The first thing I did was tell the Motherfuckers that drinks were at my place.
I’d gotten the sectional and assembled it, and it definitely felt more grown-up, though Oscar and I still ended up on the floor—me because I didn’t want to crowd my guests, and Oscar because he didn’t want to sit that close to anyone, an arrangement that situated us comfortably around the new coffee table with enough elbow room that no one was banging into anyone else as we devoured the store-bought appetizers I’d picked up.
“Strategy session,” I said after they’d all filled plates with carrot sticks and broccoli florets and pita chips.
“Is this roasted red pepper?” Ronnie asked, gesturing to a tub of orangish hummus.
“Yes.”
“I have the garlic.” Oscar nudged it in her direction.
“Oh good, thanks, you’re a mind reader.”
“Also,” Dec added, “this is not traditional ranch, but I’m into it. It’s got a little kick and I—”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. Loudly. “I need to win back a man so if everyone could just settle the hell down, that’d be great.”
Mia made a face. “Wait, I didn’t know we were doing a whole thing! I didn’t bring my notebook. You must have paper here somewhere—”
“I have some.” Sidney pulled their bag over and began digging through it.
“Is winning back a man the kind of thing you need meeting notes for?” Jack asked, watching the whole thing with amusement.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
“You guys,” Dec whispered. “Mase is freaking out right now.”
“I’m not freaking out, I just would like everyone to FOCUS.”
Dead silence. For half a second. Then my friends, my chosen family, my nearest and dearest, burst into laughter.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Mia wiped her eyes. “Stop it, he’s serious, come on. Project Mason Gets His Man hereby commences.” She grabbed the notebook being held out to her, pen already tucked into the spiral. “Thanks, Sid. Next time someone’s convening a strat session I’d like an agenda in advance, please, so I have time to gather my materials, but I’m ready now.” She started actually writing a header.
It wasn’t...nope, it was. She’d literally written MASON GETS HIS MAN at the top of the page.
Oscar, also peering upside down to see it, said, “Aren’t you going to put your name and homeroom teacher on that so when it’s graded you get credit?”
“Hush, I’m busy. So, what are our options?”
“You could call him,” Ronnie suggested.
“Boring, wife, but okay, there are no stupid ideas.” Mia began writing, smoothly dodging the elbow that came her way from her (boring-idea) wife.
“Make him dinner! Right?” Dec glanced around for support. “That would win back anyone.”
“With your cooking, maybe,” Oscar muttered. “The rest of us need other options.”
Jack, still looking amused, shook his head. “All you did was show up and mock my house color, if I recall correctly. To be clear, dinner would have been nice.”
“Shut it. You made it too easy to mock you.”
I clapped my hands. “Can we try to limit the jaunts down memory lane? I have a man to win back.” I gestured to Sidney. “You’re the only one who hasn’t come up with anything.”
“I’m pro talk-it-out, I guess. Though a bit of a gesture never hurt anyone.”
Dec leaned toward them. “Hey, remember that time I called into the show to ask your advice only it was funny because I was asking your advice about you?”
“Funny isn’t how I’d describe it.”
I rubbed my temple, where a massive headache was forming. “Thank you, team sidetrack, but does anyone have something I can use? Sid, come on, you must have answered this kind of question over the years.”
“Oh. I must have.” They paused, brows pulling in. “How did you leave it?”
“Um. Well. He...told me that maybe the problem was me, not the fact that he was married?”
Whistles around the room.
“Damn,” Ronnie said. “That’s...potentially accurate, but harsh.”
Oscar was nodding with approval. “I like this guy more and more.”
“Wait until you hang out with Claris.” It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up with my mouth. “I mean. Um.”
“It makes sense that you’d have to like the wife,” Jack mused. “In terms of wanting to be part of a long-term dynamic with them.”
“Him. Mostly. Well, I was already friends with her, so.” To cover my sudden befuddlement I gestured at Mia. “Do you have anything I can use yet?”
“Maybe. While you were all tangenting I came up with some thoughts. Flowers, roses, chocolates? He’s creative with dates, so you could come up with something equally creative. Alternately you could do something classic, like the beach. You could show up at his house with a boom box like a stalker lunatic and stand in the street—”
“Wait.” Dec waved his hands excitedly. “Not the stalker thing, but you could just show up.”
“I...think it’s pretty stalkery if I just show up after telling him we couldn’t be together?”
“Not at his house! At the show! It’s tonight, isn’t it?”
A flurry of activity while they all checked calendars and social media apps, but I didn’t have to check. I knew exactly when GFW was. “No. I mean yes, it’s tonight, but... I’m not dressed. It starts in an hour.”
“This is the best idea we’ve come up with so far,” Mia said, surveying her list.
“It’s public, so not stalkery,” Sidney added. “You can back off if he wants space. This is much better than the boom box thing.”
“This is it, this is the plan!” Dec exclaimed. “Come on, you can get dressed in ten minutes.”
I ran a hand over my chin. “But shouldn’t I shave if I’m going—”
He jumped up and grabbed my hand, already pulling. “Bedroom. You guys pull up a map and see how fast we can get him there.”
“No, but Dec—”
He flung open my closet like we were in a girlfriends movie and I was winning back my—oh wait. “What’d you have picked out? I know you had something picked out. Oh, pink looks good on you! Or this? Lavender?”
“That’s my Ronnie-and-Mia’s-wedding shirt.”
His eyes gleamed. “So it’s good luck!” He tossed it on the bed. “Take off your clothes, chop chop, we don’t have all night.”
Twenty minutes later I was in the back seat of Jack’s car again, squished between Mia and Dec, half in Dec’s lap, while both Mia and Ronnie had to tilt so much to get in at the sides that they only had one butt cheek each on the seat.
“We couldn’t have taken two cars?” I asked, trying to straighten my clothes. “I’m wrinkling back here. I should have gone with Sid.” Who had opted reasonably to drive their own car, which should have been the cue for everyone else to divide up equally, but nope. Not in this crowd.
“That would be no fun at all!” For someone crammed into a very small space, Mia seemed undaunted. “You have your ticket or whatever?”
“I mean, I know everyone working the show, so I doubt it’ll be a problem to get in.”
She sighed. “I think you don’t realize how big the event is. Anyway, we’ll figure it out.”
“Ooooo.” Ronnie tapped the window. “Look! There are so many people here!”
It looked like a freaking movie opening. Suddenly even my wildly fancy wedding suit wasn’t looking quite up to snuff, though that probably had to do with all the fashiony people gathered in front of the theater. “Y’all, I’m not so sure about—”
“Dec, you and Mase get out here. We’ll find parking and get back as soon as we can!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Jack pulled to the curb some ways back from the door and I realized that not only did I not recognize anyone, I also wasn’t at all prepared to see anyone I did recognize. “No, but seriously, we didn’t even workshop this idea—”
“No time for that, c’mon!” Dec half-dragged me out of the back seat.
Oscar leaned out the front window. “Being in love looked okay on you so good luck with that.”
Dec blew an air kiss at him. “Oscar says the sweetest things, now go!”
I went. Sidewalk, bodies, a denser crush of bodies, me allowing Dec to tow me along behind him as he cut through the crowd. I wasn’t just having second thoughts, I was having third, fourth, fifth thoughts. My sixth thoughts were having second thoughts. There was no way this was a good idea. Like at all. It was a terrible idea.
“Hi there,” Dec said cheerfully to the young man working the door. “My friend is Mason Ertz-Scott and he needs to get into the show, he’s expected.”
The young man, to his credit, did not bother batting his long golden eyelashes in our direction. “VIP pass?”
Oops. “Um, no, but—”
“—but he’s expected,” Dec repeated. “He helped plan the whole event.”
The eyelashes lowered slightly as the kid took me in. “Yeah? Then you should have been here an hour ago.”
Somehow, absurdly, this dumb door kid made me blush. “I was...running late?”
“Uh-huh, well, as long as you have a valid ticket you can get in with everyone else when doors open, honey.”
It had been so long since a twenty-year-old boy called me “honey” that I was suddenly less annoyed with him. “Look, it’s just that—”
“Mason, oh my god, oh my god, Mason, thank god you’re here.” Perri slipped from the shadows, or a doorway, or a doorway in the shadows, or possibly a wormhole that happened to be in a shadow with a doorway, and touched the door kid’s arm. “It’s okay, Romeo.”
Romeo—and wow, Romeo—shrugged and unhooked the legit rope stanchion for me to pass.
“Good luck!” Dec called as Perri spirited me inside.
“Did Claris call you? She said not to, but I should have known she would anyway, she hates this kind of thing, you know how much it means to her that all the plans go perfectly and then when one gets screwed up she really—oh god, your tie’s going to clash with Diego’s coat, hang on, we can find something else—”
“But—”
“Corinne! Find Mason a tie that will complement Diego’s suit coat, please? Quick as you can!” Having dispatched that order she pushed through an opening draped with curtains into—
Pure chaos. Models everywhere, scraps of fabric on the floor, voices rising and falling in various tones of panic, mirrors of all sizes arranged everywhere, most with clumps of people in front of them doing final touches on outfits, a cacophony of scraping, sliding, rolling, shouting, murmuring, shifting, and any other kind of sound you might hear in a room full of people getting ready for a fashion show.
“Twenty-three minutes, people!” Perri called loudly, startling me. “Thank god you’re here. Diego! Look, I’ve got Mason, everything will be fine!”
I stopped walking. I couldn’t face him. I had to face him. He looked over, pins between his lips, sweat on his brow, glitter in his hair, and I just stared back at him, uncertain what to say, or how to act, or if he wanted me there.
Perri grabbed my arm. “I know you’re busy, but I need to get someone in here with a mic for him, so just maybe fill him in until I get back? Thanks.” And she whisked away, shouting three more orders as she passed people in the room before disappearing back through the curtain.
“Hi,” I said.
He held up a finger and turned back to his pinning. Two more and then he took the others out of his mouth and said, “I think that’s it. Walk for me? Okay, perfect. Hopefully hair and makeup are ready for you now. You look gorgeous.”
The model blew him a kiss and walked away and I was momentarily distracted by just how good he looked, y’know, walking away. When I refocused on Diego, he was meticulously sticking his pins in a pincushion. “So,” I tried again.
“Did Claris call you? She promised she wouldn’t, but I guess when it comes to emceeing she’s willing to lie. Not that I’m against it, I’m sure you’ll be great, but we had a whole conversation and—”
“Claris didn’t call me.”
He stopped what he was doing and looked up. “Then why are you here? I thought—because Gregory, who was supposed to emcee, is in the bathroom puking, and—” The frown looked like it was going to fracture his forehead. “Why are you here?”
Which, now that I was there, standing in front of him, was a truly excellent question and I wish I’d taken some time, preferably back in my living room, to come up with an answer. This is the sort of thing we could have workshopped, damn it. “Um. I guess...”
“You guess? Mason, if you can’t tell, I’m in the middle of a big fucking deal, the biggest show I’ve ever put on, so whatever this is—” frantic arm flapping between our bodies “—it’s really going to need to wait until—”
I hadn’t seen Claris approaching, but suddenly she had my arm in a vise grip—and Diego’s arm too. “March,” she said tersely, herding us. I was too disoriented by the surroundings to really know where we were going, but then we were behind a half-wall with curtains at each end and Claris loomed over us despite being shorter.
“You two get your shit together right now.” Her voice was low and sharp. “I did not work as hard as I’ve worked for the last nine months for the two of you to have a fit just before this event. You—” finger jab at Diego “—get out there, stop moping, and motivate the rest of these people, all of whom are here because of you. And you—” finger jab at me “—you’re the voice of GFW and either you’re gonna go out there and pretend it was your plan to emcee it all along or you’re going to get the hell out, I’m not having you here complicating everything.” Her fierce gaze took in both of us. “If you want to never speak to each other again, fine, it can wait until after the show. If you want to not be fools, then for god’s sake, learn how to disagree like adults and pull yourselves together.”
She let go of us and straightened up, her dress seeming to effortlessly flow around her like water around rock. “I swear, you’re each as bad as the other. You have ninety seconds to decide, so figure out how you’re going to walk out there—” finger jab at the curtain “—and act like you’re not pissed at each other for the next three hours. After that you can do whatever the hell you want and I’m washing my hands of the whole damn thing.”
Diego opened his mouth, only getting out “I—” before she swept around and went back through the curtain.
Leaving us standing there side by side like naughty schoolboys.
“Did she mean emcee as in...go out there in front of everyone and talk?”
“There’s a script, so you just need to deliver it. I mean, not ‘just’ like it’s no big deal. It’s important. But you don’t have to learn any of it by heart. Gregory only glanced at it as he was eating his ill-fated deli wrap. You’d be good. Emceeing, I mean.” He wasn’t looking me in the face, just vaguely in my direction. “And you’re dressed exceptionally, though I don’t think the tie will look good on film.”
“It apparently clashes with you so Perri is finding me another one. Or sent a minion to do it.”
“That sounds like Perri. Look, you can leave. You aren’t obligated to stay here, not for any reason.”
“I came to see you.” I flushed, a state not helped by how warm it was in the room. “I mean the show. Your show. Everyone’s pieces. I’m still invested.”
“If you don’t emcee, Claris will have to.” He paused and probably both of us were imagining that. Claris was photogenic as fuck, but not exactly the person you wanted in charge of the tone of a family-friendly event.
Which didn’t mean I was. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I murmured, keeping my eyes down, trying to block out the sounds of the show going on around us.
“You’re not sure you can do the show? Or you’re not sure you can do this? Us?”
“I already screwed it up so much. Not the show. I did right by the show. But everything else? Is a mess.”
He stepped forward and for a moment I thought he was going to walk out after Claris, leave me standing there, but then he took hold of my shoulders and pulled me to him, clutching me tightly, my arms automatically going around him in return. “We haven’t talked in two months. Do you really want to break up? I’ll respect your answer, even if I never understand it.”
“No, but—”
“Then we won’t.” He pressed his face against mine. “She’s right, we’re fools. We can’t figure everything out right now, but you must see that we will be able to. You do see that, don’t you? Mason?”
“But what if we can’t?” My voice was barely a whisper. I wanted to believe him, believe them both, but how could I possibly? “It will end like it always ends, I can’t do this with you, I love you too much—”
Then he was kissing me, desperately, one of his hands at the small of my back to hold me close, the other at my neck to keep me still closer, and I wanted him, us, in that kiss more than I’d ever wanted anything else.
“And I love you too much to let you go without a fight. But later. For now—hide here, go out there and host the show, hang from the rafters for all I care, but don’t—” his eyes bored into mine “—don’t you dare leave.”
“I won’t. I won’t.” I brushed tears from my eyes and carefully dabbed the ones on his cheeks. “Are you sure I can do this?”
“I’m sure you’ll be absolutely fucking brilliant.” Another kiss and he straightened my tie for me. “You look extraordinary.”
“So do you.” I took a deep breath to say something incredibly man-winning-back—
Perri’s head stuck through the curtains. “Oh thank god, I thought you’d done a runner. Corinne! Dammit, where did she go? Mason, give me that tie, we have—”
“It’s okay,” Diego said. “I know it clashes a little, but we’ll only be next to each other at the very beginning and the very end. Let Mason keep his tie.”
She blinked. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“O-kay. I need him anyway.” To me, she began, “I’m going to show you everything as well as I can but don’t worry if things go a bit awry, we’re just going to run with it. The models will nudge you toward your marks if you get in their way, everyone’s been briefed, and Gregory is not coming out of the bathroom anytime soon, so this is it. Come on.”
I looked back at Diego, the whole thing getting very real very fast. “But I’ve never—”
“Anything’s better than Claris!” he said, smiling. “It’s a low bar. And Mase? I’m bringing you home with me. You’re not weaseling out of it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Good. Because you won’t.”
Perri shuffled impatiently.
Diego kissed me. “Have fun!”
Which seemed like it had to be facetious, but he wasn’t joking. He meant it.
Fuck it, you know? How often do you get to randomly emcee a fashion show for charity? Pretty much never. Here goes nothing.