Page 133 of Deacon

“Good.” His smile warmed. “I was hoping that wouldn’t be the first thing I got wrong.”

A breath of laughter escaped me despite the awkwardness, and I sat. “So. Coffee diplomacy.”

Mason settled across from me. “Something like that.”

For the first minute, we both tried too hard to make it ordinary. There was no hostility between us, only the awareness of old intimacy sitting at a small table with nowhere else to go. Mason finally exhaled and gave me a crooked smile. “This is weird.”

I snorted into my cup. “A little.”

“Good,” he said, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “At least it’s not just me.”

That helped enough to get us past the worst of it. We started with work because work came with rules. The new ER. The construction. The absurdity of building a department from floor plans, supply lists, staffing projections, and administrative optimism. Mason asked smart questions, and I answered them. He listened the way he always had, attentive without crowding the conversation.

From there, Wicker Falls slipped in naturally. We talked about people we had both worked with, including one surgeon who still seemed convinced every nurse in the building existed to keep him from having public tantrums and another who treated new nurses like his personal dating pool. Mason reminded me of the resident he used to threaten with decaf whenever the man got too cocky, and I laughed harder than the memory deserved.

For a few minutes, it felt easy again. That was exactly why I kept part of myself braced.

Mason had never been unpleasant. The problem had been how easily pleasant turned into momentum, and how differently we had understood where that momentum was allowed to go. Halfway through the drink he had remembered for me, the awkwardness faded enough that I finally stopped waiting for the conversation to tip.

“I’m glad we did this,” Mason said.

I looked at him over the rim of my cup. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t want there to be any weirdness hanging over things if I interview and end up here.”

“There doesn’t have to be.” I meant it. Whatever had happened between us did not need to follow either of us into the new ER.

His expression softened. “I’m glad you feel the same way.” He looked down at his hands for a second, then met my eyes again. “For what it’s worth, I really do respect your decision. I know I wanted more than you did. That part was mine, not yours.”

The admission landed more gently than I expected. “It wasn’t anything against you,” I said. I watched his face before adding, “You know that, right?”

“I know it now.” His answer carried no accusation, which somehow made the guilt prick harder.

“Mason.” I heard the apology trying to creep into my own voice and disliked it immediately.

He gave me a small, sad smile. “I said I know.”

There was no reason to leave anything blurred between us, so I gave him the truth I should have said more plainly then. “I just wasn’t in a place to be in a relationship with someone new. I thought we were both on the same page. That it was just...” I searched for a graceful phrase and found none. “A scratch-the-itch kind of thing, no strings attached..”

A real laugh broke out of him. “Very romantic,” he said, and some of my tension went with it.

“You know what I mean.” I wasn’t going to dress it up into something more sentimental than it had been.

“I do.” His amusement faded into something more reflective. “At first, I felt the same.”

I studied him. “At first?”

“At first.” His fingers tapped once against his cup. “Then I didn’t.”

There it was, said plainly enough that the imbalance between us felt less like old awkwardness and more like what it had actually been: two people whose expectations stopped matching.

Mason held my gaze. “I developed feelings. It happens.” He said it without drama, which somehow made the old imbalance between us feel more real.

“I’m sorry.” The words came automatically, guilt reaching for responsibility before I could stop it.

He shook his head, refusing to let me carry something he had already claimed as his. “Don’t do that.”

I frowned, even though some part of me already knew what he meant. “Do what?”