Three #3
“I am so tired of you,” he said, speaking with his hands.
“Genuinely tired, take-a-nap tired. Do you know how insufferable you have to be to make another person want to nap? Do you even think about that sort of thing, or is your head too stuffed up? You think you know everything, but you’re a kid like the rest of us.
Actually, you’re a toddler, crying for attention all the time.
If you think I’m so wrong about Macbeth, bring it up reasonably instead of throwing baby-boy tantrums.”
I rose slowly to my feet, enjoying the way Mason’s eyes followed the movement. “Crying for attention? Really? I’m the baby, when you can’t stay focused for two minutes before going goo-goo-ga-ga at Cella?”
Mason laughed, but his face was tight. “You are so jealous.”
“Guys,” said Cella.
“Jealous?” I tried for a laugh, too, skin stretching the wrong way, but it felt good. “Of what, bad ideas and fragile self-esteem?”
“You’ve been lashing out all day ’cause you’re finally realizing you can’t always get what you want. Hurt your feelings, huh?”
“I really don’t think this is productive,” said Cella. “Look, I’ve been trying out—”
The buzzing was getting louder, scratching at my ears. “All I ‘realized’ today is that really smart people can still have shit taste sometimes.”
“If you mean shit taste in friends, yeah,” Mason said, grinning like he’d said something genius: Shakespeare himself topping off a sonnet with a perfect rhyming couplet.
I looked at Cella, still on the floor with her notebook, and waited for her to correct him.
“Can we just keep working?” she said. “I want to get this out of the way. I have early-decision applications, and then there’s that econ project. It’s all piling up.”
Mason visibly fought back a grin, and the itching in my head was suddenly too much to bear. It roared; it made me want to smack my ears like they were waterlogged. “Yeah, okay, fuck this.”
I went for the door and didn’t look at either of them again. I had barely stepped out of the room before Mason was in front of me, blocking the narrow hall.
“Are you serious?” he said. The door clicked shut behind me.
“I can’t work with you.” Standing face-to-face, I had maybe an inch on him. Nothing crazy, but in that moment it was a great comfort. “You’re in the way.”
“We have work to do. You’re not walking out because you can’t handle being wrong.”
“No, I’m walking out because I have free will, and I don’t want to deal with you.” I tried to maneuver around Mason, but he moved to block my step.
“You’re not.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if that made him immovable.
I edged closer to take full advantage of that extra inch, until I could turn my eyes downward and he had to lift his. “You going to try and stop me?”
“I’m doing pretty good so far.”
I knew I shouldn’t, but I shoved him, keeping my face blank to hide how nice it felt.
Mason stumbled into the opposite wall, big dumb shock on his big dumb face.
I was already past him, on my way to the stairs, when his hand closed around my wrist. I yanked reflexively, power coiling beneath my skin. His grip didn’t budge.
“What the hell?” I snapped to cover my surprise. “Let go.”
Mason pulled, stepped, pivoted, shoved. By the time I caught up, my back was against the wall, and everything else was Mason, the space before me swallowed by his figure.
“Listen,” he said, and it really did sound like a growl. A vein bulged in his neck, the jugular. “Seriously, listen.”
He punctuated it with a tug on my wrist that lifted my shoulder from the wall, bringing my ear closer.
A gasp jumped up in my throat, and I clenched my teeth to keep it there.
Mason’s heartbeat was fast, angry, but steady.
Deep and musical, concert bass. It was getting louder or at least pushing closer and closer to my brain.
I tasted iron. My fangs had pierced my lip.
“I know you don’t give a damn about anyone else, but you don’t back out on your group.”
I couldn’t remember what we were talking about. I tried to force my fangs back. It had been days since my last drink—I didn’t know how many. My dad had warned me, and I’d ignored him.
Mason let go. I should have pushed again, but the flow of his blood was so clear it was as if I could see it: glowing under his skin, giving life, dying, recycling itself.
Sweet. The smell of it. Mason’s blood was citrus and honey, sunshine over water. I felt like the seagrass I’d doodled in my notebook, like I couldn’t live without it.
“You some kind of expert on comradery?” I bit back half-heartedly, distracted.
“I am, actually.”
I thought I could see his jugular pulsing, which was stupid. Veins don’t pulse. So maybe it was me, pulsing, shaking with the urge to sink my teeth in. I tore my eyes from his neck.
“Mason?” I said.
I heard a slight stutter in his circulation, blood crashing through a dam.
“What?” He sounded uncertain.
“Get the fuck away from me.”
“Seriously, Mason.” We both jumped at Cella’s voice from her bedroom doorway. Mason stumbled back so far she had to steady him. “Just let it go.”
“You’re just gonna let him be like this?” he protested.
“Yes,” she said, emphatically. “Can’t you?”
I was already gone.