Chapter 34

Ava

I scanned through my phone and looked at all the missed calls from Mason. I had been screening my calls, figuring it was better that I give everything some time. I didn’t want space, but I knew it was necessary in order to wrap my head around what had happened at dinner. My mother went straight home and hadn’t talked to me since. My father told me to give it time, but I knew it was going to take a hell of a lot of time for her to get over what had happened. I felt like a complete idiot, a foolish child living in a dream world, lying to myself that things between Mason and I could ever work out. It may have been our parents’ fault, but it was the way it was, and there was no changing that fact, no matter how much we wanted to. In an effort to make things how we wanted them, we rushed into a situation, and I’d been completely blindsided by what had happened. I knew I shouldn’t have been. It was obvious it was a possibility, but I was so caught up in the fairy tale of it all, I didn’t see it coming.

Everyone in that restaurant saw our mothers going at it like a couple of children arguing over a boy in middle school. They had no care at all what they were doing to themselves, to each other, or to Mason and me. I couldn’t blame it all on Mason’s mother. My mother had decided to say something first, and she wouldn’t stop. I had never seen my mother like that before, and I couldn’t remember Mason’s mother being like that either. Their public fight had only fueled the tabloids. Someone had gotten a picture of them arguing at the table, which made the front page the next day. Surely Mason’s mom would blame my mother for that and vice versa.

The media was on a frenzy, twisting our story in ways I could have never imagined. The stories had gotten so much worse, and now they were trying to say I was attempting to get Mason to pay for sex. There was a picture of me, the one from the hotel that day, only it had been altered to make it look like I was doing something shady. There had to be something that said they couldn’t make up shit about someone like that. But what was I going to do? Take the tabloids on too? I had come to the conclusion that I was not going to be taking anyone on. I couldn’t live that life anymore. Of course, the stories were all lies. It was absurd to think they weren’t, but walking past the coffee stand with my face on the paper and a headline reading “Childhood Sweetheart Turned Sex Worker” definitely made me feel like shit.

Everyone wanted their five minutes of fame, but not me, not when it came at the price I was paying. My face was right next to a story on how aliens had impregnated the President’s daughter for Christ’s sake. It was horrifying that my life was twisted around like that. It made me feel bad for every person who had ever graced the cover of that trash, except for maybe Mason’s mom. At that point, I didn’t care about her or my mother’s feelings. They only sat on the newsstands one day while I had been on the front several times now. Every time, it was the same, them making me out to be some kind of crazy psycho, stalking Mason and trying to extort money from him and his family. I was not that woman. Nor was I a damn prostitute. Of course, there were pictures of me modeling, making me look like some sex-obsessed crazy person.

My head was spinning, and I felt like I was completely out of control. I picked up my buzzing phone from beside me on the couch and looked down at Mason’s name on the front. No matter how much I wanted to talk to him, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to face all this, not yet at least. I ignored his call again and waited for it to end before scrolling through to Blair’s number. She had called me several times, probably having seen the barrage of tabloids on her way to work. I hadn’t felt like talking about everything, but I knew I had to update her.

“I thought you’d thrown yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge,” she said when she answered.

“I’m saving that for rush hour so I can get the most press exposure,” I said.

“You might want to put on one of your sex worker outfits before you jump,” she said. “Really give them a show.”

“It’s on my list,” I said.

“What the hell happened?”

“We sat down to have dinner together to try to find even ground, and our mothers decided to have world war three at the table,” I said. “I ended up telling Mason to take her and leave.”

“Good lord, Ava,” Blair said. “You and Mason can’t catch a break. Have you talked to him?”

“No, and I don’t think I should,” I said. “This is obviously not written in the stars. It’s printed in the tabloids instead.”

“I still can’t wrap my head around why the two of you would think that putting your mothers together was a good idea,” Blair said.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.” I sighed. “I just wanted everything to work out. I was rushing it and so was he because we’ve spent our entire lives being separated, and we saw a chance to fix that.”

“You should talk to him,” she said.

“It won’t make it better.”

“How about this? It’s almost six. Get dressed, eat something, and I’ll pick you up. We can go to Elevation, get some drinks, and get your mind off things,” she said.

“I think I’ll actually take you up on that,” I replied.

“Good,” she said. “Be ready in two hours.”

I hung up the phone and got up to take a shower. I got ready, no real emotions running through me at all. I felt completely numb, and I figured that was the best thing at the time. Blair was there at eight to pick me up, and we took a cab to Elevation. When we got there, we bypassed the line with Blair’s personal relationship with the doorman and went inside. The flashing lights and pumping music beat through me, pushing my emotions into my throat. We walked over to the bar, and she ordered us a round of shots.

“To better times ahead,” she said, lifting her glass.

“It can’t get much worse,” I said, clinking her glass and taking the shot.

The warm tingle of whiskey flowed down my throat and into my stomach, calming the aching for a moment. It wasn’t going to make me feel better to get wasted, but I was willing to try anything right then to take away the heartbreak I was feeling. I loved Mason with everything in my body. I’d realized that before any of this had happened. Unfortunately, unlike the saying, love was not all you needed to make something work. I had reached the conclusion that it had to be over for us. There was no way around it. We had exhausted all our options and only made things worse with our attempts to reunite our families. I couldn’t put my mother through this for the rest of her life, and Mason couldn’t do that to his either.

“I’m gonna go dance,” Blair yelled in my ear. “You want to come?”

“No,” I said, sitting down at the bar. “I’m going to drink for a bit, knock this haze out of me.”

“All right.” She kissed my cheek and headed off to the dance floor.

I watched her dance for a little while, smiling at the guys that seemed to flock to her when she was out there. I wished everything was that easy for me, everything I wanted just being attracted to me like a magnet. I sipped my whiskey and Coke, watching numbly as the bartender ran back and forth behind the bar.

“Is this seat taken?” a familiar voice said from beside me.

I looked to the left, and there was Mason, dressed for the club and smiling down at me. I wanted to tell him to leave, but seeing his face, I was unable to let the words out of my mouth. Instead, I shook my head no, and he sat down on the stool next to me. He put up his hand and ordered a beer and two shots from the bartender and slid one over to me. I stared at him, not knowing what to say. Then I realized he was at the club, the same club I had gone to. What were the odds?

“How did you find me?” I asked.

He pressed a glass into my nerveless hand. “Take this shot.”

I took the shot and waited, watching him look around the club. He looked amused, like he had never been in one before, though I knew he had frequented them in the time we were apart. I wanted to fall into his arms, feel the reprieve of his body next to mine, but I had to hold back.

“Mason,” I said. “How did you know I would be here?”

“Blair,” he said. “I talked to her, and she set this up for us.”

“What?” I was irritated already.

“You can’t keep running from me every time something bad happens,” he said. “We couldn’t help that our mothers were going to go crazy. That isn’t your fault, and you need to stop carrying what our parents do on your shoulders. We knew it was a situation that may or may not work. We hoped it would work, but in the end, it didn’t. I don’t see that as a reason for us to give up on each other.”

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I said, angry at him. “I just wanted some space, and you couldn’t respect that. Neither could Blair.”

“Don’t blame Blair,” he said. “She wants to see you happy, and she knows you’re happiest when you’re with me and vice versa. This doesn’t have to be the end of the road.”

“Have you seen what they’re writing about me? They’re saying I’m some psycho prostitute trying to get you to pay me for sex,” I said. “I can’t even leave my apartment without pictures being taken.”

“Who cares what they write? It will be old news in a matter of days,” he said.

“I care,” I said, standing up and grabbing my purse. “I care what they say about me. I care what my parents think about our relationship, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding away because no one accepts us.”

“Ava, please sit down and talk about this calmly,” he said.

“Mason, you need to come to the realization that we can’t be together,” I said. “I don’t know why you don’t understand that.”

I turned and walked away from him, glaring at Blair as I passed her and left the club. I was livid with Blair and even more so with Mason. I only wanted time to clear my head, to figure out my future, and neither of them could understand that. I knew Mason was holding on to the fairy tale, but no matter how much I wanted to believe it was possible, I had to start living in reality. Mason and I had to be finished. Like it or not, it was over.