Chapter 15
MASON
Callum was everywhere before. Now, he’s nowhere.
By Mason’s choice, but that’s the way he likes it.
Before, it was like Callum had managed to seek Mason out like a missile, and now Callum has no discernible target.
Mason has essentially gone undercover.
Mason takes every long way out of his classes, the library, the dining hall, going three flights up to just go into another building he has no business being in and exiting.
He’s quickly learning the whole layout of the school—fueled purely by his avoidance of Callum.
It’s already pained Mason enough to finish his article that praised Callum to the high heavens, but it had to be done.
No one will want to read it otherwise, and he doesn’t want the possibility of losing his spot on the paper or to lose the opportunity of receiving praise from strangers. It keeps him stable.
College has a lot less opportunities to receive prestige and praise compared to high school, and he’s having a hard time navigating it. He holds onto the praise that The Goldberg got him with an iron fist.
Despite his intentional space from Callum, Mason feels his absence, like a scab that’s beginning to heal, but Mason is picking at it over and over again.
That drunken night was a realization that was years coming.
He hasn’t gotten rid of his feelings for Callum, and all the pain that the lack of reciprocation and betrayal he brought came back up, and he had released it on Callum.
Mason almost thinks it’s unfair to place so much responsibility onto him, but Callum had it coming. Maybe Mason could have been nicer about it, but he was drunk, hurt, and vulnerable, and Callum refused to leave him alone.
Mason keeps thinking about how Callum said he always thought about that day in the cafeteria since it happened. He knows what he did, and he felt bad about it, but not bad enough to make up for it.
He wonders what could have warranted such negligence and lack of regard for Mason’s feelings. What happened to Callum to make him not stand up for Mason, his best friend all those years ago in his freshman year?
By the time it happened, they had clearly started to grow apart without being able to hang out at each other’s houses after the Brown-Fanning family schism, but only because Callum was choosing his football friends and popular crew over Mason.
Callum was changing, and Mason kept trying to hang onto the old Callum, and that was the final nail in the coffin of their friendship. Callum had made it clear that he didn’t want to be friends anymore.
And just like that, Mason was alone for a few months, with nothing but his textbooks, calculator, and his dignity to keep him company until Jenna came along.
Despite his vehement dislike for Callum, Mason still considered Callum as someone who was important to him.
He was always important to him. Even after all the distance and the miscommunications, Callum was someone he dreamed about having a reconnection with.
Now that Callum was finally gone, Mason’s ambivalence had started to subside, making room for his feelings of affection and adoration rise without judgement. Mason figures that his suppression had led to that outburst outside of the frat house.
He can’t let something like that happen again. He doesn’t deserve it and in all honesty, Callum doesn’t either. If Callum feels bad, then that’s up to Callum to deal with.
It’s already halfway through October, and all of the scarlet, orange, and golden leaves were falling to the ground bit by bit. The trees they used to call home becoming slowly barren.
Mason has always been certain of one thing in the world. He’s sure that fall will bring change. It may not have always been the change that he wanted, but it was change that he needed.
Mason often finds himself setting up shop in the college café instead of the library.
It’s a small café, certainly not nearly big enough to accommodate the thousands of students attending, but he makes sure to go early.
Some weekends he stays there the whole day, spending obscene amounts of money on pumpkin spice lattes in spirit of the changing seasons.
He’s seen Callum more often in the library than the cafe, so it’s a good place to avoid him while getting his work done.
He expects he’ll never come across Callum. He remembers Callum saying he can’t drink coffee. Athletes probably didn’t drink coffee since it probably messed with their super specific diet or something.
Mason’s hypothesis was mostly right. He doesn’t see any football players come in or out in his days spent there studying and writing.
If Callum is looking for Mason, he’s looking in all the wrong places.
Mason’s in the middle of doing derivative problem sets when Jenna bursts into the café, her cheeks rosy and her black headphones balanced unevenly on her head, covering one ear and half covering the other.
Mason moves his spread of papers and textbooks over to make room for her at one of the tables in the corner that overlooks the café and lets Mason people watch when he’s feeling bored.
“So, I just came across someone who’s very interested in seeing you,” Jenna says, unwrapping her maroon scarf and shaking off her beige trench coat.
“Let me guess, Alex?” Mason asks, biting the edge of his pencil.
Jenna furrows her eyebrows.
“What? No. Doesn’t he avoid you like the plague now?”
Mason sighs. Alex hasn’t talked to him since that night at the frat party, and Mason doesn’t blame him. Alex asked him out and Mason pretty much hightailed it out of the party, leaving Alex in the dust, left rejected and reeling.
Mason rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, he doesn’t even look in my direction anymore in class.”
Alex probably deserves an apology from Mason, but he doesn’t know where to start.
“Well, you can always try talking to him,” Jenna says.
Mason chuckles. “What am I supposed to say? Sorry I ran out of the place like my hair was on fire after you asked me out. I saw my old grade school crush making out with a girl and it made me nauseous.”
Mason could spin a fabulous, well-thought-out story, since he lives and breathes lies now, but Alex doesn’t deserve it. It’s better to leave well enough alone.
Jenna places a tender, cold hand on his forearm. The autumn chill being transferred to him with an otherwise sympathetic and warm touch. She doesn’t have to say anything, she knows how Mason feels—or tries not to feel.
“Someone much taller, muscular, brooding, and very apologetic, was interested in seeing you, actually.”
This gets Mason’s attention. He immediately drops the pencil in his mouth and straightens up in his chair. He notices his own eagerness and tries to play it off cool, but Jenna’s already noticed his intrigue and it’s too late to downplay it.
“What? Why?” Mason says, blinking rapidly, hating how his voice sounds way too invested.
“He was asking where you were. He said he’s been trying to look for you everywhere. He said you won’t reply to his texts. He said it was like you disappeared.”
“Intentional,” Mason answers plainly.
“I know. I told him that it’s best to leave you alone for the time being,” she says, taking her textbook out of her backpack.
“Oh,” Mason says, his shoulders sagging. For some reason, he feels unsatisfied with Jenna’s answer. It isn’t like he wants her to tell Callum where he is, right? He’s already placed enough distance between them.
He needs the space.
The more Callum is in his life, the more problems it causes.
The more feelings it causes.
Warm and fuzzy feelings that he wants to avoid at all costs, no matter how enticing they seem.
“He was wondering if you were covering any more of the games for the paper,” Jenna says, taking out a notebook and calculator from her backpack.
“I told you, I’m not anymore. They can find someone else to do football games for all I care,” Mason says, huffing impatiently.
“That’s what I told him. I said his best bet of reaching you was by carrier pigeon.”
Mason smirks. “So, you?”
“Shut up.”
They go silent for a few moments. Mason stares outside at the rain droplets falling down the glass window. A steam wand from the espresso machine makes the familiar hissing noise and a barista screams out someone’s chai latte.
Mason doesn’t know what he wants anymore. He wants peace, but he feels anything but that. Mason doesn’t really know what peace means, in all honesty. The closest thing he feels to peace was when he was stuck on a physics problem for hours.
When it makes the outside world disappear and makes his mind quiet.
Callum brings chaos, but his absence also allows for “what ifs” and more questions that Mason hasn’t thought of before.
“He seems really intent on finding you. He looked… troubled. I haven’t seen him that way before. Usually, he’s all high and mighty. Untouchable. This time he seemed… distracted. Like he was knocked off his pedestal,” Jenna says, as Mason stares out the window.
“Well, that’s exactly what I did,” Mason answers, tearing his eyes off the water droplets and landing his gaze on Jenna’s.
“And you just want to let him lose his mind over you? What if he starts losing games because of you? You wouldn’t feel an ounce of guilt?” Jenna pushes.
“He needs to be knocked down a peg,” Mason says, covering his mouth with his hand as he rests his elbow on the table.
Jenna shakes her head.
“I never thought you would be one to hold a grudge like your life depends on it. Callum seems intent on ending it, but you keep holding onto it like if you let it go then you’d fall off a cliff or something.”
Mason grits his teeth, exhaling sharply through his nose.
“Of course, he wants to end this supposed ‘feud’ between us. He left me in the dust, and he let people shit talk me for years. Now that he’s on top of the world, the damage he left in his path is coming back to bite him in the ass.
I think I’m entitled to be upset at him,” Mason says, hating how Jenna was never implicitly on his side when it came to all things Callum.
She missed the months of crying in his bedroom, spending his lunchtime alone in the library, refusing to eat at lunch because he didn’t want to eat alone in the cafeteria and the library wouldn’t allow food.
She came to be his friend after all the initial shock and loss and the anger had settled into his bones.
Jenna sighs. “I know. I wasn’t there when it all went down.
I know I make it seem like I’m minimizing your feelings, but I really just want what’s best for you.
You have every right to be angry, but the more you hang onto it, the more I see you suffer.
And I don’t want to spend another minute watching you suffer, Mason. ”
Jenna presses her lips together sympathetically and then opens her biomechanics textbook and puts her headphones on.
That was that. There’s nothing else that needs to be said, and she probably needs to study.
Mason lays back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. Jenna is right. The more he holds on, the worse he feels. He’s spent so much time letting Callum rule all his decisions.
Mason deserves to enjoy his college experience without holding so much resentment. Jenna was right.
It is a grudge.
A grudge that has set up a home in his head and let itself fester into whatever he had said drunkenly the other night.
He sighs and pulls himself forward in his chair, picking his pencil back up and jotting down the next problem he has to solve.
He wishes Callum was a problem as easy to solve as his calculus ones are.
But he is more complex than any math problem that has been thrown at him. He is a theorem yet to be proved.
Callum can’t be figured out by coming up with theories and equations to prove the theories.
He has to be figured out with brute force. With relentless vigor.
Maybe it’s time for Mason to stop living in his head and to apply his knowledge to the most complex problem he had to solve yet, Callum Brown.