Chapter 17 Lee
Lee
We stayed in that arcade for hours and it was one of the best dates I’d ever had. We were both thoroughly tired out by the time I got a text from Mama K inviting us to come over for dinner with them.
MAMA K: CHALLENGE DELIVERED! You & I against D and Mason. It’s Scrabble night at the Devereaux den! You in?
ME: Let me check with Mason…I don’t know how much my crazy family he can take in one week.
MAMA D: Well, if I he’s too scared, we understand…
I groaned and shared the text with Mason. He nodded eagerly.
“Sure! Sounds like a lot of fun,” he said, grinning at me.
“Wait a minute,” I paused in confusion. “You know I said ‘Scrabble’ right? Scrabble is not fun. Scrabble is torture. Scrabble is aggravating and mind-numbing. Scrabble is not ‘fun’.”
“I’m a writer and artist, Lee. I think Scrabble is fun. The only game more fun for me would probably be Pictionary.” He grinned at me. “Did you know I used to play competitively in college?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at me.
“Bullshit,” I called, eyeing him critically as I drove.
“No bullshit. I won the Word Boy of the Month award my senior year in college,” he chuckled.
“Okay, maybe it was just our apartment building, and the only ones I ever really played against were Everett and Lizzie. After I beat her like, ten times in a row, I made her make me a tinfoil crown that had ‘Word Boy of February’ on it. She’s got pictures, I can have her send them to you If you need proof… ”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” I said matter-of-factly.
Mason waggled his eyebrows at me. “Number?” he challenged me.
I gave it to him and saw him type something into his phone.
A few minutes later my phone pinged. I pulled it up and found a message from Lizzy forwarded to me by Mason.
As promised, it was a younger Mason with a thoroughly bedazzled tinfoil crown with the words “Word Boy of February” in pink glitter on the front.
Next to him was a young blonde woman in a wheelchair with a dramatically sad look on her face who I could only assume was Lizzie.
“Nice,” I laughed. “Who did the bedazzling? You or Lizzie?”
“Neither,” Mason responded. “That was all Everett.”
We laughed and joked the rest of the way over to my parents. When we arrived, I noticed Kaine’s car was gone, but Bishop’s was here. It didn’t mean Bishop was home, as he and Kaine spent a lot of time together.
Mama K met us at the door with hugs, her gray eyes smiling. I think she surprised Mason when she hugged him, because he seemed to freeze for a minute before relaxing into it. As sassy as Mama K was, there was no better hugger in the world.
“There’s my partner!” Mama D announced as we entered the living room. Mason smiled and sat across from her at the table. They’d taken a couple of leaves out of the table to make it the perfect size for playing Scrabble.
“Lee, don’t forget to take the soap and lotion I made you, sweetie,” Mama D said as I sat down. She set a bag down next to Mason that earned us a raised eyebrow.
“Mama D makes soaps and lotions as a hobby. She has a special formula she uses for each of the kids, and we get some every few months.”
Mama D smiled gently at Mason. “Let me know if you like it,” she said. “I do my best to match the scent to the person, to the trait I see most in them.”
Mason nodded and smiled as Mama D handed me a shopping bag filled with her concoctions. I saw her eye Mason as she settled in.
“I also make a pretty sweet lip balm, Mason. Ohio weather can be hell on skin, especially lips,” she said. “I put some for you in Lee’s bag.”
“Thank you,” he said, blushing and letting his lower lip loose from between his teeth.
We settled around the table, Mama D asking first if we wanted something to eat or drink. We were both still feeling full after our arcade meal, but I got up to get a beer. A quirked eyebrow at Mason and he shook his head.
As we set up the game Mason asked Mama D “Why did you split up the teams like this? I would have thought you and Kyra would want to be partners.”
Mama D laughed. “The kids made a rule several years ago that we weren’t allowed to be on the same team anymore,” she said.
“Yep, the kiddos decided we knew each other too damn well and that it was tantamount to telepathy,” she winked at Mama K, whose cheeks turned bright pink.
“Yes, and I know exactly what you’re thinking right now, Diana Devereaux, and you should be ashamed of yourself!” Mama K exclaimed.
We laughed, and the game began in earnest.
While we played, I asked my moms if they’d seen Kaine. I was worried about my baby brother.
“He was here earlier today, but he and Bishop were meeting someone for dinner,” Mama D answered.
“Did he say who?” I asked, playing a couple of tiles for a low score word.
Mama D looked up from her tiles, her eyes glancing at Mama K before she answered.
“Um, Nicki is back in town, apparently,” she said.
I nodded.
“Kaine and I ran into him at Wally Waffle the other day,” I said with a grimace. “He… was pretty upset afterward. I wasn’t sure if he was going to contact him again or not.”
“He didn’t have a choice,” Mama D said, glaring down at her letters a touch angrily. She kept rearranging them, but regardless of how they appeared, she couldn’t seem to make anything of them. “Nicki showed up at the house last night.”
“Shit,” I sighed. I saw the confused look on Mason’s face, so I explained. “Nicki was Kaine’s first love. They were friends through most of high school, and Nicki’s parents moved away their senior year,” I explained to Mason. “He was… pretty devastated by it.”
Mason nodded. “I can understand that. It must have sucked having his parents move.” As Mason spoke, I saw a look pass between my parents for a moment, then it was gone.
“What did he want?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant.
“He wanted to talk to Kaine, of course,” Mama D said. “We convinced him to wait, as Kaine was still at school,” Mama D said as she finally gave up on her letters and threw them back into the bag to be reshuffled.
“It also gave us time to round up Bishop, so Kaine wouldn’t be alone when dealing with him,” Mama K said. I loved my parents, they could be sneaky when needed.
“How… How did he look?” I asked.
“Awful skinny, poor kid. He looks like he could easily put on twenty pounds and you wouldn’t be able to tell.
He’d been crying… His mom passed away last year.
He didn’t mention anything about his dad, so I got the feeling he wasn’t in the picture anymore.
Luckily Bishop got here before Kaine, so he was able to help him get straightened out before Kaine saw him. ”
I nodded. It made sense. The three boys had been close growing up, until their sophomore year at school. Bishop had started spending more and more time working on his art, which had led to Kaine and Nicki becoming closer.
“Any idea where they went?” I asked, wondering if maybe we should stop in and check on them.
“No, Lee. Leave him alone. He needs to get this figured out on his own,” Mama D said, eying me over her tiles.
“I know, Mom… It’s just…” I sighed. “I hate to see him hurt like this. We know what he was like after Nicki left. I don’t want him to have to go through that again.”
“You can’t stop it,” Mason’s voice whispered.
I looked over at him and he coughed, suddenly embarrassed.
Apparently, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“I mean, he’s the only one who can decide how he’s going to feel about Nicki.
He can choose not to let him hurt him again, or he can decide the love is worth the pain,” Mason shrugged.
“Everyone has to make that choice at some point.”
The look on his face made me wonder who it was that Mason had needed to decide about letting into his heart.
I had a sneaking suspicion, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it.
We turned the conversation back to the game.
While Mama K and I were no slouches, we were no real match for these two and they were thoroughly trouncing us.
Mason hadn’t been kidding when he claimed to be a word genius. He turned my puny little “REV” into “REVIVIFY”. I laughed, and challenged his word, certain it couldn’t be in the dictionary.
“Challenge accepted,” he said, winking at me with his hair flopping in his face. That look! I felt all the blood in my body head south and I shifted in my seat, suddenly afraid to stand up and embarrass myself.
“Revivify,” he quoted, “…to make someone or something strong, healthy, or active again. To restore to life.”
“Dang it!” I exclaimed half-heartedly, laughing as Mama D and I conceded the game.
Mama K came around the table and hugged her partner.
The look on Mason’s face was just… heart-rending.
It was so sad, but so happy at the same time.
Like he was trying to soak up a lifetime’s worth of hugs in that one moment.
I watched the two of them stand there for a moment and just felt my heart swell with some unnamed emotion.
I wanted to wrap this incredibly brave, strong man up in bubble wrap and protect him from all the evils of the world.
Mama D looked at me and nodded, as if in approval. I smiled at her – I’d never been able to successfully keep secrets from my parents, so I was pretty sure they knew how I felt about Mason already.
Mama K released Mason, but only after placing a gentle kiss on the top of his head.
“You can be my Scrabble partner anytime, Mason!” she said. “How long are you going to be in town? I have a few people I’d love to trounce, if you’re available.”
Mason smiled and looked over at me shyly.
“Um, supposed to be two weeks,” he said. “But I guess you never know…”
“Well, as long as you are in town, we will expect you here for Friday night D&D,” Mama K said. Dammit, he was a grown ass man. You’d think my parents wouldn’t feel the need to tell him what to do.
“Sorry,” I whispered as we finished putting the game away.