“Good job, ladies,” Cody said. Mason whistled, and Logan applauded as we took a bow. Sweaty and smoldering hot, I high-fived Bit and Shelby before walking over to Mason. I took the beer out of his hand and finished it in three swallows. Then I burped, squeezed the can until the middle collapsed, and tossed it into the trash can.
Mason laughed, “Can I get you anything else?”
I smiled, taking in Mason’s beautiful features. “Maybe a shower,” I said.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Shelby scolded. “The whole point of roughin’ it is to rough it. No modern plumbing.”
“But I feel sticky and gross,” I argued.
“There’s a hose pipe right over there,” Shelby said, and pointed to it. My mouth fell open. Mason laughed. “I bet you’ve never even been campin’ before.”
“Of course I have. It just didn’t involve a tent. My friends and I used to camp at Lake Tahoe all the time. We have a vacation house out there. It sits right on the beach.” Thinking about that place made me smile. I’d had so many great times there. “We built our own fires and cooked our own food. We made s’mores. It was so much fun.”
“That doesn’t sound like roughin’ it to me.”
“Ten people sharing three bathrooms was rough, trust me.”
“Sounds like a complete nightmare,” Mason deadpanned.
“Okay, that sounded…” Embarrassed I’d said something so shallow, I had no words.
“I’m gonna get us a refill,” Mason said, and headed to the beer cooler.
“Alright, everybody inside,” Bit ordered. Everyone followed her, and for whatever reason, we sat in a circle on the dirty floor of the tent’s screened-in room.
“So, whattya we do now?” Logan asked.
“Talk shit, play a game, whatever we want,” Shelby said.
“What games? Spin the bottle, truth or dare, I never—all the games we’ve been playin’ since we were ten,” Cody said. “We already know everything there is to know about each other.”
“We do not,” Bit argued.
“You can’t tell me that I don’t know everything there is to know about every person sitting here,” Cody said.
“Everybody except Kat,” Logan retorted.
All eyes were suddenly on me. I didn’t know what else to say, except, “What do you want to know?” hoping they wouldn’t ask me anything too personal.
Shelby lit up. “Do you know anybody famous?”
“No.”
“Nobody?” she sighed.
“Nope.”
“Not even a TV star?” she slumped forward, disappointed.
“Nope.”
“How big is your house?” Bit asked.
“Um…”
“Oh, c’mon,” Shelby coached.
“Big,” I said, hoping to get away with that answer.
“How big?” Bit asked.
“Twelve-thousand square feet.” I felt so uncomfortable saying it out loud. I shouldn’t have been ashamed of what I had. My father had worked hard for it, but somehow it seemed wrong to have such a large house for just the two of us. The Broussard family was happy in fifteen-hundred square feet.
“Oh my god! That’s enormous, like, eight times the size of ours,” Bit gasped. “Is it on a hill? Isn’t California hilly?” she asked.
“My house is on the beach.”
“What kind of car do you have?” Shelby asked.
“That stuff doesn’t really matter, does it?” I asked.
“No, it’s not a big deal. We’re just curious.” When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “So, what is it? A Lexus or something?”
It was the first time since I’d gotten my car that I didn’t want to brag about it. For a moment, I considered lying and saying it was a Lexus.
“Mercedes,” I answered meekly. If anyone in Malibu had asked, I would have said I drove a convertible Mercedes E550 Cabriolet, black with custom pink and black interior that my dad had given to me for my sixteenth birthday. He’d taken me out to dinner and given me a pair of diamond earrings, which were nice, but had left me disappointed. I mean, what sixteen-year-old doesn’t want a car for their birthday?
He gave me the car when we got home from dinner. I was so excited I lost consciousness for a minute. I squealed and hugged my dad, and thanked him a hundred times. I still remember what that moment felt like. I imagined I would never forget.
“Damn, I didn’t realize you were so loaded,” Cody said. I shrugged.
“What the hell kind of jobs do your parents have?” Logan asked.
“My dad works for a finance company.” Which was the short answer to that question. “And I don’t know what my mom does.”
“Ha! What? Does she shop all day or somethin’?” he asked.
“Probably,” I said, opting for the short answer again, especially since I had no idea what she did at all.
Mason was staring at nothing—in another world. I touched his arm, startling him. “You wanna take a walk?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t go. I still don’t know how you lost your virginity,” Bit said. I gawked at her, surprised.
“She has this weird fixation with how everybody else did it, so she can plan losin’ hers down to the second,” Shelby said, rolling her eyes.
“So, you two haven’t,” I said, stunned that Bit and Logan weren’t sleeping together.
“Nope,” Logan answered.
“Don’t plan it; you’ll be disappointed if you do,” I told Bit.
“That’s what I keep tellin’ her,” Logan argued. I wanted to laugh. Bit wanted it to be perfect, and Logan just wanted it.
“Just let it happen, because that sort of thing never goes as planned,” I said.
“That’s what I keep tellin’ her,” Shelby said.
“Would you tell me anyway, please?” Bit asked. I didn’t want to share that story, especially since I was trying to get some alone time with Mason. And why would he want to hear how I lost my virginity in front of all of his friends? I surely didn’t want to hear how he’d lost his. “It’s not even a good story,” I said.
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease,” she begged. I let out a loud sigh, looking at Bitty’s puppy-dog face. “I’ll tell you later, okay?”
“Alright,” she reluctantly agreed.
Mason stood up and held his hand out for me. We exited the tent and walked to his truck. He took down the tailgate and hoisted me up so I could sit on it. He climbed up and sat next to me.
“So, you don’t want me to hear how you lost your virginity?” he asked, a smile staring on his lips.
“I didn’t think you’d want to.”
“Was it in the back seat of a Bentley?”
“What does that mean?”
“I just figured you were with some rich guy, and since, like, half of everybody loses it in a car…”
“Old guys and rapper’s drive Bentley’s. The guy I was with drove a Toyota truck, and it was in a beach cabana, not in a car,” I snapped.
“Damn, Kat, take a joke,” Mason said, but it didn’t feel like he was joking.
“Does it bother you that Dixie’s in bed with Garrett right now?” I asked, meaning to sting him back.
“Nah. She always screws somebody else when we breakup. She thinks bein’ with another guy will make me jealous, and we’ll get back together.”
“There’s been a year’s worth of back and forth between you two, it must work,” I said.
“Who she screws has nothin’ to do with me and her.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want.”
“Okay, fine, you wouldn’t normally care, but tonight she’s with Garrett,” I argued. That would have been like Olivia sleeping with one of my old boyfriends, I would have been fuming like Frankenstein.
“It’s not the first time she’s screwed Garrett.”
“What! How are you still friends?”
“Me and G really aren’t friends. We’re civil when he’s in town, but as I’m sure you’
ve figured out by now, Garrett Broussard is kind of a douche. His big-ass ego makes him hard to deal with sometimes. Him and Dixie can do whatever they want.” Mason glanced at me. “Like I said, me and her and done.”
“Sorry about the way I acted this morning,” I said.
“Don’t sweat it. Dixie’s a button pusher. It’s better to ignore her—makes her madder than anything when she knows nobody’s payin’ attention to her bullshit.” Mason smiled at me. “But it would have been fun seeing you two roll around in the mud a little bit.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Take a joke,” he laughed.
It felt like Mason and I hadn’t been on the same page all day. Our timing was seriously off. I looked at him, in his eyes, trying to somehow make the weirdness of the day disappear, and surprisingly, it worked.
Mason jumped down and lifted me off the tailgate. He held me tightly against him. “You make me crazy,” he murmured, making me smile.
Mason loosened his grip and looked at me. He moved my hair away from my face. “I’m sorry about last night—some parts of last night,” he corrected with a devilish grin. “I shouldn’t have tried to have a conversation with you in the state I was in.”
I laughed, “Oh, is that what you were trying to do—have a conversation with me?”
“That’s what I told myself.” He pulled me close again. “I think I wanna call a do-over though.”
“What do you want to do-over?”
“Our first kiss,” he said, leaning in. “It shouldn’t of happened that way.”
“I thought our first kiss was really great,” I confirmed, biting my bottom lip.
“Then you won’t mind if I kiss you again,” he hummed.
“Stupid question,” I muttered just before our lips touched.
Chapter 17
I woke up on one of the couches on the back porch, damp with sweat. I sat up wondering how I’d wound up there because I’d remembered falling asleep in Mason’s arms in his truck. I figured my being on the couch meant that he had left.
As I walked inside the house, I noticed an extension cord running from the kitchen to the tent. It was attached to a box fan. They had a fan in the tent after Shelby said I couldn’t use modern plumbing. “Cheaters,” I mumbled.
Speaking of cheaters, I wondered if Garrett and Dixie were out of my temporary bed yet. I sneaked down the hall to his room, and thankfully, the door was open and they were gone. I stripped the bed and put the sheets and comforter in the washer before getting in the shower.
I wrapped my hair in a towel and put on the shirt Mason let me borrow the night we went frog giggin’. He hadn’t asked for it back, which was good, because I hadn’t planned on returning it. I’d washed it, so it didn’t smell like him anymore, but it represented a part of his history and that meant something.
I walked back into Garrett’s room with my head bent down, towel drying my hair.
“Nice shirt,” Mason said, startling me. He was sitting in the recliner. I tried not to seem too excited to see him, but I was.
“Hey,” I breathed, fiddling with my hair, trying to slick it down a little, noticing that he’d changed clothes. I figured he’d gone home to clean up and that was how I’d wound up on the couch. My heart beat faster; feeling his arms close around me.
Then I heard Garrett’s voice. “How ‘bout y’all just do it already?”
“If you’d stop interrupting us every five seconds, maybe we would,” I blurted, mad that he’d barged in on us again.
Garrett laughed. “Well, get to it then,” he said and twisted the lock on the door. “Be easy on her, man. Sounds like it’s been a while for her—oh and Kat, I used up the condoms you had shoved between the mattress and the box spring,” he said, before closing the door.
“You’re right, Garrett is a douche,” I complained. Mason laughed.
“So, you’re a condom hoarder, huh?” he asked, amusement in his tone. I laughed. Of all the weird things a person could collect. “Dana gave them to me. She thought you and I were sleeping together.”
“I wonder what gave her that idea,” he smiled. I had—the day I tried to show up Dixie by announcing that Mason had spent the night in my room.
“Get dressed,” Mason said and unlocked the door and left.
I put on a pair of cuffed denim shorts and a peach crocheted cap sleeve top, and went back to the bathroom to dry my hair and put on a little makeup. Mason was sitting on the couch waiting for me when I came out.
“You look great,” he said.
“Thanks,” I smiled. “So do you.” He was wearing khaki cargo shorts, a white, cotton polo shirt, and his LSU hat of course. He could have been wearing a paper sack and still would have been deliciously handsome.
I put Garrett’s sheets and comforter in the dryer and left a note saying I was with Mason on the kitchen counter before we left.
In Mason’s truck, I sat in the center of the bench seat, so I could be close to him.
“You eat pizza?” he asked.
“Yeah. I had it every Thursday night before I came here,” I blurted. He glanced over at me, like he expected me to say something more. I didn’t.
“Chuck E. Cheese,” I laughed, as Mason pulled into the parking lot.
“Yeah, you ever been?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
He shook his head. “I know you’ve at least played Skee-Ball before,” he said.
“Yeah, my friend Brian has a Skee-Ball machine in his game room. I have to warn you, I’m pretty good at it.”
“Alright,” he nodded, a slight grin on his mouth.
Once inside, we ordered pepperoni pizza, got a cup full of tokens to share, and headed to the Skee-Ball machines, dodging screaming, crying children along the way.
“I thought you were supposed to be good at this,” Mason joked after I’d tried to land the 50-point circle at the top and my ball bounced out and landed in the gutter.
“I’m just probably not warmed up yet,” I joked back.
He laughed. “You need to go outside and throw a few over-handed first?”
“Just give me a minute, I’m about to bring the pain.”
Mason laughed harder. “I can’t wait to see that.”
It took eight games, but I finally got a higher score than Mason. He gave me a high-five, threw his arm around my neck, and kissed the side of my forehead. By then our pizza was ready. We sat down at our table—on opposite sides—and watched Chuck E’s band lip-sing Beatles songs while we ate.
Before leaving, we gave our prize tickets to a couple kids who completely under appreciated the gesture.
Afterwards, Mason took me to a community theatre where we saw “Into the Woods.”
He’d fidgeted a lot during the show, seeming restless, but he was a guy who probably didn’t frequent musicals.
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked, half joking as we exited the theatre.
“First time,” he exhaled hard. “I thought you would like it.”
“I did like it, but I’m guessing you didn’t.”
“It was okay.”
“You didn’t have to bring me here,” I said.
“I know. I wanted to.”
“Thank you,” I said, and sweetly kissed his lips.
“This is a date by the way,” Mason said. I laughed.
“Okay, so now I understand the difference between a date and you being friendly. Friendly stuff is fun for you, date stuff isn’t.”
“Hey, Chuck E. Cheese was fun!” he argued.
“How about we do something you like now?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like the play.”
“If you weren’t here, where would you be right now?”
Mason grinned, hesitating.
“Spill it,” I said.
“The mud run in Saint Tammany Parrish,” he finally admitted.
“Then let’s go there.”
“You’re gonna get dirty,” Mason warned with a smile.
; “How am I going to get dirty?” I wasn’t participating.
“You just are.”
“Fine. I can do dirty,” I boasted.
Mason gave me a wide smile. “Alright, let’s go get dirty then,” he said and helped me into the truck.
Chapter 18
The mud run took place on a private farm. We parked in a freshly cut field and walked to a table sitting in front of a newer looking wood slat fence that seemed to go on forever. The gate was open, tied back with a long piece of white nylon rope.
The sign on the table read,ADMISSION $5 PROCEEDS TO THE DELK FAMILY.
A poster taped to the front of the table had photos of the family. Their youngest child had recently had a kidney transplant, and they needed help paying medical expenses. “She’s so sweet,” I mumbled looking at the three-year-old girl in the photos. She was smiling, her nose wrinkled, her baby teeth showing. Her wispy blond hair rested in ringlets against her shoulders. Her bright green eyes full of life.
“The Babin’s—the people who own this farm have been doin’ this as long as I can remember. Every year they choose a family in need and give them the money they raise,” Mason said.
“That’s so nice of them,” I gasped. I hadn’t ever been in a position where I couldn’t pay for something. I couldn’t imagine what a burden it must have been to have a sick child and trying to manage the everyday while worrying about bills they couldn’t pay.
I had a fifty-dollar bill in my pocket. Marion had given it to me before I boarded the plane to come to Slidell. She said I should have some cash on me just in case I needed some before I could get to a bank. So far, I hadn’t needed any cash at all.
When it was our turn at the ticket table, one of the women taking money lit up when she saw Mason.
“Mason,” she smiled. “How you doin’ baby?”
“I’m good, Mrs. Landry.”
“Come hug my neck,” she said, and held her arms open wide. “It’s good to see you, child.”
“Good to see you, too, ma’am.”
“Your lady friend got a name?” she asked. Mason grabbed my hand. “This is Kat.”
“Hi,” I said. The woman smiled, her dark skin wrinkling around her eyes. “She’s a pretty one,” she said to Mason. “Nice to meet you, sweetie,” she said to me. “Y’all go on—have some fun now,” she directed.
Two Thousand Miles Page 8
