CHAPTER NINETEEN
MASON
“Fuck!” I’m sleep deprived and stumbling around the shop, knocking things over, stripping screws, making errors left and right while I try desperately to keep my promise and finish the GTO for Jeanie.
It’s dark outside, ’90s grunge is playing, and the faster I work the more I seem to be fucking things up—like the canister of baby blue paint I just tripped over and spilled. The fumes in here reek already and I’ve pulled on a thin fabric mask, but it’s still going to my head a little.
After Jeanie left last night I was too full of frustrated energy to go to sleep. Instead, I came to the shop and I’ve been punishing myself with hard labor all day. It hasn’t taken my mind off her, not completely, but it’s a start.
I know it’s the right move, but why does it have to suck so fucking hard?
To make things worse, it’s not just myself I have to justify this to. My cell phone rings. It’s my brother Cayden. Indy heard through the legal grapevine I’m taking a case again and now I get to deflect Mr. Superbowl’s interrogation, like I didn’t already have enough on my fucking mind.
“So, you’re just giving up on your small town thing already?” he asks. “Sounds like a pussy move, if you ask me.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you,” I snap.
He laughs. “Hey, I’m not trying to chap your ass, brother. I’m just worried. You were so hell bent on getting out of New York, leaving all this bullshit behind. Not that I blame you, man. Indy and I are really happy you’re doing something for you and not for Dad or the firm. Which is exactly why I don’t understand why the fuck you’d just give up on it and come back.”
I know he’s a pain in the ass because he cares, but I’m not in the mood for it. Only Buddy and I know my reasons and I intend to keep it that way.
“Concern noted. Is that all?”
“Fine. Whatever, man. I just want you to be happy.”
“Oh, I’m a fucking ball of joy. Can’t you tell?” I say. The urge to throw something is real.
“Look, if it makes you happy to walk around with that corn cob up your fucking ass, then hey, go for it, brother. On another note, my foxy wife wants me to tell you that when you get back, you should come over and meet your newest niece.”
“Jesus, you’re a bunch of fucking rabbits,” I laugh, some of the tension easing.
“Guilty as charged. When you’ve got a lady rabbit this hot, it’s hard to do anything else.”
“Well, tell Indy congratulations. Not on the baby, but for making it this long with a walking hard-on like you.”
More laugher. “Trust me, she knows what to do with that hard-on.”
“Cayden!” I hear Indy in the background, followed by some kind of giggling.
Uninterested in being witness to the creation of their fourth child, I say my goodbyes and promise to visit their little vignette of domestic bliss, even though every time I do, I can’t help but feel jealous when I leave.
Cayden, Colton, Hunter—they’re all leading normal, contented lives. I’m the only one of us who let himself be saddled with the Beckett Family Expectations. I know they all want me to join their club, but there are too many shadows looming over me. There is no path to that kind of life for me, not anymore.
I hang up the phone and start looking for paper towels to clean the spilled paint up.
Just then, the bells jingle up front, even though the closed sign is out. Great, looks like I forgot to lock the door.
Fuck it.
I leave the pool of spilled paint where it is. My life is a mess as it is, why shouldn’t the garage be?
Ripping the mask off my head and tossing it at the work bench, I stalk to the shop, annoyed at the intrusion. I’ve been turning down any new jobs, and I figured word would have gotten out by now.
I grab my water, chugging it as I walk through the doorway and looking around for the customer.
“Hi Mason,” comes Jeanie’s voice.
I turn to see her in the shadows of the hallway.
She steps out and, despite the splotches in her cheeks that tell me she’s been crying, she looks mostly composed.
“I wanted to talk to you about things,” she says, stepping closer. “I know I reacted… hastily last night. I was hurt, angry. I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt and I’m sorry.”
She’s sorry? What is this? The Twilight Zone?
“You were right to be angry,” I say, not really knowing how to digest her apparent forgiveness.
Why can’t she just hate you? You deserve at least that.
“Maybe… maybe not.” She’s running her hands through her hair. She looks tired, restless as she paces. “I don’t know what makes sense right now. I just know what I feel.”
Her green eyes are searching mine and I can’t take it. Damn it, why does she have to be so good? Why does she have to come in here, apology in hand when I’m the bad guy?
“Last night I came to talk to you, but I never got the chance. I know it’s not fair of me to expect certain things when we haven’t really talked about what this is. You were right. You can’t know what I’m thinking if I don’t tell you. So, I am here to tell you.”
“Wait, first you’re sorry and now you’re telling me I’m right?” I ask, confused as hell.
“Yes, I haven’t been very fair in what I’ve expected out of you.”
Is this some kind of trick? If so, she’s cannier than I thought.
“Look, I don’t want to make demands on you that you’re not prepared for…” she’s coming up to me, touching my arm, lighting my skin on fire, and waking a hard-on that will torture me the rest of the night.
“I do want more. I want to know you, but I know it’s not right of me to rush that. You have secrets, like anyone, and I can’t expect you to suddenly reveal everything about yourself because we’ve been seeing each other for a couple weeks. I get it. You have a right to your privacy. I just know that I don’t want to give up on this.”
There’s a pain starting behind my eyes, an ache from all the fumes and the fact I haven’t slept in well over twenty-four hours.
I scrub my face and pace, needing to put some distance between us because I can’t afford to be drawn in to her warmth. “Look, Jeanie, you were right to be upset and you were right to expect more. You ought to be with someone who can give you that. I’m not that guy. I’m not… I’m not good.”
“Of course you are,” she starts to interrupt, looking at me with that naïve goodness.
“No, I’m actually not. The things I’ve done…” I fight the urge to tell her, to prove to her how bad I actually am. “You’ve never been anywhere else but Silver Springs, you can’t understand, but believe me when I say there are things in life you don’t come back from. You said it yourself; you don’t want to know me, not really. If you did, I promise you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Well, then maybe it’s you who doesn’t know me. Whatever happened in your past, you’re not that person anymore. Maybe I don’t know your secrets or who you were before you came here, but I know you for who you are now, and if that’s all you can give me, that’s enough.”
“You say you’re okay with my secrets, but what you mean is you’re okay for now… You need to understand I can’t ever share that with you.”
Her eyes widen. She looks at me in disbelief, “Ever as in never?”
“Never. I can’t give you what you’re looking for, now or down the road.”
No matter how much I might want to.
Her lashes are sparkling with moisture as she blinks rapidly. “You don’t even want to try? We can take it as slow as you want.”
I shake my head, looking away. “It’ll always lead back to this place. In the end, I’ll end up hurting you.”
Her voice is hoarse. “Is it that easy for you to walk away from this?”
“I don’t have a choice. I have to leave. I don’t belong here,” I tell her.
“No, don’t do that. Don’t pretend that everything is out of your hands. Damn it, Mason. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but there is always a choice.”
She’s looking at me with pleading in her eyes. I realize the only way to do right by her now is to crush the hope she’s still holding onto—to put things into painful clarity so she can move on.
“Fine. I’m choosing to leave. I’m choosing to close the shop. I’m choosing to end things between us.”
Several moments of silence later, she says, “You’re making the wrong choice,” with quiet conviction.
Part of me wonders if she’s right.
But it’s too late now. The decision was made when I accepted the job from Buddy. The door has been opened again and it can’t be closed. No matter how much I might crave the simplicity, the warmth of this place, of her… it’s a luxury that I can’t afford. The mistake was thinking I ever could.
“I think it would be best if we just kept our relationship professional, from here on out,” I tell her.
She’s already turned away from me, rushing out the door, the bells tinkling as she walks out of my life.
My head is pounding now, blood rushing in my ears as I sulk back into the garage and slam tools around.
I’m angry. Not at her, not even at Buddy, but at myself.
Look at my brothers. They started off the same as me but they made the choice to get out of things. They had the backbones to scrap the plot laid before them.
Jeanie is right. I did have a choice years ago, but I made the wrong one, starting me down a path I can’t escape.
I’ll be paying for it the rest of my life.
There is no happily ever after, no quiet, peaceful life in some sleepy, idyllic town… not for someone like me. There is a reason there are so many jokes about blood sucking, amoral lawyers.
The reality is, most of us are selling our souls one case at a time. Sure, I’ve met a small handful who are really, truly, in it for their own convictions—defenders of that sacred constitutional right to representation.
But that’s not me. I’m in a different, darker class. More like Roman gladiators, we ride in to the defense of the Goliath, the brute, and pummel our enemy. We relish the battle of words, the taste of blood, the thrill of triumph.
Once you’re a member of those ranks, there is no returning to who you were before.
I walk back into the garage, reliving the hurt in Jeanie’s eyes, in her voice, wishing so much I could let her in, but knowing with certainty I can’t. She sees the world, and me in it, as it ought to be, as she wishes it could be, but I have no illusions. I know exactly what I am, and no matter how much I might wish it otherwise, I can’t change that.
Distracted, I step in the spilled blue paint.
Motherfucker!
I can’t do anything right. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to change things, I just end up spinning my tires, kicking up mud on everything and everyone around me.
My phone dings in my hand. I throw it against the bench, the battery cover popping off.
Dragging in my breath, I go to grab it and through the webbed cracks on the screen I see the message telling me the final part is ready for the GTO.
The GTO—maybe the only thing I’ll manage to do right in all this mess.