“Take off and chill out for a bit,” Cole said. “But Mason, stay safe. And work on your ego some. In the middle of the battle, if you have to be the one to stay back while the California Reapers get the kill, so be it. Better to live an accessory than die a martyr.”
I knew that.
But like Cole said, this wasn’t just about cover and move. There were some serious, deeper trust issues that had to be resolved.
Cole backed off and headed back to the California Reapers. I took it as my cue to rev my chopper to life, peel out of the lot, and take a head-clearing ride around the New Mexico desert.
Rachel
One Week Later
I’d looked forward to this moment for some time now—the moment when I’d drop the games with Mason and finally text him.
It actually wasn’t that difficult to avoid texting him through the week. Putting myself in de facto isolation for a decade or so had made me quite good at avoiding extensive social human contact, so another week without it wasn’t anything. But now that the day had arrived, just going another hour would have proved difficult.
“It’s been a week as promised!” I wrote with shaky hands. “Now, also as promised, let’s get coffee. Wanna go into Albuquerque?”
I must have read that text a half-dozen times over before I sent it. Did I need to say “as promised” twice? Was it better to say “let’s go get?” Should I use his name in the message? Should I say it was me in the message? Should, could, would…
The thoughts ran through my head like a tornado, impossible to stop, something to be ridden out. Eventually, I hit send less out of a certainty that my message was good and more out of the desire to just have it be done with. I smiled when I sent it, closed the phone, and went to the couch in my living room.
And…I just sat there.
I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out much these days. I needed to make a grocery run at some point, but that wasn’t urgent today.
That was another thing that I’d gotten good at over the last few years. Just sitting. Some people were terrified of being alone with their thoughts, but this was how I’d gotten to the point of even being able to be out in public in the first place. If I wasn’t comfortable with what was in my own head, I sure wouldn’t be comfortable with what was out there.
An hour passed.
Nothing.
Two hours passed.
Nothing.
Four hours passed.
Nothing.
I was starting to get a little concerned that I’d typed the number down wrong or, worse, that Mason just didn’t have any interest in me. I was ordinarily a pretty even-keeled person, but I guessed when you allow yourself to feel something like this for the first time in ages, you get a little anxious. I knew it was somewhat teenager of me, but…
And that’s when I realized something else.
Although I had been quite good at being by myself, the times I had asked for help from someone who knew me from before, they had rushed so hard and so fast to come and take care of me that I must have just adopted it as normal. I never tried to use my past to my advantage, but I’d failed to account for that.
It’s no good to wind up with Mason if you’re in an unhealthy mental state. You were strong enough to get through the week. Be strong enough to handle this.
The words were reassuring. I didn’t completely forget about the anxiety, but just as I had so many times in the past, I found the strength in myself to alleviate the anxiety.
Good thing, too, because by the time I went to bed that night, Mason still had not replied.
* * *
I was pretty sure I started to unlock my phone before my eyes even opened. That’s how desperate I felt. The work I’d done had calmed me, but that was only relatively speaking.
And it was just like the day before. No message. No reply. Nothing.
“Damnit,” I murmured to myself in my half-awake state.
