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“What?”
“Nothing. Just love your wide array of tastes,” he says.
Rolling my eyes, I walk over, joining him just as he takes a seat.
He’s one to talk.
Though he’s a lot more organized than me. I just throw whatever I’m feeling onto a CD, and call it something stupid. Like the one playing now—it’s labeled Sad Shit #3?. Lame, I know.
Mason’s system is much more methodical. By genre. By decade. By mood. By style.
He’s even better at storing them than me. It’s a miracle most of my CDs even still work, since the binders I have go mostly unused at this point. Unless it’s to hold shit I haven’t listened to in years.
“I can do that myself,” I say warily, when he grabs the back of my hand, turning my wrist face-up. “Seriously, just…go get her scrunchie or whatever and get outta here.
“First of all, pretty sure you weren’t going to do this at all, if I didn’t,” he says, nailing a pointed look at the armbands in my hands. “So that’s why you wear those.” Not a question.
I shake my head. “Sometimes. I also just like them.”
He nods, aiming the little nozzle of the antibiotic ointment at the cut on my wrist. It’s darker in here than it was in the bathroom, what with the sun having started to go down and no lights on, leaving just what’s fanning across the floor from the en suite. Neither of us make a move to flip on the lamp.
It’s quiet, and my breathing sounds way too loud all of a sudden.
“I got it,” I mutter, batting his hand away, and using my own fingers to spread in the greasy ointment.
He clears his throat. “Second of all…” he continues where he’d left off. “I know she made that up. She was worried you’d also chicken out from going if you had to go alone. And I figured that since I backed out, I could sway you to ride with me.”
“I wanted to go alone. I didn’t have to,” I say petulantly.
“Exactly. You wanted an out.”
My mouth opens, only to close when I have no retort to that. He’s not wrong.
He chuckles. “You don’t fool me.”
Not sure what to do with that, I rip the Band Aid from his fingers, and apply it over my cut. “So what happened?” I say, turning the attention back on him. “What spooked you?”
“I don’t know, there were just all these people…” He shakes his head, wavy brown hair shifting, fluttering. “I peeked into the packed auditorium, and I just…couldn’t do it.”
My gaze finds his, fingers pausing over the band I slip over my wrist.
He smiles knowingly, if not a little self-deprecatingly. “See? I get you more than you think.”
Throat thick, I nod.
He gestures at my wrist, where a black band now covers the evidence, Band Aid and all. “You can’t do that.”
I tense up.
“Never again. Promise me, it’ll never happen again.”
“And if I don’t…”
His hard, determined gaze levels with mine, ensuring I know he means it when he says, “I will tell your parents.”
Gritting my teeth, my nostrils flare. “It’s not up to you. This isn’t any of your business, or theirs.”
“Well, I’m making it my fucking business.”
