Page 8 of Hypnotized By Love

And it wasn’t because my mom was worried about my eternal soul or wanted me to be a good person. No, she was best friends with Heather Beckett and had been since they were little girls. We spent every holiday with the Beckett family; almost every day after school had been spent at either their house or ours. Mason was an easy addition to the tight bond that Sierra and I shared. So our mothers had joked most of my life about either me or Sierra ending up with Mason.

Or both of us. I didn’t think they were particular about it.

But they stopped with their sister-wife jokes when it became clear that Mason and I were more alike. We loved reading and writing, while Sierra was more interested in dancing and science. Mason and I had both been on our high school volleyball teams and had traveled to away games together. As we got older and our interests grew more developed and aligned, it became our mothers’ personal mission to get me and Mason to fall in love.

The problem was, it sort of succeeded on my end. I had a mad crush on him. He always treated me like his kid sister, even though we were the same age. He wouldn’t let any of his friends date me or Sierra, a fact we didn’t discover until years later.

It was humiliating to have such a massive unrequited crush. It made me sad and desperate, mostly to get his attention. I started competing with him—to become the editor in chief of the newspaper, the head of the yearbook staff—because I knew he wanted those positions. To get the best grade in our AP English class. I tried putting streaks in my hair, changing my clothes. I so wanted him to see me in a different light.

None of it worked. If anything, it seemed to annoy him.

There was one night, though, when it seemed like it might have worked. One desperately romantic night where I thought things were going to change. He acted like he was interested in me. But then we went back to our regular lives, and it was like I had imagined the whole thing.

But then ... he officially asked me on a date. It was after an away game, our junior year. We got back to school and he walked me out to my car, like he always did. Then he said, “Hey, Sinclair, what do you think about you and me going to the spring formal together?”

My throat constricted so tightly I seriously thought I might pass out, my heart rampaging against my rib cage. I managed a “Yeah, that would be fun,” which was so much better than what I wanted to do, which was run around the parking lot in triumph, both hands aloft,shouting that I was the champion and Mason Beckett was going to be my boyfriend.

It had been an honest miracle that I’d been able to drive home, because I was shaking so hard that I didn’t think I’d be able to make it back safely.

The night of the dance arrived quickly. Sierra went with a senior boy. I’d focused most of my attention on her that evening. She hated dressing up, while I’d always enjoyed it, and it was good to have the distraction. My parents had gone out on a date. I hadn’t told them about Mason asking me, and I had to assume he’d done the same, or else our parents would have been in the living room trying to take a thousand pictures of us together.

Sierra and her date left, and I waited and waited.

And waited.

He never showed. He never called, no text, nothing. He completely ghosted me.

I was beyond devastated.

And our playful rivalry? It wasn’t playful any longer. I wanted to beat him at everything that I could. He thought he could break my heart and still be my friend? It wasn’t going to happen. I was named editor of the paper, but he got head of the yearbook.

He never explained, never apologized. It was like it had never happened, him asking me to the dance and then not showing up. And I didn’t have the strength to confront him. I was so riddled with my own insecurities and issues that asking him why he had ditched me was beyond my capabilities.

Our friendship was over.

My twin was outraged on my behalf, and she uncharacteristically begged me to let her yell at him, but I didn’t want to make it a bigger deal. It was already humiliating enough.

I definitely didn’t want our mothers to find out. I wanted it to just go away.

It didn’t stop me from having feelings for him, though. As much as I wanted those to go away, too, they didn’t.

And it was probably the fevered imaginings of a heartbroken teenage girl, but I would have sworn that I caught him, more than once, looking at me with regret and something else, like maybe he shared some of those feelings.

I hadn’t given him a chance to explain, though. I blocked him on my phone, my email, all of my online accounts. I didn’t want to speak to him at all.

There were some texts from a number I didn’t recognize and a couple of generic emails that I suspected were from him, but I couldn’t prove it. They just said things like “Hey, how are you?” As if I didn’t know he’d sent them, like I was just going to forgive and forget. I could never really figure out why he’d sent them. Had he thought we were just going to move on and pretend that things were okay between us?

But there was no way he’d wanted to resolve things, given what he’d done next.

The lies he’d told, the rumors he’d personally spread.

It was unforgivable, and I wasn’t ever going to get over it.

That didn’t really match up with the whole Zen/good-vibes thing I was going for with my practice, but that was reality. My twin was the one who let things go easily and forgave just as quickly.

Which was part of the reason why pasta-tossing Joseph had lasted so long.

Me? I was petty. I could fully admit to it, being able to hold a grudge. Well, not a grudge so much as the ability to perfectly retain all of the necessary memories/facts to prepare me for my next encounter with Mason Beckett.

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