“Okay, then you explain it, Mr.Logical.How does this keep happening to me?”She opened up the wrapper of her egg bites, raising one eyebrow as she challenged him.
“You really want to know what I think?”he asked slowly.After their talk last night, he’d done a lot of thinking about where they’d gone wrong.
Yasmine stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head.
“Let’s just call our parents.It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
She was going to keep thinking she was cursed, regardless.Mason sighed inwardly, but he doubted he was going to be able to convince her with one conversation.He’d also rather not get into a fight right before talking to their parents.
“Okay, which of our parents do you want to talk to first?”
Thirty minutes later, Mason left Yasmine’s apartment feeling like he’d been raked over hot coals.Their friends had been understanding and supportive.A few of them had even been encouraging.Not so much their parents.He was glad he’d been there for Yasmine when her mother had started lamenting that she was never going to have grandchildren at this rate.And he was glad Yasmine had been there for him when his father had started in on how important it was for a man to fulfill his obligations.
He didn’t think he’d ever forget the look on his dad’s face when Yasmine had coolly informed him that she would never want to marry a man who considered her an obligation rather than a partner and an honor, then offered her condolences to his mother if that was how she was treated in her marriage.He’d never seen his father stunned into silence before.That alone had been worth the discomfort of doing a video call and seeing his parents’ expressions as he disappointed them.
Mason headed back to his own home to regroup.If his parents called him today, he was not going to answer.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the peace he was hoping for.Almost as soon as he got home and sat down, his phone rang.It wasn’t his parents; it was his cousin Asad.
Sighing, Mason answered.He had no doubt that word had already reached his cousin, and if he didn’t answer, Asad would just keep calling back until he did.Nonstop.He was annoying like that.
“Hello.”
“So, what’s this I hear about you breaking off your engagement?”Asad’s voice, filled with the perpetual amusement it always held, also held a hint of accusation.“I didn’t even know you were engaged.”
“Yeah, I was going to call you to tell you, but I never got around to it.”Which, when he thought about it, was an indication that maybe he hadn’t really believed it was going to happen.Because Asad would definitely be one of his groomsmen in his wedding one day.If he ever got married, which at this point was looking less and less likely.“Is your mom calling Cyrus, too?”
Asad’s brother would be another groomsman, along with the members of his team.Why he was thinking in terms of wedding planning now that he was no longer planning a wedding, he had no idea.Maybe he was realizing that if he’d have been more excited about marrying Yasmine, Asad and Cyrus would have been his first calls after his parents and his team.
“Probably.She was appalled I didn’t know anything about your engagement, much less you breaking it off.”Asad chuckled.“I think your mom asked her to find out what I knew and why you weren’t going through with it.So, Cuz, why were you getting married, and why aren’t you?By the way, you’re on speakerphone because Morgan is curious too.”
“Hi, Mason.I don’t have to listen in if you don’t want me to, but I am very curious about what’s going on.And Asad will probably tell me later, unless you specifically tell him not to.”
“Hi, Morgan.”He smiled.He’d found Morgan’s bluntness charming when Asad had brought her as his date to Cyrus’ wedding, and that charm remained.“It’s fine, I don’t mind you hearing, too.My parents know pretty much everything.”
He gave them a quick rundown of asking his parents to arrange his marriage, them finding Yasmine, her ‘curse’, and their realization that there was not a lot of chemistry between them.Something Yasmine very much wanted and that he didn’t think he could give her.They hadn’t gone into detail with their parents about that; they’d just told them that once they’d become engaged, they’d realized that they weren’t as compatible as they’d thought, and they wanted to end things rather than pushing forward.
“I was willing to try, but she wasn’t… We talked a lot about what we wanted our lives to look like in general, and we were well matched on that, but once we got into the details, it was more difficult.”
“You could have tried more romance, you know,” Asad said.His voice was light, but he wasn’t joking.“Women like the romance.”
“It wasn’t a romantic relationship; it was an arranged one.”
There was a pause and silence on the other end of the line.Mason scowled, leaning back against his couch.He got the impression that Asad was face-palming or maybe that he and Morgan were exchanging looks, trying to figure out how to respond to that.Saying the words out loud… well, okay.He could see Asad’s point.Maybe the arrangement had been out of logic and practicality, but once they were engaged, he could have tried to be more romantic.
“Fine,” he said begrudgingly.“I probably could have tried to be romantic.”
“It sounds like you two were more good friends with similar life goals than anything else,” Morgan said.“But if she wanted romance, and you didn’t, then you weren’t going to be compatible.”
“It’s not that I don’t want romance, I just...”His voice trailed off.
When he thought about being romantic, when he thought about being passionate, it hadn’t been Yasmine he’d pictured in his head.Which officially made him the worst fiancé ever.She’d been right to dump him.
“You just?”Asad prodded.“What?”
“Yasmine accused me of being attracted to someone else, and I can’t say she was completely wrong,” he admitted.It felt like a relief to finally be able to say it to someone.He sure as hell couldn’t tell anyone here in Pittsburgh and definitely not anyone on his team.“But it was just an attraction.I was still willing to marry her.”
Someone sucked in a breath, and he was pretty sure it was Morgan.
