by A. C. Bextor
“I’ll be good, Kates,” she returns. “And I’ll tell you the same.” Nodding to me, Maggie bids, “Nice to meet you, Cole. Stop on over anytime.”
“Will do,” I advise, grabbing Katie’s backpack, not giving her a chance to argue.
Silence holds our way out of the room. Katie walks two steps in front of me, so I get a view of her long legs that end with those fucking pink-flowered, yellow flip-flops.
“You workin’ here now?” I question and she turns.
Nodding with a smile she replies, “I am. I need the volunteer hours to help with college credits. But really, I don’t mind. It’s quiet here. The residents are nice, too.”
“What’re you doing here?” she questions accusingly, as she hits the down arrow by the elevator door. “Didn’t think a guy like you would have much interest in visiting the elderly.”
“I don’t,” I tell her honestly, handing over her bag. “I’m here with someone.”
Katie’s happy expression also reads curious, and if I’m not wrong, a little sad.
“You came to a nursing home with a girl?”
“Yep.”
“Seriously?”
“My friend’s grandfather—”
“The old coot,” she remembers.
“The one and only. Mallory’s grandpa loves westerns.”
Mallory and I aren’t together. We’re friends who hang out, and in the past friends who occasionally fucked. Right now she’s dating a guy named Brock, so we see less and less of each other. I’m fine with that. I only came today to give her a ride since her Mustang is in the shop.
“Well, it was good seeing you again,” she tells me, pushing the elevator button and waiting for the doors to open.
“You too.”
“Take care,” she calls, stepping inside. I hand her backpack to her and she tosses it over her shoulder. As she enters, I step back. When the doors start to close, Katie startles me when she jumps up and yells, “Keep Happy, Mason Cole!”
I smile, alone in a hallway of a retirement home, thinking how happy that little shit was to have stolen my line.
“MY GOD, KATHERINE. MASON COLE was born to be the father of your children,” Connie exaggerates, while shaking her head.
We’re standing in front of the kitchen sink, both holding a cup of late afternoon coffee as we look out into my backyard.
With Thomas out of town and to avoid being alone with Mason, I called Connie and explained what happened. She cancelled her plans with Charles and did as any best friend would—she came right over with a bottle of chilled white wine.
Refusing that in order to keep my head straight, I made coffee.
To keep busy until everyone arrived, I started dinner, which is now simmering on the stove. Spaghetti has always been Thomas and my girls’ favorite.
As a mother, I shouldn’t teach my children to drown their sorrow with food. But as an adult woman, I swear carbs help cure heartbreak of any kind. I prefer ice cream and anything peanut butter.
Turning my head, I study Connie as her eyes stay trained to the view through the window.
Mason is sitting on the grass with one of my daughters to each side. All have their knees up, elbows resting against them, staring at the pile of upturned dirt behind my small herb garden, near the corner of our fenced yard.
Averie insisted her first pet be given a proper funeral, and Mason ensured she got what she needed.
Amelia insisted Duke hated where he was going to be forever. She wanted him beneath the apple tree. When the two argued, I figured this was yet another way Amelia was being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.
Luckily, though, when her younger sister broke out into real, true, unapologetic tears, Amelia softened and gave in.
Either way, Mason was here on time to help my girls say goodbye and bury their first, ever faithful, canine friend.
“I don’t know how to feel about him anymore,” I confess my confusion aloud, and hope my best friend knows what to do with it. “I never imagined Mason would ever be this close…here, in my house, taking care of—”
“Oh, honey,” Connie comforts, grabbing my hand. “You’ve had a lot happen in a short time. Seeing Cole like this again, Duke passing, and hearing all that shit about Thomas and Grace—”
“Please don’t,” I deny.
Thomas and Grace are talking again. I knew before, but it’s been unofficially confirmed.
Gossip in this town never falls short. Along with finding out Mr. Everly has cashed in his dead wife’s life insurance policy in attempts to purchase a mail-order bride, I also heard through the same ridiculous source that Thomas was seen last week having dinner with Grace the next town over. When he was supposed to be out of town for work.
I don’t know the extent of their visit, nor what happened between them after. God knows I can’t afford to process that now. Thomas and I will talk once the trauma of losing Duke subsides.
“I’m sorry,” Connie comforts. “But Cole showing back up, after all this time, can’t have been easy. You loved him, Kat. You still love him.”
God knows I do.
Mason was standing on the porch of my home yesterday. He was so close, this close, and I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t ask him about his day. I couldn’t tell him about my chaotic morning with the girls, before what happened with Duke occurred.
I hated that when I shut the door, turned back into my home, I felt nothing. Nothing when I saw Thomas’ coat hanging on the wooden rack. Nothing when I noted his dress shoes perfectly placed on the mat near the wall. Nothing when I caught a glimpse of his expensive, shiny silver watch he must’ve forgotten to grab on his way out of town.
The same I’ve felt in our marriage for years.
Nothing.
“That’s what cuts so deep,” I admit. “A wife should feel love for her husband. Right?”
Connie shakes her head. “Don’t bait me to say not nice things about him. Let me just say Thomas failed you and your marriage from the beginning.”
I’ve had this same sobering thought more than once. The thought that comes after is just as sad. This one being that after the girls are grown and gone, living lives of their own, our marriage will likely come to an end.
Then what?
Connie wraps her arm around my shoulders. “Cole is who he is. I don’t think there’s anything that would keep him from being where you are, if he thought you needed him.”
“The way he looks at me…” I stop, shake my head, and internally shudder remembering his blank stare. “I’m a ghost to him and I don’t know how that’s possible.”
“I know you don’t see this, but I do. So let me tell you…” She pauses for breath and hesitates briefly before saying, “He’s avoiding feeling anything for you. You can’t fault him for stepping back and guarding his heart while he does that.”
“I can’t,” I extend.
“You and he agreed to this, remember?”
In an effort to avoid the truth, I look over to my cluttered kitchen table. The girls threw their bags there when they’d gotten home from school. They’d hit the front door and immediately went to change clothes and gather a few mementos of Duke. Averie was relentless in her insistence he take some with him.
“I hate this for you,” Connie tells me, turning from the window and resting her lower back on the counter by the sink. “I hate you’re so unhappy.”
I’m not completely unhappy. I’m mostly content.
However, as my girls have started to really grow, the contentment in my life has shifted and started to fade. In its place, an unbridled sense of restlessness has taken hold. With each day that passes, I’ve become more anxious to live my own life, rather than manage those of my family. They don’t need me like they once did. And I’m finding my time seems emptier and emptier.
“I’ll leave well enough alone,” Connie promises.
“Thank you.”
Changing the subject to none better than the previous, Connie mentions, “So
speaking of…I saw Grace last night.”
“Where?” I question, loathing myself for being so curious.
“She was ahead of me in line at Cohort’s, getting groceries. I saw her and before I could turn to run, she spotted me.”
“And?”
“She was in a state. The woman looked like a hooker years past needing to retire.”
I fight a smile.
Grace was always beautiful. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and model gorgeous. I like to believe Karma always prevails. Maybe that’s what has finally caught up to her.
“Did you talk to her?”
“I didn’t talk, but you know she did.”
Yes. I’m sure she did.
If Grace could talk more, I’m certain she would. She hated that I married Thomas. Hate more the reason why. She wanted him and his babies from the start. As petty as this sounds, I was thankful she wanted my husband, rather than Mason. What this says about my marriage should have troubled me long ago.
Lifting the mug to my lips, using both hands and blowing on the coffee first, I stare out into the yard and ask, “And what did she have to talk about?”
“She told me she’s getting divorced. That hot lawyer from Libelle—the one she married after husband number two—is leaving her for another woman.”
With a liar’s disappointment I voice, “Oh, that’s so sad.”
Smiling, Connie adds and giggles, “He’s leaving her for his twenty-two-year-old secretary.”
Snidely, I brave, “I always knew that conniving fish was cold in the sack.”
Slapping my arm, Connie smiles and feigns, “Don’t be catty.”
“She slept with my husband after I’d just had his children. I claim all rights to be catty.”
“You do,” she agrees.
“It wasn’t like they had a random one-night stand,” I remind her, knowing she was there every step of my demise, and she also remembers. “They had an on-going affair.”
Countless nights I cried in Connie’s arms, wishing the whole of my marriage wasn’t real. Looking back, even then, I cried more for my loss of Mason than for Thomas. Even in my best friend’s arms, I wasn’t weeping over my husband being unfaithful. I was torn up because Mason wasn’t there to protect me from it.
“Grace is in love with him,” I tell Connie the only piece to all of this that makes the pain almost bearable.
I lost one of my best friend’s the day Thomas came home and told me he almost fell in love with Grace Aldean.
After a while, I started to wonder if Grace felt for Thomas how I felt for Mason. I was curious to know if she’s mourned the loss of the man she’s always wanted, like I’ve mourned the loss of mine.
I’ll never know because I’ll never ask.
“You know they’ve never stopped talking, right?” I query. “Maybe they aren’t having sex like they once were, but he talks to her.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard,” Connie seethes.
“And the sad part about this? I don’t care. Not really. If the girls ever found out, they’d be crushed. But I’m numb to it. That’s what scares me the most.”
“Cole being here also scares you,” she adds. “The only time I’ve ever seen you unravel is when something has anything to do with him.”
She’s right.
Seeing him again, after so much time has passed, brought back all the memories from the past. The sound of his voice. The way he used to say my name, the care he always gave when he used it. The smirks. The sweet. The banter. The careful touches in passing. I’ve even missed his quick temper.
“Cole’s always been with you, honey,” Connie concludes, turning to gaze out the window again. “And he’s also always taken care of you. Whether only in memory of the past or not. Outside of your girls, Cole is the one person in your life who’s kept you going, able to endure this empty marriage.”
Tears for so many reasons fill my eyes. Out the window, I watch as my girls sit on the lawn with a man they don’t know the way I do. But I wish they did. And Mason hardly knows them at all, yet he’s consoling their broken hearts in place of their absent father.
“Thomas won’t be happy he missed this,” I declare.
“I don’t like Thomas, this goes without saying,” Connie replies. “But you’re right. He’ll be sorry he’s gone. Especially when he finds out Mason Cole was here.”
I’ve thought about that. I won’t ask my daughter’s to lie. So, when Thomas finds out, I’m sure we’ll have words. And they won’t be pleasant. Thomas doesn’t know all there is to know of Mason, but when we first started out, he knew Mason called on occasion.
He also knows my father respects Mason, as do a lot of people around here. And he knows the two still talk. This, I feel, burns him more than anything.
Staring out into the yard, Connie sighs as Mason stands.
“Goddamn it. As sinful as it would be for you to have a well-deserved affair with the only man you’ve ever loved, it would be heavenly to hear all about it,” she observes dreamily.
“Stop,” I try.
“Do you remember how Cole looked at you at the lake that year?”
“You know that’s gross, right?” I aim to avoid again. “I was underage and he was…experienced.”
“You remember, though. Hard not to since he still looks at you that way.”
“No,” I deny.
“Yes,” she rebuts. “And I see you, Kat. You look at him the same.”
Mason takes Averie’s hand and pulls her from the ground. Amelia follows, but brushes off his offer for help.
“An affair with Mason Cole is a bad idea,” I note.
“Not from where I’m standing,” she expresses slowly, tilting her head to the side and staring longingly at Mason’s ass, fitted into an old pair of Levi jeans.
Placing my coffee cup on the counter, I smooth the front of my dress. “Here they come. This conversation is over.”
As Connie turns her attention toward the door, Averie comes crashing through it. Her eyes, no longer blinking with sadness, are shining in relief.
“McButterPants says that dogs have a special place in heaven.”
Connie bites her lip as her gaze comes to mine. She wants to laugh, but I narrow my eyes to keep her from it.
“They do, honey,” I agree, touching Averie’s face and using my fingers to cast away the last of her fallen tears.
“Amelia wants a guinea pig. I want a bunny. What say you?”
As the back door opens again, this time Amelia steps through. She doesn’t stop on the way to her room. Her bottom lip trembles and her eyes are red and puffy. She’s showing real emotion, other than anger, for the first time in months.
Mason steps inside next. He closes the door and stands in front of it, taking in the mood of the room.
“Cole,” Connie greets, skirting around where Averie stands in the kitchen. She rubs Averie’s head and smiles. “Averie, let’s give your mom and Cole a minute. See your favorite aunt to her car.”
Averie’s confused but looks to Mason and bids, “Are you staying for dinner, McButterpants?”
At the same time, both Mason and I abruptly chorus, “No.”
“You don’t like spaghetti?” Averie asks, using her insistence to pin him to the door.
“Averie, honey,” Connie calls. “My car?”
“But you have to taste Mom’s Caesar salad!” Averie insists.
Mason looks down to his booted feet. The dimple comes, so I know he’s holding back. He’s amused by Averie.
“I can’t tonight,” he tells her. “I have plans.”
Plans that probably include Sabrina Marks. This shouldn’t hurt, but of course, as everything else in regards to Mason, it does. Too much.
“Maybe next week,” Averie offers. “Dad’ll be back. You can meet him.”
Shit.
“Thank you,” is all Mason returns, frustration taking up where the humor had been.
Connie clears her throat then waits for Averie to move before remin
ding me, “Thursday night, Kat. Wine tasting. It starts at nine o’clock. I’ll be by at eight. And you’re not going to cancel.”
“Got it.”
“Love you,” she bids, before flashing a smile to Mason and walking away.
To avoid an awkward silent pause as the two head out, I tell him, “I still can’t believe my daughter calls you McButterpants.”
Mason smiles, almost genuine.
“And you let her,” I chastise further.
“She can call me whatever the fuck she wants.”
Secretly, I love the way he seems to have taken to Averie. A good thing because in the short time she’s known him, she’s become completely taken with him.
“Amelia’s tough,” he tells me, regarding my oldest. “She’s built a wall the size of Fort Knox around her.”
Agreeing, I return, “She has. But thankfully I’m on the right side of it, for now.”
“Is that wall ‘cause her dad is never home?” he strikes. When I don’t respond, he rumbles, “Figures.”
Annoyed at his judgment, I tense but still extend, “Thanks for your help.”
Mason holds my gaze as he takes two steps closer. Every distraction in the room vanishes, and I’m left to study my reflection in his big, beautiful, dark blue eyes.
Still, his voice is distant, cold, but its edges slight in a way I know he’s battling as I am, he says, “You ever need me again. You have my number. Call.”
“Okay,” I reply, flustered.
“For anything, Katie. If you’re bored and just wanna say hi. Call.”
“All right.”
Stepping in, forcing my back to the sink, he whispers, “I’ll always make time.”
“I’ll call.”
His expression changes from caring to not. He drops his head to look down between us, close but not touching at all, and shakes his head.
“Too easy,” he murmurs, pissed off and mostly talking to himself.
“What?”
He lifts his head, scans my face and claims, “You won’t call.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
Mason steps back. He stares me up and down, thinking, strategizing, the way I’ve known him to do before. This time, though, it’s not in determination. This time to keep his distance.