Chapter 10 Mason #2
“Lee,” I said, my hand touching his arm. “Can we… Can we just sit out here, a minute?” I asked, not quite ready for the evening to end.
He turned and looked at me, his body mostly dark against the bright light of the security light. He seemed surprised at my request, but it was hard to tell when I couldn’t read his features.
“Sure,” he said, stepping back and taking a seat in one of the rockers.
I realized as I sat in the other seat that these chairs were the ones he had photos of with the fiancé who had died. I still felt guilty for having inadvertently snooped in his business, but it had been an accident.
The scents of green growing things, sun-baked rocks and the wildflowers near the drive diffused through the porch.
“You have an amazing family,” I said, listening to the chorus of insects and other night creatures chirruping around the yard as I relaxed in my rocker.
“Yeah, I’m pretty lucky,” he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The security light over the garage clicked off, plunging us into darkness.
“When I think about how much other people have gone through, what a lot of kids go through today, I really feel extremely fortunate to have been born into the family I was.”
I nodded but realized he couldn’t see me in the dark.
“I always wanted a big family,” I said. “Hell, I would have been happy for almost any family, really.”
“You… didn’t have anyone?” Lee asked. “No parents, grandparents…?”
“Nah. I mean, I had my mom for a while, growing up. Her name was Navi. She was simply… amazing. Magical to me, in so many ways, but she died when I was about eleven. I lived on the streets for a little while, but the cops turned me over to CPS for stealing food from a grocery store, and they forced me to go live with my uncle and his partner.”
My throat closed around my words, thinking about those early days with Ricky.
“He… He wasn’t a good man.” I managed to get out, swallowing hard.
“Wasn’t?” Lee asked, his voice sounding surprised. “Are you still in contact with them?”
“Fuck no!” I exclaimed, then lowered my voice.
“No. Not since… no. My uncle tried to kill me,” I answered, my voice trailing off.
I waited for the disbelief. Most people who had heard my story couldn’t seem to get past the concept that my uncle had tried to kill me.
Some had accused me of lying. Others said I was just telling the story for attention.
I was kind of tense, waiting to see what response I’d get from Lee.
“Shit…” Lee’s voice trailed off as he absorbed what I’d told him. “Your uncle…? I’m sorry, Mason. Fuck. Somehow saying ‘That sucks’ doesn’t seem to cover it.”
I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. He believed me. Not everyone I'd shared my story with had.
“You have people now, though, right?” he continued after a moment. “You’ve mentioned Lizzie, and Everett.”
“Yeah. I was lucky. I mean, really lucky. Someone… someone saved me, the night my uncle tried to kill me. A literal, fucking knight in shining armor showed up and rescued me,” I said dramatically. I knew the story sounded unbelievable. Hell, it was unbelievable to me, and I’d lived it.
“Who… who was he?” Lee asked, his own voice sounding oddly strained.
“No clue. He kinda patched me up, called the cops, and then disappeared. They got me to a hospital. No one seemed to know who he was, and the cops never found out who… um…who he was, either.” I'd started to say “who had killed Ricky” but figured that might be a little too heavy to lay on someone like Lee. I mean, even with all his military experience, I felt sure that Lee’s life had been pretty tame compared to mine.
He had no idea what life on the streets was really like, or the things a kid would do for food or money.
I didn’t want him to know the things I'd done, or been forced to do, to survive. I’m not sure why his good opinion was so important to me, but it was.
When I thought about Lee’s relative innocence, I was bit jealous.
Though somehow, knowing that there were still people in the world who would have a hard time fathoming the depths of human depravity made me feel better.
It was nice to know that somewhere in the world there were people who were untouched by horror.
“It’s beautiful out here,” I said, feeling the darkness sink into my bones.
“I never really thought the dark could be so… peaceful. Beautiful. It’s almost as if it has…
texture. Substance. In the city, it’s never really dark,” I continued.
“There’s always light of some kind, and the smells and sounds…
I’ve always been big on using all five senses in my art,” I shared.
“Even though my it is a visual medium, I try to find ways to visually convey sound, smell, texture.”
“I noticed that about your work,” Lee said. “But if you think this is true dark, I need to take you to somewhere out west. You can’t see the Milky Way here,” Lee said, looking up at the stars.
“I assume you aren’t talking about the candy bar,” I teased. “You mean, like, with a telescope, right?” I asked questioningly.
“No… If you get someplace without a lot of light pollution, you can see the Milky Way with the naked eye,” he answered. “I have some photos in the living room I took when I was visiting some friends in Nevada.”
“Um, I thought those were manipulated images,” I said, glad the darkness hid my burning cheeks. I'd noticed those this morning. “I didn’t think they were real.”
“Nope, no Photoshop. One-hundred percent real. It’s a pretty amazing sight.”
“That would be a cool thing to see,” I agreed softly.
We waited a little bit longer, but the chill had started to sink in, too, so we decided to call it a night. We walked into the darkened house, which Lee made his way through gracefully. Me? I stubbed my toe twice and almost fell over an ottoman in the living room.
“It’s really not fair that I’m taking your room. I can sleep on the couch,” I offered, feeling guilty for kicking him out of his own bed.
“No way, dude,” he answered back. “That couch is super comfortable. Plus, my moms would kill me if I let a guest sleep on the couch…” he continued, though suddenly he seemed a little nervous.
“Just, um, let me get some pajama pants, and my toothbrush, and I’ll get out of your way,” he said, opening the door to the bedroom.
I set my backpack on the floor of the room, plugged in my phone to charge, then waited as Lee grabbed some clothes and darted into the bathroom.
Thanking the Universe for the darkened house I surreptitiously pressed the heel of my palm against my cock, willing it to stand down.
God, that man’s ass was killing me. He’d turned the light on in the bathroom and was rummaging around in one of the drawers for something.
He still wore the dark blue Twin Peeks t-shirt he’d worn earlier but he’d changed into some dark wash skinny jeans when we’d gotten to his parents’ house.
Those jeans did some amazing things to his ass, and just seeing him lean over to get something out of the drawer in the bathroom had my dick growing hard.
As he popped back out of the bathroom, his arms full of clothes and toiletries, his foot caught on the strap of the backpack I’d carelessly dropped, and time seemed to slow.
Lee stumbled, and for a moment I thought he was going to recover, but then his hip seemed to give out and he fell forward… squarely on top of me.
“Shit!” we exclaimed simultaneously as our foreheads cracked together.