Page 99 of Escape Velocity
“I’m sorry. I just missed you so much.”
“It’s only been two days.”
“We only saw each other for a second.”
They pull apart and Callum cups Mason’s face in his warm hands. “You’re right, Mase. Going an hour without seeing your eyes is criminal.”
Mason’s face flushes.
The wind picks up and Mason squeezes Callum again, trying to shield himself. He’s like a furnace, without even having to touch Callum’s bare skin.
“Here.”
Callum nearly has to pry Mason off him. He opens the zipper of his jacket and motions for Mason to wrap his arms around his waist.
Mason obliges and wraps his arms around Callum, feeling the softness of his shirt. Callum wraps his jacket around him, and Mason finally relaxes.
He’s warmer, and the cold doesn’t feel so daunting anymore. The world doesn’t seem to be so scary, and the doubts he has in his mind of them not working dull to a quiet hum.
It’s just the two of them.
“How are you, really, Cal?”
“I’m trying to keep my head down. Just focusing on play-offs coming up next month.”
Mason nods. “And your dad?”
Callum blows out a long breath. It’s warm and sweet on his face. “He seems angrier than usual, like he knows I’m trying to get away from him. Like he knows he’s going to lose me.”
Mason shakes his head. “How do you do it?”
Callum lifts his eyebrows quickly. “I grin and bear it. Try to remember that I’m one championship game away from never having to come back. I just try and hope that I win the game and someone drafts me so that I never have to come back.”
Mason hugs Callum tighter, hoping to squeeze the sadness out of him.
“This time of year is the hardest. Just being without my mom—” Callum sighs. “I just wish she was here.”
“She made the best Christmas cookies,” Mason says.
Callum laughs. “Yeah, she did, didn’t she?”
“And she… had the most beautiful voice. I didn’t hear it often, but I remember she used to sing Christmas carols with us…”
Mason feels his own throat constrict as he remembers Mrs. Brown’s long, wavy black hair cascading down her shoulders as she sat in front of a roaring fire with Mason and Callum when they were just kids, holding mugs of hot chocolate piled with thick marshmallows and cocoa on top.
She would sing them carols and they’d sing along, but her voice always shone through. She had an angelic voice.
Callum clears his throat and hugs Mason tighter, like he’s been brought into the memory alongside Mason and feels like Mason’s going to be taken away from him too.
“‘Silent Night’ was her favorite.”
Mason hugs Callum tighter. They share no words for some time, both trying to hold on to each other as the grief hangs in the air between them, frozen in time as the snow falls softly, setting in the peaks of their hair and balancing delicately on their eyelashes.
For so long, they’ve ignored and ran away from each other. Running away from the grief, the pain, the fear.
They avoided it all, when all they needed was each other.
Callum rubs a hand on Mason’s back. “I forgot. I have a gift for you.”
