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Sarah cleared her throat beside me, perhaps picking up on the tension in the room. She looked from me to Kendall as she stirred her drink and asked, “So… should we get started?”
“Yup,” Kendall and I said in unison. It looked like we were finally going to get to spend a Friday night together, after all.
chapter twenty-one
kendall
Having Mason stay was such a relief.
His presence eased some of the awkwardness of being in Sarah and Owen’s house. While Owen seemed pretty relaxed—offering me a bottle of water and making his usual stupid jokes—Sarah was very much on edge. I was the one who encouraged her to go make herself that drink so she’d stop treating me like I was an egg about to crack. Someday she’d believe I was over Owen, but not yet, apparently.
It didn’t help that when she asked me if I had found a date for her wedding, I stared at her like a deer in headlights before admitting that no, I had zero prospects. And then she and Owen got into a playful argument about how she never told him Heath and I ended things, despite her swearing up and down she’d mentioned it—which is how the tumbling lesson with Finley got started in the first place. Their arguing turned into a tickle fight, which I was happy to ignore while showing Finley how to do a headstand.
Not only did Mason’s presence ease my nerves, having a fourth set of hands for our project made it go a lot faster. Sarah had bought some miniature fairy lights to wrap around each mason jar, which turned out to be a more complicated task than it seemed—and there were so many.
Sarah made a margarita for me—twice as strong as any drink I’d ever had at La Cocina—and the four of us got to work assembling lanterns. Finley played with Leia beneath the table, both of them wriggling beneath chairs and weaving in between our legs. Mason and I mostly kept to ourselves, occasionally looking up to eye each other across the table as Sarah and Owen swapped stories about the dog. It was like sitting in on one of Owen’s podcasts, and Sarah was his esteemed guest. And while their stories were entertaining enough, I was finding it difficult to listen, too distracted by Mason’s hands as he wrapped the wires of lights around each jar.
When there was a lull in the conversation taking place beside us, I picked up my drink and took a long sip, staring across the table at Mason. “So, Mason,” I said, and he froze for a second, the sudden attention catching him off guard. “You haven’t told us how your interview went.”
His shoulders slumped as he sat a finished jar on the table between him and Owen. “It went really well—until it didn’t.”
“Uh oh,” Owen said, tucking faux leaves in between the wires around the jar exactly the way Sarah showed him.
“Yeah, they wanted me to be available in the evenings, which is a no-go for me. For obvious reasons.” Mason nodded in Finley’s direction, just in case it wasn’t that obvious. “Pretty sure they were going to hire me, too.”
“Sounds like it wasn’t meant to be,” Sarah said.
Mason shook his head. “I guess not.”
He stared down at his hands as he opened another package of mini fairy lights, and I could tell he was feeling pretty down. He wasn’t his usual perky, flirty self. Maybe I could cheer him up. “So that means I get to keep you a little bit longer.”
His eyes lifted to meet mine, and he gave me a half smile. “Yeah, it looks like you’re not going to be able to get rid of me just yet, Ms. Devin.”
I picked up my glass, taking another big sip through the straw. Mason was watching my lips closely when I said, “I’m going to run out of space for your drawings on my bulletin board.”
“You’ve been drawing pictures in the kindergarten room, huh?” Owen teased.
“Every week,” Mason answered.
I glanced across the table at Owen, who was seated diagonally from me. “He draws the cutest little woodland animals. Oh!” I turned back to Mason. “You should show him that fox.”
Mason just raised an eyebrow at me, shaking his head. “It was just a doodle.”
“Shut up—you said it was inspired by the podcast, right?”
“Owen’s podcast?” Sarah asked, looking up from the jar in her hands. “I want to see it.”
Mason just shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “It’s just a little fox… scientist… girl. It was nothing.”
“Mason.” I slapped the table in frustration, realizing then I was starting to feel a little bit of a buzz. I reached for my phone in my back pocket. “Would you totally hate me right now if I showed them?” I hoped he wouldn’t say no—but if he did, I wouldn’t insist on it. I’d hate to put him on the spot, especially when he was already having a bad day. But I caught a hint of a smile on his lips and the playful way he glanced to the side—indicating he might actually like this attention—so I threw in a soft, “Please?”
He stared across the table into my puppy dog eyes. “You just had to say that, didn’t you?”
I grinned, unlocking my phone. “Finley’s taught me the inner workings of manipulating you.”
“Show them if you want—but it’s not very good.”
“He’s lying,” I said to Owen and Sarah, navigating to the fox photo in our message history—taking extra care not to scroll too far back. It didn’t take me long to find the illustration. “There she is.”
