by Lili Valente
That lease proves Mason can fake anything for five days.
I can’t stop thinking about the way we laughed together four summers ago as we visited one cheap, Atlanta apartment after another, imagining what we were going to name the cockroaches we’d be sharing a kitchen with in our crappy new living space. We were so excited to finally live together that not even the reality of what we could afford on our limited budget had been able to dampen our spirits.
And then, the night he proposed, when he got down on one knee and told me he didn’t want to wait to promise me forever, when I cried and laughed and hugged him so tight…
He had hugged me just as tight, and there had been happy tears in his eyes. There had been no sign, no clue, nothing to warn me to expect the worst.
If I give Mason a chance, I might end up with that happily ever after I was imagining last night. Or I might end up deceived and broken all over again. There’s no way to know for sure. Mason is too good at hiding the things he doesn’t want other people to see.
He’s more of a master of deception than I ever assumed, so adept I will never be able to trust what he shows me on the surface.
Never. No matter how much I want to, no matter how it’s going to rip me apart to lose him all over again.
But, in the long run, it’s better to lose him now than years down the road, maybe after we’ve already started a family, when the situation will be infinitely more complicated. And painful. And sad.
I can’t remember ever feeling this sad. Not even the first time Mason ripped my heart from my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I finally whisper in a defeated voice.
“That’s it?” he asks, his breath coming faster. “You’re not even going to think about it?”
“I have thought about it.” I lift my chin, willing myself to stay strong for just a few more minutes. “It’s over, Mason. For good this time.”
He takes one stunned step back and then another, shaking his head back and forth. “Just like that,” he mutters beneath his breath, crossing to the table and snatching up the folder. “Because of some stupid piece of paper your crazy, suspicious sister found.” He draws back his arm, hurling the folder across the yard with a grunt that makes me flinch. He spins back to me, a wild look on his face. “Don’t let her do this, Lark. Her story isn’t our story. There’s no reason we can’t be happy.”
“I need you to leave.” I point toward the fence gate with one trembling arm.
I’ve never seen Mason this angry. I know he would never hurt me, but seeing him out of control is scary, especially knowing Felicity and Melody could be home any minute.
“This is insane!” He closes the distance between us so fast there’s no time for me to move away before my face is in his hands, his fingers buried in my hair as his thumbs trap my chin.
“Look at me.” He leans down until our faces are only a breath apart. “Look at me and tell me you don’t want to be together. Tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll walk out that door and never come back.”
I swallow and try to back away, but Mason has me trapped. “Let me go.” I curl my fingers around his forearms, intending to push him away. Instead, I cling to him, some primal part of me refusing to let go.
“Tell me,” Mason demands softly, his breath warm on my lips.
“You have to go, Mason,” I say, fighting the panic rising in my chest. With him so close, with his hands on me, and his skin warm beneath my fingers, it’s impossible to imagine never touching him again, never looking into his eyes or smelling his Mason smell or feeling his lips on mine.
But I have to imagine it. If I let the weak part of myself call the shots, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
“Leave,” I repeat in a firmer voice. “Now.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t love me,” Mason whispers. “Because you do, and you know we belong together. You felt it last night, the same way I did. Please,” he says, dropping his forehead to mine. “Don’t push me away. Don’t give up on us.”
“She asked you to leave.” Aria’s voice comes from the back door. “So leave. Before I call the police.”
My eyes slide to the left to find Aria standing on the top step leading down to the patio.
Mason’s hands slide from my hair as he turns to face her. “Why did you do this? Is it me you hate, or just the thought of anyone being happy when you’re not?”
“I’m not the one who lied, Mason, you are,” Aria says. “Own up to it or not, I don’t care. I just want you out of this house before my baby comes home.”
Mason glances over at me, an unspoken question in his eyes.
“You need to leave,” I whisper.
“This is crazy. This isn’t—”
“Leave,” I say. “Or I’ll call the police myself.”
He meets my gaze for a long moment before his shoulders slump and the fight goes out of his eyes. I swallow hard, refusing to think about how much it hurts to watch him give up on us, even when I’m the one demanding he do it. It doesn’t make sense, but nothing makes sense right now. My heart is howling too loud for my head to have a chance of pulling the fractured parts of me together.
“All right.” Mason nods to me, and then turns to Aria. “Congratulations. Does it feel good? Do you feel like a hero? For making two more people as miserable as you are?”
“Get out,” Aria says, a hitch in her voice that surprises me. She sounds more upset than angry.
“Good bye, Lark,” Mason says, the words raw, ragged. “I will always, always wish this had ended differently. Because I love you. More than anything in the world. And that’s the truth.”
And then he turns and walks across the lawn and out the gate leading into the front yard.
A minute later, I hear his car start and pull away down the street.
He’s gone. Mason is gone, and he’s never coming back.
The realization hits one second; I crumple to the ground the next.
Chapter 23
Lark
I bury my face in my hands, crying like the world is coming to an end.
I know it isn’t, but God, it feels like it is. It feels like every good thing has been burned away, every hope and dream gone up in smoke, leaving ash behind. I swear I can taste it, bitter in my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Aria says with a sniff. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
I hiccup, coming back to my body to realize Aria is on the ground beside me, rubbing my back in slow, comforting circles. At least I’m sure they’re meant to be comforting.
“I want to be alone,” I say, shifting away from my sister. “Please.”
“Are you sure this is what you want, Lark?”
“Yes. I just need…a few minutes by myself.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean with Mason.” She sniffs again, a long, liquid sniff.
I glance up, shocked to see tears wetting Aria’s red cheeks. Her skin always turns cherry red when she’s upset. It’s one of the hazards of being a redhead and the reason Aria usually stubbornly refuses to cry except at funerals or other legitimately tragic moments.
So why is she crying now? When she got what she wanted, and proved beyond a doubt that she was right about Mason all along?
“What do you mean?” I ask thickly.
“I mean what just happened.” Aria motions toward the gate and the front yard beyond. “I know Mason lied, and I can’t believe he hid his plans to go to New York from you for so long. But maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he has changed.”
My jaw drops. I blink, then blink again, not knowing how to respond to this particular string of words coming from my sister’s mouth.
“He was so devastated,” Aria continues in a soft voice. “I could see it in his face, couldn’t you? That was real.”
“You’re taking his side? What the hell, Aria?” I shake my head and surge to my feet, needing to escape the insanity. “I can’t believe you’re taking his side.” I start toward the back door, but Aria grabs my hand.
“Of course I’m not taking his side. I’m on your side. Always. That’s why I knew I had to show you the lease, but I—”
“How did you get that, anyway?” I pull my hand from Aria’s grasp and spin to face my sister. “I asked you to quit snooping.”
“And I did, I swear,” Aria says. “I called Mason’s uncle three days ago asking if he had any of Mason’s things from before he left for New York, but I never heard back. But then I ran into Parker at the store yesterday, and he said he had a box of Mason’s old papers that he’d found in a desk upstairs and—” Aria breaks off with a sigh. “I knew I should tell him I wasn’t interested, but I thought there couldn’t be any harm in looking so…I did.”
“And you found exactly what you were hoping to find,” I say, my eyes going dry as a terrible numbness begins to settle in my chest.
I remember this feeling from the first time I lost Mason. It’s a self-defense mechanism—my heart battening down the hatches, shutting out the pain before it gets too debilitating—but it won’t last forever. Sooner or later, the numbness will wear off and the pain will rush back in, hotter and more miserable than before.
“I wasn’t hoping to find anything,” Aria says. “Not after dinner the other night. He seemed so genuinely committed to you and you were so happy. I really thought... I thought everything was going to be okay. Better than okay.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” I turn to go a second time, but Aria rushes around me, blocking the path to the door.
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Four years is a long time.”
“You’re the one who says people don’t change.” My fingers curl into fists at my sides. “And you’re right. Even if he’s telling the truth, I’ll never be able to trust him. He’s too good at deceiving me. I’d never know when he was telling the truth, and when he wasn’t.”
Aria’s forehead furrows. “No, you wouldn’t, but…you can never really know, can you? About anyone? Doesn’t there come a point when you just have to decide to believe the best about a person and…let go? Isn’t that what faith is all about? Believing in something even when it’s hard or scary?” She holds my eyes with a long, searching look, as if she’s genuinely trying to sort out the answer to some burning question.
But for me the question is no longer relevant.
“What if Liam showed up on the front step this afternoon and begged you to come back to him?” I ask. “What if he swore he was a different person and promised you the life you’ve always wanted? Would you pack up your things and give it another shot?”
Aria is silent for a long moment. “No. But a weak part of me would want to, even after everything.”
“Well, I’m not going to listen to the weak part of myself, either,” I whisper. “I can’t. It’s too painful to hope and…” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “Better to be done with it, once and for all.”
“Done with hope?” Aria’s eyes fill with tears again, as if she’s just now realizing what she did when she decided to show me the lease. “What about the best is yet to come? And everything you said to me the other night? That can be true for you, too.”
I’m suddenly tired, so tired that even shaking my head again feels like a Herculean effort. “I meant what I said. Mason was it for me. I’m done hoping for that kind of happiness.”
I’m done with love, I think to myself as I move around Aria and trudge up the steps into the house.
This time, my sister lets me go, as if she can sense that the battle is over, and this time, everyone has lost.
Chapter 24
Mason
I don’t get wasted. Never. Not even in college.
I’ll have a few beers with friends, a mixed drink during happy hour, or wine with dinner, but I don’t drink to get drunk or to escape my problems.
I had enough stepfathers who Drank with a capital D to know that getting smashed only creates new problems. When you sober up, whatever you were trying to escape is still there, and all you have to show for your trouble is a sour stomach, a pounding head, and an increased risk of liver disease.
I know better.
I absolutely do.
There’s no excuse for finding myself at Buddy’s at eleven in the morning with a beer in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other.
No excuse at all, except that Lark shut me out of her heart—forever. The world is a dark, worthless place to be, and Buddy’s is the perfect place for feeling miserable.
The bar is literally on the wrong side of the tracks, a squat wooden building next to an abandoned train station built in the early 1940s that, as far as I can tell, has never been renovated. The gravel parking lot is overgrown with weeds, the wood siding is cracked, and the foundation is so badly rotted it’s hard to believe it passed code.
The inside is even worse.
The faded old bar is patched in a dozen places, the floor has settled on a slant, it smells of sour armpits and stale nuts, and even in the middle of the day it’s so dark it’s hard to see into the corners. The single rectangular window above the door barely lets in enough light to maneuver your beer to your mouth.
Which is good. I don’t want to be able to see the glass clenched in my hand too clearly. I have serious doubts about its cleanliness. Its surface is gummy against my skin, sticky the way the floor feels under my shoes.
The thought that I’m drinking out of a used glass turns my stomach for the first few sips of beer, but after a shot of whiskey and a refill of whatever amber swill Buddy—the ninety-year-old bar keep, a cantankerous old man without a friendly bone in his body—has on tap, I find I’m not too worried about my dirty glass.
By the third beer and second shot of whiskey, I hope I won’t be worried about anything.
I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to remember the defeated look in Lark’s eyes, or the hopelessness in her voice when she told me it was over. I don’t want to admit to myself that I’ve lost her for good this time. I don’t want to imagine a future without my best friend, or leaving town tomorrow without her in the seat beside me.
I was planning to ask her to move in with me tonight after dinner. I made a reservation at the little Italian restaurant where we had our first date years ago, and planned to ask Lark if she would consider moving into my condo in Atlanta with me. She said her catering business is equally divided between Bliss River and larger venues in Atlanta. Her commute wouldn’t have been any worse, and I would have been only a few minutes from home when I got off work.
I’d already been imagining coming home to Lark at the end of the day, imagining the two of us walking the streets of our new community, trying all the Chinese restaurants to see which had the best eggrolls, running in the park before work, hitting the Farmer’s Market on Thursday nights, and finding a new brunch place for long, lingering breakfasts and reading the paper on Sunday mornings.
I’d already decided that I didn’t need a home office, after all. I could find a place for my desk in the living room. That way Lark and I could turn the second bedroom into a guest room for her sisters for now, and a nursery for our first baby in the not too distant future.
Our first baby.
I was sure we’d have at least three.
Now, I’m never going to know what it’s like to start a family with the woman I love. I’m going to live the rest of my life alone, wishing for something I can never have, knowing there’s no one to blame for it but myself. If I could go back in time and punch Younger Mason in the face, I would do it. In a heartbeat.
But I can’t, so I’ll have to settle for taking my self-loathing out on my liver.
“I’ll have another whiskey, Buddy,” I call out in a firm voice.
The bartender has massive, cauliflower-shaped hearing aids in both ears. Still, you have to talk loud enough for him to hear you over a train, even when you’re the only person in the bar and the jukebox is quiet.
“Coming up,” Buddy grumbles with a heavy sigh, one that insinuates that I�
��m a pain in his ass, and that he could care less if I live or die, let alone continue to patronize his establishment.
“Make that two,” comes a familiar voice from near the entrance.
I don’t remember the door opening or closing, but it must have, because Buddy and I are no longer alone, and my day just got worse.
It’s Parker. I’d recognize my uncle’s smug twang anywhere.
“Thought that was your fancy new car outside,” Uncle Parker says, crossing the room to clap me on the back in a way that’s almost friendly. “Figured I’d stop in and see if you wanted to buy your uncle a drink.”
“Sure.” I nod to Buddy as he sets my whiskey down in front of me. “Add whatever he wants to my tab.”
“Well, ain’t that generous?” Parker settles onto the stool beside me with a happy sigh. “Very generous, indeed.”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to find the old man grinning like the dog that crapped in the cat’s water dish.
“You’re in a good mood. Somebody die?” I ask, drunk enough not to care if I pick a fight.
But Parker only laughs, a long, high-pitched laugh that ends in a coughing spasm he quiets with his own shot of whiskey.
“Nope, nobody died.” He clears his throat and slams the shot glass back on the bar. “Just glad to see people getting what they deserve.”
I turn on my stool, watching my uncle over the rim of my glass as I take a drink of lukewarm beer. I’ve never seen him so damned happy. Never, with maybe the exception of my junior year, when my team made it to the state basketball finals and I missed the winning free throw, dooming Bliss River High School to another year without a state championship.
I’d come home exhausted and feeling awful for failing my team—despite the fact that not a single one of my teammates, or my coach, had blamed me for the loss. Parker had been sitting on the front porch with a shit-eating grin on his face, practically twitching with excitement over the chance to glory in my failure.