Page 68 of Most Valuable Player
My awareness comes back into focus when I hear Mason shift. We’re facing each other, about a foot of space extending between us. I feel him grip my wrist, then uncurl my fingers. Slow and careful, like he’s afraid of waking me, he cradles my hand against his face, then nudges my thumb back and forth along the scoop under his eye, emulating me stroking his cheek.
Why would he wait until I was asleep? He doesn’t want me to see that he needs to be comforted? He’s so desperate for affection that he’s using my limp hand to find some semblance of warmth and peace?
“Just ask me to hold you,” I mumble.
Mason stiffens. His hand falls away, but I keep my palm snuggled against his face, continuing to move my thumb along the dried tear streaks staining his skin. I peek through one lid to find that he’s stubbornly closed his eyes, like he knew I was about to look at him.
I realize something, then.
Cam Morelli is going to die tonight.
I’m not sure he’s even still alive, to be honest. After everything that’s happened recently, I can’t say when it was that I last consciously had my mask up. Regardless, keeping up the ruse isn’t possible around him. I’ve only ever wanted to be perceived in this school as a fun-loving, loudmouthed jock who flirts around and wins people over with his loyalty and charisma. But I care too much now. I can’t pretend to be as conceited and theatrical around the other football players when Mason is nearby, because I know how painfully easy he can see through me.
Deep within the confines of my soul, I know I’m not going to get hurt by the people in this school. It’s different here. But Cam Morelli has always been a fail-safe—reassurance that if I’m wrong, it won’t matter, because I’ll be too popular, too likable, to become a target.
Around Mason, though, I feel safe. Even if the entire school turns their back on me, or turns their fists on me, one person won’t.Hewon’t. Because he likes the parts of me that I’ve kept shielded from this town, whenever I’ve accidentally allowed them to peek through in his presence.
So I’ll tell him who I really am. Because I know I’ll be okay.
“Back in middle school, there were times I thought I’d go ahead and die if I didn’t feel my mom’s arms around me,” I say quietly, watching as Mason peeks through one crunched eyelid to see me. “If I could get up, I’d crawl into bed next to her whenever my dad was sleeping on the couch after a fight.”
Mason is quiet, absorbing this. “Your parents fight?” he whispers.
“Not anymore.” I sigh from the remembrance. The overwhelming frigidity of our house—the way the stiff floorboards cried under our feet whenever someone moved. The sound of heated voices reverberating down the hallway, louder as Mom pulled more Pride paraphernalia off the walls and Dad fought to keep it up.
“I mentioned people targeted me because of my mom,” I murmur. “But it wasn’t just that.”
Both of Mason’s eyes are open now, and he’s watching me with contemplation through the darkness, his expression neutral but not cold.
“I was bullied in elementary school for unrelated things,” I tell him, my heart thumping harder against my chest. I’ve never told anyone this. “Namely, that I acted too cutesy and ‘girly.’ I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s just the kind of place we lived in.”
Mason reaches out, fingertips crawling over the bedspread. Henudges aside the folds of my robe, then presses his hand flat to the warm skin of my chest. The sensation of this cool calmness pushing back against my restless heartbeat causes it to slow. Unwillingly, I’m relaxing, my breaths coming longer. Less shaky.
“I was really quiet,” I continue, my left hand sliding down from his hair to scrape against the back of his neck. I think he likes the feeling, because his lashes flutter. “Soft-spoken. I picked flowers during recess and collected rocks by myself. I didn’t talk to anyone in class because I was so busy daydreaming and not paying attention. I cried easily and often, even as I started getting older. After people found out about my mom, they linked my ‘girliness’ to me just being fruity. And everything sort of escalated.”
I should be sliding into a panic. The memories are seeping into the corners of my vision. But Mason is at the center, and it binds me to the present.
“They found meeverywhere,” I breathe, fingers curling in with frustration. “They stalked me and my house. I used to sell my painted rocks at the end of my driveway, and they would start pelting me with them, then throw them down the street grates. I’d go to the park so I could cloud watch, but they followed me so they could smear me in dirt. When I walked home from school, I’d stop by a florist to buy my mom flowers. They’d appear out of nowhere and rip the flower heads off, then tell me to give her the stems.”
I can see Mason’s eyes glittering against the scant amount of moonlight filtering into the room around my shades. They’re filled with tears.
“At one point,” I murmur, “I signed up for a recreational football team. I was seeing the counselor on a weekly basis, and she thought it would be good for me to join a sport or club outside of my school. To force myself to get out there. I was good.Reallygood. I knew, if I putall of my effort into the practices and games, I’d probably be the best player on the team. Even though I’d only ever practiced with my dad in the backyard and I wasn’t built like everyone else. I was just a natural, I guess.”
I pause, teeth latching together instinctively with frustration. I force the rest out.
“But even though I liked the distraction, it was only ever that. A distraction. It never became a passion—just a way to escape. It didn’t last. When people from school found out I’d joined a rec team in a neighboring town, they claimed the only reason was so I could get my hands on a bunch of sweaty boys tackling each other. So I eventually quit.”
Mason’s hand on my chest begins to slide up along my collarbone. It drifts over the side of my neck, latching itself there so he can graze a slow, methodical trail along my jawline with his thumb. I resist the urge to catch it and kiss his knuckles.
“There was this party in eighth grade.” My teeth clench as the memory comes reeling back. A rough bedroom carpet under my knees, half my shirt buttons undone, my heart galloping and sobs raking my chest. A crowd of people whispering to one another. “I was told about it by an acquaintance. I didn’t have friends because people didn’t want to get roped into my shit. It was the first time I was invited somewhere. My parents said no, so I snuck out in the middle of the night, because I thought…finally. This is my chance to turn things around.”
The sound of relentless bass and explosive laughter hums in my ears. The anxious anticipation as I wandered around groups of students, high schoolers included, feeling more and more out of place as the night dragged.
“There was a girl I started talking to. Someone who’d been nice to me in the past,” I say. Only then do I notice that he’s not onlystroking my jaw, but his other hand has moved to the back of mine. His cool thumb is massaging my knuckles, lingering in the skin between. The feeling stirs tingles in my abdomen. “I thought maybe I was going to make a friend. But she said the music was too loud to hear me, and she brought me into a bedroom.”
I distinctly remember the creaky hinges of the door swinging shut. The way the music dampened and light was squashed from the room. The sudden, mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Basically,” I say through multiple voice cracks, “she tried making out with me. Pushing me into the wall, trying to take my shirt off, trying to kiss me. She kept asking if I was a real man, or if I took after my mom. I didn’t realize until a few minutes later that the whole thing had been set up by others at the party.”
