Summer Lessons

by Amy Lane

  Mason thought about all those times he’d sat in the principal’s office and known that his mother and father would love him regardless. “Yeah.”

  “When you don’t got that feeling, like you can screw up and it’ll be okay, you stay a kid a lot longer, at least in your head. Because you don’t know how to do anything else. Nobody showed you how.”

  “Great. Because I didn’t feel old and creepy enough.”

  Carpenter shot him a white grin through his scruff. “Anybody can see you’re a big kid pretending to adult, Mason. But you at least know how to pretend. Anyway, talk to Skip. They’ve known each other as long as Skip’s known Richie—he might have some info.”

  Mason nodded, feeling a little better. But he still didn’t play the next round, because he was too busy watching his brother and Carpenter destroy the enemy like old and blooded brothers.

  Or like two guys working hard at not falling in love.

  MONDAY HE called Skipper through the tech line.

  “Tesko Tech Business Services, this is Skipper Keith!” God, he sounded happy. Happy, perky, and sweet. He had from the first time Mason had called his department and gotten him. And Mason, coming off of Ira and worried about Dane, had asked him to come up to his office and watch porn.

  The thought of it still made his cheeks burn.

  He expected himself to just blurt out things like that—but to have that unfortunate victim of his social ineptitude turn into a friend? Embarrassing.

  “Hello, Schipperke,” he said now, making himself sound jovial and smooth. He always tried to channel his father when he did this. Or Fred MacMurray. “How are we doing this morning?”

  “Well, apparently we’re having lunch with a VP in the east wing, because he got his brother to take our friend out for lunch, and we don’t want to eat alone.”

  Mason laughed. “I thought I was being smoother than that.” Dane had been happy to do it. And so had Carpenter.

  “You could have just come eat with us,” Skipper said reprovingly. “Me and Carpenter don’t bite.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted to quiz you shamelessly about your friend, and that’s easier to do when you don’t feel like you’re being a rat fink. So, my office? I promise I’ll have something delivered. Anything you want.”

  “Thai food?” Skipper asked hopefully. “I keep trying to get Richie to try it, but he says nobody he’s known has eaten it and lived. I’m hoping if I eat it and live, then maybe we don’t have to eat pizza all the time.”

  “What’s wrong with pizza?” Mason asked, although he’d hit the age where the onions gave him gas.

  “Ponyboy keeps getting into it.”

  “Ponyboy?”

  “The puppy. He can reach the counter, you know.”

  Mason had known they were getting a puppy. He hadn’t realized it had happened already. “What kind of puppy?”

  “We have no idea, but they told us it was eight weeks old, and it’s already the size of a pony.”

  “And it likes pizza.”

  “The only things it likes better than pizza are garbage and cat shit.”

  Mason laughed, genuinely delighted. Skip and Richie had apparently seized each other’s hand and decided to trot boldly into the future, even if the future was filled with unknown quantities such as Thai food. And dogs.

  “Well, I look forward to you telling me all about it,” he said, happier now even if Skip didn’t know a damned thing about Terry.

  “See you at lunchtime.”

  He rang off and looked up to see Mrs. Bradford waiting in his doorway.

  “Did you have a good weekend, Mrs. Bradford?”

  “Can’t complain, sir. The mister and I drove up to the snow.”

  Mason blinked. “Did you go skiing?”

  She gave a shudder. “Good Lord, no. We sat inside the bed and breakfast, drinking hot chocolate and looking out the window, going, ‘Oh, look. Snow.’ It was thrilling.”

  “I imagine so,” he laughed. A part of him wondered if maybe the two of them hadn’t found other “thrilling” things to do while looking at the snow, but the thought of Mrs. Bradford and sex would knock him off his game for maybe the rest of his life.

  And he wasn’t doing great as it was.

  “How was your weekend, sir?”

  Mason sighed. “I played golf,” he said, unable to shake the confusion in his voice. “But that was Saturday. Sunday, my brother and I tried to redecorate one of the guest bedrooms.”

  “Tried?”

  Mason shrugged. “Well, we succeeded, but I went with green and cream, thinking it would be handsome?”

  “As it should have been.”

  “I picked the wrong….” He shuddered. “Green.”

  “How bad could a green be, sir?”

  He closed his eyes and shuddered again. “Like an olive barfed on a rotten lime.”

  She let out a bark of laughter and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “That is an epic failure, sir. Do you have plans to fix it?”

  “Yeah—next weekend, I think.”

  “That would probably be a mercy. Are you ready for your first meeting?”

  Mason nodded. “Yes, ma’am—but is there any way you could order some takeout Thai food delivered?”

  She barely raised an eyebrow. “Of course, sir. Anything in particular?”

  “How about two helpings of mild green curry and one of pumpkin curry. You really can’t go wrong.”

  “But that’s what you said about green and cream,” she told him in all seriousness.

  Mason found a real smile coming up from his toes, when he could have sworn he’d be stuck with that sort of achy, anxious expression he’d been wearing since he woke up.

  “Point taken. Make sure it’s a really good Thai place, or Skipper and his boyfriend may be feeding their dog pizza for the next twenty years.”

  She laughed again and then sobered. “Mason, does any of this banter have anything to do with the young man you saw last week?”

  Mason felt his face heat. “It’s sort of a way not to think about him,” he confessed, feeling raw. “He was my golfing buddy on Saturday.”

  Mrs. Bradford nodded as though things were beginning to fall into place now. “Was this a good thing or a bad thing?”

  Mason closed his eyes again, and this time, instead of putrid green, he saw the wonder in Terry’s eyes as he peeped at Mason through his hair.

  “It was an amazing thing,” he said, but no amount of remembering the amazing could shake the trouble from his voice.

  “Understood, sir,” she said.

  “I wish I did,” he told her and then nodded in dismissal before he could spend any more of his morning worrying about Terrence Jefferson.

  SKIPPER TOOK to Thai food like a pro, dumping the curry over the rice with unabashed curiosity. He took the first bite and whimpered, pleasure written all over his square-jawed Captain America face.

  “This is good,” he moaned. Then he opened his eyes like he’d discovered a bone or something. “Is it bad for you?”

  Mason smiled. “No, sir—chicken, vegetables, and coconut milk. There are way worse things.”

  “Mm.” He took another bite and savored. A few more bites, appreciating every one, and finally, when he was at the slowing down part of the meal, he focused on Mason.

  “You look like shit,” he said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” Mason protested. Then he sighed. “Well, we tried to decorate the guest room, and it smells like paint and it looks hideous.”

  “That’s it?”

  Mason avoided his blue-eyed gaze. “That’s a thing,” he temporized. “It’s a true thing.”

  “But is it the only thing?”

  Mason let out a breath. “So. Uh, your friend Terry—”

  “Jefferson?”

  “His first name is Terry!”

  “I know what his first name is—we went to Disneyland, for heaven’s sakes!”

  Mason squinted at him. “Is that a team
-building thing?”

  Skipper squinted back. “I had to see his driver’s license. We did not suddenly grow close and bond because it was four guys in a hotel room. But still, yes, I do know his first name is Terry. I know his dad left when he was still a baby, and I know his mom’s a piece of fuckin’ work.”

  Oh good. An opening. “Mm… could you maybe, you know, define that a little more specifically for me?”

  Skipper chewed his rice thoroughly and regarded him with suspicion. “I need to know why you’re asking.”

  Mason took a bite of his own curry—he’d gone with half green and half pumpkin and was wishing he’d gone with all pumpkin, because it was delicious. He swallowed and wondered how much to trust this sweet young man who had, thankfully, not tried to have him hung out to dry for sexual harassment.

  Well, when he thought about it that way….

  “I’m… well, we’re sort of involved?” Oh yeah. That was mature.

  “Sort of?” Skipper frowned at him.

  “See, that’s my problem too.”

  Skipper’s frown was not unfriendly—it was more… contemplative. “Well, I didn’t know he was gay, but Richie had a feeling, so I’m not really surprised.”

  “So, he’s not… out?” Mason had figured this out for himself.

  Skipper shook his head. “See, that’s….” He flailed with his fork, flinging rice indiscriminately. “It’s that whole….” He flailed again. “See, Richie and I were doing it for weeks before we even said the g-word.”

  “Goal?” Mason was actually busy ducking rice—it was the only thing he could come up with.

  “Gay, Mason. I mean, thing about guys like me and Richie? Sixty years ago and we wouldn’t be working in an office. We’d be working in a factory or a mill or someplace. World changes and we end up in IT—but we’re not suits. We’re not you. There’s this whole… thing—you know and we don’t.”

  Mason closed his eyes and tried to think like someone he hadn’t grown up with. “Schipperke—”

  “Like that,” Skip said triumphantly. “Like what that damned dog is called! Like how to wear a suit—”

  “My dad taught me—”

  “See!” Skipper bounced in his seat—and he wasn’t a small, bouncy man.

  “Skip, I’m still not—”

  “Money, Mason. But not just money, because I met some of Carpenter’s rich people, and they were douche bags.”

  “I’m really starting to hate that stereotype,” Mason muttered.

  “But see, you’re the good kind of stereotype. You send your secretary down with TheraFlu. You agree to be on my soccer team even though we’re just a bunch of hosers who like to get dirty. You’re a nice guy. But….” Skipper closed his eyes and shook his head like he was coming to a reckoning. “My mother drank herself to death in our apartment, Mason. While I was in school. I had to get a job at a burger joint so I could eat, and all I ate was burgers, and I was a mess! Now I’m not saying everybody don’t—doesn’t—have their baggage. For all I know, your pain is way worse than mine—”

  “No,” Mason said numbly, thinking there wasn’t enough Thai food in the world. “Not even.”

  “Well that’s good to hear, because mine is bad enough. But guys like Jefferson, like Richie and me, that’s the hand we’re dealt, and we don’t have a safety net to help us get our shit together in a paper bag. So whatever Terry is dealing with, he’s not used to help. He’s not used to words that’ll help. All he’s used to is what he’s got, and he might not even have a picture in his mind of anything better than that.”

  Mason’s turn to flail. “Movies—television, books—”

  “Well, yeah. But I watch shit blow up on my TV and that never happens in real life. For all I know, those TV people in happy families are just that—TV people.”

  Mason found he had to still his breathing, and suddenly words—hateful words spoken by the people Ira used to invite to their dinner parties—hit him full-on. Things like background and education, uttered in tentative tones, like these things were lacking in whomever they were talking about. For the first time in his life, Mason realized what wealth and privilege really were.

  And that there was a barrier between the people who had them and the people who didn’t.

  The barrier wasn’t money itself, like most people thought. It was resources—it was the belief that the world out there could help you instead of just kick you in the teeth.

  This was the thing that he had and Skipper and Richie and Terry did not.

  It was the thing Carpenter had been trying to tell him.

  It was a thing he didn’t know how to fix.

  “But…,” he said, sounding plaintive like a spoiled child. “I… I care about him. Do I not get to care about him because I’m a rich douche bag?”

  Skipper laughed a little and finally set his fork down, like he couldn’t eat anymore even though he was about halfway done. “No. I don’t think that’s how it works. But it means you need to help him see bigger than what he’s got. It’s like….” Skipper sighed and looked at Mason unhappily. “I really hate talking about myself. I hope you know that.”

  Mason grimaced. “I couldn’t miss it if I was blindfolded,” he said honestly.

  “Well, good. Because this is me being a friend, and now you know. But Richie and I, when we were first getting together, he didn’t want to leave his dad. Not because he couldn’t afford to live away or because he was afraid of being on his own, but because his dad, he was the only family Richie had. And he’s a bigoted asshole, so if Richie left him for me….” Skipper stood up and started wrapping up the food on the table.

  “It was permanent,” Mason said, understanding.

  Skip looked at him square on, a wealth of understanding loading down his broad shoulders. “It is permanent. And it’s scary. So Jefferson—Terry—if his situation with his mom is awful, well, he thinks that’s just his life. You may want to keep going like you are until he can see there’s more to life than just what he’s got now.”

  “Patience,” Mason said, feeling stupid because it was obvious. “You’re talking patience.”

  Skip nodded. “And… like, use your words. He won’t. You need to give him words to use.”

  Mason nodded, thinking about chocolate chip cookies and promises to be monogamous because condoms were a pain in the ass. “Better words,” he said softly.

  “Yeah. Macho male bullshit is only romantic if one of you translates,” Skipper said pragmatically. Then he shrugged and smiled shyly. “That sounds really fucking wise of me, I know, but truth is, I’ve got a whole three months of relationship under my belt. Let’s see if Richie and I haven’t screwed things up in a year, and I’ll tell you how much of this works.”

  Mason laughed. “Sit down, Skipper—you’ve wrapped up lunch, but we’ve still got half an hour to go. I brought some cookies from home. Do you want some?”

  Skip bit his lip. “I’ll have to run an extra block, but sure!”

  They dug into the cookies Mason had brought in a baggie. Mason watched his friend looking just as blissed out as Terry did and had a useless wish that everyone he knew had had a Janette Hayes to make them cookies when they were kids.

  Or a someone. Anyone at all.

  THURSDAY NIGHT was stormy and blustery—no practice. Mason texted Terry just to be sure, but he was expecting the Can’t get away. Sorry, no dinner! that he got back.

  Miss you, he texted truthfully. I missed you all week. Mason had tried—he’d sent cute little pictures from the Internet, pictures of his brother asleep with shaving cream in his hand (because Mason and Dane really were twelve), and pictures of him awake with shaving cream in his hair.

  He’d gotten back the occasional LOL, but nothing beyond that, and Mason was wondering if he wasn’t getting brushed off, which, after all of that research, sort of hurt.

  A lot.

  I want to come have dinner, he got back. Mom doesn’t like the rain. It freaks her out.

  Wow.
That was more truth and emotional availability than Mason had assumed he’d get in a month! He’d take it!

  Dane hates the rain too, he confessed, looking at his brother on the other side of the couch. Dane was flipping through the channels dispiritedly, and Mason reminded himself to ask Dane about his medication. It triggers his depressive episodes sometimes.

  Your brother gets depressed?

  And oh crap. Mason had forgotten that Terry didn’t know everything—or anything, really—about his life. Well, Skipper said it was up to him to provide a road map. He has bipolar disorder. If he doesn’t take his meds he goes up up up and then comes crashing down. It’s scary.

  Beat, beat beat, and Mason felt the absolute terror of wondering if he’d jumped without a safety net and landed on a cliff.

  He always seems so together. I had no idea.

  He IS together, Mason texted, girding himself for a brief educational text interlude on mental health. His brain chemistry just betrays him.

  “Who are you texting?” Dane asked, and Mason jerked, sending the phone up in the air before catching it.

  “Ta-da!” he said, and Dane clapped. Mason inclined his head modestly and answered the question. “Terry. We were going to do something tonight, but no soccer.”

  “Oh!” Dane replied, sounding very innocent of any knowledge that he was being gossiped about. “Getting-to-know-you texting. It probably should have happened three weeks ago.” He nodded sagely. “Oh well, better late than never. I’m settling on shotgunning Vinyl and eating popcorn. Are you game?”

  Mason shuddered. “Ugh. I’d rather kiss Bobby Cannavale—”

  “I wouldn’t mind that, actually.”

  Mason glared at him. “It’s like you’re not even my brother. I’m going upstairs to talk like a human being.”

  “Fine—but don’t knock Bobby until you’ve crushed on him.”

  “Dane, just no.”

  Mason took his phone upstairs to his room. By the time he got there, Terry had left a string of texts that he had a hard time deciphering.

  So he hit Call, because fuck it, texting was a young man’s game.