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I look up from the spread of wound care items in front of me. “Of course, I was right,” I answer automatically. “What was I right about this time?”
Mason comes in, taking position on the other side of the bed to assist . . . and gossip. “About me and Greta,” he answers with an eye roll. “As the announcers would say, it’s ovah!”
“What? Oh, no, Mase! I’m so sorry!” I truly am. Though I worried they weren’t a good fit because she didn’t appreciate Mason’s awesomeness, I hate that he’s hurting, which I know he is beneath his macho man guise.
“I’m not. Unfortunately, she made it easy. She told me that my bare chin looked so good,” he mocks, “and was rubbing all over my face like a cat in heat. Then, like she was testing a stolen credit card and got approved for the candy bar at the gas station, she went straight for the 70-inch TV and said I should shave the ‘stache too and maybe get an undercut and a hard part. And then we could go shopping.” He throws his voice falsely high and whiny. “Won’t that be fun?”
“Ooh, that’s not good.” I wince.
“Right? I’m not some dude bro who needs a makeover to pass as human. And want to know the worst part?” he asks, sounding like this is going to be a head-run off a cliff.
I cringe, preparing for something like she wanted to shop for engagement rings or wanted Mason to get her name tattooed on his chest in three-inch tall Gothic letters.
“It’s gonna take months to grow my beard back out,” he finishes, sounding exasperated. He sighs heavily and holds gauze out for me. “I’m not one of those guys who sprouts facial hair like a werewolf. It’s gonna take time, but it’s happening, Mrs. Michaelson. You just wait. Mason’s getting his groove back.” He dances, wiggling his hips and kicking out a leg, but conversationally including our patient like she’s been involved the whole time, something he learned from me.
I laugh in surprise at his good-natured, Golden Retriever-esque response to a breakup. Considering mine was more tears and pathetically begging for Henry to at least go to the wedding, I’m impressed by Mason.
Not that I’m still in that headspace. I’m more in the Henry Who? mindset now.
“Congratulations, then?” I say carefully.
Mason dips his chin, agreeing that congrats are in order. “You know what this means, right?” he says. “You and me, both single and ready to mingle. We should get drinks tonight and see who’s out there.”
There’s never been anything between Mason and me, so I know he’s not asking me ‘out’, but even the idea of sitting in some club, sipping an overpriced, watered-down drink and making myself available for any Tom, Dick, or Henry to choose me sounds dreadful. Especially when I already know who I want. He just didn’t want me.
Not that I’m bitter! I’m fully in my Janey-Self-Love era, taking care of me, myself, and I and remembering why I left my family in the first place, and analyzing why the hell I got caught up with Henry, who treated me like a second thought, so I don’t do either of those things again.
As I’ve recently been reminded, I’m a strong, beautiful woman worthy of more, and any man who doesn’t appreciate that can go. As Ariana Grande famously said . . . thank you, next!
Somehow, it doesn’t sound so badass when I tell Mason, “Can’t, I have a date with a bottle of wine, takeout pasta, a hair treatment, a collagen face mask, and Dragul tonight. I’m gonna be naughty and go all . . . the . . . way . . . to chapter fifteen.” I shimmy my shoulders in giddy excitement as I make my reading sound dirtier than spreading book pages. “Already promised Mrs. Michaelson that I’ll tell her how Tiffany gets snared in Dragul’s seductive web of nips and nibbles.” Finished with my patient’s wound treatment, I throw away the trash, yank my gloves off with a snap, and then load up on waterless soap from the dispenser on the wall.
“Your vampire guy, who’s like a thousand years old and has lived through war, the rise and fall of civilizations, and the advent of sour gummies as an entire genre of candy, is in love with someone named Tiffany?” Mason echoes, his face screwed up in distaste. “Let me guess, she’s twenty-one, has zero life experience, but they’re somehow inter-cosmically connected?” Mason laces his foamy soap covered fingers together to illustrate.
“Maybe,” I concede. He’s pretty spot-on, but he doesn’t have to ick my yum like that. And in my defense, Tiffany is the reincarnation of Dragul’s first love from when he was human, so . . . there’s that.
We walk down the hall together toward the nurse’s station, greeting other patients as we do a cursory scan to make sure they’re okay. Some are sitting up in their rooms, doing puzzles or listening to the radio. Others prefer to socialize by sitting in the hallway or the den area, which is better known as Gossip Garden—and if you think a care center full of old folks doesn’t have more gossip swirling than the Big Brother house, you’d be mistaken.
