Under the low angle of the sun, the building casts a long shadow, and the remaining dew stubbornly clinging to the grass dampens my toes sticking out of my sandals. As Mason leads me around the back of the school, several sports fields come intoview, including a baseball field and football field with a running track circling its perimeter. The aluminum bleachers reflect the sunlight with piercing accuracy, and I regret not bringing my sunglasses with me. At least the shade helps lessen the scorching rays of the late summer sun, even if it does nothing to tamp down the high humidity that suffocates the air. I’m already sweaty in too many uncomfortable places.
“We never talk about it for obvious reasons,” Mason says, and I squeeze his hand that’s holding mine. I can feel the slight tremor in his grip.
“Mason, you don’t have to talk about it now. We can leave.”
He shakes his head, a curled lock of his blond hair falling across his forehead. “I should have told you before, but I was scared. I never wanted the dark parts of my life to ever touch you. To change how you felt about me.”
My feet stumble and trip over themselves, taken by surprise at his confession.
“Harper painted this,” he says when we reach a large storage shed with the beautiful mural painted over its south-facing exterior wall.
Harper was his friend Bennett’s fiancée at CU. They all grew up together: her, Mason, Bennett, Carter, Carter’s girlfriend Christy, and another girl, Michelle. Douglass and Sorcha were the only ones from that group of friends who were newbies, like me. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with them hanging out, going to the beach, studying together. I envied how close they all were. The tight bonds of love they shared that went beyond just being friends. They were a family in every sense of the word. And now I know why. Tragedy has a way of forging unbreakable bonds.
Why would he think me knowing would change how I felt about him? I loved him. What happened here wasn’t his fault.Like his friends and the other students, they were the victims. They are survivors.
I look up at the enormous painting. There are smiling faces of young people,too many people, I think, and tears spill over as I trace the mural with my eyes, soaking in every fine detail and brush stroke. A colorful set of handprints, each with a name and a year, create a border around the pictures, and in the middle, #NEVERFORGOTTEN is painted in bright, bold colors.
“I was a senior when it happened,” Mason softly says, touching one of the faces.
I let go of his hand to wrap my arms around him. I need to hold him. To comfort him. To comfort myself because I could have lost him before I ever got a chance to meet him. I would never have felt the joy of falling in love for the first time. Never would have seen his smile or heard his beautiful laughter. The world would have been an emptier place without Mason McIntyre in it.
Not even my anger or my broken heart can compete with the immense gratitude I feel right then to have him here, with me.
“Thank you for showing me.”
My arms tighten around his waist when he places a soft kiss on the top of my head, and I bury my tear-streaked face in his chest, breathing him in. Drowning in him. Never wanting to let him go.
As the hot breeze trickles around us, we stand in front of the memorial Harper painted, and I listen to Mason tell me about that day.
Chapter 8
ARIA
“Are you serious? How did we not know this?” Kama asks, then drops her phone so all I see is the ceiling of her living room. “Sorry.”
My phone sits propped upright in its stand on the counter, allowing me to cook and talk at the same time.
“That’s what I keep asking myself. Mason and I were together for a year, and I hung out with his friends on the regular. I feel so stupid. They all went through this huge, horrible thing. Something that would change a person in fundamental ways.”
“What do you want to happen now?” she asks, lying back on her sofa, her rich, sable hair spreading out around her face like a halo.
Isn’t that the one-million-dollar question?
Somehow, my need for closure turned into a desire for Mason and me to become friends, and now… now, I don’t know what I want. My mind is a jumbled and confused mess when it comes to that man.
Holding the lid to the top of the pot at a slight angle, I drain the pasta in the sink, making sure to use oven mitts so the scorching steam doesn’t burn my fingertips off. Brandon keeps threatening to gift me a colander for Christmas. It would make iteasier, I guess, but this was how my grandma did it and how she taught me to do it.
I place the pot down, set the lid aside, and add in pesto sauce, chopped garlic, and shaved parmesan.
To answer her question, I reply, “Now, I’m making dinner.”
What I don’t disclose to Kama is that I’m making one of Mason’s favorite meals, pesto pasta, and plan to take it over to him along with the rotisserie chicken I went out and bought an hour ago. I’m justifying the meal as a house-warming slash welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. Which is a total lie, of course.
“I think Brandon has a bro-crush on him.”
“I think you do, too, without the bro part,” Kama singsongs, and I aim a perfect glare at her grinning face.
Ignoring that, I continue. “Mason is the new baseball coach at Brandon’s school.”
