“Hold on.” Sky sat up and looked in the direction of Sarina’s bedroom, rattled and ashamed of how aroused he was. “He can’t really—!” he snorted as he exited the app and found Mason’s number. He pressed the call button and Mason answered immediately. “Time out! Tell me you’re joking,” he ordered but there was a long pause.
“I wasn’t. I’m not. Unless you want me to be.”
“Mase.”A word had never held more warning.
“Look. I swore I wouldn’t do this ever again and I know it’s…wrong, but if it would help you and make this visit less traumatizing… Why not?”
“Why not?” Sky returned. “Do you want me to make a list of all the ways this would be the most fucked-up thing we could possibly do?”
“Come on. You’re a Sutton. Your family has turned fucking up into an art form. How could this possibly compare to Sina and Sam, or your mother, or the time Lance sent my dad a dick pic?”
“Dear God, I forgot about that. Only Lance could send the mayor a picture of his hog and act like it wasn’t a big deal.”
There was an uncomfortable groan from Mason. “We were on a hike and my mom saw it first. I think he actually meant to send it to her,” he confided, making Sky roll his eyes.
“Probably. Anyone else would have done the decent thing and apologized but not Lance, he just said ‘Whoops!’ and pretended it never happened. That motherfucker tried it with everyone. To this day, I still don’t know how he got away with half the shit he pulled.”
“See? The bar is low and it’s not like we haven’t already.”
“You’re married to my sister! Did you forget who we are?”
“I promise, Sina wouldn’t care. She’d probably be happy about it, actually.”
Sky shuddered and gagged. “That would make it so much worse. No one should encourage this, especially her.”
“Who do you think took most of the pictures for my profile?” Mason asked.
Sky gasped. “That’s so weird. Why are you two like that?”
“It’s not weird, it’s just the way we are. She cares about me and wants me to be happy. And she thinks it’s super hot for some reason.She doesn’t get as excited about having sex with men but she wants every dirty detail when I get back.”
“Ew. No.” Sky shook his head. “Don’t you ever tell her anything about us.”
“From now on?”
“Obviously! Fuck!” Sky had a whole new reason for wanting to go back and murder Mason after their first kiss. “How much did you tell her?”
There was an even longer pause. “Everything... You know I tell Sina everything. How else am I supposed to know what to do? She has a working frontal cortex so I let her make the important decisions and fix the things I screw up by being a clueless tool.”
“That’s your problem, Mase. You don’t put the emotionally damaged person in charge of stuff like this.”
“It’s worked so far,” Mason said with a soft laugh. “She said we’d be really sweet together.”
“Too bad we’ll never know.”
Why did Sky feel bitter about that? He had a good life back in the city and hecouldfind a decent guy to date and build a future with. There were plenty of healthy, stable, available queer men if Sky was willing to make an honest effort at dating. Hemightbe able to find a decent man, if he was being truthful about his own self-destructive tendencies. He would probably be in a meaningful relationship with a wonderful man if he stopped hooking up with “straight men” he met at the gym or on dating apps.
None of them were dating material, but they all reminded Sky of Mason, in one way or another. That was probably something Sky should discuss with his therapist, if he told her those sorts of things.
“We both know we’d be amazing together. Every time something does happen it’s…really good. Maybe the best,” Mason mused.
“Shut up.” That was something Sky would never admit, even to himself.
“You can’t tell me you don’t think about it. I do. A lot.”
Sky really wasn’t enjoying the conversation. He was scared because he couldn’t tell if Mason was being completely serious. But hesoundedserious.
“Why are you telling me this? We’re just supposed to be playing around and being cute on a stupid app. It was supposed to be just for fun.”
