Chapter 29
MASON
Like a wilting rose, October falls away into November and frost covers every layer of Montgomery.
It encrusts the glass windows of the library, occluding the darkening clouds that are poised to invoke snow down upon the campus at any second.
Preparations for finals are already on the way, the threat of them looming over his head.
It’s the brief moments before Thanksgiving where he can take things slowly, but after Thanksgiving, it’s full-throttle finals mode.
Mason doesn’t know what to expect anymore. November used to be a time when he felt like he belonged with his family, when he started celebrating Christmas early with them by putting up decorations and playing Christmas music on the radio.
This year is different. Everything is different.
He has to toss out an entire belief system that he had adopted his whole life and build a new one, but he’s still hanging onto the vestiges of who he used to be.
The boy who did what he was told. The boy who got good grades. The boy who was going to be a prolific writer just like his parents.
Some things have changed, and some things haven’t. Callum is still with him. They had spent time apart, but now they have found their way back to each other.
How much three months has changed. It’s like he left his old self back in Northwood and had inhabited some other body. Living a double life.
And of course, it’s so confusing and so disarming to conjoin both of these so-called body doubles into one. The Mason who’s a writer and who’s going to make his family proud and the Mason who’s in a relationship with Callum Brown and is a physics whiz.
Dead leaves crunch beneath his worn boots. Flurries of snowflakes dance around him on his way back to his dorm from the library, way past his usual bedtime.
The world is quiet when snow falls.
It’s like he could hang up all his worries and disasters on a hanger in his closet when the flakes softly tumble out of the sky. Like the frigid wind and the icy streets freeze time and the growing panic in his mind.
All he can focus on is Callum.
His cheeks flushed as icy wind sweeps through him, and he puts his hands further into his pockets and shrugs his shoulders high to try and block it out.
It’s been a few weeks since he and Callum had their moment at the Halloween party. Their schedules never lined up properly to have more than a few moments alone together.
Mason sees Callum at games and briefly in between classes, but their relationship is left to handwritten notes left in Mason’s books or morning texts that Mason would wake up to while Callum was at practice.
Joel is always in Callum’s dorm, or Simon is always in Mason’s. Mason has to study. Callum has to practice.
Something is always in the way.
It’s an odd predicament. They’re in the same place, but they can’t find the right moment to meet, until tonight.
He knows it’s a bad idea to see him given everything that’s happening. Any chance of anyone seeing them together only means more cannon fodder for gossip if anyone does end up seeing them together.
Mason walks up the steps to the gazebo in the middle of the quad, with fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. It’s his first time in it, and it shields him from the developing storm that threatens to bury Montgomery in snow.
He leans on the banister of the gazebo, watching as the flurries dance in the wind, waiting for Callum to show up.
“Mason.”
He stops and whips around, as Callum’s low timbre and voice thick with warmth stops him in his tracks.
“Callum,” Mason says, his voice almost breaking.
Callum appears almost incandescent in front of him, like he’s glowing, like a meteor that had been pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere and collided on Montgomery’s front steps.
Mason practically runs at Callum, like he’s doing to tackle him.
He throws himself at Callum and wraps his arms around him.
“Mase!” Callum cries as Mason thumps into him, making Callum grunt like he’s being tackled.
His plaid jacket just feels like home.
“I’m sorry. I just missed you so much.”
“It’s only been two days.”
“We only saw each other for a second.”
They pull apart and Callum cups Mason’s face in his warm hands. “You’re right, Mase. Going an hour without seeing your eyes is criminal.”
Mason’s face flushes.
The wind picks up and Mason squeezes Callum again, trying to shield himself. He’s like a furnace, without even having to touch Callum’s bare skin.
“Here.”
Callum nearly has to pry Mason off him. He opens the zipper of his jacket and motions for Mason to wrap his arms around his waist.
Mason obliges and wraps his arms around Callum, feeling the softness of his shirt. Callum wraps his jacket around him, and Mason finally relaxes.
He’s warmer, and the cold doesn’t feel so daunting anymore. The world doesn’t seem to be so scary, and the doubts he has in his mind of them not working dull to a quiet hum.
It’s just the two of them.
“How are you, really, Cal?”
“I’m trying to keep my head down. Just focusing on play-offs coming up next month.”
Mason nods. “And your dad?”
Callum blows out a long breath. It’s warm and sweet on his face. “He seems angrier than usual, like he knows I’m trying to get away from him. Like he knows he’s going to lose me.”
Mason shakes his head. “How do you do it?”
Callum lifts his eyebrows quickly. “I grin and bear it. Try to remember that I’m one championship game away from never having to come back. I just try and hope that I win the game and someone drafts me so that I never have to come back.”
Mason hugs Callum tighter, hoping to squeeze the sadness out of him.
“This time of year is the hardest. Just being without my mom—” Callum sighs. “I just wish she was here.”
“She made the best Christmas cookies,” Mason says.
Callum laughs. “Yeah, she did, didn’t she?”
“And she… had the most beautiful voice. I didn’t hear it often, but I remember she used to sing Christmas carols with us…”
Mason feels his own throat constrict as he remembers Mrs. Brown’s long, wavy black hair cascading down her shoulders as she sat in front of a roaring fire with Mason and Callum when they were just kids, holding mugs of hot chocolate piled with thick marshmallows and cocoa on top.
She would sing them carols and they’d sing along, but her voice always shone through. She had an angelic voice.
Callum clears his throat and hugs Mason tighter, like he’s been brought into the memory alongside Mason and feels like Mason’s going to be taken away from him too.
“‘Silent Night’ was her favorite.”
Mason hugs Callum tighter. They share no words for some time, both trying to hold on to each other as the grief hangs in the air between them, frozen in time as the snow falls softly, setting in the peaks of their hair and balancing delicately on their eyelashes.
For so long, they’ve ignored and ran away from each other. Running away from the grief, the pain, the fear.
They avoided it all, when all they needed was each other.
Callum rubs a hand on Mason’s back. “I forgot. I have a gift for you.”
Callum snorts and reaches into his jacket pocket.
Mason pulls away from Callum and puts his hands in his coat pockets. “A gift? Why?”
Callum pulls out a gift box wrapped in red and green.
“Because I wanted to.”
Mason shakes his head. “Callum.”
“I know, I know. But I had to get you something. I want to give you everything I have. After going so long of ignoring you, I have to make up for everything I’ve done,” Callum says, his voice tinged with sadness and longing.
“Callum…”
Callum shook his head. “Don’t say anything, just open it.”
He hands the gift to Mason. Mason turns it over in his hands, like he can somehow determine what the gift is just by inspecting it.
He smirks at Callum and tries to hide his blush as he carefully rips the wrapping off.
He gasps as he pulls out a small, golden telescope.
Mason notices that his name is engraved on it.
“I know it’s probably not something you expected… but I felt that it was fitting.”
Mason looks up at Callum, wanting him to explain more.
Callum rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment.
Mason can’t believe that someone as achieved and attractive as Callum can be flustered.
“I uh… I don’t know if I’m the most articulate person… but I’ll try my best.”
Callum clears his throat and grins at Mason. “You’re someone who sees things, Mase. You notice everything. And you notice me. You see past all the barriers and dams I put up. The mask I use to push everyone away. You can see through it.”
Callum sighs and paces around the gazebo. A gust of wind sweeps through, and a few snowflakes get caught in Callum’s hair.
“I feel like you see right through me sometimes, and yeah, sometimes that scares the hell out of me, but I can’t help but appreciate it.
And… I felt like this telescope represents you.
You can see me from hundreds of feet away in the stands.
You saw me from so far away in the hallways at Northwood.
You stayed on the sidelines the whole time, and you always noticed.
Every movement. Every unsaid word. You… knew. Like you were observing from far away.”
Callum stops pacing and stands in front of Mason. “That’s why I wanted to give this to you. To help you remember how you can make others feel seen. How you make me feel seen—”
Callum sniffles and puts his hands in his coat pockets awkwardly, and stares at fairy lights that twinkle in his eyes.
Mason’s chin trembles as Callum’s words almost topple him over.
The telescope shakes in his hands.
“I get it if you don’t like it—”
Mason shakes his head. “It’s beautiful.”
Callum nods solemnly.
“I don’t know what to say, Callum. I’m shocked.”
Callum blinks. “Why would you be shocked?”
Mason inhales the frigid air, and it burns his lungs. He pictures himself back in high school and how much he yearned to have his time back with Callum.
For Callum to run up to him in the hallways and beg for Mason’s trust back. That it was all one big misunderstanding, and he regrets it so much. But it never came at the moment he wanted it.
Yet, here he is, just a bit later, and it came. Not at the time he wanted it, but at the time he needed it. Their time finally came, and Mason is in disbelief at how his childhood best friend still holds a candle to him, even after all this time.
All the time they spent apart. All the time they practically ignored and hated each other. Callum was waiting, and so was Mason.
Mason is tired of waiting.
“I just never thought you’d… want me,” Mason says, his voice almost imperceptible with how small it was.
He feels like uttering these words will make them true. That Callum will suddenly see Mason as unworthy. A liar. A perpetual people-pleaser. That he can never love someone who lies to everyone around him.
Callum takes a step forward and grabs Mason’s shoulders.
“Mase. Look at me.”
Mason sniffles and tries to avert his gaze as he realizes he’s nearly crying.
“Mason.”
Callum softly takes Mason’s chin and lifts it to meet his eyes.
Callum’s disposition is serious now. He’s clearly shaken by Mason’s confession.
“You’ve always been there. And so have I. I messed things up royally, I know. But you were always there. And I want to always be there for you.”
Mason’s chin trembles.
“And I’m always going to be.”
Callum wipes Mason’s tear from his cheek with his thumb.
Callum licks his lips and leans down and kisses Mason softly.
His lips are still warm, but dry from the frigid cold that still hangs in the air.
It’s soft. It’s delicate. It’s like a fresh winter snowfall.
But most of all, the kiss is a promise. Without words, Callum’s lips fill Mason with the hope for future. That he won’t have to pretend with him. That he can be himself. That Callum won’t leave when he sees the uglier parts of him.
The world is quiet again. Only the thrumming of Mason’s heart and the steady thump of Callum’s keep them company.
Just like time, sound, and the air, their feelings had been frozen. It was unchangeable and unbreakable as a glacier.
Mason knows that from now on, Callum won’t fracture like thin, November ice.
They’ll stay strong and their love will grow deep like January ice. Their still waters underneath can change and morph with the seasons, but their attachment will remain unbreakable.
Unchanged.
Forevermore.