by Lina Langley
He looked concerned. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
I did worry, I was very worried. I couldn’t do anything but look right ahead biting down on my lower lip and continuing to pretend that everything was fine. He was going to find out soon enough, and he was going to need me.
I should have had a plan for this, but I didn’t. I just wanted to see the reaction on my mother’s face when she saw me. I wanted to know if she could justify what she had done to me, I wanted to know if she would even try.
Jules pulled into a small access road, then onto a large parking lot. I had thought that the family was rich before, but I had to stop myself from exclaiming when we pulled into the parking lot of the mansion.
Jules parked at the front, near the steps, and put the car in park before he killed the ignition. “We’re here, boys!” he exclaimed.
Hashim and Brandon both whooped. I sat there for a second, trying to take it all in. My body was circling through a whole bunch of emotions I hadn’t even been aware I had.
“Mason?”
I could hear Jules voice, but it felt like I was underwater. I opened my mouth to answer, but that was when I felt the bile build up in my stomach and began to go up my throat, so I had to open the car door and practically fling the top of my body out so I could vomit on the ground, right in front of the steps of the ridiculous Dubois mansion, on their beautifully maintained cul-de-sac.
They had stopped talking. I was vaguely aware of the silence around me, nothing around me but the sound of my own body and the liquid hitting the ground enveloping me, little beads of sweat falling down my face.
It felt like it took forever to finish. Like maybe I wasn’t going to be okay. But then I was done and I could hear their overlapping voices, all asking me if I was okay, and I wanted to say yes, but I wasn't, and for some reason, at that moment, I just couldn’t bring myself to lie.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MASON
I felt faint as I asked for things to clean up the mess. I was mortified and I didn’t know when Jules’ parents were coming out. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with it, with vomit still on my face and my hair sticking to my forehead from the sweat.
I could feel Jules’ hand on my shoulder. It felt so familiar, like it was perennially there. I turned to look at him, stammering over my apology again. “I’m sorry—”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Jules said. “Nothing at all. Let me take you inside, you can rest for a bit.”
“No,” I said. “I need—I need some time alone. Please.”
They all looked at me for a second too long as I began to wave my hand in front of my face. I was about to open my mouth and tell them to leave me alone, but Jules was ushering them toward the door, forgetting all about their bags.
I stared at the vomit on the floor, then my gaze went up to the mansion in front of me. It was all windows, with an A frame roof, but there was a large porch with a tall foundation, which felt more Victorian than anything else. I didn’t know much about architecture—all my knowledge came from watching House Hunters—but I did know that it looked bigger than any group home I had ever been in.
I told myself that it was better that I went inside, that there was no need for me to continue being there, sitting next to a pool of my own vomit in Jules’ steadily warming car.
I pushed myself up and out of the car. I was unsteady on my feet and I could feel myself swaying from side to side as I began to walk toward the house. If I was going to do it, it needed to be done now. I couldn’t keep putting it off.
I needed to meet her, and I needed to know how she was going to react. I had to know the truth. I had to look in her face and ask her why she had done the things she had done. But even as I tried to walk into the house, my body was fighting me with everything it had.
I couldn’t do it. I found myself close to the steps and practically collapsed upon them, sitting down as I faced away from the mansion, and watched my own leg begin to move up and down. It felt like it didn’t belong to me and I didn’t know how I could get it to stop.
“Calm down, Mason,” I told myself. “Jesus. Just take a second.”
I heard footsteps coming near me and I looked over my shoulder to set my gaze on what I assumed was Jules. My eyes widened when I saw that there were no denim-clad legs coming toward me. They were clad with Nylon. The person coming toward me was wearing bright red heels and began to speed up as they got closer to me.
My gaze shot up, my heart beating quickly as I set my gaze on her face. I knew exactly who she was before our gazes met, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain.
It only took a second. Her eyes widened as she set her gaze on mine, her entire face paling.
I stood up and turned to face her. I opened my mouth to say something, anything. To ask her why she had left me. To ask her why she had chosen Jules over me, to ask her what made him so much better than I was.
But no words came out of my mouth, and as my gaze moved up and down her body again, I noticed the belly she was attempting to hide with a shawl wrapped around her body.
I opened my mouth and began to stammer something, but she spoke before I could. “Gregory,” she said quietly, her expression crumbling for a split second. She straightened herself up and brushed herself off, tilting up her chin and standing up even straighter than before.
I shook my head. “Mason,” I said. “My name is Mason.”
She took a step toward me, almost closing the gap between us. She didn’t say anything. I could see the lines written on her face, the tiny gray roots on her perfectly dyed blonde hair. She furrowed her brow slightly.
I cleared my throat. “Congratulations,” I said, looking down at her stomach.
Her gaze met mine again. “Thank you,” she said. “My husband is very excited.”
I swallowed. “Are you?”
She took a step back. “Are you here with my son?”
My breath caught in the back of my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “I suppose I am.”
He cocked her head slightly, one eye a little smaller than the other. Her expression looked exactly like one of Jules’. It might have looked exactly like one of mine, though there was no way for me to be sure of that.
“Call it craftiness,” I replied.
She took a deep breath. “You’re here now,” she said, her arms firmly crossed over her chest. “Ask your questions.”
It wasn’t just her offer. It was the way she was telling me this, as if she was defying me to come up with anything right there on the spot. I hadn’t prepared. I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, but it felt like my mind had gone completely blank and I had completely forgotten how to even string a sentence together in the first place.
She got closer to me, her eyes narrowing a little further. When she spoke again, her voice was low and venomous. “I don’t know how you did this,” she said. “You might be crafty, but I have never gone down without a fight.”
I scoffed. I couldn’t help myself. “Wait, you think me coming here is a threat?”
“I don’t know how else I can take it.”
“I guess I expected you to be a little more excited about this.”
She moved away from me. “Tell me, what exactly is there to be excited about?”
I shook my head. I was trying to hide the tears welling up in my eyes. I didn’t want to react emotionally, but I was finding it very hard to keep my reaction under control. In theory I knew I shouldn’t have cared about this woman. She might have given birth to me, but she had abandoned me, and she had completely forgotten about me.
I hardened my jaw as I stared at her, sniffling for a second. I bared my teeth at her. “Nothing, I guess.”
“That’s right,” she replied. “Nothing.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. There was nothing I could do, I had been beat. Then she smiled at me. “Listen, Mason,” she spat out my name, as if it disgusted her to say it. “You’re going to go inside, you’re going to
spend the afternoon with my son and his friends, and then tomorrow, bright and early, you’re going to excuse yourself. You’re going to say you’re not feeling too good and then you’re to call your parents to pick you up.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but there were no words coming out.
She smiled at me, her expression icy. “You might think you’re very clever by coming here, but you just made a huge mistake.”
“I don’t think I was clever by coming here, I just wanted some answers.”
She scoffed. “And yet you can’t think of any questions,” she replied. “I’m serious. We don’t know each other, but you should know that I would do anything to protect my family.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat down. She cocked her head, smiling at me, this time, the picture of a perfect hostess. “What are you waiting for? Go inside, I’ll have a member of staff get this cleaned up,” she said.
I stayed put, my body frozen in place. I tried my best to listen to her, I told myself that it was better if I just went inside and forgot all about this conversation, but my body wasn’t listening to me.
“Come on, Mason,” she said. “You are unwell, right? So you better get some rest.”
With that, she turned around and began to walk away from me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JULES
I didn’t want to worry about him, I just wanted to spend time with my friend and pretend that everything was fine, but even as they began to roam around my house, I wanted to go out and ask Mason how he was feeling. He had asked for space, so I had decided to give it to him, but it felt like it was difficult, and there was a part of me that just wanted to spend my time around him. Especially when it came to something like his well-being.
He had said he got carsick, but I hadn’t realized how bad it was. After all, he had never been so impressively sick before. The boys were talking about going to the pool, my dad wasn’t home, I didn’t know where my mom wants, so I decided I would sneak out. Plenty of time had passed, or at least that was what it felt like — I was aware that, in reality, it had been about 10 minutes — and I wanted to be there for him when he needed me.
He was the kind of person who would push people away when he needed them the most, and I wasn’t going to let him go through it all alone. I stopped suddenly when I got to the top of the stairs; the door was still open, so I wasn’t really making any noise as I walked towards my car. I wasn’t prepared see what I saw, because in no universe had my mother ever taken an interest in my friends. She was talking to Mason, her body towering over his, even though she was a tiny woman, even now that she was pregnant. She was standing a step above him, and whatever conversation they were having looked intense.
I hadn’t realized I was doing it, but I had begun to hold my breath. I was trying to hear what they were saying, but my mom was soft-spoken in the first place and it sounded like they were speaking in whispers.
I wanted to get closer to them, but I couldn’t, not without giving myself away. So I stayed there, still holding my breath, standing near the door with my hand on the handle and wondering what the fuck they could be talking about.
When my mom turned around and set her gaze on me, she seems surprised. Her eyes widened slightly, but then she smiled at me. “Oh, Jules.”
I smiled back at her. “Hey, Mom. Everything okay?”
“Of course, everything’s fine,” she said. I noticed that she didn’t even greet me, which I guessed was fine. She was very pregnant, which was making her more forgetful than usual. “Don’t go to sleep too late, boys.”
I nodded. I watched her go inside, and it wasn’t until she was close to the stairs that I finally turned to look Mason. He looked like shit. He had yet to regain any color on his face and when he looked up at me and our gazes met, he flashed me the weakest smile I’d ever.
“Mason, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing you can fix,” he replied. “It’s, um, I’m just not feeling well.”
“How can I help?”
He looked at me for what felt like a few second too long. “You can’t help,” he said. “Can we just go inside, please?”
“Of course,” I replied. He walked up slowly, so slowly I thought he might actually collapse. I reached out to grab his arm in order to steady him. He looked up at me, then he looked down at my hand wrapped around his bicep. Part of me expected him to shrug me off, but he didn’t. Instead, he picked up his head, and he looked right at me.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet, and it sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “Thank you. For everything.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing to thank me for. I haven’t done anything.”
He licked his lips, but he didn’t say anything else. I guided him toward his room, which was at the end of the long hallway, closer to the lake than it was to the kitchen.
“Hashim and Brandon are sharing a room,” I said, letting go of him. He flashed me a questioning look. “I thought it would be nice for you to have the guest bedroom.”
I watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed. “Why?”
“I’m just going to go ahead and guess that you’ve never not shared a room?”
He raised his eyebrows. I waited for him to go wash his mouth out with cold water, sitting down on the bed. When he emerged, I patted the space next to me to indicate that he should sit down. He hesitated for a moment, but then he did, and we were so close to each other that our shoulders were touching.
“It’s one of the things I miss most about being at home,” I said. “There’s nobody to bother you, there’s nobody who’s always talking about how you shouldn’t leave towels on the floor—”
He snickered. “That’s not really a problem for me.”
“Exactly, because you’ve never had your own personal space.”
Mason looked at me, bit down on his lower lip, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “I don’t know what I would need my personal space for.”
“To masturbate, obviously,” I said with a smile.
He smiled back at me, or he tried, which was something. “Thanks,” he replied. “This is really nice.”
“Of course, we’re friends, and I just want you to be okay.”
He looked down at his lap, where he was twisting his fingers. “There’s something I need to tell you, Jules.”
I blinked. I had some idea of what he was going to say, but I could have been wrong, and I didn’t want to be. If I was wrong, it would shatter everything. This felt like my chance.
I put my arm around his shoulders, holding him close to me. He didn’t stop me and he didn’t move away from me. He looked up at me, his green eyes shining. “Jules, what are you doing?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
He didn’t say anything. His gaze darted between my eyes and my mouth, then he exhaled heavily from his nose. “We can’t do this.”
“Why?”
“There are things—”
“I know, things I don’t know,” I said that as I put finger over his lips. “I don’t care about any of that, Mason. All I care about is you.”
“Jules…”
I traced the outline of his bottom lip, then moved my thumb toward his chin, feeling his skin on my finger. He was warm, and I could feel his heavy breathing on my fingertip.
“I can stop,” I said. “If you really want me to.”
I guided his face up so our eyes were meeting. His mouth was half-open. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were glimmering. When I closed the space between us, he didn’t pull away.
Our lips met for the briefest of seconds, but I felt a jolt of electricity going down my spine and extending towards my fingertips. He didn’t kiss me back, not at first, but when our faces moved away from each other’s, his lips were on mine again and he was kissing me hungrily, unabashedly, like he had been yearning for this moment.
I kissed him back. It felt like it had been building up forever, and as our lips met, every ragged breath k
ept getting faster and faster, until I was sure that my breathing was going just as quickly as my heart.
He grabbed my wrist and moved my hand off his face. His cheeks were red when I looked at him, little beads of sweat on his forehead. He looked winded. “Listen, Jules, you need to stop.”
“Is it because you were just sick? Because, you know, I have a spare toothbrush in my bathroom.”
“No. Yes,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I really do need to brush my teeth.”
“You don’t know what?”
He got up, brushing himself off as he did. He craned his neck to look at me, and there was something in his eyes that I couldn’t quite place. It didn’t seem like anger, but it didn’t feel that removed from it. “I was serious,” Mason said. “We can’t be together. Not even for a hook up.”
I took a deep breath. “You always say that, and then you act like you want to be with me.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Look, I don’t care if you’re leading me on or whatever, but it hurts my feelings when you like this,” I said. “Like you want me so much, but what I’m doing is hurting you.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “You don’t understand, Jules. What you’re doing isn’t just hurting me, it’s hurting you too.”
“No. You’re hurting me.”
“Jules…”
“Look, Mason, I can take rejection, okay?” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. “And I can take it if you only want to be friends.”
“Jules—”
“What I can’t take is this hot and cold behavior,” I said, burying my head in my hands. I was aware I was being a drama queen, but I couldn’t help myself. I hadn’t realized just how much his attitude had been hurting me until I started to blurt it all out. “I can’t take it when you talk to me like this. When you talk to me like I’m an idiot.”
“I know you’re not an idiot,” he said quietly. “This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me.”
“And yet you won’t tell me,” I said, shaking my head. “Because, no matter what, keeping that secret is more important than us. It’s more important than a potential relationship with me, which, fine, whatever. You don’t have to want to be in a relationship with me. But what about our friendship?”
