Not a Valentine

Chapter 36

I have only two more days until the day of the sleepover, and I wasn't sure if Quincy would be coming or not. I had just been ignoring it as of now. I needed to spend the next two days dealing with my website.

There were only two school days left for the fundraiser and for Valentine's Day. I couldn't believe that two weeks were ending so soon. Time moves so fast, and that scares me. In no time, we are going to be graduating high school. But we can't worry about that right now.

I'm home after spending an hour at school sending out Valentine's. There wasn't anyone else there working with me, but I enjoyed the silence. It made me work better. Once I get home, I head up to my room, where I spend my time doing my homework. For a lot of them. It seemed that teachers wouldn't stop giving work until the end of time.

I roll my eyes as I head to take my shower of the night so I will have enough time to dry my hair before going to sleep. After I'm done with my hair, I place a towel on my head and go downstairs with my phone. I'm about to pull out my phone to text Ranger when I remember that there was someone else in our house today.

"Mase?" I shout out to the rather quiet house. The television was on in the other room, but other than that, there was silence. I make my way to the kitchen, where I hear the soft noise of people working at the stove. Standing by the door, I can see Mason working to make grilled cheese sandwiches for Natalie. That was her favorite meal and the only one she would eat right now when she was tired and cranky.

I knock on the doorframe to get his attention, and it works. Mason holds the back of Harry's head as he turns to me. Harry is propped up on his torso with a tool my mom had found on the internet, so it wasn't unsafe for Mason to be working with him. I still move toward him and stand beside him so I can see my baby brother's head.

"Hi," I say to my brother in a high-pitched voice. I grab for his tiny fingers and wiggle them as I say, "Miss me? I know you did." My brother coos out loud in answer, and I laugh as I place my finger on his cheek. When I poke him, that makes him laugh, so I continue to do it, loving to hear my brother's contagious laughter.

I place a hand on Mason's arm as I continue to bother my little brother, knowing that when he gets older he won't find this funny but annoying later on. I knew that this was the only moment in my life where I would truly be able to annoy Mason and have him enjoy it.

Mason moves his arm away from where I was touching it and says, "You want to take Harry?"

"Yes," I answer, excited at the prospect of being able to hold onto my baby brother. Mason turns off the stove and then turns himself toward me. He places his hands on either side of Harry's waist and then pulls him out of the fabric that was holding him up. He places him in my arm and only lets go when he knows that I'm able to not drop my brother.

I took notice of that and smiled at how much he knew how to take care of kids. I'm holding Harry to my chest when I ask, "You don't have any siblings, do you?"

Mason had already moved on to cutting the grilled cheese into little pieces when he answered, "Yeah." Mason doesn't have any siblings.

I've been trying to find out who the guy who was called Ranger on my phone was. I know it's a long shot for me to just walk around and ask a certain fact about every guy until I get there right now. I knew that it didn't make sense for me to try to figure it out, but I couldn't control it.

I couldn't control the little part in my head that just marked off Mason in my mind that he couldn't be Ranger. Mason couldn't be a Ranger for a multitude of reasons, one of which was the fact that he doesn't have siblings. I could rule him out. So far, I've ruled out almost every guy that I know, except for a few. There were a few where I believed they could really be Ranger, the guy that I liked on my phone.