When the Music Stops (Mason Brothers Book #2)

Chapter 39

JOLIE

After our dinner, Parker and I worked together on doing the dishes and got everything put away. We did one more sake bomb and sealed it with a kiss. After we were finished, we headed into the living room. 

“Oh, before we sit down I want to show you. I’ll be right back.” I take a seat up on the couch and curl my legs up under my body. Parker came back in with a large box and set it down on the coffee table and opened the box, pulling out a few pictures.

“What are these?”

“I wanted to show you a part of my childhood. I know we don’t talk about it that much, but I don’t know, just thought maybe you’d want to learn more about me.”

“Of course, I want to learn more about you. Does this mean I get to see pictures of Baby Parker?” I ask with giddiness.

“Well, I’m sure Mom would be more than happy to show you those, but I thought we could start with my wrestling stuff.”

“You wrestled?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? You seem to be very impressed with my wrestling skills if I’m not wrong,” he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

“If that is the kind of wrestling we’re talking about, I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

He laughs and sits back with a scrapbook that I’m guessing Lydia put together, “This was my first tournament.”

I look at all of the pictures on the first page, “Whoa, you’re so little. How old were you?”

“I was 10 in this picture, but I started learning how to wrestle when I was about 8. My mom put me in one of those summer camps the high school coaches put on. I did that for a couple of summers and then put me into peewee wrestling.”

“Were you any good?”

“Of course, I was the best,” he gloats.

I nudge him with my shoulder and he sneaks a kiss on my temple, “I’m serious!”

“At this tournament, I didn’t even place, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever and I wanted to do it forever.”

“That’s so cute. Did you ever win a tournament?”

Parker shakes his head, “Not the first few that I competed in, but finally I got first place the next year at this tournament.”

He reaches forward and pulls a trophy out of the box and hands it to me. I rub my finger over the nameplate, “Parker Mason 1st Place.”

“Did your parents keep all of these?”

“My mom is such a hoarder. She made these scrapbooks, but I kept the trophies in my room until I moved out.”

We flip through the book and he tells me all about the different tournaments and what he remembers about the matches. There are even pictures of him and his brothers and little Mel, more often than not making faces at the camera. We stopped when we got to the page titled “Freshman Year.”

“So finally in high school, we had teams through the schools. It was pretty cool at first because we didn’t need to travel all over for practice and training. This was my coach. Coach Jeb, he was a hard ass, but I wanted to do everything right for him, ya know?”

“I get it. Hero complex with those we look up to is very normal.”

“Yeah, totally.” Parker pauses and then continues, “You know how it works with weight classes?”