Chapter Eighteen
Iwant tolearn everything you like.
God, Natalie was in so much trouble.
No sentence had devastated her more.
This was probably why she wasn’t actively looking to escape trouble, almost as if she didn’t want to, even though she knew she should. This was one more thing Mia might be right about.
After they got dressed, Mason walked her to her car. She didn’t resist being pulled into his arms again, allowing him to press soft, tender kisses to her lips, her body molding to his as if they were interlocking puzzle pieces finally being matched. She also didn’t reply with anything but a goodnight when he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” as if it was a given she’d show again on Sunday and not regret everything.
She needed her buffer back and considered messaging Mia to beg her to please help with the coffee truck again. Her uncle had been wrong. Natalie wasn’t much of a gambler at all.
“You wanna hang out after work today?” Mason asked when he stopped by the coffee truck the following day.
“Can’t,” she replied as she made his regular drink. “It’s tamale day.”
“Tamale day?”
“A bunch of my family gets together to make a ton of Christmas tamales to give to friends and neighbors. It’s tradition.” She wasn’t lying. It was tamale day. Her mother, sisters, grandma, and aunts were getting together to be part of a tamale-making assembly line. Except, by the time Natalie got off, there wouldn’t be much for her to do besides help with cleanup. Still, she should at least make an appearance and try to participate in the family tradition, one that suddenly became quite important to her.
“I love tamales,” he replied.
“Yup, me too. I promised my grandma I’d get there as soon as possible so I’ll probably have to race to my mom’s house as soon as it slows down around here.”
He nodded his head in agreement.
“M-maybe I’ll bring you some tamales when I come back next weekend.” She mentioned this as a way to offer proof there were real tamales involved and it wasn’t merely an excuse not to hang out with him. “You can eat something other than waffles for a change of pace.”
He smiled, claiming his drink from her. “I’d like that.”
Something about the whole interaction was unsatisfying. She called out before he got too far away. “I was thinking I might actually take a ten-minute break later today.”
“Good. Breaks are important. You should definitely do that,” he replied before leaving.
Ugh. It was as if he didn’t care. Damn him and his damn meditation stall.
She tried hard not to let her grumpiness spill over to the next customers, a pair of kids, but she may have pushed the whipped cream nozzle with annoyance on their hot chocolates, giving them more than the usual amount. Good. Maybe they’d get cavities. And then she felt bad for wishing cavities on innocent kids and tilted the spout toward her own mouth, giving herself a healthy dollop because screw it.
During a quiet period, she put up aBe back in 10 minutessign and walked to the barn. After all the trouble Mason went through creating a stall for her, it seemed a shame not to use it at least once. She weaved her way through families of Christmas tree shoppers and ducked into the barn.
Without heaters (or Mason because the man generated a lot of heat) the inside of the barn was chilly. She tucked her coat closer to her body, wrapping her arms tight around her. The barn was clean, no evidence of their date from the night before.
Her stall was shrouded in a makeshift curtain, her hand pulling it aside to slip inside. She stopped again, half believing what she remembered from the previous night was a dream, but it wasn’t. He had done all this for her, and she loved it. Everything about him felt like a hug. Greed was settling within her, where she could believe all this was too much and, yet, she wanted more. The position felt dangerous. She wanted to scream. They should change the designation from meditation stall to screaming stall. No one would hear her. Natalie sucked in a deep breath, ready to release a frustrated shout—
The barn door creaked open.
She covered her mouth in case a scream escaped anyway. Was it Stan? She didn’t want him to know she was nearby for fear he’d forget about his own break and force a long-winded conversation on her.
“Natalie?”
Mason. The relief sweeping through her was instantaneous.
She pulled the curtain back, fixing a hand on her hip. “What are you doing here?”
He stopped. “I—Sorry, did… Were you really going to meditate? I was watching to see when you’d come to the barn. I thought you were dropping hints earlier that you wanted me to, uh, see you during your break.” His cheeks blushed pink as he twisted his knit hat within his hands.
As ridiculous as it was, her fingers had an urge to reach out and sooth the hairs sticking at odd angles, to take care of the guy. Instead, she tightened her grip on the curtain as if this was the single thing holding her control. “Well? What took you so long? Ten minutes isn’t very long, you know.”
