And Then What?

by D. R. Graham

  “Volunteering for a humanitarian group. My dad was glad I was showing interest in something, so he’s funding this project for me. We’re building schools for small, remote villages. I come into Acapulco every couple of weeks to get supplies and take a few days off here at the resort.”

  “How much longer are you going to be in Acapulco?”

  “We head back to camp tomorrow afternoon.” His eyes met mine in a way that felt like our souls were getting reacquainted, then he asked, “Is it all right if we spend time together before I leave?”

  “Of course.”

  The music seemed to get louder as more people packed into the already muggy club. Mason scanned the crowd as if he was looking for a quiet spot for us to hang out. “Why does that blond kid keep staring at us?”

  I looked over my shoulder in the direction Mason had nodded. “Oh, that’s Liam. He’s our neighbour at the hotel. He knows I have a boyfriend, so he’s taken it upon himself to protect me from unscrupulous predators like you.”

  Mason didn’t seem to take it as the joke I intended and stood. “Do you want to go for a walk on the beach?”

  “Um.” It was stifling and crowded and obnoxiously loud, so I nodded to agree. “Let me tell Sophie first. I’ll meet you at the door.” I manoeuvred over to where Sophie was on the dance floor and shouted in her ear, “He wants to go for a walk on the beach. Are you okay with Orrett?”

  “Yeah, he’s cool.” Her left eyebrow lifted in a pseudo scold. “Make sure your walk on the beach doesn’t turn into anything more than a walk on a beach.”

  “It’s Mason. Not a random guy I met at the bar. He knows Trevor and I are still together. We’re just two friends catching up,” I said, maybe only partly to convince her and partly to remind myself.

  “All right. I’ll meet you back at the room.”

  I hugged her, then before I left spun back around quickly. “I almost forgot. Make sure you play along with the Bill thing. He said he’ll explain later.”

  “Sure. Have fun.”

  I made my way through the crowd to where Mason was waiting. We left the club and walked down the path towards the beach. Small lawn lights lit the way and the sound of the waves surrounded us as if we were immersed in a relaxation CD. The air was still warm and the stars were incredibly bright. When we reached the end of the path, where it turned sandy, I rested my hand on Mason’s shoulder to take my shoes off. Something shuffled behind us and I tensed up as I spun to see what it was.

  “It’s okay,” Mason said. “It’s just my bodyguard. He’ll stay far enough away to give us privacy.”

  “Bodyguard? Why do you need security?”

  Mason stepped close and glanced around before he whispered, “I don’t. My dad’s just being over-protective because his company is funding all of the school projects. He thinks if someone finds out who I am that—” He checked over his shoulder. “He’s just being over-protective. I don’t want anyone to treat me any differently because of my dad. That’s why I’m going by Bill. Bill Murray. Do you like it?” He chuckled.

  I knew he chose it because Bill Murray movies were his favourite, but I didn’t think it was cute. “No.” I shook my head. “No. Definitely not. You have to go back home. I don’t want you to be in danger.”

  “I’m not in danger. It’s just a precaution. We haven’t had any problems.”

  “Mason,” I said in a pleading way.

  “Bill,” he corrected me.

  “I won’t be able to sleep knowing that something bad might happen to you while you’re here. Can’t you search for the real Mason in a place where the real Mason’s life isn’t at risk?”

  “I’ll be fine as long as you stop calling me Mason.” He tucked my hair behind my ears. “I do like hearing you say my name, though. Say it again,” he whispered.

  Even though he shouldn’t have been acting flirty I was desperate to convince him that his project was dangerous. Hoping I could persuade him, I leaned in really close so my lips were almost touching his ear and whispered, “Mason.”

  He closed his eyes as if he wanted to savour the sound. “Mmm.”

  “I’ll say it again if you promise to go back home.”

  He laughed. “I like it here.”

  “What would I have to do to convince you to come home?”

  He raised his eyebrows and chuckled.

  I had a fairly good idea what he might have been thinking, so I steered him away from that topic. “What if I just blurted out who you are? You’d have to come home then.”

  “I wouldn’t make it home alive if you did that.”

  “Oh, Mason.” I actually felt panicked that he wasn’t taking the risk seriously enough. “I mean Bill, I’m not comfortable with what you’re doing.”

  He stretched his arm across my shoulders casually and encouraged me to stroll slowly with him. “It’s totally fine. I’ve been here for four months and nothing has ever happened. Mostly we just spend time with friendly villagers and a bunch of innocent little kids. It’s so safe I would take you there. In fact, why don’t you and Sophie come with us tomorrow? You can stay with us for a couple of days, get some volunteer experience, and see that it’s completely safe.”

  “Seriously?” I stopped walking and turned to face him. “It’s not safe to travel outside the resort area. There are travel warnings for tourists.”

  “We travel with armed guards. You’ll be safer with us than you are at that nightclub.”

  I squinted over to where I imagined his bodyguard was lingering, but I couldn’t see him. Not sure what I thought about the offer to go with him to volunteer for a couple days, I sat down on the sand and gazed up at the stars, thinking. Mason sat down beside me and leaned back to rest on his elbows as he watched the surf crash on the shore in the moonlight.

  Eventually his head shifted and I felt his gaze on me. “You’re thinking about Trevor, aren’t you?”

  I sighed and scooped the sand with my hands and then let it sift through my fingers like an hourglass. “If he were sitting on a beach in Mexico with an ex and contemplating an offer to go into a remote place to volunteer with her, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be that thrilled with the idea.”

  “Technically, you and I were never more than friends.”

  I was quiet again as I was reminded of the feelings I’d had for Mason. He was right, our relationship had been platonic physically. But emotionally it had been more than just friends. At least for me.

  Mason rolled onto his side to face me, propped up on one elbow. “Don’t you trust Trevor?”

  My initial reaction was to say of course I do but I hesitated for a fraction of a second, which Mason noticed. I didn’t feel like going into all the details of my recent unwarranted jealousy, so I simply said, “I trust him.”

  “Then if he were on a beach in Mexico with an old friend you wouldn’t have anything to worry about. He loves you.” He studied my expression almost as if he knew there was something not quite right about how I hesitated. He reached over and gently poked my arm in a teasing way. “Don’t you trust yourself?”

  Without answering or even looking at him I laid back on the sand and stared up at the stars. “What do you think the chances are that Sophie and I came to Acapulco on a last-minute whim, and you were in town for only one night, then we went to the same club at the same time?”

  “You’re the psychic. You tell me.”

  The chances seemed astronomically slim. More than coincidental. “Did you use your connections to arrange it somehow?”

  He chuckled. “No. Apparently the universe arranged it.”

  If that was true, the coincidence obviously meant something. Another test for Trevor and my relationship, maybe. Or a message. I had read in an intuition book once that there was no such things as coincidences, only messages that we either paid attention to or ignored. I was paying attention, but that didn’t help at all with figuring out why our paths would cross in Mexico. I wouldn’t put it past him to give Sophie’s dad the tickets an
d orchestrate the meeting, but he seemed surprised to see me, too. Maybe running into him was really just random and meant nothing. I didn’t know.

  He smiled at the fact that I was trying so hard to unsuccessfully calculate the probabilities. “It’s not as random as it seems. My dad is a part-owner of the resort and they market almost exclusively to Canadians. It makes sense that you ended up at this particular resort. And there was a one-in-four chance you’d be here on my once-a-month weekend.”

  His dad owning the resort was just as much of a coincidence. Of all the cities, all the resorts, all the nights, we ended up in the same place at the same time. Universal intervention felt like the most logical explanation or he paid someone off to make it happen. And I didn’t know what to think about that. Eventually I turned my head to look at him and said, “I trust myself.”

  He smiled in a satisfied way and then laced his fingers behind his head to lie flat on the sand. “How do you like school?”

  I didn’t answer at first because the change in topic was abrupt and I hadn’t fully gotten over the weirdness of running into him. What was even weirder was that it didn’t actually feel weird to fall right back into the easy comfort of conversation that we had always shared. “It’s hectic. I like my courses, but there’s a lot of work. I was actually getting really stressed and needed this vacation.”

  “What are you and Trevor going to do after he graduates?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t really discussed that far in the future yet. Why?”

  “It’s not that far in the future. He’s got two years left on his forestry degree and will probably be away for most of his third year on field studies. You’ve got four more years plus at least a couple years’ interning ahead of you if you still plan to become an architect. Trevor will be pretty established in a forestry career by the time you’re ready to get a job. You might want to work in New York or internationally since, the last time I checked, the best architect jobs weren’t in Britannia Beach. Is he willing to live somewhere else?”

  “Um, I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about any of that in detail.” I glanced at him and I could feel my eyebrows angling into a deep frown. “I’m sure we will. We’ll figure something out.”

  He didn’t say anything—not in the I-don’t-have-anything-to-say-about-that way—more in the I-think-it’s-odd-that-you-haven’t-talked-to-your-boyfriend-about-the-future-but-I-don’t-want-to-judge-you way. It was strange. Trevor and I had been dating for six months. We both knew exactly what we wanted school-wise and career-wise, but we hadn’t discussed how those goals would work together. I was only eighteen. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had to think about things like that yet, but maybe I did.

  Maybe sensing that he had thrown me into a silent panic, he changed the topic and asked, “How’s your granddad?”

  Relieved to talk about something less terrifying than my undeniably uncertain future, I rolled onto my stomach and rested my cheek on my forearm. “Granddad is good. He moved into a fifty-five-plus condo in Squamish after the new owners took over the Inn. At first he didn’t know what to do with all the free time, but now he’s going on all sorts of golf trips and sightseeing tours with people he’s met in the building.”

  “Do the new owners make the famous apple-cinnamon muffins as well as you did?”

  “Of course not. I used a secret ingredient.”

  He leaned closer and whispered, “What is it?”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” I swiped my hand to flick sand on his arm.

  “Ha ha. You do realize that’s the first threat I’ve received since I’ve been here.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “Not the same. I don’t understand why you need to take unnecessary risks to find yourself.”

  “It’s not risky. And I won’t be here much longer. I’m starting school in the fall.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Florida. They have a good marine biology program.”

  I smiled at the memory of when he first told me he was interested in marine biology. Everyone had assumed he liked working for his dad, making a lot of money, but he didn’t. I had challenged him to think about what he really liked and what made him happy, which was one of the things he had said he appreciated about me. “I’m really happy for you. Are you happy?”

  He smiled and then said the same thing he’d said on our very first date, “I’m happy right now.”

  “Still saying provocative things, Mr. Cartwright.”

  He chuckled. “Not everything has changed, I guess.”

  I moved and sat cross-legged to face him. In a lot of ways it felt as if nothing had changed. Maybe that was how connections like ours worked—life changed, we changed, but our bond was unaltered. I wondered if that would still be the case in ten, or even fifty, years. “I saw twin boys at the airport that reminded me of you and Cody. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign that I was going to run into you.”

  The mention of his bother shifted his mood and he sat up to stare out at the waves again. “So, you think about me sometimes?”

  I dug my toes in the sand and buried my feet as I contemplated how much to admit. Trevor wouldn’t have been overly thrilled to know how often Mason did pop into my head, but there was no reason why Mason shouldn’t know the truth. “Every time I see a Range Rover, I check to see if the driver is you. When a Town Car pulls up to the curb, I wait to see if it’s you who gets out. The sound of a helicopter flying over the city always makes me wonder where you are. So, yeah, I’d say I think about you sometimes.”

  He smiled and relaxed again. “I’ve written you a letter every week since I’ve been here.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t send any of them, obviously, but you’re the only person who I felt like I could talk to.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  “They’re back at the camp.”

  “Why didn’t you send them?”

  His eyes widened and he shot me a goofy duh look. “Because you have a boyfriend.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t write to me. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.” He inhaled and hooked his elbows around his knees. “I wanted to take a break from dating for a while to see if it would help me find myself.”

  “Cold turkey. Impressive. If you keep that up they won’t be able to call you Chance anymore.”

  “I never liked that nickname.”

  “And now you’re Bill.”

  His eyebrows angled into a frown. “Yeah, apparently I’m no closer to figuring out who Mason is.”

  He became quiet and seemed lost in thought. I had no idea what time it was, but it was obviously so late that it was early because the sky started to lighten. I wondered if the bodyguard was still there somewhere in the bushes, and if he was, I wondered when he slept. “Maybe we should get back before Sophie starts to worry,” I said.

  Silently, Mason stood and extended his hand to help me to my feet. He was staying in the building closest to the lobby but he walked me to the other end of the resort to my building. We ran into Sophie and Orrett on the path. “Hey,” she said with amusement. “That was a long walk.”

  “We were just talking,” I said in a quiet but threatening tone to make her drop the teasing she was undoubtedly about to launch into.

  “We were just talking,” she mimicked me in a high-pitched voice as she brushed the sand out of my hair. Fortunately that was the extent of her ribbing. “You guys want to come in for a drink?” she asked the boys.

  They exchanged a look that communicated some sort of silent agreement and followed us upstairs.

  CHAPTER 9

  In our suite, Sophie cracked open the mini bar and started mixing different types of booze. While Mason was out on the balcony, Orrett said to me, “You must be quite something. Billy never spends time hanging out with women we meet at the bar, and he’s had plenty of opportunity.”

  I almost told him we already knew each other b
ut remembered that he didn’t even know Mason’s real name. “You must be quite something too. Sophie doesn’t find very many people interesting enough to even give the time of day to, let alone invite them in for drinks.”

  “Well, I am admittedly cool,” he said with a grin. “And we have a lot in common.”

  “Really? Are you a musician?”

  “I used to be. I’m a dentist now.”

  Sophie joined us in the living room with a tray of four glasses and Mason stepped in from outside. I scooted over on the couch to make room for him to sit beside me. The drink Sophie handed me was too strong for me, so I put it back on the table. “How long have you been working on the humanitarian project?” I asked Orrett.

  “Almost a month. I’m going home after this project is finished.”

  “He’s married and has a three-year-old son,” Sophie added, as if she wanted to make it clear to me that he wasn’t going to be her rebound from Doug. It was hard to tell if she was disappointed about that or not. I was relieved he was unavailable since I couldn’t imagine her or Doug being with anyone other than each other.

  Orrett choked back a sip of Sophie’s burning drink concoction and then said, “Even the people who aren’t married don’t usually stay longer than a month. Billy’s a die-hard—four months and counting.”

  “Four months?” Sophie exclaimed. “That’s a long time to be away from home.”

  Orrett nodded and added, “I have a theory that he won’t confirm nor deny. I think maybe some girl back home broke his heart and he’s not ready to go back.”

  Nervous that my expression would let on to the fact that we knew him I made a joke. “Bill seems more like the type who breaks hearts, not the other way around.”

  Apparently Mason didn’t find the topic particularly humorous. He shifted his weight and then shot back his entire drink. There was a long, awkward silence before Sophie fortunately changed the subject to some obscure punk bands that Orrett also knew a lot about.