by Tia Siren
I watched Mason quickly take the roses from Eva before he handed them over to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. I saw a bag dangling from the ribbon, and I’m sure it was probably some beautiful stones he’d bought in town for my jewelry I was going to make when I get home. But, all of a sudden, I was incredibly tired and no longer hungry.
“So, let’s backtrack,” I said. “Your mother was supposed to be here, Mason?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you weren’t going to tell me about this, at all?” I asked.
“I mean, it would’ve come up eventually…” he trailed off.
“Like Winston’s apartment eventually came up?”
I saw the pained expression on his face, and I knew I was being unfair. I understood why all of that transpired, especially in the beginning, but when he whisked me away for the weekend, I figured we were starting fresh. I figured we were erasing the past and starting again.
“I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me this was a family trip,” I said.
“Ash, you gotta believe me. All I wanted to do was show my mother how good we are around each other. How natural it is for us to be together.”
“And why did this require you not telling me she was coming?”
“Because…”
Eva was standing back and enjoying the entire spectacle. Her movement caught my eye, and I glanced back over to her. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the terrace railing. Then, she felt the need to speak up again.
“Because he knew I was probably going to show up, and he wanted to show mommy dearest that he could be with anyone. Even someone like you.”
“Eva, would you please shut up?”
“You knew she was coming?” I asked.
I felt tears rise to me eyes. He fucking knew she was going to be here? He dragged me halfway across the world after treating me to the most incredible weekend of my life only to parade me around in front of his mother and some stuck-up bitch just so he could prove a point?
“What point were you trying to prove here, Mason?” I asked. “What point could possibly be more important than informing me that this bitch and your mother were coming on the same trip as me?”
“Wait, what did you just call me?” Eva asked.
I ignored her. “This was supposed to be a family affair trip, and you just thought dragging along your temporary girlfriend would really spice things up?”
I felt my blood boiling. I was no longer in the mood to play fair, and I was no longer in the mood to save face. If cursing was beneath them, then they were about to get a hell of a lot smaller, because I was about to raise my podium and stand over both of them.
I was dragged halfway across the world and given my dream jewelry-making lessons, and I was not about to look like a fool because I blindly trusted a man who already proved to me once that he couldn’t be trusted. I remembered every word that bitch Eva said to me at that dinner. She criticized me for my weight, and she looked down at her nose for my wine choices, and I knew she was clocking my entire fashion sense and comparing it with her own. She made snide remarks all through dinner, and never once did Mason speak up for me. So now I was going to speak up for myself.
I had no intention of spending any part of this weekend around Eva. At this point, I didn’t really feel like spending time around Mason, either.
And then, my stomach let out a raucous growl that made Eva snicker to herself.
“At least I’m not ashamed to eat,” I spat at her.
Mason clammed up just like he did at the dinner, and the three of us awkwardly sat down inside and ate. The terrace dinner was cramped, and Eva thought she was being cute when she stole my wine glass. So I picked up the bottle, poured them two more glasses, then tipped the bottle up to my lips. Who gave a fuck what happened now? I had been in the most beautiful city I’ll probably ever visit in my lifetime, and the queen of the ice bitches just made herself comfortable.
“The roses did smell wonderful, Mason,” Eva said lightly.
“They weren’t for you,” he said.
“Nice to know you can talk,” I spat.
The three of us ate awkwardly on the terrace, and I was fuming that Mason didn’t kick her out. She had marched her way right into a mansion he had set aside just for us, and he was actually letting her sit and eat the food he had prepared for me. For us.
What the fuck was going on?
Eva finished picking at her food and got up to go put her plate away. I downed the rest of the bottle of wine and shoved my plate away from my body. When Mason tried to reach and take my hand, I pulled it into my lap.
“How did you see this going?” I asked.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m curious. Did you think your mother was going to see us together and just slap her stamp of approval on it? Was it to make Eva jealous? Were you gunning for some weird threesome that hasn’t been talked about yet?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Ash?” Mason said.
“I would just like to know what light you saw at the end of this dumpster fire tunnel is all!”
Mason sat there, silent as a rock, and I felt tears rise to my eyes while Eva stood in the doorway of the terrace.
“If there was any time for an explanation, Mason, it was earlier.”
“I thought my mother would get the point about me not wanting to marry Eva if she saw us together,” he blurted out.
“Do you people not have words?” I exclaimed. “Could you not just have unhinged your jaw and said those words to her? Did it really require dragging me halfway across the world and embarrassing me in front of this bitch for you to get the idea that this is bullshit?”
“I honestly thought my mother was going to be on this trip,” he said. “She faked sick and sent Eva a day early to try and manufacture—”
“I don’t care, Mason! Don’t you get that? I don’t care about your manipulative games or your weird arranged marriages. Your money. Your station. Or the fact that you don’t work. Or the fact that your life is just as much of a shambled mess as mine is!”
“Then what is it?” Mason exclaimed. “What are you so angry about?”
“That for the second time, you’ve made me feel like a pawn. Like something you could just use to get away from your life before your own reality came raining down on you. You dragged me to a charity event and shoved your dick into me numerous times, before meeting me for whatever the hell brunch is and letting me know, in so few words, that I didn’t have enough money to understand how hard your situation was!”
“Ash, that’s not—”
“And now, I’m here in Milan. A city I’ve always wanted to travel to. And I’m just another pawn. A pawn in manipulating your mother so she wouldn't make you marry some thin, empty, stuck up shell of a woman who you’ll never love.”
“Now wait just a second—” Eva tried to step in.
“Ash, that isn’t how it works—”
“I don’t give a damn how you think it doesn’t work. Open your face hole and tell your mother you don’t want to marry a bitch, Mason. Grow a set of balls and stand up for yourself.”
“Where I come from, we deal with things with dignity,” Mason said.
“Well, from the looks of it, where you come from you don’t deal with things at all.”
Eva had the most disgusting smirk on her face, and I didn’t even care. I’m sure I was playing into some game of hers, exactly like she wanted me to. But I was done sitting on the sidelines while Mason attempted to educate me on the lives of those of the rich and famous.
He’d yanked me around enough, and I was done.
“I don’t appreciate being a pawn in your manipulative games, Mason,” I said.
We stared at each other for a while, and Eva just lingered. She didn’t move to leave, she didn’t move to come out onto the porch, and she didn’t try to speak.
The kicker, however, was Mason didn’t get up and tell her to leave, Mason didn’t get up and
escort her from the house, and Mason didn’t pick up the phone and call his mom to let her know of anything that was taking place.
“I’ll sleep in the guest room tonight,” I said.
“Ash. No, please.”
“Should I help you with your things?” Eva asked coolly. “I’ve already set my stuff up in the room down the hall.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said.
“Wow. So violent. You really should pick them better, Mason.”
And yet again, he didn’t come to my defense.
Chapter 29
Mason
I tried to convince Ash while she was moving her things out of the room to just stop. I wanted her to stop and take a breath and understand that I didn’t invite Eva here. I didn’t expect this woman to just turn up and spoil every single thing I had planned. For the love of shit, Ash was the one I wanted. She was the one I loved. Who gave a shit if Eva turned up on the doorstep anyway? She was the one I wanted.
“Ash, come on,” I urged.
But instead, all she did was act like a child. She shoved right by me with her things and picked the room on the opposite end of the house. Everything had turned into a giant clusterfuck.
“I guess she just can’t handle the stress that comes with this lifestyle,” Eva sighed.
“You know damn well I didn’t invite you here,” I spat through clenched teeth.
“And yet, here I am,” she said. “You know as well as I do that the two of us are destined for one another.”
“Yeah,” Ash said. “The conniving bitch and the airhead with no balls. Sounds like a perfect match.”
“Such a mouth for someone trying to be so clean,” Eva said.
“Would the two of you just stop?” I exclaimed.
“You know,” Ash began. “It’s astounding to me. You say you care, you say all the wonderful things, and you buy me all these wonderful presents, and yet this is the second time she’s interjected herself somehow into plans we have, and I don’t see you coming to my defense.”
“Well, you could handle this entire situation a bit better than you are,” I said. “It’s not like I invited her here.”
“So it’s my fault?” Ash asked. “Do you really think you're innocent in all this? Poor old Mason whose mother is shoving some stick thin model of a woman onto him to marry. Poor old Mason who has to do what he’s told and marry rich and never has to work and will never understand what it means to eat ramen noodles every night for a week just to get by?”
“Oh, and you’ve got it so hard? Poor Ash who gets to do what she wants with life and marry who she falls in love with and never once has to listen to her mother or be forced to marry some psycho he could never love?”
“Seriously, Mason, I’m right here,” Eva deadpanned.
“Yeah,” Ash said. “Sounds wonderful if you’ve got your looks. Men don’t want me, Mason. Men never have. Men want the little bit of money I do bring in and the couch I let them sleep on, and that’s about it. You wanna know what I was actually doing at that play, Mason?”
“Um… play?” Eva asked.
“Can it, Eva. Ash, what does this have to do with anything?”
“Do you wanna know or not?” she spat.
“What were you doing at that play?” I asked lowly.
“Signing a release my ex wanted me to sign so he could openly talk about our disgusting and manipulative relationship on camera for a reality television show he was gunning for. And I’m so pathetic and useless, I signed it just to get rid of him.”
“For the love of everything, Mason dear, is this the type of woman you really want to be spending your time with? Someone who will be gossiped about on national television?”
“Don’t act like your name isn’t in people’s mouths, Eva,” Ash said.
“At least those mouths have class,” Eva threw back.
“Enough!” I roared. “Eva, none of this was for you. My mother wanted to invite you on this trip, and I told her not to. What she does beyond that is not within my power. Ash, this trip was for you, and only for you. I wanted to get you here and show you off to my mother, who I then hoped would get off my back with regard to Eva. Obviously, that isn’t happening. My mother is just pushing back harder, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
I stood there and watched tears crest her eyes again. That same tug in my gut that I had when I suffered through all those nightmares came flooding back. I didn’t want to hurt her. For the love of fuck, I wanted to love the woman. To cherish her and spoil her and travel with her and take care of her.
Why the fuck was that so hard to do in my life?
“I didn’t invite Eva,” I said. “I swear to God I didn’t.”
Ash shook her head and started back for her room, and when the door clicked shut, I knew that was it. There went my beautifully-planned night where I was going to tell her how much I loved her. Gone was the night where I would tell her that I wanted to be with her, and only her, no matter what life threw at us.
“Well, that was fun,” Eva said.
I ignored her and stomped off to bed.
I woke up the next morning, and I was dead set on making Ash breakfast. I was going to take it to her in bed before she got up and left for class, and I was hoping she would take me up on my offer to do lunch with me.
I would tell her that we could dodge Eva and still have time to ourselves, and hell, I’d even get us a new space, and Eva could have the house all to herself. I wanted to salvage the rest of the trip for her, and I wanted to spend it holding her close and telling her that things were going to be alright. I still wanted to tell her that I loved her and that she was the only one for me.
But after I was done fixing breakfast, I carried it into her room only to see she had already left. She had intentionally gotten up earlier than the crack of dawn, had gotten ready, and had left.
Without me.
Eva was still sleeping, and I tossed the breakfast into the sink like it wasn’t worth a damn thing. I felt empty and useless, and I had no idea where to go from here. Eva was her own person, and I couldn’t just demand she go back home no more than I could demand Ash to forgive me again.
I thought about chasing her down after class and begging her to go have lunch with me, but then I remembered I had two classes scheduled for her again today, and that she would probably just hoard herself away in a room and make jewelry until the next one started.
It killed me to think she wouldn’t even emerge into this beautiful city because of me to eat.
“Something smells divine,” Eva said, yawning.
“Dig your breakfast out of the sink if you want it,” I said flatly.
“Mason, do you remember that time you, Winston, and I went to see that opera in Vienna?”
I sighed and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. I hoped that if I pressed hard enough, I’d wake up from this nightmare in the back of Ash’s rickety sedan while we looked at the glowing Hollywood sign, and I’d have a chance to do this all over again and not fuck up royally time after time after time.
“Yes, Eva. I do.”
“Gosh, we had the most incredible time. Winston brought that woman back to the hotel room and that’s when Winston became in tune with his voyeuristic side of himself.”
“Yeah. They screwed on the porch. I remember, Eva.”
The entire day was like that. Eva kept asking me if I remembered things, and I would play along with her silly little game of distractive conversation. She would remind me of the trips our families took together when my father was still alive, and then she would regale me with stories of things I only vaguely remembered of the trouble myself, her, and Winston got into with the trips we took as teenagers.
“Gosh, I still cannot believe our parents let us travel to Germany alone at seventeen. Winston was drunk that entire time.”
“That’s because we went during Octoberfest,” I said.
“And the schnitzel!” Eva exclaimed.
“God, you th
ought it was a funnel cake,” I said. “Their faces were priceless when you asked them to put powdered sugar on it.”
“Oh, I knew what it was,” Eva admitted.
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. I knew it wasn’t a funnel cake. I just remember you had the most terrible time with Winston being constantly drunk and sick, and I wanted to make you laugh.”
I looked over at her for a while and really studied her, and then she did it again.
“Remember the first time we took this trip to Milan without your father?”
I had completely forgotten about that. My mother was so torn down and broken after my father’s death that the only thing I could entice her with was the trip to Milan. But she didn’t want to go shopping without my father, and I had gotten sick the day before the trip. So Eva had come along with us.
“You came because I was sick, and you shopped with my mom the entire time we were here,” I said.
“It was the first time I saw her smile since your father had died, Mason,” she said.
“I never did thank you for doing that for her,” I said.
“Well, you’re welcome,” she said. “Plus, I love this city. There is something very binding about it.”
“Eva,” I warned.
“Mason. You know as well as I do that our lives are seamlessly blended. We grew up together, and Winston is your best friend. The three of us have memories for years we could reminisce about in our old age, and our families are closely fused with one another, both in business and in pleasure.”
“Eva, I can’t do this with you,” I groaned.
“Stop being so stubborn and look at it logically for a second. I know Winston has gotten this ‘slumming it’ thing in your head because of some lost bet or whatever.”
“He told you about that?”
“But,” Eva emphasized. “Give me the Mason I know to be real for just a second. The logical one who understands why our lives work the way they do.”
“You’re trying to get me to see the value in our marriage. The financial value and how our families would blend and work well together. It would cement an incredible future for two very powerful and rich bloodlines, and you are trying to get me to understand that, if we wanted to, you’d probably let me take a mistress or something to save face and keep me happy. Right?”