“No, I get it. You either think I’m such a bad judge of character that I can’t find a guy, that I’m too stupid to have learned my lesson with other guys, or that David is secretly a flaming pile of crap just waiting to reveal his true, evil nature and betray me.”
“You are taking averynegative stance on what went down.”
“What went down was very negative. You waited until I left the room, then decided to all pounce and accuse my boyfriend of not actually caring about me.” The elevator hit the parkinggarage and they stepped out, but Mason didn’t stop. If Robinson wanted to be the one to confront him on this, then fine—Robinson could bear the brunt of it. “Who could love a fat piece of shit like me, right? No idea what we’ve been doing, no idea who he really is, no idea how much he’s held my hand through this whole thing. Just nope, clearly this hot guy couldn’t actually beinterestedin my fat friend. Must be his new flavor of the week.”
Robinson smacked him in the cheek. Not hard…but hard enough. It stung. His jaw was tight as he looked up at Mason, and there was a wet sheen to his eyes. “You don’t get to put words in our mouths any more than we get to put words in David’s. Not one of us thinks that about you.”
Mason snorted as the pain receded from his face. “Right. You all just don’t have eyes.”
“Okay, you’re fat.” Robinson threw his arms to the side. “I’m so skinny that people used to call CPS on my parents because they assumed I wasn’t being fed. Aras has a big huge nose that makes him look like a scary bird. And that’s not howanyof us think about each other, right? Unless that’s how you’ve been thinking about us, and then that’s a bigger problem that we need to address.”
Mason knew he was right, but that didn’t fix the hurt. It didn’t sink in. It was intellectually true, but what did that matter? “You all just don’t think that he can possibly be good for me.”
“We neversaidthat.” Robinson grabbed Mason by the wrists and stepped in close, glaring at him. It was rare to see Robinson get pissed, but apparently this had done it. “We don’t know him because someone here kept their whole relationship a secret. So when we found out that you two were apparently together, yeah. We wanted to find out if he was stringing you along.”
“Because I couldn’t tell.”
“Because when someone gets smitten, they don’t always have the best judgment.” Robinson released his wrists and stepped back. “Look, if you’re determined to just be pissed about what went down then fine, whatever, I can’t change your mind. But when you’re ready to be reasonable and understand, then come find me and you can accept my apology.”
Robinson marched away, but Mason didn’t follow. He moved toward the moving truck where they were keeping most of David’s stuff and sat on the bumper. They either couldn’t or didn’t understand, and if they were all going to get defensive when Mason tried to explain, then what was the point of even bothering? Robinson, of all people, should have been the most level-headed. What would he have done if they’d all gone after Chuck, accused him of chasing younger tail to replace his dead husband?
Mason knew he should go back up, but instead he hopped to his feet and headed out of the garage. A walk around the block would do him some good. If nothing else, thedistancewould buy him a chance to calm down before he had to go back up and face them again.
Chapter thirty-one
David
Itwasnearlytwoin the afternoon when David started to feel actual panic. He’d been all through the condo and he hadn’t been able to lay eyes on Mason for an hour. There was no real way he could have gotten hurt…right? Certainly not without anyone noticing.
Bunny approached David as he was heading out the door. Maybe Mason was down in the parking garage. That was a possibility. He had to check it out. But he stopped when she waved him down. Her brows had met in the middle, and she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her overalls once she’d gotten his attention. “Have you seen—”
“I was just going to—”
They both talked over each other, then both stopped. David waved his hands toward her, passing her the conversation. “Go. What’s up?”
“It’s Mason. I was hoping you’d seen him.”
“No.” So they didn’t know where he was either. Not the twist he’d been hoping for in the plot. “I was going downstairs to look for him.”
Bunny sucked on her teeth, then shook her head. “He’s not picking up or answering texts. It’s not the first time someone’s run off partway through a job, but Mason…”
“Yeah, it’s not like him.” David felt a pang of awkwardness at that—Bunny would obviously know him better—but he pushed past it. “What do you want to do?”
“Iwantto call in the search and rescue dogs and find my friend, but I don’t think that’s reasonable.” She lifted her phone from her pocket and checked it once before stuffing it back away and snorting in frustration. “I might have to call all hands for this, though. I can’t imagine something happened to Mason, but this is so out of character.”
“Mason?” Robinson walked up to the pair of them, one eyebrow raised. “He calmed down enough to be reasonable, or is he still convinced none of us trust him or whatever is going on with him?”
David’s eyes fixed on Robinson. “When did you talk to him?”
Robinson checked his phone. “Must have been an hour ago.”
“He’s been gone for an hour.” Bunny shook her head. “No, we need to look for him. That’s not right.”
Robinson’s cheeks reddened and he looked down at the floor. “I think that might be my bad. He’d been walking around with a pickle up his ass about last night the whole day.” He offered a sheepish expression to David, then turned his attention back to Bunny. “I might have confronted him about it. I did confront him about it. It got…heated.”
David’s brows knitted. “He’s still upset about that? I’m not even upset about that.” It had raised his ire a touch, but only as much as stubbing his toe. Maybe not even that much. They’dbeen looking out for their friend, and none of them had been mean to David. It was barely even what someone could consider rude. Well, apparently someone could. Mason did.
“He was,” said David. “He is.”
