Chapter 6 Mason #2
I shook my head at my actions and quickly dressed in some jeans and a t-shirt from one of my favorite bands, Crossroads Gin.
I decided that the best option was to push the whole issue to the back of my brain.
I couldn’t deal with it right now, so I’d be all Scarlet O’Hara and think about it tomorrow. Right now I needed to focus on today.
I knew we had the meet and greet at the bookstore today, but I couldn’t remember when.
I’d missed the one yesterday, so I was determined to do whatever I could to make up for it.
The store had paid good money to bring me out here, and I really wanted to make sure they were happy.
I was still nervous, though. I'd never done one of these before. Oh, individual interviews, or the occasional recorded event, sure, but I’d never done a no-holds-barred in-person signing.
I had just finished tying my shoes, a pair of bright red Converse High Tops Zem got me for Christmas, when I noticed my hands were shaking. I took a moment to run through a couple of the grounding exercises Sarah, my therapist, had taught me.
Dammit, Lizzie was supposed to be here to help me through this. My increasing anxiety at least had the effect of taming my “Mason-Gone-Wild” reaction and I was able to button my jeans up without much trouble.
I dragged my phone out of my messenger bag and glared at the black screen.
It was dead, of course. If I’d been exhausted enough to snuggle with the hunky bookstore owner, I certainly had been too tired to think about charging my phone.
I rooted through my things until I found my charger.
As I plugged it in to the wall to recharge, I smelled something… something amazing.
I opened the door to the hallway and the smell got stronger.
Bacon. Definitely, bacon.
I was hesitant to step out, unsure of the boundaries in this situation, but my stomach chose that instant to rumble loudly, and decided the matter for me.
I followed a long hallway that I only vaguely remembered from the walk in last night.
The hall opened up onto a large open room.
To the left was a kitchen with a dining nook and what looked like a door leading to a larger dining room.
To the right there was a large living room with a gorgeous stone fireplace and vaulted ceilings.
Both rooms were dominated by large windows, the living room floor was a honey-colored wood.
The floor in the kitchen was a dark grey slate with splashes of dark copper and dusty blue throughout.
The overall effect was warm and inviting.
Lee stood in the kitchen, his eyes focused on the food he was cooking on the stove top. It looked like bacon and scrambled eggs. I certainly hoped it was for both of us, because I was starving.
“Hey,” I said, waving slightly to catch his attention.
Just as I waved and Lee looked up, I felt more than heard the loud rumble of a semi-tractor trailer going past the house.
I wasn’t sure if it was the noise, my presence, or something else entirely that startled him, but Lee jumped and the skillet of bacon in his hands sloshed, hot grease pouring over his left hand.
“Shit!” he growled, gripping his left wrist as he stared down at his grease-covered hand.
“Fuck!” I said, rushing forward. Lee seemed frozen, staring dumbly down at his hand, the skin turning bright red at an alarming rate.
I grabbed the skillet out of his hand and tossed it back on the stove, turning the burner off.
I shoved him sideways toward the large stainless-steel sink, flicked the faucet on and thrust his hand and wrist under the cold water, holding it there under the flow for several minutes.
My worry just increased as I saw small blisters starting to form on his hand.
Lee just stared at it numbly. He didn’t even seem to feel the pain the burn must have been causing.
“Mr. Uh… Devereaux?” I said, my fingers still keeping his hand under the cold water. He turned his head and looked at me, but his eyes were distant, unfocused. Shit, that wasn’t good.
“…Lee?” I called his name hesitantly. Slowly, awareness began seeping back in from wherever his thoughts had been. A moment more and he finally seemed to come back to himself.
“Um… Thanks…” He whispered. A strange catch in his gravelly voice made me look up at him, only to realize that I was pressed against him from knee to shoulder, my hands gripping his arm firmly to keep it under the cold water. It was intimate as fuck
I let go of his arms like I was the one burned and moved back.
“Yeah…uh, sure,” I said nervously. I looked around the room for a distraction. “Do you have a first aid kit?” I asked.
“Bathroom,” he said tersely, and I saw his jaw tighten. I hoped it was in pain, and not that he was pissed at me. Of course, that made me start berating myself for hoping he was in pain. Fuck, get it together, Mason! I ran to the bathroom and began looking around for a medicine cabinet.
The mirror slid out on hinges, and behind it I saw all the normal things you’d find in a medicine cabinet - pain relievers, allergy medicine, some antacids.
As I looked for bandages, I saw several bottles of prescription medication in the cabinet.
I knew it was none of my business, but I couldn’t avoid reading the labels.
Fluoxetine (Prozac), Paroxetine (Paxil), Sertraline (Zoloft), Venlafaxine (Effexor).
There were more, most of them only half full at best, all but one of them with prescription dates six to twelve months old. I knew the names. I’d tried some and had friends who had been prescribed others.
Definitely seemed like my handsome host had some kind of anxiety disorder.
I wondered what a guy like Lee could possibly have to feel anxious about.
I mean, he was big and strong – I couldn’t imagine anyone ever pushing him around.
Then thoughts of the picture shoved into the bedside drawer made me pause. I guessed everyone had their issues.
“Did you find it?” I heard him call. “It’s under the sink.”
I found what I assumed he was referring to.
It was more like a giant backpack filled with medical supplies than what I thought of as a first aid kit, but to each their own.
I nabbed it from under the sink, grabbed some of the pain relievers from the medicine cabinet, and then took everything to the kitchen.
Lee was seated at the table with a wet paper towel on his hand. As I set the first aid kit on the table, he lifted the paper towel, and I could see there were several medium sized blisters across his hand, and his skin was really, really red where the bacon grease had splashed.
“Shit,” I said, rifling through the kit, pulling out antibiotic ointment, burn cream and bandages. “That looks like it hurts.”
“A bit,” he said.
I looked at him cautiously, trying to figure out what kind of a guy he was. In my experience, people in pain showed their true selves. Some people lashed out when they were in pain, others bottled it up. He seemed to be the kind that bottled it up, but you never knew.
I opened the packet and smoothed the burn cream on his hand.
It was almost clear and smelled like aloe.
I figured it had to hurt like a sonofabitch, but he hardly reacted as my fingers smoothed the gel over his hand.
The only sign he was in pain was his lips pressing firmly together as I loosely wrapped a bandage around the worst area of the burn.
“Not bad,” he said, lifting his hand to examine my work. He turned his green eyes on me, some of the glitter coming back to them.
“You hurt yourself a lot?” I asked, gesturing at the medical bag.
He grinned. “No. I’m a… I was a medic,” he answered, hesitating mid answer.
“Military?” I asked.
He nodded. He didn’t seem to want to discuss it, so I didn’t ask any more questions. I started cleaning up the used packaging, then went to take a look at the food on the stove. It still smelled amazing, so I was hoping it was salvageable.
“This looks like it’s pretty much ready to eat,” I said, grabbing some tongs and dishing the eggs and bacon onto some plates. Lee just nodded, still carrying a slightly dazed expression on his face.
“You want something to drink?” I asked as I put the plates of food on the table in front of him. Lee looked up at me, the dazed look turning to a bemused smile on his face.
“Water’s good for me, but there’s OJ in the fridge,” he said. I nodded and got out two glasses. I filled one with water and the other with orange juice and set them both on the table. I sat down across from him and nodded at the naproxen.
“Take that with your food, or your stomach will regret it,” I said.
He nodded and started shoveling food into his mouth. Luckily, he seemed to be right-handed, so the burn didn’t slow him down much.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said after a few minutes of just the sound of us eating echoed in the kitchen.
“Startle me?” he asked, confusion apparent on his face.
“Yeah, when I came in. When you jumped and spilled the grease…?” I asked, my voice ending on a high note, wondering if he didn’t remember how he had burned his hand.
“Oh! No, that wasn’t you,” he said. His eyes roamed the room, able to look anywhere but at me.
“Really? Because it sure looked like it. I walked in and you jumped and spilled hot grease on yourself…” I said, putting the last bite of bacon in my mouth.
“I said it wasn’t you,” he barked, his voice gaining a bite of anger to it as he shoved back from the table and stood, gathering the now-empty plates and moving them to the sink.
He paused, his back to me, his shoulders rigid and tight as he leaned against the sink. I walked up to him and put my silverware in the sink.