Where We Left Off (16 page)

Chapter 27

New Year’s day had come and gone, as did the blistering snow and cold winds of winter.  Mason hadn’t spoken to Sydney in months, but not a day had gone by where he wasn’t thinking about her.  He tried his best to find other things to occupy his mind, but mostly he work.  He buried himself in paperwork and acquisitions and didn’t spend a lot of time talking to anyone that wasn’t necessary for a purchase of property or development of land.  Whether he admitted it or not, he’d changed.  Even his secretaries, who might previously have worn a skirt slightly too high or a blouse that showed slightly too much knowing it would usually catch his eye, found that he paid them no attention; instead, he would walk right past them without a glance.  Apart from cordial conversation, it was the same every single day except Friday.  No one really knew where he would go, not even Jackson.  At 11:45, like clockwork, Mason would shut down his computer, close his door, and walk right out of the building.  From there, he did the only thing that allowed him to clear his mind without the distractions of people, of places, of any thing.  He would go home, get into the shower, throw on a pair of old jeans, a shirt, his black boots and leather jacket, hop on his motorcycle, and just ride. 

Mason had changed a lot of things after the holidays had passed.  The motorcycle that he rode wasn’t the same as the one he took Sydney out on.  About a month previously he had sold his sports bike and purchased a different type; it was less sporty and less youthful as some would say, one that didn’t focus so much on speed as just riding.  He cruised, slowing everything down, almost as if he had a new appreciation for the little things in life.

It was almost perfect weather.  It wasn’t too hot or too cold; the air was just right.  He stopped off at a new restaurant along the riverfront called Thaibon.  The scenery was beautiful and more relaxing than he’d seen in a while.  Outside of the restaurant there were tables behind a thin white gate just off the sidewalk separating the diners from the water.  It was relaxing just sitting and hearing the waves rush to the shore. 

The waitress sat him at a table not too far from the sidewalk.  There was a young couple sitting a few tables over from him that he couldn’t help but notice.  The man was dressed in a crisp white shirt and blue tie with his suit jacket neatly folded on the chair beside him, clearly on a break from work. She, assumed to be his wife by the ring on her finger, was in a light summer dress as if she had just come from home.  By the looks of their plates they had been there for a while.

“Peter, are you going to talk on your phone the entire time?” Mason overheard the woman say.

Peter continued, waving her off and ignoring her completely.  She clearly gave up expecting any type of conversation with him, staring off into the sun, waiting patiently for this lunch or whatever it was to be over.  Mason shook his head, knowing Peter would eventually regret treating her that way. 
He’ll miss her when she’s gone,
he laughed lightly under his breath, thinking of his own mistakes with Sydney.

The waitress brought his food over and placed it on the table.  It was still pretty early so he ordered light - a Thai chicken salad and a bottle of spring water.  He poured dressing over the salad, stirring it together with his knife and fork.  As the wind blew, causing a light whistle past his ear, he heard a familiar voice calling his name as if they weren’t sure it was really him.  He looked around and his eyes beheld a woman he’d recognized but hadn’t seen in some time, almost six or seven months by the look of her stomach, which was as round as a basketball.  It was Erika. 

“You guys go ahead; I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes,” she said to a few of her girlfriends she had come out to lunch with.

Mason stood up from the table and greeted her with a hug as she twisted and hauled her way in between the few tables outside.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” Erika asked, smiling and happy to see him.

“I actually just stopped to grab a quick bite to eat before heading back home. Look at you!” he said, noticing her round stomach poking all the way out through her shirt. “How far along are you now?  Please, sit down,” he offered.

He pulled out a chair and watched her sit down the best way she could. “I am seven months.”

“Wow!” he gasped. “You are huge,” he added jokingly.

“Thanks a lot,” she laughed.

Erika stayed at the table with Mason and talked for a while.  He treated her to lunch and the two spent the time catching up.  There were a number of awkward moments, but they seemed to work through them just fine. 

“It’s been a while,” he said, “you know…since.”

“Yeah, it has been,” she agreed.

“So…how do you feel?”

“I feel pretty good,” she answered.

She noticed his awkward silence and knew exactly where it was coming from.  “I know this is weird for you.  You don’t have to say it.  I almost wish I just kept it to myself sometimes,” she timidly chuckled. 

Taking a bite of the bread that came with his salad, he asked, “How’s Chris doing with all this?”

“Chris and I are really good right now.  The baby, he’s good.  We’re all…really good.”

Until that moment he had forgotten she was having a boy.  He smiled and laughed off the realization that she hadn’t told Chris anything about the pregnancy, about him not being the father.  “So have you two thought of any names yet?

She smiled, “I have!”

“And?”

“I’m going to call him James.”

“James?” he repeated before drinking his water.  “That’s interesting; my father’s name was James – James David Everett.”

“I know,” she inserted modestly, as though her decision to name him that was intentional.

By the look on her face he could clearly see it was. 

He placed his glass down onto the table and shook his head in confusion. “Why would you do that?” he asked her. 

Mason frowned, trying to understand what seemed incomprehensible. His voice carried a tone of worry, not only about her decision to name the baby after his father, but in some part the decision to continue with the pregnancy at all given the circumstances. 

Embarrassed and hesitant to answer, she looked around and settled with ease, knowing their conversation hadn’t extended beyond the two of them.

“I know you think it’s crazy but it’s not…”

“Erika, you can’t be serious –”

“Just…listen to me for a second.”

She took a deep breath and put her head down, gathering her words.  “Mason… you are, and have always been, one of the best men I have ever known. And I’m having a baby –
your
baby. 
Your
son.”

“Yeah, but Erika–”

“Wait,” she cut him off again. “I know.  I’m getting married to Chris, who is also a really good man, and I love him so much and he doesn’t know.  And I will never tell him. So regardless of how this baby got here, he is Chris’ son.  Not yours.” 

“You know what you just said makes absolutely no sense, right?”

At that moment, she realized she was sounding extremely indecisive.  She moved her eyes from Mason and looked down at the ground, feeling more embarrassed than she had expected.

She took a deep breath and brought her eyes to his.  “I named him James because I couldn’t name him Mason.” 

Though he could sense her sincerity, he was still confused.  “I still don’t understand why you would do that, why you would even want to do that.”

Because one day,
he’ll know
, whether it’s when he leans to ride a bike, or kisses a girl for the first time, or when he graduates high school.  One day he’ll know.  And when that day comes he will also know that his father, his
real
father, was a beautiful, strong, intelligent man, the only one that I have every truly loved with everything in me.”

He fell back in his chair, overwhelmed by her words.  He didn’t expect to hear that, not from her.  Their relationship had always been physical, just sex, as far as he knew.  Regardless, he realized that even if she had shown him in some kind of way, or even told him, he would never have noticed.

“You never told me that was how you felt,” he uttered.

She shook her head with mild laughter, “We never really did much talking,” she bashfully responded.

“And Chris?” he asked.

The corner of her mouth rose in a smile. “Chris was what was
real
.  He was to me what I needed, when I needed it, and became everything that I knew I could never have with you.”

“But Erika, you never told me.”

“I never told him either.  But if I had told you, would it have really made a difference?  You and I both knew we would never be anything more than what we were.”

She was right. He smiled contently. 
She was right.

They didn’t stay for too much longer, but they talked for the time they did.  The conversation between them was a lot lighter, and in some ways settling.  The friends she had come in with had already finished eating their food and from the looks on their faces they were ready to go.  When they reached the front of the restaurant she hugged him to say a final goodbye and placed a kiss on his cheek. 

“You take care of yourself, Mason,” she said, sliding her hand to his chest.

“You too,” he responded softly

He watched her walk away, pondering everything she had said, and his life in general.  “I get it,” he yelled out, catching her attention only a few steps ahead of him.  “This is
his
son… because it has to be.  But if he ever needs anything – I don’t care what, when, or why - he’ll have it,” Mason promised.

She smiled and walked away.

Chapter 28

The rest of the day was uneventful, and so was the weekend.  Outside of a few errands and stops, each day ran routinely.  On Saturday Mason would clean his house, water his lawn, drop off and pick up his laundry and dry cleaning from the cleaners, order in, and watch a movie.  On Sunday, if the weather permitted, he would pull out and wash his car and his motorcycle while the majority of his neighbors were leaving for church; then, he would go to the gym for a few hours, come back home, order out, and watch television.  He didn’t spend a lot of time around people and he hadn’t been back to the Avenue or any other nightclub or lounge at all.  Mason just kept to himself.  As the start of the week approached, he repeated the same process all over again. 

Walking into work was different for Mason the next morning, mainly because of all that had transpired with Erika over the weekend.  He was sitting at his desk with his chair slightly turned to the wall, finishing up a phone call, when Jackson walked into his office.  His expression was confused, and by the way he paced with his hands on his hip forcing back the breast of his suit jacket, Mason knew exactly what it was about. 

He finished up the call and stepped out from behind his desk.  “Sorry about that, I was on with Earl from the bank.”

“Yeah, that’s actually why I’m here.”

“About Earl?”

“No, the bank. I just received a call to verify a fifty thousand dollar transfer from our personal discretionary account into a personal account in Dad’s name.”

Hesitant at first, “It’s not in dad’s name,” he insisted.

“According to this fax,
you
opened a personal checking account on Saturday for James Everett and authorized a fifty thousand dollar transfer with two authorized signatures.  Signatures for two people whose names they wouldn’t even tell me when I asked.”

“Jackson, I know it looks crazy, but it’s nothing you need to worry about.”

He tried to deflect the conversation, but Jackson wasn’t buying it.

“Nothing I need to worry about?  Why would you transfer fifty thousand dollars into an account for Dad?  What sense does that make?”

“Jackson, it’s not our father!”

More confused now than when he walked in, “I don’t get it,” he said.

Mason knew he couldn’t
not
tell him. 

He sat along the edge of his desk with his arms folded and lifted his head. “She’s pregnant,” he admitted.

“She who? Sydney?”

“No…Erika.”

“Erika! Where the hell did Erika come from, and what does her being pregnant have to do with you?”

“Jacks, it’s complicated,” he added, trying to calm down what he knew was about to be a heated argument.

“Well un-complicated it for me, Mason, and please don’t forget to explain what fifty thousand dollars from our account has to do with it.” 

Jackson was furious.  He knew Erika and Mason had hooked up in the past, but he had no idea they were still seeing each other.  And Mason not telling him about her being pregnant before now made him think something else was going on.  He thought maybe that was the real reason he and Sydney were no longer together. 

Mason sat down in his chair. “She called me on Christmas Eve and told me she was pregnant,” he began to explain.

“And then what?” Jackson demanded, “Asked you for fifty thousand dollars?”

“Jacks please calm down!”

He got up and closed the door to his office after noticing some of their employees looking at both of them.  “No, she didn’t ask me for the fifty thousand dollars. She didn’t ask me for anything.  She doesn’t even know about this.”

He slammed the transfer authorization papers down on the desk and flopped back down in his chair.  Jackson could see there was something else that he wasn’t saying.

“What else is going on Mason?” he asked with concern.  “I haven’t said anything to you because I know you have other things on your mind, but you haven’t been yourself in a while.” He paused.  “You know you can talk to me.”

He took a few minutes to say anything at all, but Jackson sat and waited patiently until he did.  Mason was the type that either held things in until he became destructive or, if given the right platform which was usually with Jackson he talked his way through it.

             
“You remember Chris?”

             
“Chris… Erika’s boyfriend, Chris?  Yeah, I think I met him at the wedding.”

“Well, they are getting married…and he doesn’t know.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t know?”

“He doesn’t know that the baby she’s having isn’t his, and she wants to keep it that way.”    Mason added after a short pause, “as far as he knows, he’s the father.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I don’t know,” he gasped. “I really don’t know much of anything anymore.”

Jackson was still confused about where the fifty thousand dollars came in.

“So what’s the deal with the account?” he asked.

Mason interlaced his fingers, resting his hands on his desk with his head slightly lower than before.  He felt ashamed and afraid, enough to cause him not to be able to look Jackson in the eye.

“He’s my son.”