Where We Left Off

by J. Alex Blane

  Walking into work was different for Mason the next morning, mainly because of all that had transpired with Erika over the weekend. He was sitting at his desk with his chair slightly turned to the wall, finishing up a phone call, when Jackson walked into his office. His expression was confused, and by the way he paced with his hands on his hip forcing back the breast of his suit jacket, Mason knew exactly what it was about.

  He finished up the call and stepped out from behind his desk. “Sorry about that, I was on with Earl from the bank.”

  “Yeah, that’s actually why I’m here.”

  “About Earl?”

  “No, the bank. I just received a call to verify a fifty thousand dollar transfer from our personal discretionary account into a personal account in Dad’s name.”

  Hesitant at first, “It’s not in dad’s name,” he insisted.

  “According to this fax, you opened a personal checking account on Saturday for James Everett and authorized a fifty thousand dollar transfer with two authorized signatures. Signatures for two people whose names they wouldn’t even tell me when I asked.”

  “Jackson, I know it looks crazy, but it’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  He tried to deflect the conversation, but Jackson wasn’t buying it.

  “Nothing I need to worry about? Why would you transfer fifty thousand dollars into an account for Dad? What sense does that make?”

  “Jackson, it’s not our father!”

  More confused now than when he walked in, “I don’t get it,” he said.

  Mason knew he couldn’t not tell him.

  He sat along the edge of his desk with his arms folded and lifted his head. “She’s pregnant,” he admitted.

  “She who? Sydney?”

  “No…Erika.”

  “Erika! Where the hell did Erika come from, and what does her being pregnant have to do with you?”

  “Jacks, it’s complicated,” he added, trying to calm down what he knew was about to be a heated argument.

  “Well un-complicated it for me, Mason, and please don’t forget to explain what fifty thousand dollars from our account has to do with it.”

  Jackson was furious. He knew Erika and Mason had hooked up in the past, but he had no idea they were still seeing each other. And Mason not telling him about her being pregnant before now made him think something else was going on. He thought maybe that was the real reason he and Sydney were no longer together.

  Mason sat down in his chair. “She called me on Christmas Eve and told me she was pregnant,” he began to explain.

  “And then what?” Jackson demanded, “Asked you for fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Jacks please calm down!”

  He got up and closed the door to his office after noticing some of their employees looking at both of them. “No, she didn’t ask me for the fifty thousand dollars. She didn’t ask me for anything. She doesn’t even know about this.”

  He slammed the transfer authorization papers down on the desk and flopped back down in his chair. Jackson could see there was something else that he wasn’t saying.

  “What else is going on Mason?” he asked with concern. “I haven’t said anything to you because I know you have other things on your mind, but you haven’t been yourself in a while.” He paused. “You know you can talk to me.”

  He took a few minutes to say anything at all, but Jackson sat and waited patiently until he did. Mason was the type that either held things in until he became destructive or, if given the right platform which was usually with Jackson he talked his way through it.

  “You remember Chris?”

  “Chris… Erika’s boyfriend, Chris? Yeah, I think I met him at the wedding.”

  “Well, they are getting married…and he doesn’t know.”

  “What do you mean he doesn’t know?”

  “He doesn’t know that the baby she’s having isn’t his, and she wants to keep it that way.” Mason added after a short pause, “as far as he knows, he’s the father.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “I don’t know,” he gasped. “I really don’t know much of anything anymore.”

  Jackson was still confused about where the fifty thousand dollars came in.

  “So what’s the deal with the account?” he asked.

  Mason interlaced his fingers, resting his hands on his desk with his head slightly lower than before. He felt ashamed and afraid, enough to cause him not to be able to look Jackson in the eye.

  “He’s my son.”

  Chapter 29

  He didn’t have to look up to see what Jackson was doing or thinking. From the sound of the ball-point pen rolling against his oak desk, he knew Jackson was signing the authorization papers.

  Jackson put the cap back on his pen, slid it into his pocket, and handed Mason the papers. “Next time just talk to me, Mason. You don’t always have to carry things by yourself.”

  Mason took the papers from his hand and nodded in agreement. “Thanks,” he said.

  “This is what we do; we take care of each other.”

  Mason worked the rest of the day and into most of the evening, which became less unusual for him as the days passed. He never had much to do after work, so he made his time count towards being productive as much as he could. Jackson, who had also stayed late, finally called it a night.

  He peeked into Mason’s office on his way out. “Have fun tonight,” he mentioned.

  “Ok?” Mason responded, clueless to what he meant.

  It was almost eleven; he had no idea what kind of fun Jackson was talking about. His only plans were to go home and get some sleep. He went back to signing the papers on his desk, and laughed it off as Jackson faded from his sight and onto the elevator. Moments later, not even a minute after Jackson had left, his attention was drawn to a light tapping on his office window. Given the state of all that had been weighing on his mind, he couldn’t tell whether it was a dream or not. At first sight the pen he was holding fell from his hand, as if his inability to exhale caused him to lose his grip.

  As he slowly rose from his chair, filling his longing eyes, there she was. And he wasn’t dreaming. “Sydney!”

  She walked into his office, not really sure of what to say to him. Clenching the purse she held in front of her, she answered him. “Jackson called me. I wasn’t’ going to come but ...well…I’m here.”

  He fumbled to get around the desk, apologetic and nervous with his every move. “Sydney, I am so sorry –” he stuttered.

  She raised her hand and said, “No,” stopping him. “Let me talk. There a few things that I need to say to you,” she firmly instructed.

  He was insistent on saying something first, “Sydney, I am really, really sorry about –”

  “About what?” she cut him off.

  He pursed his lips, standing in silence.

  “About what?” she asked again.

  She shook her head. Her disappointment was obvious, as was his realization that he was at fault.

  “For the first couple of weeks, regardless of how crazy it sounded, I figured you’d show up one day as if nothing had ever happened. And despite how angry I would have been,” she gasped, “I would have been happy to see you. But you never showed up, and the more and more I thought about it, it just didn’t make sense.” She walked towards him. “You surprised me with a gift to see my parents on Christmas, and that meant so much to me. It was unexpected and so thoughtful,” she stressed, “but the best part about it was they were going to get the opportunity to meet the man who had come into my life and breathed a love into me that made my heart beat to the very sound of his voice.”

  “Sydney –”

  “Shhh,” she placed her finger in front of her lips. “In one day, you made me hate you. You. Made. Me. Hate you!”

  “…Sydney, I –”

  She shhh’d him again, followed by a light chuckle to hold back the emotions that had rushed to her face.

  “But here I am,” she said, stopp
ing a single tear from falling. “I couldn’t hate you enough to stop loving you.”

  Mason’s head fell to his chest, embarrassed and ashamed. She walked towards the door as if she were leaving and turned to look at him.

  “Get up”, she said, regaining her composure. “Get your coat and let’s go.”

  Mason grabbed his suit jacket from the chair and followed Sydney to the elevator, out of the lobby, and into her car. Although he was extremely curious and very confused, he neither asked nor said a word; he just went with her. She stared through the tinted windows, not looking at him or even giving him the complete satisfaction of her presence. Mason, growing more nervous by the second, just waited. They pulled up to the front entrance of a hotel, stepped into the elevator, and went to the top floor. By the time they got off the elevator, beads of sweat had formed above his brow. He followed her to one of their suites, where she handed him the key card to open the door. He was hesitant, but eventually slid it into the door. He didn’t know what was on the other side and he had no clue what Jackson may have told her. She didn’t seem angry, but she didn’t seem happy, either. He couldn’t read her.

  “What did Jackson tell you?” he asked with his hand on the doorknob.

  “Enough,” she responded. “He told me…enough. Open the door.”

  Not knowing what to expect, he opened the door. What he saw as it slowly opened into the foyer of the suite was nothing he would have ever expected. Not from Sydney, not after what he’d done to her. His eyes softened behind restrained tears to the sounds of songs that would otherwise be out of season. For that moment, however, it was perfect in every way imaginable.

  “Merry Christmas,” she whispered over his shoulder, sliding her hand into his.

  The blending scents of pine and cinnamon, and the flicking glow of the fireplace in an already warmly dimmed room, were breathtaking. What made it so much more was the blue spruce Christmas tree draped with bright white lights in the corner. Beneath it were even gifts wrapped in gold and silver wrapping paper, laced with bows and his name beside them.

  “Sydney…”

  “Wait,” she stopped him.

  “Before you say anything, Jacks asked me to give this to you first.” She pulled an envelope from of her pocket. “Go ahead and get comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

  He stepped into the living room and sat on the sofa, tearing open the envelope. There was a plain post card inside it, with no pictures or other markings aside from Jackson’s handwriting.

  “Yes, I did call her,” he wrote, causing Mason to laugh as soon as he read it. He leaned against the sofa and continued reading.

  “At some point you have to realize that what you have with a person is worth more than the fear of them becoming the one that once hurt you. You have to realize that what you feel in your heart about a person is genuine, and is worth trusting them enough to let them in. Don’t let where you’ve been hurt dictate where you can be happy. I’ve never seen you happier than you were with Sydney, and I’ve never seen you sadder than you were without her. All she wants to do is love you and she isn’t asking any more of you than that in return. So be that to her…be that for her…be that for you.

  P.S. In case you were wondering, I didn’t tell her.”

  Chapter 30

  Sydney walked into the living room just as he folded the card and slid it back into the envelope. She sat down beside him, placing her hand on top of his.

  “Thank you,” he said humbly, “for everything.”

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say in that moment, knowing that no words could express all of what he was feeling. He didn’t deserve this; in a way, he felt he didn’t deserve her. There she was, though, sitting beside him and resting her head on his shoulder like nothing had happened in the past months.

  The snaps of the flames from the fireplace accented their night of sometimes silence and sometimes laughter. They hadn’t moved an inch from the sofa, or from each other. He missed the softness of her touch so much and how even when she lay still she was like a smooth stroke to a painted masterpiece.

  She had missed his scent, and his thick strong arms that made her feel like nothing in the world could touch her when she was held within them.

  “I almost forgot!” Sydney quickly jumped out of his arms.

  “What?” Mason asked.

  “You have to open your presents!”

  “Those are real?” He had assumed they were just decoration.

  “Of course they are real!”

  She moved box after box until she found the one she want to give him first. “Here, open this one.”

  He stared at her, embarrassed that he didn’t have anything for her.

  “Just open it,” she charismatically insisted.

  The both slid onto the floor from the sofa. Like a child on Christmas morning, Mason opened the first present. In it was the puppy he had won her at the carnival; she had gotten both of their names and the date stitched on it with a message beneath that read, ‘You make everything special.’. He went on and opened the second, then the third, fourth, and so on. The smile on Mason’s face as he opened each gift was priceless. Ties, shirts, engraved cufflinks - she had really gone the extra mile.

  “What is it?” she asked, noticing the look on his face.

  “I have a gift for you, but it’s at my house. I wanted to give it to you on Christmas, but-”

  “But you left,” she joked.

  She interlaced his hand with hers and lightly nudged him with her shoulder. “It’s okay, there’s always tomorrow,” she smiled.

  He had almost forgotten how beautiful her laugh was. For hours they found themselves sitting around, talking about the few months they had spent apart, about his new motorcycle and her new job. They seemed to talk about everything, except the one thing that led to them spending months apart: the day he left, and why. Mason rested his head on Sydney’s lap and his body stretched across the floor in front of the fireplace as she lightly stroked his forehead. The music still played and the fire still burned, but in the silence questions she hadn’t asked began to surface in her mind. She had thought a lot about that day in Charleston - about her father, about Mason. She had started to remember old conversations she had with him about how he grew up, and realized that parts of his life were still a mystery to her. Somehow piecing the two together, she wondered if there were things that he wasn’t telling her that made him feel and act the way he did. She was almost sure there was something in his past he was either hiding from her or afraid to talk about.

  Sydney slowed her hands from caressing his forehead until they stopped moving altogether. “I have to ask you something.”

  “Okay,” he responded.

  Mason lifted his head from her lap to sit beside her.

  “No, don’t get up,” she urged him. “Lay back down.”

  He returned his head to her lap, where he had been lying for the past few minutes sensing that something was wrong by her silence.

  Sydney took a deep breath, staring down at him as he rested on her thighs. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  It was the way she said it that caused his eyes to thrust open, as if she’d seen clearly through to something he’d kept hidden and locked away. Mason’s heart beat so hard he feared she could tell he’d stopped breathing for a moment. No one had ever asked him what happened before. No one knew. As he lay still in his thoughts, ‘what happened to you’ resonated in his mind. On one hand he felt like she knew something that he hadn’t told her. On the other hand, he’d shown her something somewhere in the process of them dating that he’d been waiting for her to ask all this time.

  He attempted to pretend as if her question had stuck him in confusion. “What do you mean ‘what happened to me’?” He rhetorically asked, as if to seem like he had no idea where she was coming from.

  She didn’t want to ask again. Sydney saw the level of discomfort he was feeling from his tense response. “Nothing…never mind,” she res
ponded as she began to rub his head again.

  But it wasn’t nothing, and it was too late to say never mind. Some things are just private, he thought. My life…my life before her…is private, he repeated to himself. The longer he lay beneath her hands, gently and lovingly caressing his brow, he started to realize that his life slowly stopped being only his the day he’d fallen for her.

  Mason closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and before he could think of the right words to say they started to fall from his mouth. “Where do you want me to start?” he whispered.

  Sydney smiled. “Wherever you feel comfortable.”

  She had so many questions, but she kept from speaking a single word as he spoke and instead just listened. Mason talked in circles for a while, telling her things she’d heard before, making it obvious that he was trying to get to the one part of the conversation he’d be avoiding but just didn’t know how. He talked until his words were merely sound to the thoughts in his head. He danced along the line of, tell her or not, keeping himself from saying anything that he wouldn’t be able to take back. He could have just kept talking and let her draw her own conclusions, but then again he couldn’t. Sydney deserved more than him pretending. She deserved more than his fear of trust.

  After what seemed like almost fifteen minutes of him talking, he quickly grew quiet. Mason lifted his head from Sydney’s lap and sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder against the sofa. As he nervously clenched and unclenched his hands, he felt the race of his pulse grow with the words that readied on his lips. She hadn’t said a word, sensing he was only moments from truly letting her in for the first time. His face deepened into the crisp collar of his white shirt. He put his hands together, making a tight fist, and slightly lifted his head before resting it on the sofa cushion behind him. She started to wonder in the silence if he was going to say anything at all, but with his exhale came his story.