“It’s not a big deal. I just had some issues for a bit. That’s all.”
Her smile is soft and genuine as she pulls me closer into her. I have a hard time believing how quickly she and I can go from angry, to passionate, to talking about body shots, to tender.
“Mason, you know I have a master’s degree in telling when people are bullshitting and glossing over their problems, right?”
I wrap my hands around her hips and we pull our bodies as close as we humanly can. I heave a deep sigh, because I hate talking about this kind of stuff. I also know there’s no getting off the hook with Clarissa, so I may as well come clean.
“After that night when the cops showed up—”
“You mean the night you saved me from getting a scratch on my record?”
“Sure, that night. When I got taken in, I did some thinking. And, I know you’re not going to like this based on why you slapped me tonight. But I thought how amazing and smart you were. And how many great things you were destined for. And I can’t explain it exactly, it was like I had this flash of insight, almost like an out of body experience. I saw our life, Clarissa. I saw our future together, probably because I knew how much I truly liked you. I’d had crushes on other girls before, of course, but I knew you were different. But I had this vision of the future where we dated, and we were happy for a year or two. Cole even got over us being together in my vision. And then you wanted to go to Harvard. And I knew in my heart you *should* go. I knew you were destined for greater things than I was, even at age seventeen I knew that. And I thought, why would I get attached to you just so you could leave? And when you left I’d feel insecure. I didn’t want you to be the girl in college who was calling her boyfriend at home every night. I wanted you to live your own life. So I let you go.”
I take a deep breath and examine Clarissa’s eyes. They’re glossed over and a tear rolls down one of her cheeks.
She wipes it away.
“Are you crazy?” She asks through a sniffle.
“Am I crazy? I don’t understand.”
“You’re telling me that you, Mason Worthington, at age seventeen, distanced yourself from me after our incredibly amazing date because you were worried about holding me back!? Are you insane?!”
She’s crying and laughing at the same time. Some emotion wells up deep inside me, too, and I don’t know if it’s pain or laughter or sadness. Maybe it’s everything.
“Was I wrong?” I ask, holding my serious tone.
“Wrong about what?”
“Look at you. You’re the pride of Blackwell. You did go to Harvard. So I was right. My prophecy came true. So no, I’m not insane.”
“Mason,” she whispers, and hops down from the bar.
She hugs me tight, and I reciprocate.
“Yes?”
“You…you…” she stutters, striving to find the right words to say some.
What, I’m not sure.
“Spit it out, nerd.”
She pulls back, smiling, but teary-eyed.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Yeah, after I pulled it out of you! It was like pulling teeth! I always thought you pulled away because you thought I was too dorky…or not attractive…or just dumb. Or because of Rex...”
My heart sinks a little bit at the mention of his name. I haven’t heard anyone speak about him in so long. “Goddamn it, Clarissa,” I growl and pull her body into me, grabbing her hips and pulling them into me. “Look at me.”
“What?” She cooes.
“If you ever so much as think any of those things, I’m going to give you the most stringent of punishments you’ve ever seen.”
“Oh really?” She raises an eyebrow. “And what if I like the punishment?”
I smile a little bit, but quickly pull back.
“I’m fucking serious. You’re the hottest, smartest girl in this town. And if you don’t think so I’m going to have to remind you…even if I have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
She bites her lower lip.
“What’s the old-fashioned way?”
“Let’s just hope you don’t have to find out,” I whisper, nibbling at her ear.
“Oh? And what if I decide to be a naughty girl just because I’m curious how far you’d actually go with that, Mason?”
Motherfucker.
Shockwaves head to my cock.
“What are you trying to do to me?”
She lightly bites her lower lip as she stares at me.
“I’m just trying to be a good fake fiancée for you, Mason.”
“Clarissa, baby,” I huff.
Her chest rises and falls with deep breaths, and her mouth hangs open.
“I want to do so much with you. I want to bring you back...and do things in a nice warm bed with you. Do you want to do that with me?”
She blows out a deep breath and her expression changes to slightly concerned. She takes a few steps away from me, then spins on her heel.
“I’ve been thinking. About the benefits agreement. And I think I neglected to mention something very important.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I don’t want to go all the way. We can do anything else. What would that be,rounding third? But if we go all the way, I’m going to get super attached to you. And we need to be realistic about our situation, too. As great as this is, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future...and it feels like we’re rushing so fast into things. This is a staged relationship,for the cameras, like you said.”
My heart clamps up, and my face tightens.
There is no anger in her words, just reality.
“And you...get too attached if you have sex with a guy?”
“Yes. You don’t think I’m weird, do you? I’m all out of sorts. I love hooking up with you but…”
She trails off.
My eyes unfocus, though.
There’s always a ‘but.’
Of course, with the one girl I’d want something more than just hooking up with, she’d prefer to just leave it at that.
“I understand,” I say. “Besides. We’ve got business to take care of. We’ve got to start the best goddamn bar this town has ever seen. You ready?”
She takes another step toward me, and drapes her hand over my shoulders. I wrap my hands around her waist.
“When I’m old and grey,” she says, “I want to look back at this time with you, and me, starting a bar together, and think of it as one of the most fun, ridiculous times in my life. How ridiculous is this? Faking an engagement with you, designing a bar, hooking up with the hottest guy ever…”
As she looks up at me, I’m simultaneously thrilled and heartbroken.
So she thinks of me as the hottest guy ever. That’s good.
But I’m starting to think she might *only* think of me as hook-up material.
We press our foreheads together and kiss softly, touching our sweet whisky-soaked lips together.
She pulls back and offers a sly smile.
I wish I could read her mind.
But I can’t.
Still, I don’t mind playing along this time, if that’s what it takes.
“We should get to work on a design of the place then,” I say.
“Maybe. After a little bit of this.”
She runs her hands along my abs, underneath my shirt.
I swallow. “Why the fuck are you so irresistible?” I mutter.
“You’re funny,” She says as we kiss again, and I slip my hand down her leg.
22
Mason
Three Months Later, Opening Night
On a Friday in January
October comes and goes. We contract a crew in place to do the work of reconstructing the interior of Firehouse.
I train Johnny on the bar at The Watering Hole, give Sebastian my notice, and change my schedule to part-time behind the bar while we work on the new place.
Clarissa creates the design. Harvard t
aught her very well, and we both agree we want the place to have an environment that precipitates social interaction. She lets me in on the idea of a ‘butt funnel,’ which forces people to bump into each other on the dance floor.
By November, most of the reconstruction work is done. I design the drinks, making sure the tequila Negroni and jasmine are house specialties, front and center on the menu. We also work out some basic food offerings. Burgers, fries, chicken fingers, that kind of thing.
When December rolls around, we’re focused on making sure our inventory is strong, hiring and training staff.
Not surprisingly, along the way I realize there’s no way I could have done this without a partner.
And the benefits we’ve been enjoying have been pretty fun, too.
We manage to keep up the facade of our relationship, but at the same time avoid spending Christmas with each other’s families.
When January arrives, we’re planning two things:
The Grand Opening
The Grand Breakup
We’ve decided to break up two months after the grand opening.
And we’ve decidedthat, starting with the grand opening, we’ll stop hooking up and go back to being ‘just friends.’
On opening night, there’s a line wrapping around the block to get in.
“Holy shit,” Clarissa says gleefully to me, when she pulls her head back inside the door. “We did it.”
“Yes. We did it.”
“We did it.”
It’s a sort of a Hallmark moment. I do what I do best: ruin it.
It doesn’t help that I can’t miss the big, honking ring on her finger.
I add: “We made it through for all this time. Now...only a few more days until we engineer the breakup and you’re a free woman.”
“Yeah. Right. The breakup,” she says, a little distantly. “It’s for the best. We were,” she clears her throat, “not meant to be together forever.”
I look at my watch. “It’s five o’clock. We’d better open the doors.”
I nod to the bouncer, Cliff, and turn to see our staff. I’m impressed with how amazingly everything has come together for the opening of Firehouse.
But as I give a rousing opening day speech to our staff, as I make the first cocktail of the night, and as we proceed to do a sales night that doubles the best night at The Watering Hole,it all feels slightly empty, knowing Clarissa and I are going to be coming to an end soon.
During our opening night, I watch her.
She was hot the first night she worked at The Watering Hole, when she had a short skirt on and was flirting for tips.
Tonight, though, she’s a different kind of hot. She’s got on a blue skirt that comes down almost past her knees, a white blouse, and a blue blazer.
While I’m behind the bar and in the kitchen making sure all of the back of the house stuff is going smoothly, she’s on the bar floor making sure everyone is happy. And by everyone’s smiling faces, they seem damn happy.
Still, there’s something I have to discuss with her, so I call her over.
“Clarissa,” I say. “Can I talk with you?”
“So busy right now,” she says.
“In the back. It’s important,” I say, raising the ‘I’m serious’ eyebrow I’ve gotten so good at during the last month.
I lead her to the back office, where I shut and lock the door promptly.
“Mason, this better be important, because if not-”
I cover her mouth with mine, ending her protests.
I feel her body quivering beneath me as she melts against the wall.
“What are you doing?” she whispers. “We’ve got to be out on the floor…”
“Fuck the floor,” I growl, kissing her neck, and cupping her upper thigh. “We’ve only got two more weeks of this, so we need to make the most of it.”
She responds, unbuttoning my shirt and kissing the hell out of my chest.
“Let’s have a drink after shift tonight,” I say. “Just you and me.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something we need to talk about. Regarding our breakup.”
“Oh.”
“Now get back out there and crush it. As much as I want to do this right now,” I add.
“I’m damn tired,” Clarissa says after the shift.
It’s almost 4 AM. We sit on the bar, having finished checking out all of our servers and cleaned the place down. The last late night cook just left.
“You did good tonight,” Clarissa says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “People loved the drinks. We had a lot of happy faces and hardly any send backs.”
“The Jasmine was popular.”
She nods. “You nailed it.”
I turn away, looking at the bottles of alcohol and how much we’ve gone through.
“Something is on your mind,” she continues.
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m thinking about you and me. And what’s going to happen when we finally stage our breakup.”
“Are you looking forward to it? The way all these ladies are looking at you, you’re going to be a hit.”
I tighten my jaw. “And what makes you think that’s what I want?”
“Because we’re getting to the end of our relationship. And, like you said, we’d never actually make it as a couple. Plus, we still haven’t had sex. I was sure you would have pushed for it by now.”
“We haven’t had sex because I’m respecting your wishes. And what do you mean, ‘Like I said?’ When the fuck did I say we’d never make it as an actual couple?”
“Uh. You don’t remember?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“It happened the night you hate to think about.”
23
Clarissa
See you Around
Homecoming Midnight
Liam drops me off at home, and I wonder if I might be out of the woods.
Until the police show up in my front yard while I’m kissing my Mom goodnight.
Two officers file out, and my heart skips a beat when I see they have Mason in tow.
I look through our front window as Mason gets out of the back seat. He’s still got blood on his shirt.
“What in the world?” my mom exclaims.
“Uh oh,” I swallow.
We step out into the brisk night, and the officer greets us.
“Hello, Miss. Ma’am.” He bobs his head to acknowledge my mom and I. Mason is silent as his partner holds him by the cuffs.
“We have a situation here that we need to get to the bottom of.”
“Well, can’t this wait until tomorrow?” my mom protests. “It’s quite late.”
“We realize it’s late, but the thing is, if we give the high schoolers time, by tomorrow they’ll all text each other and fix their stories. And we’re interested in the truth. But old Mr. Mute here, won’t even say a word. Even though witnesses as the party say they saw him beat the dead man senseless.
I feel like I’m about to vomit.
“Did you say...dead?”
“Yes, Miss. Rex Mayweather died from a car accident tonight. Drove himself right into a tree.”
And that’s when I vomit in our grass. Not much comes out, though.
“Oh my gosh!” My mom says. “And you think, what are you implying exactly? That Clarissa had something to do with his death?”
“We’re not saying anything. We just want to know what happened, and where you were tonight. This case is of special interest to the force.”
Rex’s dad.
“And the details are quite confusing. Mason here, the victim’s blood on his shirt.”
I get up off of my knees. Mason shoots me a glance, and shakes his head ever so slightly.
My mom interjects. “Tell the officer the full truth, Clarissa. I want to know, too.”
I take a deep breath. “Well, he broke up with me today so he could go with Stacy.”
“Oh,” the of
ficer shoots me a suspicious look. “Any particular reason for the breakup?”
“Well Mr. Officer, he said it was because I wouldn’t put out.”
The officer squints and clears his throat. “You refused to put out? You mean, have sex?”
“Correct.”
My heart is thumping out of my chest.
The officer turns to Mason.
“So…I have to ask, then, why were you going after him? And why does everyone say they saw you two enter the party together/”
“Listen, I don’t know what you think but there was nothing secretive going on here. When I found out Clarissa got dumped, she was sad, so I decided to take her out. Neither of us are huge fans of homecoming anyway.”
“You didn’t answer my question. It’s in your best interest to tell me everything,” the officer continues as he scribbles something on his notepad.
“I am telling you everything. Rex challenged me, so I fought him. I didn’t know how drunk he was.”
“Or that you would beat him so bad he could barely see.”
I try to stay strong. But I’m about to break into tears and tell the officers everything.
How Rex basically dragged me up the stairs and tried to force himself on me.
That horrible, horrible look in his eye.
Mason shoots me another subtle glance, raises his eyebrow, and shakes his head.
The officer looks at me again, then closes his notepad shut. “I’ll be in touch. You’re not thinking of traveling any time soon, are you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Good. Don’t.”
When the officer leaves, my mom turns to me. “I don’t know what was going on between you two, but I hope to God you were telling the truth.”
“I was, Mom! Don’t you believe me?”
“I wish I could. It’s just…” she looks down. “Mason’s an okay boy, and it’s fine that he and Cole are friends. I don’t want you seeing him though.”
My heart sinks.
“Mom, you can’t just say that!”
She’s got tears in her eyes. “Clarissa! Enough! A boy is dead.”
This has been such an amazing day, and to end on a note like this makes me want to cry.
Bartender with Benefits Page 14