Page 114 of Sapphire Spring

The wordsbig, secret feelingshad been ringing inhis head ever since Naser had shouted them the night before, reminding him againand again of Naser’s accusations that theirs hadn’t been a long-distanceromance. There was truth to what Naser had said, lots of it. But it was alsotrue that Naser might not appreciate the depth of those so-called secretfeelings. AndsoMason was determined to put them onpaper, to give them as much detail, as much history as he could.

He’d finished a paragraph when something shifted andchanged, and he realized he was writing something altogether different. He’dgone back to that moment in the hallway at Laguna Mesa High when he’d slid hisarm around Naser. Only instead of looking back to see how Chadwick and Timreacted, he kept walking, kept his arm around Naser’s shoulders, kept askinghim questions about who he was and how he’d ended up in their school.

He realized he’d gone from revisiting the past to rewritingit, and that’s when he decided theselettershe plannedto write would need a title.Soat the top of thepage, he wrote one—Who I Could Have Been.

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Seventy-two hours. That’s how longNaser thought he’d need before Mason stopped occupying his every other thought.His reasons for this projection were simple—forty-eight hours seemed rushed,and a week seemed absurdly self-indulgent. He shouldn’t spend longer grievingMason’s abrupt departure than he’d spent in the guy’s actual presence aftertheir reunion.

He was almost on target.

After three days, his every other thought stopped being ofhis former bully.

His every fourth or fifth, however, was still a painfulfreeze-frame from those final moments in the motor court of Sapphire Cove, whenonly a thin stream of Naser’s true feelings had managed to bubble to thesurface. That’s when he found himself googling Southern California rehabs,making a list of all the ones located in mountainous or even relatively ruggedareas. He figured he’d narrow it down to three, then send Mason an emailthrough the main contact address for each facility. But when he tried to draftsomething succinct and powerful, something that would both convey how badly hemissed him while not embarrassing him to the office administrator sure to readit first, his fingers froze, and his face got hot.

The fifth day after Mason’s departure, Naser did theunthinkable, something that made clear to all who knew him that his mentalhealth was in a perilous state—he canceled on his mother.

She was scheduled to have her eyes dilated during her visitto the optometrist, and it was common knowledge in their family thatas long asMahin Kazemi had adult children with cars, shewould never take an Uber anywhere she couldn’t drive herself. So Naser calledhis sister and guilted her into being chauffeur. To this end, he offered Pari asemi-tearful CliffsNotes version of his fight with Mason, leaving out the detailthat Mason had gone off to rehab. Pari’s persistent delight over the suddenmessiness in her perfect brother’s life—which she masked in dramatic sympathy,of course—seemed to trump her annoyance at having to drive south from LA on aweekday.

He hung up, grateful she hadn’t seen through to his realmotives. Now that he knew the woman had read his secret high school journals,Naser was too freaked out to be alone with his mother, especially with thestress of Mason’s departure added to the mix.

The fact that he didn’t hear from either woman after thedoctor’s visit should have been a red flag. A red flag consumed in flames thatspelled out,Depart California immediately. But he was too exhaustedand upset to monitor the situation closely, and that’s why, when his mothershowed up unannounced at his townhouse the next morning, he was buck naked andtrying to masturbate his feelings away.

Mahin Kazemi thought doorbells were for other people—commonpeople—which meant she always knocked with great verve, as if whoever was onthe other side was awaiting not just her arrival, but the lively cadence of hersignature announcement. When he saw her on the Ring cam, he cursed, franticallywiped lube off himself with a handful of Kleenex from beside the bed, spritzed himselfwith enough cologne to tranquilize a cat, then threw on an outfit that wouldbarely pass muster at the gym. As he hurried downstairs, he hoped to diesomewhere around the fifth step.

Instead, he found himself opening the front door, wearing asmile that felt like a grimace.

For the first time, Naser saw that she hadn’t come alone.Standing behind her was a startlingly attractive man in nurse’s scrubs holdingsome sort of medical bag. He looked eerily like one of the porn stars Naser hadjust been watching upstairs—olive-skinned, muscular, with ajetblackbuzz cut, bedroom eyes, and a bright silver stud in his right ear.

His mother stepped forward, cupped his chin in her hands,and squeezed. Hard. “Stick out your tongue, Naser-joon.”

“Why?”

“If you are canceling on your mother, then you must be verysick and you must be examined.”

Rather than refute this misdiagnosis, Naser stuck out histongue.

Mahin tapped his chin, an indication he should close hismouth. “This is Randy. He is going to take your blood.” She moved past him intohis townhouse. “Say hello, Randy.”

Randy complied.

Another son might have objected to an unannounced blood draworchestrated by his mother, but Naser had been enduring surprise blood drawssince he was a little boy, mostly in the middle of the night and never for anurgent or compelling reason. The thermometer, however, was a surprise, and hejumped when she popped it in his mouth before he could sit down at thebreakfast table. After a few seconds, it beeped.

“Ninety-nine. You are high!” Mahin proclaimed.

“That’s actually normal for me, Mom.”

Especially when I’m jerking off,he thought.

“There is no normal foryou. There is only normal,and you are high. What have you been eating?”

“Pita chips.”

And porn,he thought.

“That is not real food. What are you eating for real food?”Mahin headed for his pantry.

“I don’t know. The only meals I ever remember are the onesyou cook for me,Maman-joon.” She rejectedthis obsequious compliment with a grunt and started rifling through his fridge.

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