Not a Reunion

Chapter 26

Mason

Just as I am about to get lost in my own mind, I hear footsteps approaching me. I turned around to find that the woman with whom I came here was walking toward me. As she gets closer to me, I find that her face is contorted with a lot of feelings.

I feel myself walking toward her as well, and before I can think twice about it, I'm walking toward her. I'm about to hold out her hands and slip them onto her face to get a good look at her, but I cannot. Thea takes a step back when she sees how close I had gotten and the fact that I had bent my knees to get to her face level.

She is surprised that I was about to touch her, as am I. I'm not convinced to do that, and there was no way that would've been a smart choice. I step back from her and then look at her face, trying to see it all clearly. The makeup she put on today was falling off her eyes and dripping down her cheek bones. Her face was also red, a sign that she was either angry or had cried.

I think it's the latter, because she looks sad. I can take one look at her and see that she did talk to her mom.

"Oh my God, Thea," I say when my initial reaction still plays out. "You look awful."

Thea almost cracks a smear when she pushes her hair out of her eyes. "Thank you, Mason. That's nice of you to say to a woman."

I don't react to her scarcity and say, "No, no. You look like you have been through it. What? Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she whispers, and then opens her mouth to say more. But then she shuts her mouth and then looks past my arm and toward the houses behind me. She studies it for a second before turning her attention back to me and saying, "You didn't go in there."

"Yes, I did," I answer her.

She holds my eyes for a moment before she shakes her head and says, "Liar. You didn't go in there."

I didn't go inside, but there was no way that I wanted to go. I didn't think I could do it. I had walked around our neighborhood for an hour, and yet I couldn't get myself to do it. There was no way I would be able to go up the stairs and into my house. That wasn't a possibility.

Thea only raises an eyebrow and calls me out on my lie. "You're lying," she says, and when I go to shake my head again, she only adds, "I can see it on your face."

"What's on my face?" I ask, confused about what emotion I could be showing right now.

"Nothing," Thea says, and when she cracks a smile, she says, "But you should confirm that you are in fact lying."

"Hey," I say, playing serious as I turn my attention fully to her. "We should go home and talk about what happened with you and your mom."

"Nice try," she says with a scoff as she crosses her hands across her chest. Then she points back at me with her chin and says, "You are going in there, no matter if you want to or not."

"Well, that's not fair," I say with a frown.

She only rolls her eyes at me and says, "Yeah, well, you forced me to talk to my mom."

"That's because you wanted to talk to her already!" I exclaimed with a quirk of my eye. I was doing this, forcing her to do things because I knew Thea had wanted to do them in the first place. But she wasn't going to be doing it, so I had to force her.

"Yeah, but you want to see your parents too," Thea retorts, and I shake my head.

I had made peace with the fact that I wasn't going to see my parents again. I had said my goodbyes to them six years ago, and I wasn't interested in being reacquainted with them now. That was the last thing I wanted to do.