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Mason
“What’s the story?”
Rian looked at me over his drawing.
I flipped over one of my mother’s letters and answered, “Reading.”
It was a painful process, sifting through her words. Thousands and thousands of words. Difficult facing her pain, her hurt, her regret. Facing my own. The burden of not forgiving. The life and love that could have been, but never would.
Rian snorted. “You don’t read.”
I glanced up from my stack of old letters and noticed him drawing that same girl in the faint pink glow of the neon Dublin Ink sign.
“Yeah, and you don’t draw real people.”
This earned me a smirk over my friend’s shoulder.
“So what are you reading?” he asked.
“So who are you drawing?”
Rian grinned and returned to his work. For a few minutes more I read on in silence. Then I set the letters aside, dragged my legs off the edge of my nan’s old floral couch, and leaned forward, elbows on my knees.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
Rian answered, “I’m not high on anything, alright? She just won’t get out of my head. And…and I still haven’t quite got her nailed down. Though, if you want get high?”
Again Rian drew his normally fixed attention away from his paper and raised his eyebrows up and down to tempt me.
When he saw my downturned face, he rolled his eyes. “I’m not dealing, alright? I see how you guys have been looking at me—”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“I know I’ve kind of been fixed on one subject for a while now, but—”
“Really Rian.”
“And I told you where that cash came from, the cash I paid for my share of the Dublin Ink bills last week.”
“I don’t think you’re dealing again,” I said, though maybe that wasn’t entirely true. I’d been so focused on Rachel that maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to my friend who had a troubled past with drugs.
I knew he wasn’t sleeping well. I knew he was gone more often. I knew he wasn’t quite himself: a little more distant, a little more moody, a little more tortured. But I didn’t know why. I could only hope it wasn’t serious.
“I’m teaching,” Rian said. “Like I told you. And she’s real. Whatever her name is.”
I looked at my friend. His eyes were clear even if there were bags beneath them. He was sitting calmly even if his bottom lip was between his teeth. He was meeting my gaze earnestly even if I could see a whole other world just there beneath the surface of his green eyes.
“I was wondering if you could tell me about my wedding,” I said with a gentle smile.
Rian frowned, then he pushed back his stool and stood. “I guess it’s more of a whiskey night then.”
He brought a bottle and two glasses to the coffee table. I took one and he cupped the other as he perched himself on the arm of a high-backed leather chair all scratched and faded. He drummed his fingers awkwardly and shrugged.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
I laughed.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I mean, I don’t remember shite. Like shite all. And Rachel said that she remembered and she told me about it, but…”
