Chapter 15 Sierra
Sierra
The night before the festival begins, after a long final day of setup, most of the planning committee goes out for drinks—at Sea Haven Bar he had terrible aim; worst of all, he didn’t even seem to try anymore.
Soph had labelled this state of affairs “the trifecta of disappointment” and gave me the dildo for my thirtieth birthday along with a bottle of lube.
Maybe if Mason knew how sexually deprived I’ve been, he’d take pity on me and just do me already.
“Wow, that was blatant,” Maria says, delighted, as Mason walks away from our table and I stare at his muscular ass. “Swear on my children, I have never seen Mason look at someone like that.”
When I find every eyeball at the table locked onto me, I take a just chilling over here sip of my drink even as I feel my cheeks turning pink. “Look at who? What?”
“She’s in deep denial,” Sophie explains to the others. “But it’s not her fault. She doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head. So, she doesn’t actually see him taking a mental bite out of her ass every time he’s behind her. You know, same as she does to him.”
“Ahh,” Trish says, like some confounding mystery has finally been solved.
“What?” I say innocently. “Who’s biting whose ass?”
“Mason Grant,” Maria enunciates, like maybe I am actually this dense, “is completely obsessed with you, Sierra.”
I blink. “He is not.”
“Say more,” Sophie says, shushing me with a flap of her hand.
“Oh, Mason’s a total playboy,” Maria says. “If you haven’t heard. So many women around here have tried to lock him down, fix him up, make him their man. All for naught. But I’ve never seen anyone turn his head like this baddie does.” She flips her thumb toward me, like I’m the baddie she speaks of.
“Who . . . me?”
“You are a baddie,” Maria informs me. “Own your own business. Won’t put up with his shit. Hot as fuck in yoga-wear. Check, check, check. If that man has a wish list, I’m sure you’re it.”
“More,” Sophie demands. “This is gold.”
“He’s very hard to get,” Trish concurs, happy to jump onboard. “He’s always been, like, the hottest guy in town, you know? It was like that in school, too. Girls love him.”
“And not just the locals,” Maria adds, nodding her head toward the bar, where those four women are perched in a line. “They come and go every year, especially in summer, and he just takes his pick. Never seems to care when they leave. Never gets attached.”
“It’s like that with Layne, too,” Trish gushes. “It’s like he just hasn’t found the right woman for him yet . . .” She turns the conversation to Layne, while my attention remains riveted on the show at the bar.
Not Mason, exactly, but those women. Their backs are to me, but I don’t need to see their faces to know they’re watching his every move. It’s in their posture. The way their heads angle toward him. Their hands—touching themselves while they speak to him, playing with their hair.
And before I even notice she’s left the table, Sophie is getting up to something.
Suddenly, she’s up at the bar, leaning over to talk to Mason. He nods, then turns up the volume on the music at her request. Led Zeppelin plays loudly over the sound system as she strolls over to the jukebox—where she switches up the song, putting on “Into You” by Ariana Grande instead.
Which could not be more fucking fitting.
Maria and Trish are chatting and don’t seem to notice what Sophie is up to as she comes to sit down next to me again. I lean into her. “Tell him you think I want to fuck him without telling him you think I want to fuck him,” I say dryly.
She sips her cider like a lady, eyes dancing. “You’re welcome.”
I know, I really brought this on myself. By telling my best friend, last night, about my conversation with Mason on the pier. I told her everything. How he makes me laugh. How he makes me long.
How he makes me wonder . . .
I told her how totally thrown off I was by his reaction to my confession about the meme and the stupid purple dildo—which was completely opposite to the way Kyle reacted—and the resulting loss of my investment.
I hadn’t planned to tell Mason about any of it, but when he told me he’d seen the meme, I had to tell him. Because maybe I didn’t want him to judge me for it as badly as he might if I didn’t at least try to explain.
I never would’ve anticipated that my “enemy” would be so understanding. So supportive. That he’d show more respect for me than my boyfriend had.
Can I trust Mason’s reaction? I don’t know. I have no way of knowing if it was genuine, or if he was just trying to manipulate me into feeling better about the whole thing so I’ll go back to the city, find somewhere else to run my business.
And it’s driving me crazy, the wondering.
I even told Sophie in frustration that I should’ve brought that dildo with me to Orchard Cove.
Never would’ve thought I’d want to fuck myself with a sex toy while my best friend is trying to sleep right in the next room—because I’m so hard up for a guy who doesn’t even like me that I’m hornier than I’ve ever been in my life—but it’s the sad fucking truth.
I want the man, badly. And any way I look at it, my days in Orchard Cove are numbered. And last night, when Sophie realized how much I want him, she told me the same thing that my hormones keep trying to tell me.
Maybe you should just tell him you’re into him.
Maybe you should just sleep with him.
Maybe it can just be about sex. Just for fun. Just putting yourself, and what you want, first for once.
But since I’m clearly not going to tell him I’m into him, I guess my best friend decided to let a song say it for me.
Unfortunately, the song totally misses its mark. Mason is either oblivious to the vibe or pretends to be.
Meanwhile, my least favorite local responds like a salivating dog offered a whiff of raw meat.
Lee Weston, June’s fortysomething nephew and orchard manager, a man who gives overt horny-womanizer vibes every time I run into him, pulls up a chair next to me and sits down. “Hey, Sierra. How’s your night going?”
Unfortunately, I think he has a thing for me. Between his legs.
“Hey, Lee. It’s good . . .”
I can’t help looking for Mason across the room.