Page 72 of Summer Lessons
“I’m so pathetic,” Terry choked. “I am so grateful for you guys—”
“Then concentrate on that,” Mason said. “You have friends. They showed up. They helped. They’ll do it again.”
“But my mom—”
“Can jump off a fucking cliff,” Mason snarled, hating her more in that moment than he’d ever hated another human being. “We won’t talk about her. We don’t think less of you. Just let us know—you can sleep in our guest room or on Skip and Richie’s couch. We’ll come—someone will come every weekend—to help you get the house to where you feel you can leave.” Mason fought against every instinct he had to throw Terry into the car and rescue him like he was a princess in a tower. Or to sink a few grand into improving a home that would eventually end up in the possession of someone he hoped to never speak to again. “You tell us, okay?”
Terry nodded and looked up finally, embarrassment and humiliation etched clearly on his features. “You’d be willing to come back?”
“We’ll pretend she’s a mosquito,” Mason said grimly. “A mosquito we can’t squash, but sort of a blood-sucking annoyance who spreads bad karma like a disease.”
Terry laughed shortly and then offered another one of those ridiculously pleasing kisses on the cheek. “I want to spend another day in bed,” he said frankly.
“Well, maybe if my ankle gets better, we can spend part of the day in bed and part of the day doing something more interesting.” A movie in a theater, even.
Terry smiled wistfully. “I’d like to play golf again,” he said, surprising Mason very much. “You’re a good teacher.”
“Then we will.” Oh, a rash promise, but Mason would have made a thousand of them. “Summer mornings—I’ll reserve a tee time for every Sunday, before it starts to get hot. Just for you.”
Terry looked around the concrete-colored air of dismal January. “You’re planning awfully far ahead.”
Oh. Mason shrank back into the car a little. “I’m not getting bored,” he said, hoping he could keep it light.
Terry’s smile lit up the darkness like a magic moon. “Me neither—and everything bores me. So summer it is.” This time his kiss hit Mason’s lips and lingered. He pulled away, saying, “Thanks, Mason. You’re… I gotta….” He held his hand uncomfortably to his chest. “I gotta figure out the right word.”
He turned and trotted back into the house, and Dane sank thankfully into the driver’s seat and closed the door with a thud. “So, are we meeting at Starbucks for chocolate?” he asked hopefully. Well, he and Carpenter had flirted like always, but this time their flirting had been… more intense, Mason thought. Maybe hope was the order of the day.
“Of course.” Mason swung into the car, did up his belt, and shut the door. Behind his eyes he saw Terry rubbing his chest and searching for the right word.
Mason knew that word. He’d used it before mostly for a lot of assholes who thought they knew what it meant.
He was starting to learn that you didn’t really know what it meant unless you felt the broken glass of worry that went with it.
Everybody Hurts
BY MID-MARCH,Mason was ready to play again—but Dane had stopped taking his medication twice, and soccer should have been the last thing on his mind.
“Dane, so help me, I willcall Mom!”
Dane looked up from the driveway, where he was sitting, knees drawn up to his chin, rocking back and forth. His hair had grown over his collar, and his scruff had turned into actual beard. He didn’t look hip at this moment, he looked homeless—and the fact that he was wearing Carpenter’s supersized college sweatshirt didn’t do him any favors. Mason had been getting breakfast together and telling him to hurry up and take his meds when Dane had sprinted past him and out to the carport.
Mason tackled him right when he got to the SUV, and Dane had crumpled, trying hard not to weep against his knees. Mason had given him a moment to calm down, and had gone inside for his medication and some milk and some goddamned food. Dane had lost twenty pounds since January, and he didn’t have that much to lose to begin with.
Goddammit. Dane needed Mom, or Dad, or fucking Carpenter, even as a friend. Mason was not doing this right, he just fucking wasn’t.
“You always want to call Mom—what’s the fucking matter, Mason—not man enough to deal with the crazy person by yourself?”
“You’re not crazy! You’re just undermedicated! And if you don’t get up and eat this sandwich and take your meds and get into the goddamned car, we’re notgoingto the soccer game, we’regoingto the fucking psych ward!”
Dane’s mouth dropped slowly open, and Mason hated himself more in that moment than he had in his entire life. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered, hurt as a baby. “Mason—that place—”
Mason sank to a squat and shoved the pill in his fist into Dane’s open mouth and then thrust the chocolate milk at him. Dane swallowed, staring at him resentfully, and Mason put the sandwich in his other hand.
“I’m going inside for my bag,” he growled. “If you are not in the car and ready to go by the time I get back, I’m dragging you in by your Jesus hair and taking you to the fucking hospital.”
Dane’s eyes washed over with tears. “I don’t want to go there,” he all but whimpered.
Mason couldn’t watch his baby brother cry. His eyes burned, and he wiped them with the back of his hand. “Please don’t make me take you. Please? God. Please, just work with me here. The game. Carpenter. The things you love. They’re there, inside you. I know they are. Just… just take a deep breath and remember they’ll come back. I know you’re sad now—I know it. But those things aren’t gone forever—they’re just hidden, Dane. Please, man. You gotta keep looking.”
