25. Mason
Mason
It’s insane to have mandatory Greek study hall, especially in my condition.
I drag myself every step to the building, pressing my knuckles into my temples every couple of minutes to ease the headache I have, complementary of the eight shots I took last night alongside whatever else I ingested at that party.
I can hear the chaos behind the doors before I even open them, and I would much rather be back at the Sig house right now, still in bed.
I haven’t slept for shit this week. Every time I start to drift, the thoughts keep me awake, and the sadness constantly tries to pull me under, tries to chip away at this fake happiness I’ve created here at college, when my reality is actually anything but.
My dad got home from whatever corporate world tour he was on for the last two months and immediately got on my ass about grades, football, life plans, the internship coming up next summer, and all the ways I need to improve from last summer. All the shit I don’t want to think about.
He hasn’t allowed the boys to call me once, and it’s killing me. He knows I have no other way to contact them besides him or Rose, and he’s taken that away, saying maybe it’ll be an incentive to get my shit together, as if I don’t already work my ass off to meet his impossible standards.
I hate that I know they’re asking to talk to me, and he’s feeding them lies that I don’t have the time or don’t want to talk to them.
He’s never had a problem trying to make me look bad to them. He’ll do anything to go after the few things I actually care about. And who knows how long he’ll keep them from me? It pisses me off to the point where I want to say fuck school and hop on a flight right now just to see them.
I shake that all off as I walk in and scan the room. It’s an organized mess in here—everyone in small groups or paired up, backpacks and papers everywhere, food half-eaten scattered on tables, and a coffee in every hand.
And in the middle of it all—Simone, trying to tame a Tank. I laugh under my breath, feeling bad for the girl, always getting sucked into tutoring that barbaric caveman.
I walk up to the table, where Tank is slouched in his chair beside her, his giant arms—that he spends way too much time working out every day for—crossed over his chest, while she points at his notebook like this is the fifth time she’s telling him the same thing.
“Okay, what’s the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics?” she asks, tapping her pen on the page.
Tank squints at the paper. “Micro is…like…smaller.”
She stares at him. “No shit, Sherlock. Try again.”
He grins, completely unfazed. “Micro is like…household level. Macro is the big picture. The economy as a whole.”
She points the pen at him. “See? You know this. Stop being lazy.”
“I’m just conserving energy,” he says. “I need it for all the parties this weekend.”
“You need it for your brain,” she shoots back, flatly.
I smirk, dropping my bag in the empty chair across from them.
“Trying to teach the Hulk economics again?”
Tank looks up at me, offended. “I’m not the Hulk. I’m more like The Thing.”
Simone snorts. “You’re like if The Thing and a golden retriever had a baby.”
“A buff, military-looking ass baby,” I tease, and then bump Tank’s arm as I sit. “It’s time for me to steal my tutor from you, man.”
Simone looks up at me over her notebook. “Why do I let you Sig boys convince me to tutor you for free again?”
“Because you love us,” Tank says, batting his eyelashes at her.
She gives him an unimpressed look. “Depends on the day.”
Tank checks his phone and groans. “I need a break from studying, Drill Sergeant. My brain’s done.”
“I’m sure your brain was done when you walked in here,” I tell him.
He flips me off and stands, stretching. “I’m gonna go pretend to read in the corner, so I don’t get in trouble for ditching completely. You can have her. I need to recover.”
I move over to his now-empty seat next to Simone and pull out my notebooks.
“For the record, I’d pay a lot of money to have you tutor me.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know…you’ve offered.”
“And you keep refusing,” I say, smirking.
She sighs dramatically. “Because if I took it, I’d actually be obligated to this torture. You boys never give me a break. When am I supposed to study?”
“We’ll trade off. You save Tank’s GPA, then you save mine, then I help you.”
She snorts. “You? Help me?”
“Don’t disrespect me like that, Simone,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her. “I’m surprisingly useful sometimes. And I have you know that I was valedictorian of my high school.”
“Then why do you need me?” she asks.
“I study better with good company.”
She pulls my notebook over, looking down at the page as she tries to hide her smile. “What chapter are you on?”
“Uh…the one with the words.”
She gives me a pointed look. “Mason.”
“Kidding, calm down.” I tap my finger to the top of the page. “Supply chain. Business operations. Whatever. It all blends together into the same shit.”
She starts quizzing me, reading off different terms, trying to get me to actually think. I answer enough of them right to prove I’m not completely hopeless, but the boredom creeps in fast. My eyes drift around the room, and my leg starts bouncing.
“This stuff is mind-numbing,” I groan, dropping my head back. “I’d rather get hit by a hundred linebackers than read another paragraph of this.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have chosen business as a major,” she says, not looking up.
“I didn’t choose it,” I mutter.
She glances at me. “Then why are you in business?”
I hesitate…then shrug. “I’m not really in business; I’m in ‘do whatever my dad tells me to do.’”
“That’s right, the big old mean Mr. Sinclair you told me about,” she says, then her brows pull together in curiosity. “So what would you actually choose, if you could pick?”
I stare at the open book for a second, debating if it’s even worth saying. It feels stupid every time I hear it out loud now, like I’m some little kid who’s excited to tell an adult what I want to be when I grow up.
“I wanted to be a…marine biologist,” I say.
I can tell that throws her a little by the way she looks at me. “I’m sorry, you wanted to…pet dolphins for a living?”
I laugh. “Something like that.”
She leans her chin on her hand, studying me. “I’m trying to picture it. You…smiling in those underwater documentaries…next to whales.”
“More like the sharks,” I say. “I’d be a pretty badass marine biologist.”
She laughs, and I can’t help grinning, watching her. “What made you want to do that?”
“I grew up near the water. It was always my escape. Naples is all coastline. Surfing a lot, going out on boats. I was always in the middle of the ocean. It was the only place that didn’t feel like I was drowning, ironically. Especially when shit was bad at home.”
She nods slowly and then hums. “Boat-money rich,” she teases, trying to lighten it. “Love that for you.”
I smirk over at her. “Maybe I’ll take you one day. Ever been on a boat?”
“Does a kayak count?”
I shake my head, laughing. “No.”
“Then nope. But I would love to.”
“You have to experience it. I’m even PADI certified.”
“What the hell is that?” she asks.
“Deep diving.”
“Ah, fuck. That would terrify me.”
I chuckle. “It’s so beautiful. I promise there’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Umm, did you forget about the sharks?”
“I’d fight off all the sharks for you,” I say, winking at her. “You’d be safe with me.”
She looks down at the book again. “Okay, so why don’t you do that? Be a marine biologist?”
I mindlessly flip the pages of the book in front of me. “I told you, I’m taking over my dad’s company.”
She looks up, confused and a little annoyed for me. “But you don’t want to?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay, so what am I missing?” she asks. “If you hate it…why is it the plan? I know he wants you to, but like…why not just tell him no?”
“Everything kinda depends on it,” I say, shrugging like it’s no big deal.
“Like what?”
I look up at her. “Money, college tuition…my brothers.”
She looks even more confused now. “Your brothers?”
I nod. “Yeah…not only would he try to keep me away from them if I went against him…but the company is for them too, to set them up for success in life. Basically, I do everything he wants me to—I grow up without a real childhood, I do football, I get good grades, I go to the school he wanted, I get a business degree so I can take over Sinclair Real Estate Investments. He pays for college and my life, and in return, my soul goes to the family firm…blah, blah, blah. At this point, it’s more for the boys, but I’ve always known it’s what I’d do, even before they were born. ”
Her nose scrunches. “That sounds…horrible, like you’ve been groomed since birth to be his replacement.”
“Yeah, pretty much.” I lean back in the chair. “But what other choice do I have?”
She twists her pen between her fingers, thinking. “We always have choices.”
I huff out a laugh. “Not with Scott Sinclair.”
She studies me for a second. “You two don’t really get along, from what you’ve told me, huh?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “That’s an understatement. We’ve never gotten along. He doesn’t even like me. I’ve always just been his little puppet…and a bad one at that if you let him tell it.”
Her expression shifts—more serious now. “What do you mean?”
I rub a hand over my jaw, debating how much to say. No one here knows my shit, not like that. These people know party Mason, football Mason, dumb frat guy Mason. But something about Simone makes it all feel less…stupid and pathetic to say out loud.
“He’s always made it a point to tell me how much of a disappointment I was…am. I’ve never heard the words ‘I love you’ leave his mouth, or gotten a single hug from him in my entire life. We’ve even gotten into physical fights…plenty of times, actually. I’m just…not like him, and he hates that.”
Her eyes widen a little. “Physical fights? Why?”
“Pick something,” I say. “Arguments over grades, me not scoring a winning touchdown that turned into a fight, him finding me drunk, me finding him throwing out all my dead mother’s things like she never even mattered…”