After dinner, we play another ten frames—me winning again, a fact I’m sure to rub in as Mason drives me home—and then, suddenly, the date is over and I’m walking back up the path to my parents’ house.
Alone.
Mason doesn’t even try to walk me to the door.
Which is a little…disappointing.
“Not disappointing,” I mumble beneath my breath as I wave goodbye to Mason, watching his car pull away from the curb. “It’s good. It’s exactly what I wanted.”
It is. Which leaves no explanation for why I feel like a balloon with all the air leaking out, or why I hurry up to my old room without ducking into the den to say good night to Aria.
No explanation for why I curl into bed feeling sad and alone in a way I haven’t in a long time.
There is just no explanation.
None at all.
Chapter 6
Mason
They say you can’t go home again.
In my experience, a better quote would be—You could go home again, but why? Why put yourself through that when you could light yourself on fire and walk across a bed of nails instead?
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I mumble beneath my breath as I slide out of my Audi and start toward my uncle’s shack, a grungy island in a sea of overgrown grass and junk cars my uncle never got around to fixing up.
I should at least see if he’s alive or dead, and offer him help if he needs it. I’m in a position to help now, and helping each other is what family is for. Just because my family has been dysfunctional up to this point, it doesn’t mean that I have to continue the trend.
“Well if it ain’t the big man himself.” The rusted out voice creaks through the shade on the porch, drawing my attention to the right. There, Uncle Parker squints up at me from the swing occupying the one flat spot on his sagging front stoop. “Alive and in the flesh.”
“I just got back in town a couple of days ago.” I stand at the bottom of the porch steps. Given the way things ended the last time we spoke, I’m not inclined to get any closer to my uncle until he proves he’s in a good mood. I’ve put on thirty pounds of muscle since the last time we came to blows, but Parker fights dirty, and I’d really rather not be sporting a black eye my first day at my new job. I’ve still got a few weeks before I start, but my uncle hits hard enough to make bruises linger. “I thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to get some catfish for lunch.”
“Already ate,” Parker says, not moving from his chair. “Is that all you want?”
So much for a heart-warming reunion.
Good thing I wasn’t expecting one.
I force a smile. “All right, then. Maybe next time. In any case, I figured I’d pick up the boat while I was here.”
Parker grunts. He looks older than the night I left, and certainly older than his forty-six years. He’s lost weight and his sunbaked skin hangs loose on his sharp face, emphasizing the shadows beneath his eyes. But otherwise, he’s the same. Same thinning black hair perpetually in need of a cut, same thin lips and lanky frame, same expression of sour amusement when he looks at his only nephew.
I’m not surprised he isn’t getting out of his chair to welcome home family he hasn’t seen in years. He didn’t bother getting off his ass to attend my graduation, either. Not a single one of them, not even from Bliss River High, and that’s only five miles down the road.
Back when I was an eighteen-year-old kid, still secretly longing for approval, or at least someone to notice that I was graduating at the top of my class, that had hurt.
Now, knowing my uncle isn’t interested in my life is a relief.
I made a move toward reconciliation. If he’s determined to stay estranged from each other, that’s fine with me. Less chance of being embarrassed if our paths happen to cross in town.
Parker doesn’t go to town often, but when he does, he’s usually drunk and looking to get into trouble with his loser friends down at Buddy’s.
“Don’t know why you’d need the boat,” he says after a moment, scraping his thumb across the stubble on his chin. “Didn’t think a fancy doctor like you would have time for fishing.”
“I don’t start work until the middle of June. I took some time off after my residency.”
“Ain’t that nice.” He bares his teeth in another smart ass grin, like my success is a hysterical joke only he can fully understand. “Some time off from all that soft work. Going to take some of your faggot friends out on the lake to celebrate?”
“I’m going to take Lark fishing later this afternoon,” I say, refusing to give him the reaction he’s looking for. He knows I have gay friends, and he knows I hate it when he talks that way. But I’m not going to get mad or offended or anything else. I refuse to give him the satisfaction.