Summer Lessons Read online

  Mason shook his head and walked past the gaming tournament in his living room toward the card game in his kitchen, picking up bottles and soda cans and putting them in the recycler, while making sure everyone had a fresh drink and the chip bowls were full.

  As a chilling out in the house and pool party went, it wasn’t bad. People moved slowly, spoke quietly, and simply enjoyed the fact that they weren’t somewhere it felt like 112. The guest rooms were put to use for quiet television and naps, and the expensive pool pump pretty much paid for itself by not sucking too much power and continuing like a champion.

  Mason worked hard at being a host and managed to avoid meaningful eye contact with George, Stuart, or Hugh, although he couldn’t seem to take a step without one of them asking him if he needed help. He managed to make small talk and appear to listen attentively, but the whole time…

  His eyes were on Terry.

  The hair on the back of Mason’s neck had risen the minute Dane let him in. Dane had been polite, shaken hands with Terry’s new friend, and told them to make themselves at home.

  “Where’s Mason?” Terry asked, and Mason had closed his eyes in the middle of Hugh’s riveting tale of being stuck in traffic over the Folsom Bridge, and tried to decide if he sounded excited about seeing Mason or not.

  “He’s around,” Dane said airily. “You’ll have to fight past his swarm of guys to get to him.”

  Mason had blinked, not wanting to be seen with his swarm. Not wanting to be seen at all.

  “Excuse me,” he said politely. “I need to check on something upstairs.” He separated himself from Hugh and was heading for the stairs like a laser pointer when George interrupted his trajectory.

  “Hey, Mason—where are you off to? We were just going to start a game of Qwirkle!”

  Mason was fishing for an excuse—any excuse—when Terry came and touched his elbow. “Hey, Mason.”

  Mason turned and looked at him full on.

  And drank him in.

  His hair was cut a lot like Skip’s now—parted to the side and brushed back from his brow. It looked sweet and grown-up, both at the same time. His earrings had apparently healed, because he had a big fake diamond in each ear, but it suited him. He was wearing a T-shirt—something new and striped and not full of holes—and cargo shorts with flip-flops that looked relatively new and not like they’d fall off his feet.

  And the smile he leveled at Mason was tentative, and a little worried.

  “Hi,” Mason said, the emptiness in his chest filling for the first time in months. “I’m glad you could come.”

  “I brought a friend—not a boyfriend, okay? Just a friend. I didn’t want you to think… you know.”

  Exactly what Dane and Skip and Richie had been thinking. Mason knew.

  “That’s kind of you,” Mason said, nodding. “That would have hurt.”

  “You seem to have a lot of… friends.” With an arched eyebrow, Terry gave George a once-over. George gaped at him and then sort of faded into the background.

  “Just friends too,” Mason said soberly. “I wouldn’t have three men here if I was trying to date them.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.” Terry bit his lip and looked at Mason shyly. “That would be mean, and you’re anything but mean.”

  Mason smiled at him, his heart so full of the compliment that he could barely breathe.

  And something crashed and someone screamed by the poolside, and Mason turned his attention outside for just a minute—

  And Terry was pulled away, his friend chatting excitedly about the gaming system and how they had up next.

  Mason went outside and cleaned up the mess—Ponyboy had gotten excited at the kids in the pool and knocked over a planter. He had plenty of help, because in spite of Mason having no interest in any of them, his three suitors would not leave him alone.

  And Terry’s friend—and his other teammates—seemed hell-bent on keeping Terry’s attention divided as well.

  The rest of the day felt like a haze of people that Mason could never remember talking to, and glimpses of Terry’s brown eyes peering at him from his own haze.

  They were the only two souls in the whole house, but they never had a chance to touch.

  Until night fell, and people left.

  Terry went somewhere in the middle—after Hugh and George but before Stuart—and Mason managed to catch him before he got to his car.

  “So,” he said breathlessly, wilting in the heat. “I just wanted to say I’m glad you came.”

  Terry smiled and, unbidden, stood on his tiptoes and kissed Mason’s cheek. “I’m glad I came too. Are you coming to see our game next week?”

  Of course he wasn’t. “I can try,” he said brightly. “If nothing comes up.” He refrained from raising his hand to cup his cheek.

  “I’ll look forward to seeing you.” Terry raised his hand and rubbed Mason’s lower lip with his thumb, and Mason’s libido woke up with a bang. “Maybe we can go out afterward.”

  “I’d like that,” Mason whispered.

  And then Terry turned and was gone, leaving Mason in the humid dark, alone.

  Or so he thought.

  “Oh,” Stuart said, coming out of the shadows by the doorway. “I was wondering.”

  “Wondering what?” Mason headed back into the house—sweat was running down his neck and back already.

  “You said you weren’t over someone, and I was wondering. Is this guy really mooning for someone he doesn’t have a chance with, or is maybe there still a thing going?”

  Mason shrugged and cupped his cheek, unable to stop the smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth. “We’re still friends,” he said with dignity.

  Stuart’s low laughter was probably sexy, but Mason wasn’t feeling it.

  “Well, I got the phone number of that blond guy—”

  “Hugh?”

  “Yeah. And I think your other prospect was flirting with one of your soccer guys—”

  Mason frowned. “I had no idea so many people on Skip’s team swung our way. Who was it?”

  “I have no idea. He was young and hot—but that’s the entire team, so, you know. Whatever. But I’m sad I never had a chance with you.”

  Mason shrugged. “We’ll probably be better neighbors this way.”

  “Yeah. As long as you have the parties, my friend. You know way more interesting people than I do.”

  They walked inside together and, in fact, had a nice conversation over cookies and soda. Stuart was the last to leave, trailing in Skip and Richie’s wake as they towed the exhausted dog into the car.

  Mason was left with surprisingly little cleanup, which Dane and Carpenter helped with. He took a final dip in the pool before dousing it with chemicals to help counteract the people and the sunscreen and the heat, and then started up to bed while the cool on his skin remained.

  As he fell asleep to the hum of the air-conditioning, he could still feel the tingle on his cheek.

  Time and Space

  MASON DID not make it to the next soccer game. He had to go give a damned speech in San Francisco instead.

  Hugh was actually very sweet on Monday. He came in, they talked about their new project and about promoting Carpenter and Skip, and then, almost shyly, he brought up the party.

  “So, uh, I sort of figured out why you weren’t… you know. Inviting me places on the weekends.”

  Mason stared at him, unsure of what to say. “Because….”

  “Because you’re in love with someone else.”

  Mason was wearing another polo shirt and khakis, and he pulled at the collar. “Uh, well, we’re on a break.”

  “Good,” said Hugh, rolling his eyes. “I’d hate to think of what you guys are like in the same room when you’re not on a break. The sexual tension alone would up the temperature twenty degrees. But don’t worry—you’ve been a gentleman this whole time, and I’m not vindictive. But I do have to say I have no compunction about throwing you at this whole speaking engagement thing.
I was going to try to save you from it if you had any interest in me at all, but buddy, I’ve got a date on Saturday, and you are on your own.”

  “Speaking engagement?”

  Yes. Speaking engagement.

  Apparently their new program had caught the eye of a company in the Bay Area, and the president had received an invitation for one of the two people who had spearheaded the changes.

  Mason skimmed the memo Hugh handed him with dawning horror.

  “No,” he said seriously. “Please. No. I’ll blow you to not do this—Terry would totally understand.”

  Hugh laughed as though genuinely delighted. “That kid I saw Saturday? He’d gnaw his toothbrush into a shiv and gut me with it if he ever found out. No—I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

  He left and Mason sank down into his desk chair, muttering “Fuuuuuuuuuck!” as he sat.

  “Sir?” Mrs. Bradford said crisply, apparently summoned from the very air by his salty language.

  “I have to take a business trip on Friday. I have to give a presentation Friday afternoon, and I’m the keynote speaker at a dinner on Saturday.”

  “Well, sir,” Mrs. Bradford said kindly, “you’ve spoken at meetings before. We can work on what you’re going to say before you leave. It’s not the end of the—”

  “Given by my old boss.”

  “I’m sorry?” Mrs. Bradford pulled up the chair in front of the desk and sat down gracefully. She really was lost in the twenty-first century, Mason thought distractedly. She would have been wonderful as an actress in one of those movies made in WWII.

  “My old boss. Who is now living with my old boyfriend. Which is only right, since they were having an affair for two years when we lived together in my old house and I worked my old job.”

  “Well, he sounds like a ripe old prick, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I’m sure his ex-wife thinks so too,” Mason said, and tried to remember the name of his last administrative assistant. He couldn’t, because Roy Carruthers had spun the secretary pool like a game of roulette, and Mason hadn’t seen the same assistant for longer than a month.

  “I’m far better off without that situation,” he said sincerely. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to my old turf and tell them how they’re fucking up their business.”

  Mrs. Bradford started to laugh, and it had a surprisingly evil ring to it.

  “Really, sir? Are you sure? Are you sure you don’t want to go back to your old turf and tell them how they’re fucking up their business? Because it seems to me that you were invited to go back, and invited to talk to them about their business, and you’d have to be pretty damned angelic to resist that sort of temptation.”

  Mason stared at her and thought of all the ways Roy Carruthers had made him feel like a complete asshole even before Mason had found out about the affair.

  “I’m not an angel,” he said, a perfect chord of beautiful, sweet revenge opening up in his soul.

  “For which I am damned grateful. Angels are boring to work with, and they’re irritating as hell as friends. Now how about you write up two lists for me, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, not sure when she’d taken over this situation but not minding in the least. “What’s on them?”

  “Well, one list is the ways you think your old boss could have run his company better. The other list is the series of notes you need to make about your project. I’m going to see if we can’t combine these lists into a thing of beauty.”

  “Mrs. Bradford, I adore you.”

  “Yes, you do, Mr. Hayes, and I have the flowers to prove it.” She paused then. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking… about your young man?”

  Mason sighed. “I was going to go watch him play soccer on Saturday morning. He asked me special.”

  She pursed her lips. “Well, sir, grown-ups know how to take setbacks.”

  “That,” he said grimly, “is a very good point.”

  And a very good test, whether he’d thought of it that way or not.

  SORRY I can’t make it to the game. I was looking forward to seeing you play.

  Mason stared at the text and debated whether or not to push Send. The car was packed, his best evening suit hung from the hook in the back, and he had a small bag of gifts from his present boss to his old boss.

  He was good to go.

  He just needed to decide how he was going to tell Terry he wasn’t going to make it.

  “What are you doing? Why aren’t you moving? You’re just standing in the driveway like a moo—Jesus, Mason, let’s go!”

  Mason looked up from his phone irritably. “You know, you could have signed up for summer courses.”

  “In the loony bin. No. I’m taking downtime, and you’re avoiding the question. What. Are. You. Doing?”

  “I was just going to text Terry about—”

  Dane, wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else, reached out an imperious hand and grabbed the phone. His hair was down, falling from a natural part in the middle, and his scruff was almost beardlike. Mason had been calling him Hipster Jesus all morning. “Done. Texted. Now leave.”

  “You and Carpenter are going to have sex in the kitchen, aren’t you? I knew it—no details. I want no details. That’s why you’re in such a hurry for me to leave.”

  Dane recoiled. “Ew. No. Who does that?” His eyes widened in horror. “Don’t answer that. For the love of God. Gross. But no—we want you to leave so we can watch the Star Wars trilogy from beginning to end. Not your favorite, I know.”

  Star Trek, yes. Star Wars, not so much.

  “Heathens,” Mason grunted. “Now give me my phone back. And be sure to tell him that—”

  “I know, I know. Someone held a gun to your head and made you go to San Francisco to give a speech. And maybe blow your old boyfriend. Because that’s fun.”

  “Not even when we were together. Go away.”

  Dane rolled his eyes. “Drive safe. Call me before you get home. The kitchen, no, but the living room is fair game.”

  “Deal.”

  After a brief, hard hug, Dane went back inside and Mason took off.

  ROY CARRUTHERS didn’t believe in casual Fridays, employee commissaries, or getting to know your administrative assistants well so you could work as a team. Mason wasn’t sure how his company had survived so long in the ultra-competitive world of the Bay Area corporate shark tank, but it sure wasn’t because people wished him well.

  However, in the past two months, Mason’s company had managed to stave off lower-tier turnover by half and had saved some money doing so.

  Mason got to tell everybody how he’d done that, and boy, did he enjoy it.

  “So,” Roy said when Mason’s presentation was over, “I see you’ve found your niche.”

  “I’ve found my home, yes,” Mason said levelly. “Nice of you to ask.”

  “Do you have a plus one to bring to the banquet tomorrow night?”

  Oh, classy, Roy. Asking if Mason was going to be alone. “All my plus people are back in Sacramento,” Mason replied with a smile. “Not even a trip to San Francisco was worth sitting through a corporate dinner.”

  Roy startled. “You don’t like corporate dinners? Really? You used to try so hard to fit in!”

  Ass. Hole. “Well, that should have been my first clue,” Mason said. “Anyplace you have to try to fit in really isn’t your place.” He was going to say Sort of like fitting a cock into your tight ass, but he suddenly realized he didn’t have to. What a relief.

  “Sounds like Sacramento has some good points,” Roy said genially. “Ira and I will have to check it out sometime.”

  “Let me know when you’ll be there, Mr. Carruthers.” So I can have my posse slash your tires. He was pretty sure Dane would just make bitchy comments over dinner, but Richie would definitely slash his tires, and Skip would help because it was Richie. And Carpenter would pull lookout duty.

  And Terry would probably dismantle his engine, whether or not he and Mas
on were going out.

  “So you can get out of town?” He smiled coquettishly like he lived to make people uncomfortable.

  “So you can meet my friends,” Mason said, not blinking. “I’m pretty sure you don’t know how to behave around decent people.”

  He gathered the rest of his notes into his briefcase then and turned to Roy’s second-in-command, Janice Collins. She was a vibrant woman, maybe a little younger than Mrs. Bradford, who streaked her blonde hair and liked bright red lipstick. She was lucky she could carry it off.

  “Janice,” he said warmly. “It’s so good to see you again. Now I understand you got me accommodations nearby?”

  “Sure, Mason. But did you want to come out to eat with us? Nowhere fancy—there’s an El Torito around the corner from the Marriott, if that’s okay.”

  Oh awesome. “The place with the karaoke?” he asked, because he and Dane had loved that place when Dane had been in school.

  “That’s the one. No champagne, no caviar, just really big margaritas. C’mon—I’ll give you a ride. Everyone else can meet us there.”

  Everyone else turned out to be the people Mason most missed from leaving work. He’d forgotten he’d had people in San Francisco—and they had a good time.

  But as they sat and waxed lyrical about how shitty it was to work with Roy Carruthers and his new leader of the graphics department, Ira, Mason had a moment of clarity.

  He’d take Monday lunch with Skipper and Carpenter over these nice people any day of the week. He’d take Saturday dinners with the guys from the soccer team and his brother too. Skipper had been right—he really had found his people, and knowing who his people were made it so much easier not to feel like an asshole in front of everybody else.

  THE NEXT night’s corporate dinner wasn’t nearly as awful as he’d anticipated, mostly because Janice had put him at the table with the same people he’d stayed up drinking with the night before. They were eating in the banquet room of the hotel Mason was staying at, and as Janice had a generous hand with the champagne, Mason could only be glad.