Strum Me

by Allison, Ketley

  “How … how’d you get this number?” I ask.

  “Mack! Open up! We need to talk, damnit!”

  I burrow my chin closer to my chest and angle away from the door while cradling the phone, like that’s enough to block Mason out.

  “A guard gave it to me,” my dad says. “Said you called the prison and wanted to pass along your new number to me. I gotta say, Kenny, you almost shocked my heart into stopping when I got that message. It’s been years.”

  Hearing my dad’s voice brings forward a childhood comfort I thought was long ago destroyed. It brings back memories of story-time before bed, hot milk toddys brought to me while sick, stern lectures when disobeying house rules—all those parent moments that are just a routine part of life, until that life is altered against your will and those simple memories become precious artifacts.

  It’s enough to distract me from his words, until my survival instinct kicks in. I never contacted the prison.

  “I know, Dad.” I say, wiping under my eyes. “I never figured out what to say to you after you were arrested and we lost everything. Honestly, I still don’t know what to say. But you should know, it wasn’t me that gave you this num—”

  A beep comes from outside the hotel door, and I watch with annoyance as the lever’s pulled down and Mason strolls in, the door shutting ominously behind him.

  “Mason,” I snap. “I’m on the phone. Could you give me a minute?”

  “Did you just say Mason?” my Dad asks from the other end of the line. “As in, Mason Payne? Are you with him, Kenny? I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

  The phone’s pulled from my grip.

  “Hey—!”

  Mason hangs up on my father, then tosses the phone across the room. “What I have to say is more important.”

  “You son of a bitch!” I rear up from the bed. Palms splayed, I push against his chest. His hammering heartbeat under my palm startles me, but I cover it with outrage. “That was my father, you jackass! And I have no way of calling him back!”

  For a brief second, awareness brightens his stare, chased with a stab of guilt, but he blinks it away. “Listen to me, Mack.”

  “No!” To my horror, tears blur my vision. But I dare not let them fall. “I’m sick of listening, of doing what you instruct, of being your good little companion while you waltz around doing whatever the fuck you want. Get out of my room. Last night doesn’t give you permission to stomp around where I deserve privacy and piss your testosterone everywhere.”

  “Everyone knows.”

  “You have such gall to bust in here right now,” I continue, ignoring what he has to say. There’s nothing he can voice to fix this emptiness growing inside me. A hollow tomb he’s constructing with his bare hands. “After what you did. I’m not some object you get to keep in your attic and pull out and play with whenever you remember I’m there. I’m a person, Mase, and unless you’re here for some kind of repentance—”

  “You’re not hearing me.” Mason steps into my personal space, a not-so-subtle urging to sit back down on the bed, but I put my hands on my hips instead and practically chest-bump him.

  He repeats, “Everyone. Knows.”

  This. Man. He gets me so angry, so volatile, that I don’t feel like myself. I’m unhinged and hurting, and when set against the stone cold look on his face, it’s like I’m the only one who cares that it’s happening.

  “Knows what?” I yell.

  “Who you are. What you do.”

  The sharp insults I planned to fling lodge in my throat. I back away, but my thighs hit the side of the bed, and I have nowhere further to retreat. “They…?”

  Mason nods, and while he never appears happy, at this moment, his features are especially foreboding. “Someone—I don’t know who, but mark my words I will find out and skin them alive—leaked who you are to the press, and it’s not about being a long-lost childhood friend. I’m not going to try and pretty this up for you, Mack. It’s all over, the fact that you’re a call girl. The tabloids here have the story, and so do the ones in the States. Your face is plastered everywhere.”

  “My…” I hold a hand to my forehead and crumple into a slow sit on the bed. “Oh my God.”

  Mason looms above, unmoving, his hands hanging at his sides. I don’t expect comfort from him. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because my stomach’s in turmoil. My throat’s swelling, and all I can think of is my father.

  I risk meeting Mason’s eyes, though he’s hard to see through the blur. It’s like my heart’s pounding in my head and pulses into my vision, throbbing sound waves creating an aurora of light and darkness around his form. I may pass out. “Did you…was this you? Because of what went down last night? What I said to you? Are you punishing me?”

  “It didn’t come from me,” Mason assures.

  But it is something he’d do, as punishment, retribution, petty revenge. It’s definitely a tactic he would’ve employed years ago.

  “You and I had an agreement,” he says, “and I honor promises. I—fuck, Mack—I wouldn’t ruin your life like that. I’m fully aware how nasty the press is.”

  “My life…” I say as realization hits. I massage my neck as I stare off to the side. “Yes, it’s definitely ruined. I’ve been publicly outed and shamed. No client will ever want to associate with me again.”

  “I’m sorry, Mack.”

  The sincerity is there in his tone. I can hear it. Yet, I’ve experienced enough of Mason Payne to wait for the inevitable truth. He never means what he says. There’s always a deeper menace lying dormant in the wings, until the perfect moment when he decides to unleash it.

  “You don’t mean that,” I say, both shocked and impressed at how dull my tone is. “You got what you wanted, Mase. I can no longer be an escort, have sex with strange men, make all the cash I need to—to—” I choke.

  Giles will punish me.

  My father will die.

  The contract between Mason and me is null and void.

  The money promised is gone.

  Mason touches my shoulder. “Mack…”

  “Don’t touch me,” I hiss, then shoot off the bed. I dart across the room, as far away as I can get from him.

  I peel my lips back and glare. “You wanted this! To destroy everything I’ve worked for! All because of your fucked up sense of decency. You can be the asshole, the beast, the dick who does whatever he pleases, but God forbid I exercise my free will and decide to be an escort. How dare I sully my innocence, right? How could I ruin the sweet, innocent, stupid little McKenna Beckley who you hold so dear in your memories? Do I have that right, Mason? You wanted that girl back, the one who cracked your heart open so wide you had no choice but to hurt her to protect yourself.”

  Mason responds with a low growl. “You are so, so wrong. You had the perfect set-up. A jumping off point where you could’ve done whatever you wanted—be a doctor, lawyer, bio-fucking-scientist, it was all written in the stars for you. But then your dad got caught doing wrong. Your world went upside down. So what?”

  My eyes widen at his blasé tone, but I should’ve seen the signs. The building blocks to anger.

  He continues, “My dad did illegal shit all the time, did more time in jail than he did sitting on the couch at home, drinking and smoking and wailing on his kids. Hell, my brother did time, too. Life can be shit, McKenna, no one knows that better than me. And all signs pointed to me staying in my shit-hole and never coming out. No one thought I’d make it. I sure didn’t think I’d be a millionaire before I’m thirty. Or have a platinum-selling album with my best friends. If anyone should’ve made it, it was you. You should be the one on top, you had the primer needed to pull yourself out of the gutter your father put you in, and instead, you squandered your chances by thinking you deserved to stay down.”

  “You’re disappointed in me? Is that it?” I’m so angry, I’m shaking. “I had a good life, Mason! I may not be a millionaire, but I was living high, and now it’s been taken away from me. All becaus
e I agreed to have you back in my life. My fucking mistake.”

  “Are you happy?”

  The question makes me pause, but he doesn’t deserve to see the hesitation. “Yes.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” I yell, spreading my arms. “My career’s done.”

  “That was no career. A ‘career’ means you’re making something of yourself, striving towards success.”

  “Stop it! Stop talking like you’re better than me!”

  Mason’s eyes go wide and white with rage. “You think that’s what this is? I’m trying to preach to you? God fucking dammit, Mack, that’s the opposite of what I’m doing! I’m trying to show you who the good one is, here. Who deserves the better life, and it’s not me! I sold my soul a long time ago—I’m on the brink of losing everything, and you know what? All I can think of is you. How this media leak is going to affect your everyday like you won’t believe. And I don’t want to be the one to do that. You hear me? I don’t want to be the one that ruins you again!”

  During our exchange, we moved closer to each other, bit by bit. I’m trembling, shaking, my face hot with heightened emotions, and his features mirror mine.

  “Then maybe,” I say in a low whisper, “you should’ve thought of that before you bought me last night.”

  Mason jerks back like I’ve slapped him. “That became more than just a transaction and you know it.”

  “You asked for Jane. You got her. And now you’ve destroyed her.” Heaving, I spin on my heel and head toward my duffel. “I need to leave. I can’t be here anymore.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  Nodding, I start throwing things haphazardly in my bag. My cheeks are wet and I swipe away the dampness as fast as I can, but the tears keep coming down.

  Mason doesn’t come up from behind to comfort, but nor does he move. He just stands there, watching my movements with an inscrutable look on his face.

  When I beeline past him to the bathroom and toss my toiletries in a clear baggie with one fell swoop, he says quietly, “I’ll give you the money.”

  I’m halfway back to my luggage when I halt, the bag of toiletries dangling in my hand.

  “The cash we agreed upon,” Mason clarifies. “I’ll still give it to you.”

  Don’t do me any favors flies to the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back.

  To deny Mason would mean I still harbor a decent amount of pride, of which I have none left. I’m adrift and exposed. Without that currency, I don’t know what Giles is capable of or what he’s already reconsidering.

  I don’t have a choice.

  “Thank you,” I say in as calm a voice I can muster.

  Mason responds with a single nod. “I’ll call my bank now. Give me your details, and I’ll have it transferred into your account within the next forty-eight hours.”

  With shaking hands, I pull up my bank information on my phone, write the numbers down on the hotel memo pad, and hand it over. We don’t speak during any of it. In fact, I can’t look up and meet his eyes when I pass the paper to him.

  He folds it and shoves it into his pants’ pocket. “There will be a car waiting for you downstairs to take you to the airport. I’ll have Jess book you a plane ticket home.”

  I nod, horrified that I’m sniffling, so I turn my back on him instead and busy myself with packing.

  “Mack…”

  I don’t turn, but I hear his exhale.

  “It’s going to be tough. Getting home. I won’t be able to fly you private.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say, not bothering with folding my clothes. “You can stop worrying about my welfare. I’m a big girl who’s dealt with worse.”

  Like when my father was outed and the news articles circulated. He was the nation’s pariah after what he did with innocent people’s money. Debbie got past it by ignoring it all and pretending she was never married to my father in the first place. But I was forced, every time I stepped outside to camera flashes, to understand that good people can be rotten at their core, even daddies who remember to put smiley-face sticker notes in lunchboxes.

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Mason, go. Please.”

  There’s shuffling behind me, and I like to think it’s Mason turning to leave and not the muffled sound of my heart shaving down its size, peel by peel, until there’s nothing left but a small, black coal.

  Once the door clicks shut, I buckle to the floor. I fold my arms around my head and cry into the fabric of my luggage, confident no one will hear me.

  25

  McKenna

  High School

  Senior Year

  It’s like I inherited a stray cat.

  ...If that cat were naturally angry, preferred the darkness of dumpsters to people, and with raised fur that’s tangled and mangy.

  After Mason’s four-night stay, where my dad and Debbie were none the wiser, Mason took it easier on me at school. He never acknowledged our time together—because that, of course, is the kind of announcement better kept out of cool circles, but he also didn’t … stop coming over.

  “Hey, Mr. Beckley,” Mason says on my doorstep one random Wednesday.

  Mid-snack chew, I peer around Dad’s form while sitting on the kitchen stool, instantly stiffening at the voice.

  “Mason, pleasure to see you,” Dad says, opening the front door wider and eyeing Mason warily as he steps around him. “Again.”

  “Your daughter’s an excellent teacher.” Mason chooses that moment to send me a wink.

  I cringe, fully aware Mason often confuses “teacher” and “janitor’s closet” as related words.

  “Whatchu got there?” Mason asks as he saunters into the kitchen. He nicks an apple slice smeared with peanut butter off my plate, not bothering to hear an answer.

  This close, he smells like fresh rain, the sharp burst of a droplet hitting soil and newly ripped spears of grass. I glance over and see the shoulders of his denim jacket are wet and his hair sparkles with the beginnings of a storm.

  He also brings with him the outside chill.

  I shiver, pretending it’s because the door was open and not Mason’s proximity.

  “I guess you’re here to learn more,” I say after swallowing, then grab my diet coke as I slide off the stool.

  “There was a pop quiz on Monday. Remember?” Mason asks while chewing.

  Automatically, I nod.

  “I got six out of ten right,” he says. “That’s because of you. Damn right we’re gonna learn more.”

  Dad squints at me behind Mason’s back. I send him a comforting nod, the kind that says, everything’s fine, this strange boy is familiar to me, don’t worry.

  “Leave the basement door open while you’re down there,” Dad says before retreating upstairs to his office.

  As soon as Dad’s out of earshot, Mason gives me an up-close wink. “Is he afraid I’ll take advantage of his sweet girl’s ass?”

  “You had your opportunities,” I say while leading him down the hallway. “You didn’t take them.”

  I won’t admit it, but it’s kind of nice to see Mason in a semi-good mood, even if it always has to be accompanied with dirty intentions.

  The four nights Mason stayed over, he didn’t sneak up to my room, or say nasty things, or try to break me. In fact, every morning when I crept down the basement stairs to wake him up, the blanket was neatly folded with a pillow perched on top, and there was no Mason in sight.

  He left early, but arrived late, willing to undergo an hour or two of tutoring before wanting to sleep. It’s hard to pretend nothing’s wrong when the dark purple bruises under his eyes tells me different, but I tried to be as ambivalent as possible, focusing my criticism and study on his schoolwork and nothing else.

  When I saw him in the hallways at school, he’d barely acknowledge my presence. One time, he was with Amy and her crew, standing around the lockers. Amy turned and locked in on me. Mason, chewing idly on a toothpick, nudged h
er shoulder and brought her attention back to him. He threw an arm around her and brought her near, and she laughed and nipped at his jaw, my proximity neatly forgotten.

  I tried to forget the pit lodging in my stomach at the sight of them, too.

  I can’t possibly be jealous of Amy’s relationship with Mason. That’s … that’s practically blasphemy, after the way he’s treated me. His four night couch-stay can’t possibly erase the years of torment.

  Yet here he is, the heat of his body too close as we take the basement stairs into our haphazard study hall, and there’s my heart, pattering away excitedly at the thought of spending another evening with this temperamental street cat.

  Mason, familiar with the layout, goes into the mini-fridge and grabs a beer.

  “Do you think that’s wise?” I ask as I swipe my pile of books from the side table and drop them in the middle of the couch.

  “Best decision I’ve made today,” he responds as he cracks open the can. After a few glugs and a satisfied exhale, Mason falls onto his side of the couch. “Which books we got today?”

  I sit nearby and crack open our next assignment, explaining the questions while referring to my laptop now and again. I’m shocked to hear Mason ask his own, pointing at my screen and then the book, leaning closer each time.

  I smell him again, wild and rugged male mixed with the malt of beer. His breath hits my shoulder and I instinctively turn my head toward it, realizing how close his lips are to mine.

  In that moment, we both freeze.

  This close, Mason’s eyes are winter blue, silver icicles spearing jaggedly from his pupils into his irises. His lashes are coal black, despite the milk chocolate of his hair.

  My breaths are short. Hesitant.

  Mason’s gaze skims over my face. “I can count all your freckles from here,” he says.

  And I notice he has none. No freckles or moles mar the flawless skin. No recent bruises, either. His stubble has grown a bit, but that only makes him appear older. Too mature for his years.

  He’s not moving away. Neither am I. Our breath mixes, the room is silent, and I think if I tip my chin up just a bit…