Two Thousand Miles (11 page)

“Good job, ladies,” Cody said. Mason whistled
, and Logan applauded as we took a bow. Sweaty and smoldering hot, I high-fived Bit and Shelby before walking over to Mason. I took the beer out of his hand and finished it in three swallows. Then I burped, squeezed the can until the middle collapsed, and tossed it into the trash can.

Mason laughed, “Can I get you anything else?”

I smiled, taking in Mason’s beautiful features. “Maybe a shower,” I said.

“Oh
no, you don’t,” Shelby scolded. “The whole point of roughin’ it is to rough it. No modern plumbing.”

“But I feel sticky and gross,” I argued.

“There’s a hose pipe right over there,” Shelby said, and pointed to it. My mouth fell open. Mason laughed. “I bet you’ve never even been campin’ before.”

“Of course I have. It just didn’t
involve a tent. My friends and I used to
camp
at Lake Tahoe all the time. We have a vacation house out there. It sits right on the beach.” Thinking about that place made me smile. I’d had so many great times there. “We built our own fires and cooked our own food. We made s’mores. It was so much fun.”

“That doesn’t sound like
roughin’ it to me.”

“Ten people sharing three bathrooms was rough, trust me.”

“Sounds like a complete nightmare,” Mason deadpanned.

“Okay, that sounded…”
Embarrassed I’d said something so shallow, I had no words.

“
I’m gonna get us a refill,” Mason said, and headed to the beer cooler.

“Alright, everybody inside,” Bit ordered. Everyone followed her
, and for whatever reason, we sat in a circle on the dirty floor of the tent’s screened-in room.

“So,
whattya we do now?” Logan asked.

“Talk shit, play a game, whatever we want,” Shelby said.

“What games? Spin the bottle, truth or dare, I never—all the games we’ve been playin’ since we were ten,” Cody said. “We already know everything there is to know about each other.”

“We do not,” Bit argued.

“You can’t tell me that I don’t know everything there is to know about every person sitting here,” Cody said.

“Everybody except Kat,” Logan retorted.

All eyes were suddenly on me. I didn’t know what else to say, except, “What do you want to know?”
hoping they wouldn’t ask me anything too personal.
Shelby lit up. “Do you know anybody famous?”

“No.”

“Nobody?” she sighed.

“Nope.”

“Not even a TV star?” she slumped forward, disappointed.

“Nope.”

“How big is your house?” Bit asked.

“
Um…”

“Oh, c’
mon,” Shelby coached.

“Big,” I said, hoping to get away with that answer.

“How big?” Bit asked.

“Twelve
-thousand square feet.” I felt so uncomfortable saying it out loud. I shouldn’t have been ashamed of what I had. My father had worked hard for it, but somehow it seemed wrong to have such a large house for just the two of us. The Broussard family was happy in fifteen-hundred square feet.

“Oh my
god! That’s enormous, like, eight times the size of ours,” Bit gasped. “Is it on a hill? Isn’t California hilly?” she asked.

“My house is on the beach.”

“What kind of car do you have?” Shelby asked.

“That stuff doesn’t really matter
, does it?” I asked.

“No, it’s not a
big deal. We’re just curious.” When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “So, what is it? A Lexus or something?”

It was the first time since I’d gotten my car that I didn’t want to brag about it. For a moment, I considered lying and saying it was a Lexus.

“Mercedes,” I answered meekly. If anyone in Malibu had asked, I would have said I drove a convertible Mercedes E550 Cabriolet, black with custom pink and black interior that my dad had given to me for my sixteenth birthday. He’d taken me out to dinner and given me a pair of diamond earrings, which were nice, but had left me disappointed. I mean, what sixteen-year-old doesn’t want a car for their birthday?

He gave me the car when we got home from dinner
. I was so excited I lost consciousness for a minute. I squealed and hugged my dad, and thanked him a hundred times. I still remember what that moment felt like. I imagined I would never forget.

“Damn, I didn’t realize you were so loaded,” Cody said. I shrugged.

“What the hell kind of jobs do your parents have?” Logan asked.

“My dad works for a finance company.” Which was the short answer to that question. “And I don’t know what my mom does.”

“Ha! What? Does she
shop all day or somethin’?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said, opting for the short answer again, especially since I had no idea what she did
at all.

Mason
was staring at nothing—in another world. I touched his arm, startling him. “You wanna take a walk?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t go. I still don’t know how you lost your virginity,” Bit said. I
gawked at her, surprised.

“She has this weird fixation
with how everybody else did it, so she can plan losin’ hers down to the second,” Shelby said, rolling her eyes.

“So,
you two haven’t,” I said, stunned that Bit and Logan weren’t sleeping together.

“Nope,” Logan answered.

“Don’t plan it; you’ll be disappointed if you do,” I told Bit.

“That’s what I keep
tellin’ her,” Logan argued. I wanted to laugh. Bit wanted it to be perfect, and Logan just wanted it.

“Just let it happen, because that sort of thing never goes as planned,” I said.

“That’s what I keep tellin’ her,” Shelby said.

“Would you tell me anyway, please?” Bit asked. I didn’t want to share that story, especially since I was trying to get some alone time with Mason.
And why would he want to hear how I lost my virginity in front of all of his friends? I surely didn’t want to hear how he’d lost his. “It’s not even a good story,” I said.

“
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease,” she begged. I let out a loud sigh, looking at Bitty’s puppy-dog face. “I’ll tell you later, okay?”

“Alright,” she reluctantly agreed.

Mason stood up and held his hand out for me. We exited the tent and walked to his truck. He took down the tailgate and hoisted me up so I could sit on it. He climbed up and sat next to me.

“So, you don’t want me to hear how you lost your virginity?” he asked, a smile staring on his lips.

“I didn’t think you’d want to.”

“Was it in the
back seat of a Bentley?”

“What does that mean?”

“I just figured you were with some rich guy, and since, like, half of everybody loses it in a car…”

“Old guys and rapper’s
drive Bentley’s. The guy I was with drove a Toyota truck, and it was in a beach cabana, not in a car,” I snapped.

“Damn,
Kat, take a joke,” Mason said, but it didn’t feel like he was joking.

“Does it bother you that Dixie’s in bed with Garrett right now?” I asked, meaning to
sting him back.

“
Nah. She always screws somebody else when we breakup. She thinks bein’ with another guy will make me jealous, and we’ll get back together.”

“There’s been a year’s worth of back and forth between you two, it must work,” I said.

“Who she screws has nothin’ to do with me and her.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want.”

“Okay, fine, you wouldn’t normally care, but tonight
she’s with Garrett,” I argued. That would have been like Olivia sleeping with one of my old boyfriends, I would have been fuming like Frankenstein.

“It’s not the first time she’s screwed Garrett.”

“What! How are you still friends?”

“
Me and G really aren’t friends. We’re civil when he’s in town, but as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, Garrett Broussard is kind of a douche. His big-ass ego makes him hard to deal with sometimes. Him and Dixie can do whatever they want.” Mason glanced at me. “Like I said, me and her and done.”

“
Sorry about the way I acted this morning,” I said.

“Don’t sweat it. Dixie’s a button pusher. It’s better to ignore her—makes her madder than anything when she knows nobody’s
payin’ attention to her bullshit.” Mason smiled at me. “But it would have been fun seeing you two roll around in the mud a little bit.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Take a joke,” he laughed.

It felt like Mason
and I hadn’t been on the same page all day. Our timing was seriously off. I looked at him, in his eyes, trying to somehow make the weirdness of the day disappear, and surprisingly, it worked.

Mason jumped down and lifted me off the tailgate. He held me tightly against him. “Y
ou make me crazy,” he murmured, making me smile.

Mason loosened his grip and
looked at me. He moved my hair away from my face. “I’m sorry about last night—
some parts of last night
,” he corrected with a devilish grin. “I shouldn’t have tried to have a conversation with you in the state I was in.”

I laughed, “
Oh, is that what you were trying to do—
have a conversation with me
?”

“That’s what I told myself.” He pulled me close again.
“I think I wanna call a do-over though.”

“What do you want to do-over?”

“Our first kiss,” he said, leaning in. “It shouldn’t of happened that way.”

“I thought our first kiss was
really great,” I confirmed, biting my bottom lip.

“Then you won’t mind if I kiss you again,” he hummed.

“Stupid question,” I muttered just before our lips touched.

I woke up on one of the couches on the back porch, damp with sweat. I sat up wondering how I’d wound up there because I’d remembered falling asleep in Mason’s arms in his truck. I figured my being on the couch meant that he had left.

As I walked inside the house, I noticed an extension cord running from the kitchen to the tent. It was attached to a box fan. They had a fan in the tent after Shelby said I couldn’t use modern plumbing. “Cheaters,” I mumbled.

Speaking of cheaters, I wondered if Garrett and Dixie were out of my temporary bed yet. I sneaked down the hall to his room
, and thankfully, the door was open and they were gone. I stripped the bed and put the sheets and comforter in the washer before getting in the shower.

I wrapped my hair in a towel and put on
the shirt Mason let me borrow the night we went frog giggin’. He hadn’t asked for it back, which was good, because I hadn’t planned on returning it. I’d washed it, so it didn’t smell like him anymore, but it represented a part of his history and that meant something.

I walked back into Garrett’s room with my head bent down, towel drying my hair.

“Nice shirt,” Mason said, startling me. He was sitting in the recliner. I tried not to seem too excited to see him, but I was.

“Hey,” I breathed
, fiddling with my hair, trying to slick it down a little, noticing that he’d changed clothes. I figured he’d gone home to clean up and that was how I’d wound up on the couch. My heart beat faster; feeling his arms close around me.

Then I heard Garrett’s voice. “How ‘bout y’all just do it already?”

“If you’d stop interrupting us every five seconds, maybe we would,” I blurted, mad that he’d barged in on us again.

Garrett laughed. “Well, get to it then,” he said and twisted the lock on the door. “Be easy on her, man. Sounds like
it’s been a while for her—oh and Kat, I used up the condoms you had shoved between the mattress and the box spring,” he said, before closing the door. 

“You’re right, Garrett is a douche,” I complained. Mason laughed.

“So, you’re a condom hoarder, huh?” he asked, amusement in his tone. I laughed.
Of all the weird things a person could collect
. “Dana gave them to me. She thought you and I were sleeping together.”

“I wonder what gave her that idea,” he smiled.
I had—the day I tried to show up Dixie by announcing that Mason had spent the night in my room.

“Get dressed,” Mason said and unlocked the door and left.

I put on a pair of cuffed denim shorts and a peach crocheted cap sleeve top, and went back to the bathroom to dry my hair and put on a little makeup. Mason was sitting on the couch waiting for me when I came out.

“You look great,” he said.

“Thanks,” I smiled. “So do you.” He was wearing khaki cargo shorts, a white, cotton polo shirt, and his LSU hat of course. He could have been wearing a paper sack and still would have been deliciously handsome.