Summer Lessons

by Amy Lane

  “I just really would like you not to hurt my boyfriend,” Mason said, allowing some of his own temper to show. “He’s perfectly functional until you open your mouth.”

  Julie gaped a couple of times, and Mason turned back toward his chair. “Guys, wanna help me fold this up again? I’m thinking it’s time to pack it up.”

  By the time they got the chair in the back of the SUV and rounded up the cage lights, Dane and Carpenter had come out of the house, followed by Terry, who was apologizing profusely, sounding young and destroyed.

  “Guys, I’m sorry. That thing she said, that was horrible, and I just hate that you all came over and—”

  “Stop,” Mason said, his heart hurting too hard to even put words to it. “Terry, c’mere.” He swung around in the passenger seat so he was facing outward from the car door, his feet braced on the runner. Terry moved between his knees without question.

  “I’m sorry,” Terry said, near tears. “It’s so stupid. It was… I mean, it was horrible, but it was a good day. You all came over and helped and I was….” He took a shuddery breath, and Mason met Skip’s eyes over his back.

  That quickly, the guys all disappeared to their cars. Skip’s last words were “Meet at Starbucks—hot chocolate on me!”

  The cars all pulled out, and Dane leaned on the driver’s side of the car, giving Mason and Terry some privacy.

  By the time everyone had disappeared, Terry was crying softly against Mason’s chest.

  “Sh….” Mason kissed his hair. He understood. For a day, Terry had been independent, capable, and accepted. Mason had wanted to be like that his entire life. For a moment, Terry had held the keys to the adulthood castle, and then the one person who should have built up that castle for him had ripped the keys from his hand and stomped the castle to splinters.

  “I’m so pathetic,” Terry choked. “I am so grateful for you guys—”

  “Then concentrate on that,” Mason said. “You have friends. They showed up. They helped. They’ll do it again.”

  “But my mom—”

  “Can jump off a fucking cliff,” Mason snarled, hating her more in that moment than he’d ever hated another human being. “We won’t talk about her. We don’t think less of you. Just let us know—you can sleep in our guest room or on Skip and Richie’s couch. We’ll come—someone will come every weekend—to help you get the house to where you feel you can leave.” Mason fought against every instinct he had to throw Terry into the car and rescue him like he was a princess in a tower. Or to sink a few grand into improving a home that would eventually end up in the possession of someone he hoped to never speak to again. “You tell us, okay?”

  Terry nodded and looked up finally, embarrassment and humiliation etched clearly on his features. “You’d be willing to come back?”

  “We’ll pretend she’s a mosquito,” Mason said grimly. “A mosquito we can’t squash, but sort of a blood-sucking annoyance who spreads bad karma like a disease.”

  Terry laughed shortly and then offered another one of those ridiculously pleasing kisses on the cheek. “I want to spend another day in bed,” he said frankly.

  “Well, maybe if my ankle gets better, we can spend part of the day in bed and part of the day doing something more interesting.” A movie in a theater, even.

  Terry smiled wistfully. “I’d like to play golf again,” he said, surprising Mason very much. “You’re a good teacher.”

  “Then we will.” Oh, a rash promise, but Mason would have made a thousand of them. “Summer mornings—I’ll reserve a tee time for every Sunday, before it starts to get hot. Just for you.”

  Terry looked around the concrete-colored air of dismal January. “You’re planning awfully far ahead.”

  Oh. Mason shrank back into the car a little. “I’m not getting bored,” he said, hoping he could keep it light.

  Terry’s smile lit up the darkness like a magic moon. “Me neither—and everything bores me. So summer it is.” This time his kiss hit Mason’s lips and lingered. He pulled away, saying, “Thanks, Mason. You’re… I gotta….” He held his hand uncomfortably to his chest. “I gotta figure out the right word.”

  He turned and trotted back into the house, and Dane sank thankfully into the driver’s seat and closed the door with a thud. “So, are we meeting at Starbucks for chocolate?” he asked hopefully. Well, he and Carpenter had flirted like always, but this time their flirting had been… more intense, Mason thought. Maybe hope was the order of the day.

  “Of course.” Mason swung into the car, did up his belt, and shut the door. Behind his eyes he saw Terry rubbing his chest and searching for the right word.

  Mason knew that word. He’d used it before mostly for a lot of assholes who thought they knew what it meant.

  He was starting to learn that you didn’t really know what it meant unless you felt the broken glass of worry that went with it.

  Everybody Hurts

  BY MID-MARCH, Mason was ready to play again—but Dane had stopped taking his medication twice, and soccer should have been the last thing on his mind.

  “Dane, so help me, I will call Mom!”

  Dane looked up from the driveway, where he was sitting, knees drawn up to his chin, rocking back and forth. His hair had grown over his collar, and his scruff had turned into actual beard. He didn’t look hip at this moment, he looked homeless—and the fact that he was wearing Carpenter’s supersized college sweatshirt didn’t do him any favors. Mason had been getting breakfast together and telling him to hurry up and take his meds when Dane had sprinted past him and out to the carport.

  Mason tackled him right when he got to the SUV, and Dane had crumpled, trying hard not to weep against his knees. Mason had given him a moment to calm down, and had gone inside for his medication and some milk and some goddamned food. Dane had lost twenty pounds since January, and he didn’t have that much to lose to begin with.

  Goddammit. Dane needed Mom, or Dad, or fucking Carpenter, even as a friend. Mason was not doing this right, he just fucking wasn’t.

  “You always want to call Mom—what’s the fucking matter, Mason—not man enough to deal with the crazy person by yourself?”

  “You’re not crazy! You’re just undermedicated! And if you don’t get up and eat this sandwich and take your meds and get into the goddamned car, we’re not going to the soccer game, we’re going to the fucking psych ward!”

  Dane’s mouth dropped slowly open, and Mason hated himself more in that moment than he had in his entire life. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered, hurt as a baby. “Mason—that place—”

  Mason sank to a squat and shoved the pill in his fist into Dane’s open mouth and then thrust the chocolate milk at him. Dane swallowed, staring at him resentfully, and Mason put the sandwich in his other hand.

  “I’m going inside for my bag,” he growled. “If you are not in the car and ready to go by the time I get back, I’m dragging you in by your Jesus hair and taking you to the fucking hospital.”

  Dane’s eyes washed over with tears. “I don’t want to go there,” he all but whimpered.

  Mason couldn’t watch his baby brother cry. His eyes burned, and he wiped them with the back of his hand. “Please don’t make me take you. Please? God. Please, just work with me here. The game. Carpenter. The things you love. They’re there, inside you. I know they are. Just… just take a deep breath and remember they’ll come back. I know you’re sad now—I know it. But those things aren’t gone forever—they’re just hidden, Dane. Please, man. You gotta keep looking.”

  They were forehead to forehead, and Mason couldn’t ever remember feeling as desperate about anything as he had at this moment. C’mon, baby brother—c’mon. I know it’s hard. I know that the world feels like broken glass right now. I know going outside and dealing with people is scaling an obsidian cliff. But don’t give up. God, Dane, don’t fucking give up.

  “He never kissed me back,” Dane said brokenly. “I thought…”

  Mason’s heart seized. “B
ut Dane—even if he does love you, how are you going to see it when you’re like this? You can’t see me, and you’ve known me all your life.”

  Dane closed his eyes and leaned his chin against his knees, and lost the battle with sobs. Mason gave up on being on time and turned around and sat with him, their backs against the car, his arm draped around Dane’s shoulders.

  Dane eventually leaned his head against Mason, and the sobs died down. “Go get your bag,” he said softly. “I’ll make us better sandwiches. God, Mason—salami for breakfast?”

  “If you don’t cook, you don’t bitch,” Mason said, his voice clogged. But he pushed himself up and then gave Dane a hand. Dane went in for a short, fierce hug, and then they went back to their morning like it never happened.

  BUT YOU can’t just erase a moment like that from your heart.

  “Jesus, Mason,” Terry said with respect. “I’ve never seen a soccer ball go that far. What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  Mason smiled tightly. “Bad morning,” he said, and by now Terry knew him well enough to know what that meant.

  “Sorry,” he said, and to his credit he managed not to look at Dane, who was wrapped in blankets and glaring balefully at the field.

  Mason shrugged, but he was pretty sure he fooled nobody—a supposition that was backed up by Carpenter as they stood waiting for Skip to score on the other side of the field.

  “He looks like hell,” Carpenter muttered. “So do you. Is there anything you can do to help him?”

  Mason laughed bitterly. “I force fed him his meds this morning. You got any other ideas?”

  Carpenter grunted and play came their way. Mason charged the offense, kicking the ball right out from under his foot and straight to Richie, who was half a field away. Play shifted to the other side of the field and Menendez whooped at Mason and high-fived him.

  “I don’t know what’s got you pissed off, man, but use that shit!”

  Mason eyed the soccer ball grimly, even as Skip took Richie’s pass and ran it to the goal. “I totally intend to.”

  The half came, and Carpenter and Mason stood together, gulping water. “I was going to take him to my folks,” Carpenter said quietly. “My mom loves him. I don’t know if he can turn that shit away.”

  Mason nodded. “Good plan.” He’d never met Carpenter’s family, but Mason and Dane were such mama’s boys, he couldn’t see Dane not responding to mothering from an actual mom. “He’s got meds for tonight and tomorrow, but he needs to do homework in the afternoon. He’s falling behind.”

  Carpenter grunted. “God. Another year after this—that’s what you said?”

  Mason closed his eyes, and Terry came up next to him, patting the small of his back in a gentle way that had nothing to do with guys on the field. “Yeah. If we can just get him through till May, maybe we can lighten the load and make it two.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Carpenter said, and Skip called them back to play.

  Mason looked down at Terry, grabbing his hand before they turned away from the bench. “Thanks,” he said softly.

  Terry shrugged. “I’ll see if I can do better tonight.”

  A wave of lust—pure, unadulterated, without tenderness or sentiment—assailed him, and for a moment, he could have taken Terry right there, in public, snarling and biting, like an animal.

  Oh God.

  Mason shied away from the image.

  “I might be a bastard tonight,” he apologized, wondering if he could find words to tell Terry that he didn’t want his boyfriend—or whatever they were—to see him this way.

  Terry winked. “I’m a bastard all the time. Bring it!”

  “C’mon you guys! Get your ass out here!” Skip called, and that was the end of the half.

  MASON WAS busy talking to Dane and making sure he’d be okay to go with Carpenter when Terry waved and said he’d meet at Mason’s house with sandwiches. Well shit—Mason was going to have to remember how to be a person, how not to wear his fear and his frustration on his sleeve.

  God. Please let him keep it together—as settled into routine as he and Terry had become, Mason was positive he was one harsh word, one accidental blurt away from scaring him off forever.

  He got to the house to find Terry waiting on the doorstep, sandwich bag in hand.

  “I’m going to shower first,” he said with a quick peck on Terry’s cheek. “I still have game-stink on me.”

  Terry scowled, putting the sandwiches on the counter. “You still got game mad on you. I don’t know who you think you’re kidding.”

  “About what?” Mason let him in and followed him to the kitchen, pulling out the potato-leek soup he’d made the night before, just for their Saturday together. “Here—let me set this up to warm.”

  “No—we’ll eat it later.” Terry took the soup out of his hands and put it back in the refrigerator, surprising him.

  “Why later?” Mason mumbled, and then Terry turned toward him and kissed him, hard, almost angry, shoving him back against the counter and shoving his hands up Mason’s shirt to pinch his nipples.

  “Mm?” Mason tried to pull back. Enthusiastic—yes. But never angry, never harsh.

  “Shut up and use me,” Terry snarled. “You gotta do it to someone, you might as well do it to me.”

  “Not to you,” Mason said, trying to take a stand. His hand shook, but he managed to caress the skin of Terry’s cheeks with his fingertips. I love you. “Never to you.”

  Terry’s face contorted into a battle sneer. “That’s why I’m best for the job.” And then he climbed Mason like a tree, wrapping his legs solidly around Mason’s hips and capturing Mason’s mouth again.

  God, Mason wanted. He cupped his hands under Terry’s thighs and walked him to the stairs. Part of him was surprised his weak ankle didn’t roll, but his cock—which felt like most of his functioning brain—was screaming I WANT! And Mason couldn’t say no.

  Terry wriggled out of his arms at the bottom of the stairs and hauled ass up, shouting, “Hurry, Mason, or I’ll finish myself.”

  Mason was halfway up when the image hit him, Terry, lying in his bed, one hand on his cock, the other fiddling behind him, stretching himself, making him ready. Mason’s vision went red, possessiveness sweeping through him.

  Mine!

  All of the juggling with words, the not trying to scare anybody, not trying to hurt anybody, trying to understand. Suddenly Mason just wanted—wanted to possess his lover like a cave man, wanted to take him, to own him—wanted no words or ideas between them, no other people.

  He hurtled up the stairs like a meteor, arriving just in time to see Terry shimmy out of his jersey and shuck his shorts.

  Mason didn’t remember taking off his own clothes, but by the time he got to the bed, Terry was bent over the mattress, lubed fingers prepping himself, dilated, slick, and open.

  Mason drove himself inside like a bullet, Terry’s cry of pleasure/pain one of the sexiest things Mason had heard in his life.

  It was the last thing he remembered hearing for a while, as he surged into his lover like a freight train, roaring and swearing, screaming “Mine!” whenever he could find breath.

  Terry lay beneath him, panting, moaning “Yes, yes, yes—c’mon, Mason, give it to me!” and Mason gave and gave and fucking gave.

  His climax seemed incidental in all of that fury, but when it rushed his spine and exploded outward, everything stopped—all the noise in the room, all the noise in his head, all the grief in his heart—and for that one moment, he lost himself in the beauty of orgasm, pouring his frustration into his lover’s body.

  He collapsed forward then rolled sideways, trying to catch his breath. Terry was still mashed into the bed, his fist moving feverishly underneath him. Just when Mason realized that he hadn’t finished—was, in fact, chasing his own orgasm and maybe Mason should help—Terry let out a little “Oh!” and shuddered, his come hitting the bedspread beneath him.

  And Mason realized what he’d done.
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br />   “Oh God,” he whispered as Terry smiled tiredly through his fall of hair. “Terry, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Terry said simply, shrugging. He wriggled up so he and Mason were facing each other. “It’s okay. I know how to take it like that.”

  Oh hell. Mason had used him, like all of the other guys Terry had known.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said again, his voice cracking. “I didn’t mean—I never would have—” Except he had, hadn’t he?

  The smell of sex and sweat filled the room, and Mason came a breath away from rushing to the bathroom to throw up.

  Terry’s fingertips on Mason’s cheekbones stopped him.

  “Of course not,” he said, equable and calm, like Mason hadn’t just fucked him savagely, like a thing. “You’re the only one who ever treated me like a person,” he said. “But that’s ’cause you’re decent. When you’re decent, you don’t want anyone to see you hurt like that.” A sweet, sad smile flitted across his face. “You trusted me, right?”

  Mason nodded, out of words. “Yeah,” he said, his voice fractured. He took a deep breath, and his chin wobbled. He tried to push himself up so he could go to the bathroom and pull himself together.

  “Right?” Terry said softly. “You trust me?”

  “Yeah,” he said again, his voice broken completely. Oh God, he wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom. Terry wriggled up on the bedspread, so Mason was even with his chest, and palmed Mason’s head forward.

  “Trust me,” Terry urged. “C’mon, Mason. Trust me.”

  The first sob broke, the total helplessness, the pain of watching his brother in pain, the stupid unfairness of Mason’s beautiful baby brother and the mental illness that sank its claws into him when Dane needed his sanity the most.

  A flurry of sobs, a waterfall of broken, gasping tears, and Terry held him through them all, not saying much, just held him, kissing his temple, telling Mason without words that it was going to be okay.

  Mason never remembered getting up and showering after that, or eating lunch either. They spent a couple of hours sweeping off the back porch and getting it ready for spring so they could sit out on the patio and eat, and then they went back inside and watched movies. Mason didn’t say much, and Terry filled in the silence with chatter.