Not a Reunion

Chapter 18

Thea

Mason and I both got out of Natalie's room a few moments later. Mason has to tell me something; I can see it written all over his face. He keeps glancing at me as we walk, as if he is scared of asking me something. But I'm tired and do not care as much about what he has to say. I just want to go to sleep.

Today has been a complete failure. I felt like a horrible daughter as I started to berate my mom in the morning, trying to get her to cooperate with me. The way I spoke to her, as though I had zero patience for her, left me in a sour mood. I didn't want to be mean to my mom; I didn't want to feel as though I was judging her. I should feel like I wanted to help her, not anything else. That wasn't good of me to be thinking about it on my mom's part and on my part.

I sigh as I turn to Mason completely, my body blocking the exit for the staircase. Pointing at him with my chin, I ask, "So, what's up?"

"Huh?" Mason answers, his eyes widening as if he didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe he was too into his head and wasn't expecting me to say anything to him. Once he catches my eye, his senses come back to him, and he says, "Well, I guess there is something I need to tell you."

"What is it?" I ask him, not feeling like beating around the bush. I just wanted a straight-forward answer because I wasn't getting it from the people I loved. I wasn't getting a slightly forward answer from my mom, who kept dodging my questions, making me not want to even ask her about it. I also wasn't getting anything from Liam, the guy who used to text me every hour. He didn't text me the whole day, even though I had texted him to check in on him.

I wasn't sure if he was super busy answering my text or if he just didn't want to answer. The second part shouldn't ever be a concern for a person who was going to marry her fiance, but I was. It didn't used to be a concern, but the way he has been distant with me at home made me wonder if it was true. I didn't know what was wrong with our relationship; we haven't had any problems between us. That was the scary part—the part where I didn't know what I was doing wrong.

If I didn't know the reason for our relationship suddenly falling apart, then how could I fix it? I wanted to be able to find the reason why I hadn't had a full conversation with Liam in the last three weeks. If I were being honest, it hurt to be around him, but for some, I felt as though I was the one constantly trying to make an effort to speak to him. And when he doesn't speak to me, I feel awkward; I feel as though I want to crawl into my own skin and hide away.

I didn't know if this was a normal thing to be going through in a relationship—a patch that we had to work through—but I knew that if it was, I'd go through it. Liam and I would go through this, whatever it was.

Mason places a hand in his hair and doesn't look at me but rather past my shoulder when he says, "I don't have a place to stay tonight."

I wasn't expecting that, even though I didn't have any expectations regarding him right now. I wasn't able to think about Mason and all the problems that were assessed when speaking of him. I was too busy to think about Mason. despite the fact that thinking about Mason just makes me so angry. I knew that I couldn't afford that right now.

"Um," I say, my eyebrows furrowing as I think about how to address this. "You couldn't book a hotel?"

"No," Mason answers, licking his lips as he looks back at me. I only give him a quizzical expression, to which he says, "Well, I tried five hotels in this town, but none of them had an empty room."

"Why not?"

"I was thinking that it could be because it's a holiday weekend." Mason says it in a questioning tone and then gives me a shrug. "I don't know. But I know that I wasn't able to secure a room."