the first place.
Mason hadn’t been back to Summerville in
four years, not since the night he asked Lark to marry him, then
ran off to New York City to do his residency at some hospital in
Queens the very next morning. He had been offered a residency in
Atlanta, only an hour away, and he’d promised to take it. To take
it, and to take Lark with him when he left Summerville. They’d
planned to get an apartment and Lark was going to get a job cooking
at an amazing restaurant and Mason was going to start saving the
world, one family practice patient at a time, and after three years
of dating, they were finally going to live together.
Finally live together, and do all those
other boyfriend-girlfriend things they’d never done because Lark
was waiting for marriage, and Mason was deathly afraid of saying “I
do.”
By the time Mason turned sixteen, his mother
had been married eight times. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday,
she had left town with husband number nine and Mason went to live
with his Uncle Parker, a man who made it clear he wasn’t thrilled
to be saddled with his sister’s kid. Mason blamed his mom—and the
ridiculous, outdated, backward institution of marriage—for the
roughest years of his childhood.
Lark had known how he felt about marriage.
She should have been suspicious the second he dropped down on one
knee.
Instead, she had wept with happiness,
slipped the ring on her finger, and stayed up half the night
calling everyone she knew, telling them the happy news.
But instead of coming by her parents’ house
for Saturday brunch the next morning to celebrate the engagement,
Mason had run for it, leaving Lark to explain that all her giddy
“I’m getting married” phone calls had been a mistake.
A mistake.
Like leaving the kitchen.
Like heading for the dance floor.
Like getting close enough to see Mason’s
blue eyes flash when he spotted her across the lawn, frozen like a
deer in the headlights.
***
“ Betting on You” by Jessie
Evans is available now.
Mason hadn’t been back to Summerville in
four years, not since the night he asked Lark to marry him, then
ran off to New York City to do his residency at some hospital in
Queens the very next morning. He had been offered a residency in
Atlanta, only an hour away, and he’d promised to take it. To take
it, and to take Lark with him when he left Summerville. They’d
planned to get an apartment and Lark was going to get a job cooking
at an amazing restaurant and Mason was going to start saving the
world, one family practice patient at a time, and after three years
of dating, they were finally going to live together.
Finally live together, and do all those
other boyfriend-girlfriend things they’d never done because Lark
was waiting for marriage, and Mason was deathly afraid of saying “I
do.”
By the time Mason turned sixteen, his mother
had been married eight times. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday,
she had left town with husband number nine and Mason went to live
with his Uncle Parker, a man who made it clear he wasn’t thrilled
to be saddled with his sister’s kid. Mason blamed his mom—and the
ridiculous, outdated, backward institution of marriage—for the
roughest years of his childhood.
Lark had known how he felt about marriage.
She should have been suspicious the second he dropped down on one
knee.
Instead, she had wept with happiness,
slipped the ring on her finger, and stayed up half the night
calling everyone she knew, telling them the happy news.
But instead of coming by her parents’ house
for Saturday brunch the next morning to celebrate the engagement,
Mason had run for it, leaving Lark to explain that all her giddy
“I’m getting married” phone calls had been a mistake.
A mistake.
Like leaving the kitchen.
Like heading for the dance floor.
Like getting close enough to see Mason’s
blue eyes flash when he spotted her across the lawn, frozen like a
deer in the headlights.
***
“ Betting on You” by Jessie
Evans is available now.
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