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“Did you?”
“I was a shit heel,” he said, resting his back against the railing.
“A deflowerer of virgins,” she said, nodding her head in agreement.
He winced. “If I told you I never stopped thinking about you, all this time, would you believe me?”
“No,” A
“You’re not easy, are you?” Mason said, with an exaggerated sigh.
“Not anymore, no.”
“Listen.” He touched her elbow lightly, and she jerked it away, but he took it again. “Will you please listen?”
“No,” A
“I fell hard for you that summer,” Mason said.
She gave a snort of disbelief.
“I did. Honestly. But it wouldn’t have worked out. Your mother made me realize that.”
She whirled to face him. “My mother? What are you talking about?”
He raised one eyebrow. “She never told you she called me, did she?”
“No,” A
“Your mother is not a stupid person, A
A
“Yep,” Mason drawled.
“Oh, God. And she never said a word to me. Never let on she knew.” She grabbed Mason’s arm. “What did she say?”
“Enough. She called me on my cell phone. From yours. I guess you’d left it lying around the house, and she took a look at the call history. Listened to some of the voicemails I’d left you … about meeting me out at the lake house.”
A
“Long story short, she told me to stay away from you. I tried to point out that you were nineteen, and legally of the age of consent, but that didn’t cut much ice with your mother. She was very clear that I should get the hell out of your life and stay out. And she made some threats that weren’t very nice.”
“My mother? Threatened you? And you believed her? My mother wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Your mother said she would call the sheriff and have me arrested for statutory rape. And even if the charges didn’t stick, it would ruin my life and ruin my family’s reputation. And she meant every word of it.”
“But it’s not true,” A
Mason shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She was so intent on getting you away from me, she would have eventually cooked up something that would work. Anyway, you had to go back to State, and I was headed off to Pe
“Nice of you to let me know,” A
“You’re right,” Mason agreed. “I suck. And the longer I went without talking to you, to try to explain things, the easier it got to just avoid Passcoe, and you. Pokey gave me reports of what you were up to, though.”
“She did?”
“I heard about the guy in your marketing class. An SAE, right?”
“He was an ATO actually,” A
“And wasn’t there some mysterious Asian guy you went with in New York? Pokey said you got his name tattooed on your ass.”
“His name was Nouri,” A
“I’d like to see that,” Mason said. “I’m very interested in entomology, you know.”
“Fat chance.”
“Pokey says you’re currently unattached,” Mason said.
“Pokey has a big mouth,” A
“You haven’t asked me if I’m seeing anybody,” he said.
She turned toward him and raised one eyebrow, almost afraid to ask. “Are you?”
“No,” he said, drawing the tip of his finger up her forearm. “I’ve been saving myself for you.”
A
She hopped off the flagstone veranda and set out onto the golf course in her bare feet.
“Hey! Where you going?” Mason called after her.
“To get my damned shoes,” she muttered.
* * *
With a newly minted marketing degree in hand, A
Phoebe, the department’s administrative assistant, gave A
“What?” A
“It won’t be good,” Phoebe warned. “She never hands out attaboys on Fridays. Mondays are for attaboys. Fridays are for … well, I hope I’m wrong.”
Eileen, her supervisor, got up and closed the door as soon as A
“I’m sorry,” Eileen said, without preamble. “This is awful. I hate this. But I have to let you go.”
“Why?” A
Eileen stared down at her desktop. “Howard Dewberry’s nephew just graduated from college.”
“So?” But A
“The kid needs a job, and he thinks marketing would be ‘fun,’” Eileen said. “And you know the kind of budget we’re working with. I can’t afford two marketing assistants. Anyway, A
A
She kicked around Raleigh for another six months, sending out résumés and doing temp work, but when her savings ran out, she faced the inevitable and moved back to Passcoe.
But not to her mother’s house. Not after the blowout they’d had after A
Instead, she got a crappy job selling ads for the town’s only radio station, and she rented a crappy half of a duplex on a crappy street on the outskirts of town.
It didn’t take long for Pokey to start matchmaking once A
“What did you say to Mason at my wedding?” she demanded one day while they were sitting at her kitchen table. Pokey was spooning cereal into De
“Nothing,” A
“That’s a big fat lie,” Pokey said. “I saw you watching him at the wedding. And he was watching you. For God’s sake, why don’t you just sleep with him and be done with all the cat-and-mouse games?”
“I did sleep with him, and then he dropped me like a bad habit,” A
“You were just kids,” Pokey said. “Anyway, you can’t keep avoiding him forever. He’s moving back to town, you know.”
A
“Daddy finally talked him into giving up the job at Dr Pepper,” Pokey said. “He’s coming to work at Quixie.” She looked over at the kitchen clock. “And I’d say he should be getting into town right about now.”
She gave A
A
The kitchen door swung open, and Mason stepped inside. He stopped in his tracks when he saw that his sister had company.