If someone had asked his type before this moment, he would have told them that he liked elegance.Smoothness.Calm.Serenity.That he preferred brunettes over blondes, though he wasn’t going to reject anyone based on something so superficial.
He would not have pictured bubbly warmth and chirpiness, with miles of curves packed into polka dots.He would not have pictured bright red hair and redder lips that curved into a beaming smile.
“Fuck,”he muttered under his breath, stopping outside his office to press his head against the wall.Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath.“You are a psychologist.You know your reaction is just a combination of a dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin release.It doesn’t mean anything.”
The only thing it meant was that she was the first person to make him react in such a manner.
He suddenly had a much better understanding of what others had gone through.Even though he understood the process, there had always been a part of him that felt sure people exaggerated when they described how they felt.Secretly, he’d worried there was something wrong with him that he’d never felt that way, and it was easier to attribute it to others’ exaggerating rather than him being different.
Well.
Turned out he wasn’t that different.
Why now?
Why not a year ago?A month ago?Hell, why not yesterday, before Yasmine and I agreed to get married?
Before he’d asked his parents to arrange his marriage would have been even better, but definitely before he and Yasmine had agreed to it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and immediately buzzed again.He pulled it out to see who was calling.His mother.Of course.As always, her timing was impeccable.
It occurred to him that the description he would have given for his ‘type’ when it came to women closely matched the description he would give of his mother.Take a break, Oedipus.We like what we know.
Taking a deep breath, Mason straightened up and answered the phone.
“Hello.”
“Mason, sweetheart!Your dad and I are putting together the list of people to call about your engagement, and we wanted to know if you wanted us to call Asad and Cyrus, have their parents tell them, or if you wanted to speak with them yourselves.”His mother’s smooth, low voice was laced with unusual excitement.
He suddenly wished he hadn’t answered the phone.
This was what he got for letting his parents arrange his marriage.They were far more involved than they would have been otherwise.
If only he’d been a little less impatient to get his life started.A little less impatient to ‘catch up’ to Asad and Cyrus, his cousins, who were more like brothers.Cyrus had gotten married last year, and Asad was planning his proposal to his girlfriend, and Mason…
He’d gotten jealous.He was man enough to admit that.
Jealous and worried he was being left behind.He’d had no girlfriend, no one he was interested in dating, and nothing about his past relationships made him think he was going to suddenly find ‘the one’.Letting his parents arrange his marriage had seemed practical.
Logical.
Easy.
“Mason?”
“Sorry, Mom.Um, I’ll tell them myself.”Otherwise, they’d be calling him as soon as they heard the news, anyway.Plus, he needed to think of the best way to phrase it.To explain.
“Okay.We’re planning to start calling tomorrow.You’re still telling your friends tonight, right?”
“Right.”
Because his parents had done the impossible and managed to find a woman who wanted the same things out of life that he did, was also willing to have her marriage arranged, and she was even his described type.And kinky.They’d had several long talks about what they wanted from a marriage.She checked all the boxes on paper.
And she was even friends with a lot of his friends.
They’d never tried dating before for a myriad of reasons, but once their parents set them up, well… it just made sense.They were both ready to be married.They got along well.Mason liked her.A lot.
But he’d never felt like he’d been hit with a brick by her.
