Page 15 of Summer Lessons
DANE’S CHOICESfor painting his room and tiling his bathroom were bold and simple—sky blue and white. Mason couldn’t complain, because the colors brightened the house but they didn’t clash with the neutral carpeting in the hallway, and when Dane accessorized with dark purple bedding and curtains, the extra color gave the whole thing a pop.
They stood back the Friday after Christmas and looked it over, both of them sweaty and filthy and really, really glad that they could turn the water back on after the incident with the water main when they were replacing the toilet.
“We did good,” Dane said in awe.
“You did good,” Mason praised. “I was a credit card and a strong back.”
“No, seriously—you looked up how to use all the stuff. That one wrench looks like something you see in cartoons only—I don’t know how you thought it was a real tool.”
Mason laughed, secretly pleased. The truth was, he’d been studying how to redecorate Dane’s rooms for a month. “Ira hired someone to do the house in Walnut Creek,” he confessed. “I just… I wanted to, you know—”
“Prove you didn’t need that two-timing fucknugget to make your house a home?” Dane supplied.
Mason wrapped his arm around Dane’s sweaty, paint-spattered shoulders and hauled him into a hug. “Just my baby brother, whom I love,” he said sweetly.
“Yeah, yeah—I’m cleaning up. We already made that deal. Now go shower. Don’t you have a golf game tomorrow?”
“Next week!” Mason called as he trotted off to shower. But speaking of…. He grabbed his phone and texted Jefferson as he waited for the shower to get hot.
Ready for golf next week?
I’m ready for golf TOMORROW and I’ve never even played.
Oh hell.Shit—I could try to find a driving range to visit to work on your swing.
How about I teach you soccer?
Mason stared at the text. Oh. Okay. Well, if whatever they were doing didn’t work out tomorrow, he still had a tee time next week. Why not?
He refused to get excited about it. Any of it.
But he couldn’t shake Jefferson’s eyes peeping shyly out at him through his hair either.
MASON SHOWEDup at Tempo Park bright and early Saturday morning, cleats in hand, wearing shin guards, soccer socks, and knee sweats.
And a hooded sweatshirt over his long-sleeved shirt and gloves, because it was nine in the morning in the rat-tail end of December, dammit!
Jefferson arrived as Mason was on his second trip around the field. His green Toyota coupe belched a big cloud of black smoke before it puttered to a stop.
When he got out, he was wearing soccer shorts and a T-shirt, and Mason felt a surge of annoyance. It was obvious the guy was just aching to get out of the house and away from an overbearing mother, but she couldn’t be bothered to nag him about wearing a sweatshirt?
“Aren’t you freezing?” Mason called out as he jogged up the hill toward the parking lot.
“Like a brass monkey with no nuts,” Jefferson retorted, throwing his ball over Mason’s head and into the center of the field. “Can we do another couple of laps?”
It would figure that he was way faster than Mason without even trying. Mason finally just told him to run on his own while Mason kept at his steady jog-trot that got him around his neighborhood in the morning.
When Jefferson veered off from the outside of the soccer field to the center, with the ball, Mason headed that way, unsurprised when Jefferson used his toe to pop the ball up to his knee, and his knee to pop it up so he could bounce it solidly off his head. It arched over to Mason.
Who caught it wetly in his arms.
“Mason, you’re killing me,” Jefferson said, but he was laughing as he said it. He’d pulled his wedge back into a brief ponytail, the shorn sides of his hair still thick enough that Mason couldn’t see any scalp through the stubble. Mason suddenly wanted to touch his scalp, feel the strands of hair through his fingers, but Jefferson’s voice called him back. “Now set it down and use the inside of your foot to pass it to me.”
Mason did, feeling like the world’s tallest, gawkiest, most awkward human.
“Oh my God.Killingme.” Jefferson passed it back, making an obvious turn to his foot so Mason could see him using the inside of it to pass. “Now don’t be a toe-poker. You have more area on the inside of your foot, so more control. Now send it back!”
Again, and again—it was like a game of catch with your dad, except with your feet and a big vinyl ball, and they moved around the field as they kicked. And except Mason’s dad had never actually played catch because of that whole coordination thing.
