making plans for life without Terry, and that he was going to be okay—and then realized he was crying, hard, and he felt gutted like a fish.
He managed to clean up the tears and hopefully the red eyes before everybody woke up to chocolate strawberry pancakes.
That empty feeling, though—that gutted one, like his heart was aching, bleeding, torn apart, somewhere far from his body?
That stayed.
He wasn’t sure it was going anywhere. Not for a long, long time.
Reports from the Front
“MRS. BRADFORD,that is a lovely frock you are wearing this morning. I highly approve.”
In fact, the bright red-and-yellow tailored dress was probably the best thing about Mason’s Monday morning. He was still eating lunch with Skip and Carpenter, so things could possibly improve, but he’d woken up that morning with the same big throbbing emptiness in his chest.
He sort of doubted improvement could happen.
“Why thank you, sir. I notice you, too, have decided to throw yourself into business casual.”
He mostly couldn’t have faced putting on a suit. The middle of May was apparently brutally hot, and his heart just hadn’t been in the whole pressed suit-and-tie thing.