How We Deal With Gravity (13 page)

“You wanna drink?” I say, nodding to the porch behind me.

“Yeah, I do,” she says, her lip barely curling at the
corner. I wait for her to catch up, and when we both take the first step onto
the porch, I feel her fingers against mine, and I grip them hard.

Avery

I told Mason to make us rum and Coke, and I can tell he made
it super weak. I might as well sip on cough medicine, but I appreciate that
he’s being so sensitive. We take our drinks up to his room, and shut the door
so we don’t wake up Max; the second his door closes my heartbeat picks up its
rhythm.

Adam shocked me tonight. He shocked me by showing up in the
first place. But as strange as it sounds, what he said didn’t surprise me at
all. Maybe it’s because I wrote his parenting rights off in my own mind years
ago, or maybe it’s because he was always selfish and worried about what people
think.

Adam’s words hurt—they hurt to hear because they were
about Max. But they didn’t surprise me. What
did
surprise me were my instincts. Adam was busy doling out fake
apologies, talking about how this is all for the best, and how he’ll still pay
his child support, but that we have to make it seem like a business venture.
And all I wanted to do was run home—to Mason.

“You want me to play something?” his voice startles me.

“Huh? Oh…if you want…I guess,” I say, my eyes trained on his
fingers, and how they grip his guitar.

“Nah, that’s okay. I only thought it might distract you,” he
says. He starts to put the guitar back on the floor, but I grab his forearm to
stop him. When I touch his skin, I hear him gulp, and his eyes flicker to my
hand.

“I’d like that. Play something…anything,” I keep my voice
soft, almost like we’re sneaking around. It’s barely nine at night, but here
behind Mason’s closed door, it feels like the wee hours of the morning.

“Anything…hmmmm? Okay, well…I was sort of messing around
with this; let me know what you think. I thought I’d play it with the band this
weekend,” he says, tuning lightly and dampening his strings to play quietly. I
recognize the song instantly. It’s Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You.” My
dad played a lot of Otis records when we were kids, and he and Mason used to
play those songs together in the garage. But they never sounded anything like
this.

I spend the first half of the song just watching his
hands—the way they move, the careful selections they make, and the
perfectly timed moments. When he hits the chorus, I’m drawn to his face. His
eyes are closed; he’s feeling this so much. That’s how Mason sings—he
feels every word, his lips breathing life into each lyric. It’s a song I’ve
heard a thousand times, maybe more, yet when Mason sings, it feels entirely
different.

He opens his eyes for the last verse, and I look right into
them. I know it’s an act—when Mason sings, especially on the stage, he
has this power of singling you out and making you feel like he’s making this
poetry, and it’s just for you, and you alone. But tonight, I’m the only one in
the room. There’s nowhere else for his eyes to go, but I think even if there
were, they’d still be here, in this place, with me.

When the song is over, the air feels thicker, and I can tell
it’s making him uncomfortable. I straighten my legs for a stretch, and then
bend my knees to stand, but Mason halts me.

“You don’t have to go. I mean…unless you want to. We can
talk. We can talk about stupid pointless stuff, I mean. Not the heavy shit,” he
shrugs and flashes a single dimple that has me back on the floor again.

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?” I ask, grabbing an
old sweatshirt I find on the floor, and folding it up into a ball behind my
neck.

“Come here,” Mason says, moving to the far side of his
blow-up mattress and laying back with his arm out. I’m weighing this one,
everything inside me screaming for me to curl up into his arms, but this tiny
voice warning me not to. “Stop trying to find my damn angle, Avery. I feel bad
you’re lying on the floor is all.”

He’s right, so I crawl over to the mattress and slide in
next to him, my weight making the mattress bounce and shake like a birthday fun
house. “Gee, yeah, Mason. This is so much better than the floor. You’re a real
gentleman,” I joke, and he pokes me in the side.

I kick the straps of my sandals loose from my ankles,
letting them fall to the floor. Reaching down for his blanket, I pull it over
my knees, mostly because I’m still wearing a dress, and the quilt makes me feel
less exposed somehow.

“All right, Miss Abbot. Let’s see—why don’t you tell
me about something I don’t know. Like…oh, I know! What’s with Max and the
planet book? Like, seriously—I learned something from that bedtime story
tonight,” Mason asks. I love that he’s asking about Max, and I love the details
he notices about him, like how unbelievably smart he is.

“Okay. Well, it’s pretty clear he likes science,” I start. I
turn my head to face him, twisting my body ever-so-slightly to the side when I
do, and I feel his fingers curl around my shoulder blade, almost cradling
me—like he’s hovering. His barely-there touch sends the tiniest chill
down my spine, and I find myself wanting him to hold me harder, and I mentally
wish for it.

“We went to the planetarium over the summer, and there’s a
guy there who runs the show. He’s like Max,” I pause, waiting for him to
understand, and when he nods slowly, I continue. “Max really liked the guy. I
think he just liked the way he spoke. There wasn’t a lot of fluff, just
facts—lots and lots of facts. And when the show was done, Max asked to
look at the store. He’s usually not interested in things like that, so when he
picked out a book, I jumped at it and bought it—all fifty-nine dollars of
it.”

“Damn, that’s a rip-off,” Mason says. I laugh in response,
and I feel his hand get firmer along my back when I do, and the same chill
travels down my body.

“Right. Well, joke’s on them, because we’ve read that thing
through, cover-to-cover, forty times. Max has it memorized. We’re almost to a
buck a read,” I smile at my joke, and when I look up, Mason’s smiling back, his
dimples deep. I want to touch them, so I take my right index finger and reach
up to his cheek and softly run the tip of my finger over the divot.

“Uh, that’s…different,” Mason says, his eyes almost crossed
while he peers down at my finger on his face. He’s unshaven, and I want
desperately to cup his chin with the rest of my hand, to feel how rough it is,
but I’m embarrassed enough already, so I pull my hand away and turn my face
into him so he can’t see me.

“You’re dimples are cool. Kinda always wanted to touch
them,” I say. What the hell, I already violated his face—might as well
own up to that one. I can feel Mason chuckle deep in his chest, and then his
thumb gently slides back and forth on the bare skin of my shoulder. I. Never.
Want. It. To. Stop.

“Your turn. Ask me something. Ask me anything,” he says,
almost eager for me to want to know one of his secrets. I think about it, and
then I spare a glance at his face for inspiration. He’s looking straight up at
the ceiling, his other arm tucked under the back of his neck, completely at
ease.

“The tattoo,” I start, and I watch as his eyes close
tightly, and he slides his hand forward over his face, almost wincing. He tilts
his fingers up just to glance at me, and then he shuts them back over his eyes
when he sees I’m watching. “What’s the story?”

I’ve hit a nerve, and Mason Street is actually embarrassed,
which only causes me to prop my head up with my fist to look him in the eyes.
He laughs lightly when I do, and he turns to face me more, but he leaves his
arm under my neck. His fingers are playing with my hair now. I wonder if he
knows I can feel it? I don’t react, though, for fear he’ll stop.

“All right, so I’m on the road with the guys…for like…six
months. We started out playing some pretty decent venues, but then it turned
into some pretty shitty dives,” he looks at me when he says this, probably more
embarrassed admitting that his tour wasn’t a great success than about the
tattoo. I just shake my head, urging him to keep going.

“So, we end up in this nasty old casino in the old part of
Vegas. I mean, rooms are being rented by the hour, and there’s a guy they call
the King of Heroine on one of the floors—that kind of a shithole. Anyhow,
me and the guys decide to party with some chicks we meet at the casino; they
were in town for a bachelorette party. We start drinking at this rundown club,
and this one girl, Teresa, is
really
putting
herself out there for me. So we drink more, and then we bring it back to the
hotel, and we drink more. And—” he pauses, his lips suddenly getting
tight; I prod him with my elbow. “I don’t know…are you sure you want to hear
this story?”

I nod yes, my smile bigger with every piece he tells,
probably because it embarrasses him. For some reason though, my wanting to hear
makes him get quieter, and he’s staring at me hard. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But
you have to promise me something…”

His words make me a little nervous, but I say, “Okay,”
anyhow.

“Promise me you’ll still see me the way you do right now?”

I nod
yes
slowly,
but without hesitation. I’m in—I’m
deep
into this…this…whatever this is that I am feeling for Mason. And who am I
to talk—the girl whose ex just told her he basically wants to hide her
existence away, like an offshore money account. Mason has a past—I’ve
seen it. And I don’t think this is the story that’s going to make my heart do a
complete U-turn.

“Okay, well…me and Teresa ended up ditching the room party
after some pretty crazy, uhm…stuff,” he coughs, and I know he means they had
sex. And I know it was a roomful of people. And I’m not surprised Mason was in
the middle of it. I don’t really like
imagining
it, but I’m not shocked or angry. “We sort of ended up at the chapel. And
next thing I know, it’s the morning, and we’re married.”

“Ohhhhh,” I start laughing now, uncontrollably, because you
hear about rash wedding chapel runs in the movies—I never thought they
were real.

“Right? But wait, it gets worse,” he says, rubbing his hand
over his face at the memory. “Turns out Teresa…was the fiancé!”

“Oh shit!” I’m laughing even harder now, covering my mouth
with my hand to stifle the noise.

“We got it annulled, of course. But I’m pretty sure she ended
up calling off the wedding. Or the dude did. Never saw him, but she told me he
found out,” Mason says, nodding at the memory.

“So…how does that fit with the tattoo?” I ask, and Mason
takes a deep breath, finally pulling his arm out from under me and sitting
himself up a little to pull off his shirt. And I now suddenly could not care
less about the tattoo—because he’s lying back down, his bare skin right
there, touching me, and it’s bronze, and it’s perfect, and there are abs
happening and…
oh my.
I force myself
to listen to him even though all I want to do is run my fingers up and down his
chest.

“If you look carefully, you can still sort of see it,” he
traces his finger over a few stripes within the delicate tiger wrapped around
his bicep. I don’t know what he’s pointing at, exactly, but I take the
opportunity to study his arm. “Look there…it’s her name. I tattooed that
chick’s full fuckin’ name…on my arm! I covered it up with the tiger a few weeks
later, but the guys kept calling me Mr. Teresa Westerhouse for months.”

It might have been a mistake that put the ink on him in the
first place, but damn did it turn into something special. I can sort of see a
few of the letters, but even knowing the story now as I do, I don’t see her
name. I’m probably just a little drunk on the high of being in so much contact
with Mason’s body—but right now, I’m ready to tattoo anything he wants on
mine, just to get closer and to touch him more.

“I think it’s beautiful,” I let the words slip, and my eyes
flair when they do, but I just hold my breath, thankful that from this angle,
Mason can’t see my face.

“Yeah, well I think
you’re
beautiful,” he says in an instant, and now my heart is officially in my
throat. His hand is back to stroking my hair, and he’s no longer trying to hide
it, instead, his fingertips start at the very edge of my hairline, lacing deep
into the strands, softly brushing them out across my bare shoulder.

When I feel his hand run lower down my neck and pull my head
in close, I stop breathing, afraid that I’ll do something…say something…that
will make him stop. In seconds, his lips are on my head, and I can feel him
inhale. My body is telling me to look up, to make a move—to take a leap
of faith. But then a familiar light floods his entire bedroom, and time
actually freezes.

My dad has driven the same damned pickup truck for fourteen
years. The lights cast a very distinctive hue, and when I first started dating
Adam in high school, I had it down to a science. The second I saw those lights
pour in through the front living room windows, Adam was quickly pushed out the
back kitchen door.

“Shit, that’s my dad!” I say, practically jumping to my feet
and cracking open Mason’s door. I step one foot into the hallway, just enough
to flip the bank of lights off, and then my dad’s keys are at the door. I push
Mason back into the room and shut his door again behind us, holding my finger
up to my mouth. “Shhhhhhhhhh!” I say, giggling uncontrollably.

I lay my ear flat against the wood so I can hear my dad move
through the kitchen, get a drink from the fridge, and kick his shoes off by the
stairs. The fourth one creaks as he passes it, and I widen my eyes at Mason,
warning him that he’s coming. Mason leans forward against me, pressing his own
ear next to mine, and we both wait. It’s hard to tell, but it seems like my dad
is standing at the top of the stairs in the middle of the hall for an unusually
long time before he makes his way to his own bedroom. I finally hear his door
close, and let out the breath I’ve been holding, sliding my back against the
door so I’m facing Mason.