23. Mason
Mason
“Come on, man,” I drag out, nudging Bash’s arm. “One party. One night. It’s not like I’m asking you to go find your old coke stash and sell it to some college kids.”
Bash laughs, shaking his head at me.
“What do I have to do?” I ask, standing up from the table. “Get down on my knees and beg?”
Bash grabs my arm and glares at me. “Don’t you dare,” he laughs out. “Do not publicly embarrass me like that.”
I throw my hands up. “Then agree to come with me tonight. I never see you anymore since you got clean and all holy on me.”
Erik is just watching in amusement. “I think you need to try nursing a bible and not a bottle, Mase.”
I look over at him, thinking about it. “Maybe you can read it to me while I nurse the bottle…”
“You’re so annoying,” Bash huffs out.
“You used to be annoyingly fun when you partied with me,” I tell him, pouting.
“I used to be a heathen and in a lot of pain.”
“Okay, okay. I’m not trying to get you to drink or make bad choices. I’m just trying to get you to hang out and help me make better choices by being my DD.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Hell yeah! I mean…heaven yeah!”
“Shut up,” Erik and Bash say in unison, laughing.
“Hey, what if you meet your future wife at this party…all thanks to me?”
Bash rolls his eyes. “I don’t think she’ll be there.”
I tilt my head and give him a look. “You never know.”
* * *
The house is already in full party mode when we pull up.
Bash parks a little down the street, kills the engine, and twists around to look at me. “I swear,” he says, pointing his finger at my chest, “if you puke in my car, I’m making you clean it with your tongue.”
“That sounds…unsanitary,” I reply, “but noted.”
“I’m also not an Uber, so I’m not bringing any girls back with you. You’ll have to find somewhere else to practice procreating.”
I don’t know why I don’t just tell him I don’t sleep around with any of these girls.
It just feels like…my image at this point, like it makes me less…lame. Not that he would even care. He doesn’t sleep around anymore either.
I just feel like it’s way past the point of telling people, because it doesn’t really matter. I don’t talk about my sex life with people.
I clap him on the shoulder. “Has anyone ever told you how fun you are?”
“Yeah, actually. A lot of girls from the past whose names I don’t remember.”
I point a finger at him. “Fun times, right?”
He shakes his head. “No, not really.”
I’m actually really glad to see how far he’s come this last year. Sometimes I get curious if this version of him is actually happier. The version that doesn’t need to be plastered all the time, the version that found some kind of strength for all the bad crap in God.
What does that even look and feel like?
It seems easier to drown it all out. His way scares me more.
It brings everything to the forefront and forces you to deal with it head-on.
I don’t really see the point in that method.
It wouldn’t change anything for me. I can’t force my dad to love me, I can’t make my mom be undead, and I can’t erase all the girls who made me feel like I wasn’t enough.
I’d rather just live in the delusion that I can paint that makes me feel like I’m not all those things they’ve made me feel like I was for so long.
When I’m in the middle of a party, with all the attention on me…
I’m someone. When a girl’s hands are all over me…
I’m the one they want, I’m the one they chase, and I’m not the one looking stupid in the end.
I don’t know…maybe it is all pointless, but at least it’s fun for now. I can deal with the deeper meaning behind that later in life.
It’s chaos inside…the kind I’m used to these days, the kind I like. People are everywhere, the music is louder than my thoughts, and kids are yelling, dancing, and doing shots in every corner of this place.
I’m quickly pulled away by some of the guys, and I get Bash to stick by me for a little while, proving to him that he can enjoy this with me, even sober.
But eventually, after enough sloppy girls have asked him to do shots off their bodies or dance with them, he tells me he’s going to grab a Red Bull and sit down for a bit.
I’m right in the middle of a keg stand that Tank convinced me to do when I hear a couple of girls shouting my name, one of the voices sticking out—it’s all glittery, girly, and high-pitched.
I lift my head to see exactly who I was hoping was attached to that voice—Simone.
She puts her hands to her mouth and screams for me to chug.
I finish and hop down, wiping my mouth before walking up to her, smiling.
“Hey, pretty girl.”
She smirks. “Someone’s drunk.”
I shrug and look around. “Isn’t that the point?”
The other Gamma girls she’s with start pulling at her when Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado comes on.
“Simone!” one shouts. “Let’s dance!”
She laughs as another one of the girls stops and turns to the group of us guys. “Girls, don’t forget to grab your Timbaland!”
Each girl starts grabbing a guy and pulling them into the crowd of people.
It’s just me and Simone left, and she looks at me, being shy all of a sudden.
“Respectfully, I don’t dance on other guys,” she tells me, shouting over the music.
I smile and take her hand, leading her over to the group of girls she was just with. “Good thing this song doesn’t need grinding to be fun! How well do you know the lyrics?”
“I could sing it in my sleep,” she yells as we move through the bodies.
I pull her into the middle of the crowd and start giving her my best dance moves. She instantly matches my energy, and I love it.
We go back and forth shouting the lyrics to each other, getting lost in the song, lost in the moment…honestly, I’m just lost in her.
She takes her hand and holds it up to her mouth like a mic.
I start singing Timbaland’s parts.
Her smile is so big as she dances and sings Nelly’s parts back at me.
Our energy is high, and I wink at her. I give her a ‘come here’ motion with my finger as I sing out to her.
Everyone has gathered around to watch us now.
I never mind being the center of attention, but it’s always more fun when you have a friend who’ll join in and look stupid with you, and Simone’s energy is contagious.
When the song ends, she’s breathless and laughing as she places a hand on my shoulder to steady herself.
“Okay, that last shot I took is definitely hitting now.”
I put my hand on her elbow and smile as I try to balance her sway.
“Come on,” I tell her, “let’s go sit down.”
She nods and then follows me to the kitchen, hopping up to sit on the counter. I grab two seltzers and lean my back against the counter, handing her one.
“Don’t tell Tank…but you’re a much better dance partner than him.”
She laughs, taking a sip of her drink before setting it next to her on the counter. “I’m just better to look at than him.”
Somehow, Tank pops up, apparently being next to us this whole time. “Hey! I’m a smoke show!”
Simone pats him on the shoulder. “Yes, you are, Tank,” she tells him in a playfully baby voice, then turns to me and tries to hide, shaking her head and giving me a look like that was a total lie.
“I can see you, Simone!”
She turns back to him, giving him an innocent, confused look. “What? I was trying to get something out of my eye.”
He gives her a bullshit look, and just as he’s about to say something back, Bottoms Up by Trey Songz comes on, and Simone screams.
She grabs her drink and puts it up for us to cheers with her.
We both do, then she chugs it and presses it into my hands as she starts dancing, still sitting on the counter, screaming the lyrics.
When Nicki’s part is about to come on, she climbs all the way up on the counter to stand up and shout the lyrics with no care in the world.
I can’t help but laugh and hype her up when she doesn’t miss a single word.
She stumbles slightly in her heels, and I reach out to grab her legs so she doesn’t face plant on this counter or on the floor. She doesn’t even notice, though, righting herself and running her hand along her chest to emphasize the lyrics.
After her full performance, she tries to hop down during her grand finale, and I grab her before she breaks an ankle.
“Someone get me a shot,” she yells, “and find my girls Lani and Lydia!”
Tank laughs. “I think you need water, girl.”
“You need water,” she shoots back, mockingly, making me snort out a laugh.
“How about you go find water and your friends, and I’m going to find a bathroom,” I tell her.
She nods and shoos me away.
I throw my empty drink away and walk through the crowd of people into the hallway, trying to find a bathroom. I’m definitely past buzzed, and everything is starting to get blurry. Walking past each door, I open them all, trying to find which one is the bathroom.
When I make it almost to the end of the hall, I hear fighting or some kind of commotion.
All I really hear is yelling and things breaking.
I push the door open where the sound is coming from and see two guys fighting on the floor…
well, one of them is doing all the fighting, and the other is just underneath him, getting the shit beat out of them.
My vision clears up for a moment, and I see that it’s Bash.
What the hell?
Fists are flying.
It’s not two guys drunk fighting; there’s no shoving. This is…different. Bash is obviously sober, and his face is twisted, eyes wild, veins popping in his neck. The guy beneath him is barely even guarding himself. Blood is everywhere—on his face, on the floor, on Bash’s shirt.
“Bash! Stop!” I yell, but it’s like he doesn’t even hear me.
I quickly pull him off the guy that he’s clearly about to kill, and he tries fighting me off at first.
“Get off me,” he snarls.
“Dude, chill!” I bark. “He’s done! Chill, man!”
He looks up to see it’s me, and then stops fighting, eventually letting me pull him up. I look over to see that there’s a girl on the bed who looks terrified. I blink a couple of times and realize it’s Lydia—Simone’s friend.
What happened here?
The doorway is starting to get crowded, the commotion drawing everyone in to see what’s happening, and then three people push through, one of them being Simone.
I grab her arm as she rushes in, turning her to look at me, trying to make sure she’s okay. She just shakes her head and pulls out of my hold. She doesn’t even look around the rest of the room before running straight to Lydia.
Simone’s other friend and roommate, Lani, follows, both of them going to check on Lydia. The guy who came in with them stands in the middle of the room, taking in the scene.
“What the fuck,” he says, confused, with a hint of protectiveness in his tone.
Simone pulls Lydia into her arms and then finally looks up, finding my eyes. She looks worried and scared. Her eyes plead with me to make whatever is happening okay, or at least explain what’s going on.
“What happened?” she asks, not dropping her gaze from mine. She pulls Lydia even closer, like she’ll be able to keep her safe now that she’s here.
“I don’t know…“ I tell her. “I was headed to the bathroom when I heard a commotion like someone was fighting. When I walked in here, Bash was beating the shit out of this kid, and I pulled him off.”
The guy in the room looks over at the guy lying on the floor. “Is he…dead?” he asks, worried and disgusted.
I bend down and check his pulse. “Nah, just knocked out,” I say, looking at him for a second longer. Damn, Bash really fucked him up. “Probably needs some kind of medical attention if you want my professional opinion. Definitely gonna need some stitches.”
I wince and stand back up. The sight isn’t pretty, that’s for sure. But this is Bash…he wouldn’t hurt anyone unless they deserved it.
“Someone get him the hell out of here,” the guy shouts.
I walk over to the open door and grab a guy I know, telling him to help me. We each take one end of his body, dragging him out of the room and tossing him onto a couch. Then I tell the guy who helped me to call him an ambulance, ‘cause he’s gonna need it.
It feels like the rest of that night goes by in a blur. Bash eventually comes out of the room looking pained. Once he tells me what actually happened, it all starts to connect.
He walked in on the guy trying to rape Lydia. If he hadn’t walked in when he did…it would have been too late.
Bash doesn’t talk much about his sister, but he’s opened up to me and Erik since getting sober…about what actually happened to her, about his childhood best friend raping her, which led to her eventually killing herself.
I don’t have a sister, but I have my brothers…and if anyone hurt them the way his sister was hurt…if they ever got to a place mentally where they didn’t want to be here and took their own life…it would drive me to much darker places than any I’ve already visited.
“Come on,” he tells me. “I’ll drive you back to the Sig house.”
I nod. “Okay, let me check on Simone before we leave. I’ll meet you outside.”
I go to walk back to the room they’re still in, pushing through people, getting annoyed by all the drunk kids in my way. My buzz is long gone, and I just want to get to her.
Simone is walking out of the room alone when I make it to the hallway.
“Hey,” I say.
She looks up, sees me, and then runs into my arms.
“Hey,” I say again softly, wrapping my arms around her, “it’s okay. She’s okay.”
I feel her tears before I see them. “I hate people so much,” she says angrily.
“Me too,” I tell her.
“Why do so many people want to hurt her? What the fuck did she ever do? Why—”
I pull her back to look at me. “I—I really don’t know why evil people exist…and I don’t have all the answers to why some people get the shittier cards in life. But what I do know…is that she couldn’t be luckier to have you as a friend by her side.”
She wipes her tears and tries to straighten back up. “Not lucky enough if I can’t even protect her when we’re at the same damn party.”
I shake my head. “Don’t do that, Simone. This isn’t on you; this is on that fucking predator who tried to hurt her.”
“And he wouldn’t have been able to if I wasn’t so wrapped up in myself and stayed with her.”
I pull her back into me. “Stop,” I tell her. “All that matters is that she’s okay now, and she has you and Lani. None of this is your fault.”
She pulls back, wiping new tears, and points down the hall. “I need to go find our ride and get her back to the dorm.”
She starts walking, and I grab her arm lightly. “Give me your phone.”
She looks up at me, confused. “Why?”
“I’m putting my number in it,” I tell her. “I want you to text me if you need anything.”
She slowly pulls her phone out and hands it to me. I put my number in and save it, then hand it back.
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “If you need me—”
“Thank you…” she says, cutting me off, “for being the friend looking out for me.”
“Anytime, pretty girl.”