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He huffs a short laugh, lip curling up bitterly, and before he turns away, I don’t miss the flash of hurt in his pale eyes.
“Mason…” I push off the sink, taking a step.
“You keep pushing me away.”
My frown deepens, and I think, I have to. I have to push you away, because if I don’t…
If I don’t…
“What about our friendship?” he says quietly. “What about us? Do I mean nothing to you?”
You mean everything to me, and that’s the problem.
But of course I can’t say that.
Swallowing tightly, I shake my head. “You’re my best friend, Mason,” I whisper. My only friend, really. And if that isn’t just the saddest thing ever.
“And you’re mine.”
A shiver races down my spine at those three words, my eyes falling shut.
Gritting my teeth against the unexpected assault of feelings rising up, feelings I’ve taken great care in pushing back over the last couple years, I bow my head, and run my fingers through my hair. The cloth on my wrist forgotten, I let it hang from my fingers.
I’m not though, I think sadly. I’m not yours…
“But you’ll always be hers first,” I whisper before I can help myself. “Theirs,” I quickly amend, turning around to face the sink. I clear my throat. “You’ll always be theirs first.”
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
A long moment passes before he says anything.
I don’t even hear him breathing.
There’s just the angry attack of a guitar coming from the other room, and the cries of battered rooms and broken bones and last breaths followed by a scream.
Despite Mason’s eerie stillness, his penetrating gaze is undeniable. The way it moves over me, tracing my movements… The way it calls to me, silent, yet with irrevocable force. Like it carries its very own gravitational pull.
Willing myself to ignore it, I remove the washcloth, unsurprised to find that the bleeding has stopped. The cut is shallow, save for a little jagged dip where I flinched.
It looked worse than it actually is.
Making a mental note to just throw the rag out rather than try to wash the blood out—and wipe down the tiled floor before Izzy gets home—I bypass Mason, and throw my door open.
Deep-throated screams and heavy drumming and screeching guitar blast from my speakers, flooding the room, drowning all else out. Heading straight for my dresser, I crank down the volume, before calling out, “You should go.” I yank open the top right drawer. “You’re going to be late.”
A beat passes, then, “I backed out.” His voice carries faintly from the connecting room.
Frowning, my fingers still around the black bundle of armbands buried beneath my socks. “What? Why?”
Clenching the fabric in my hand, I turn around to find Mason still in the bathroom, rustling in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror.
With a Band Aid box in one hand, and a crushed, nearly empty tube of Neosporin in the other, he strides into my room, and shrugs a shoulder. “Chickened out.”
I frown. He says it so…casually.
“Come here,” he says, nodding to the bed just as the song ends and skips to the next. “Jesus Christ” by Brand New.
At the soft, more somber strokes of guitar filling the room, a sharp contrast to the last track, Mason arches me a humored look.
