Page 60 of Most Valuable Player
I’m not getting through to him, so it’s a good time to put my words into practice. “I brought you something else,” I say, reaching into my jacket flap and pulling out a crinkled sheet of paper.
“What’s that?”
“A gift. A shitty one. But I figured you’d want to see.” I smooth out the crease so he can see the painting. It’s a dinky thing I spent time on this morning—we have old art supplies in the basement closet, so I whipped something up, doing my best to depict a looming mountain and bulky gray clouds. The forefront features a crudely painted stick figure couple sitting in grass.
Mason takes the picture with bemusement. “Um…what is this for?”
“You said you suck at painting.” My attention wanders to the countertop, where I spot another painting far more meticulous than mine. “See!” I cry out, gesturing to it. Mason must’ve been in the middle of making it, because it’s of a similar style to the half-finished canvas in his room. “Your art is good. I created this garbage to show you. I didn’t even purposefully fuck it up—I’m just that untalented.”
Mason’s dark hair is hanging in his eyes. His fingers curl in tighter around the paper’s wrinkled edges.
“It’s none of my business what you do with it, because it’s a gift,” I say, feeling sufficiently awkward amid his silence. “I figured you could look at it whenever you’re feeling down about your art. Because it’s just so fucking terrible. Like, I worked on it for two hours.Diligently.I’d understand if you throw it out the moment I turn around, since it’s so ass-ugly—”
I choke on my words. Mason has set the painting aside and stumbled into my chest, hugging me. His palms tremble as they flatten against my spine and rise slowly toward my shoulder blades, like he’s trying to find where best to hang on to me.
“Water boy?” I squawk.
“Quarterback,” he mumbles into my jacket.
My heart swoops into my stomach before skyrocketing into my throat, clearly uncertain of how to handle this. His head is an inch below my chin and smells like crisp apples. Does he have fall-themed shower products? Probably. Definitely.
Do I hug him back? The thought of holding him against me makes my body temperature scorch hot, even after everything that happened last night.
By the time I decide, Mason is drawing backward, his lanky arms sliding away. The corners of his eyes are swelling and scarlet. “I don’t get it,” he whispers. “You go out of your way to bring me my necklace…buy me my favorite coffee…paint me a picture you hate just so I’ll feel better…”
It sounds sappy when he says it like that. “It doesn’t mean anything,” I claim, because I’m not some soft, squishy little boy. “I was bored. Then I grabbed you coffee because I was already in the wrong place, so I figured I might as well, since you’re a caffeine enthusiast. And you had a breakdown when your necklace was damaged, so I drove it here.”
Mason smiles faintly at my pathetic ramble. “Cameron Morelli,” he says, so frail and broken that I want to reach inside of him and put his shattered pieces together with my bare hands, regardless of how many times they might nick my fingers. “If you keep doing things like this, I might start to regret rejecting you.”
My brain latches onto the word “regret.” Is he serious? “Then I’ll ask you out again,” I say, donning an impish smile.
Mason’s eyes glow with faded amusement. “Oh? And when will that be?”
“Whenever you least expect it.”
“Planning on jump scaring me into saying yes?”
I shrug. “If that’s the only way I can date you.”
A flush works through Mason’s cheeks, and he gives a small indignant scoff. “You don’t have to pretend you’re interested,” he mutters, shifting away from me, his fingertips grazing the edges of my painting. “You’ll get bored of my face eventually.”
His hand wanders toward the aquamarine necklace pooled on the countertop. I snag his fingers before he can poison himself on its surface. “Sit on the counter,” I snap. “Shorty.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it.”
Mason pinches his brows with puzzlement but does as commanded, hopping onto the edge of the cashier counter so he’s raised a few inches higher. I can look him in the eye now without bending over. I step toward him, but his knees are in the way, so I nudge them apart and wheedle my waist between them.
“Cameron?” Mason’s voice cracks over the word. The faint, lingering blush in his cheeks spreads farther as he leans back, but I snatch his head, forcing him to look at me.
“Stop with the self-deprecation,” I say sharply. The hearth in his captivating brown eyes has started to rekindle, but it’s not the intensity of flickering firelight that should be dancing against his irises while he’s in his favorite place. “I asked you out because of how you look, yeah. But you’re more than a pretty face. I don’t know why you hate yourself, but I like being around you. Even though you’d rather suffer a thousand deaths than date me.”
Mason’s face twists with mystification, brows arching, lip flinching down. I try not to notice the way his kneecaps rise to frame my hips, like he wants to wrap his legs around me. Like he’s falling into a new habit.
“Then I’ll ask you again,” he says, digging his index finger into the break of my chest. Like always, his touch is a cooling serum, relaxing the tension in my limbs. “What about me, exactly, has bewitched you, body and soul?”
I can faintly recall my previous answer.
