At this point, I didn’t want to choose. They both made my heart act up, both made my body feel a strange kind of desperate and needy. They made me feel things I never dreamt I would, and if I was honest with myself, it was a nice feeling. To be wanted, to be needed by someone else…there were no words for it.
In the end, I would be heartbroken, I knew, either way, if I chose or if I didn’t choose.
“Maybe you won’t have to,” my sister said, picking at her nails.
I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t. All I could do was say, “You’re saying maybe Mason and Calum will both be happy to be with me at the same time?” The thought seemed so far out of the ordinary that I couldn’t even picture it.
Hell, I couldn’t even picture one guy staying happy with me, let alone two. Two just seemed like an alien equation.
Michelle said, “You never know. Guess you’ll have to wait and see. Now, I’ll leave you alone. I know you’re dying to lay down and stare off into the void.” Her voice took on a dramatic tone, and I had to roll my eyes—even if she was right. She rolled off my bed and left my room.
Heaving a sigh, I went to turn off the lights and get under the covers. My phone was already beneath my pillow, charging. Had to change the ringer to silent, because with the amount that Calum was texting me, it was going off constantly. It took every ounce of willpower in me to not roll over and check it.
Mason texted me a bit more now, too, actually. And not just about the project. He’d taken to asking me how my day was, telling me goodnight, texting me good morning. I mean, was all of this normal? Was this what everyone else did when they were dating or tiptoeing around getting into a relationship? I had no idea. I had no experience. All of this was new to me, as new as something could possibly be.
And the worst part about this was the fact that I knew none of it would last. I was so torn—so unbelievably torn because I knew this wouldn’t go on forever, and yet I wanted it to. I didn’t want to have to say goodbye to Mason or Calum. If there was ever a time in my life when I wanted to be selfish, when I wanted to be optimistic and hope for something good, it was now.
Maybe it was silly, maybe it was stupid, maybe other people would think I was a sad excuse of a human, but this was the first time I ever really, really wanted something for myself. Another person. Two of them, at the same time.
There was no way Michelle’s words would be true, that I could ever keep both Mason and Calum, but that didn’t stop me from losing myself in a daydream.
That night, when sleep called to me, my body and mind answered right away. It was not a fitful sleep, as it usually was. It was the pure, unabashed embrace of blackness, sweet and silent, dreamless, the kind of sleep I should get every night instead of the wakeful, interrupted bouts I did.
It was nice. A girl could get used to it.
Mason and I were currently sprawled out in my room, copies of journals before us, bits and pieces highlighted and numbered. We were trying to structure how our paper would be. We couldn’t actually write the entire paper until we got enough results to look over—still working on getting all that done, unfortunately—but we could get everything ready. Either way, we would have to come up with reasons why our hypothesis was supported or not.
Because, in every single psychology class, it was hammered into your brain: you could never prove a hypothesis. You could only support it or disprove it. Everything we took for granted, like the law of gravity or the laws of motion, were only ever supported by the thousands of experiments run all across the globe and in history. Because, in a scientific scope, there was no way humans knew it all. Best support something instead of claiming it was one hundred percent infallible, so if or when the time came that something went against it, everything in the past did not have to be scrapped.
It was just one of those things they told you over and over again, so much that the phrase became natural in your head. Kind of like the whole correlation versus causation debate. Don’t even get me started on that one.
Mason had become a bit better about asking about Calum. Granted, I was pretty sure that was because he knew Calum was now out of town. He’d been gone for a week now. I…I haven’t heard from him if he planned on visiting me this weekend or not, and I was trying not to freak out about it.
He had a life. He had a job. He had a bunch of other things to pay attention to besides me. I knew he wouldn’t come every weekend. Hell, at this point, I doubted he’d take the time and ever see me. I mean, it was just me. I certainly did not merit a two and a half hour drive one way just to see me for a bit.
Still, I missed him. I missed those bright blue eyes, the almost whiteness of his hair, the way he oozed maturity and confidence. He was a man that had somehow captured me, dragged me in, and made me swoon over him—something not many other men could claim.
Mason could, though. His dimples, his easy smile, his non-stop chatter about any stupid thing. Oh, somehow he’d gotten me, too.
Two men at once. It was ridiculous, almost like a strange set up for a sitcom or something.
But, no. This was my life, and it would never end up like a sitcom. Eventually, one would leave, or they’d force me to choose, and I’d be so paralyzed with indecision that they both would get angry and leave.
Hmm. Maybe that would be a good thing. Then my life could go back to the way it was, me zoning out every day, going on with life with no hopes or cares. Right now my mind thought far too much about both men and the feelings they stirred within me.
I hardly recognized myself anymore, some days. I mean, I thought about kissing them, for God’s sake. I thought about their mouths, their hands, their bodies…I wondered what it would be like to be caught under the sheets with them.
Not once in my life had I ever thought about sex, in the way of actually having it. Sure, I thought about it before, but that was always me wondering what the big deal was, why everyone always claimed it made a relationship or broke a relationship, why it was so important to so many people. I’d gone twenty years of my life without having it; clearly, it couldn’t be that important.
“Earth to Bree,” Mason’s voice chimed in, causing me to snap out of it and meet those warm, inviting amber eyes. “You in there?
I blinked. “Yes. Sorry, I was…” I trailed off, not sure what I was doing. Of course, I knew what I was thinking about—sex—but it wasn’t like I wanted to freely admit that to Mason. No, I was pretty sure he would only get the wrong idea.
Or he’d get insanely jealous because he’d think I was only imagining myself with Calum, which I wasn’t.
“It’s okay,” he said, picking up the clue that I did not want to say anything about it. “We’ve been going at this for a while, now. We could call it quits for the night.”
My phone sat on the floor beside me, and I checked it. For the time, not for any missed messages from Calum. It was just after five. Mom would be downstairs, figuring out dinner, and Dad wouldn’t be home until seven since it was his late night at work.
Mason began to pack up the papers, a small grin on his face, as there usually was. Such a cute, eternal grin, it was permanently imprinted in my brain. That grin popped up any time I thought about him, any time I pictured him, and it was something that would stick with me, long after he moved on.