The One Thing by Marci Lyn Curtis

of subtext you can only get from a decade of bonding in the backseat of the car during family vacations, and he said, “Of course.
You, on the other hand, should go with dog snot, what with that monstrous birthmark you have on your ass.” This was immediately followed by a scuffle that started with Ben leaping toward
Mason, and ended with laughing, shouting, and wrestling on the kitchen floor.
    “Knock it off, you two,” Mrs. Milton chastised lightly. Wearing a pair of Birkenstocks and a dress that appeared to have been forged from a burlap sack, she stepped into the kitchen,
a half-dozen fabric grocery bags swinging from her arms.
    The two boys scrambled to their feet, looking guilty. “Just goofing off, Mom,” Mason muttered. And then he greeted her with a kiss on the forehead.
    And as Mason slid the grocery bags from her arms, I could see something genuine in his eyes, something sincere. Something that made me question every opinion I’d ever had of him. Something
that seared me with a brief, burning thought:
Mason is a good person.
    I swallowed.
    All of the Miltons were, actually, especially Ben. Whom I was currently taking advantage of. It was painful to admit this, even in my own head—like gravel grinding against the inside of my
skull.
    “Um. Thera?” Ben said. “I think your phone was ringing?”
    I hadn’t even heard it.
    I dragged myself away from my eyesight and down the hallway to check my phone for voice mail. Rounding the corner to Ben’s room, I stood there for a moment—longer than proper,
really—just breathing and trying to collect myself. And then I swung the door shut and slid my hands up the wooden surface, in search of the hook where I’d hung my purse. It was gone,
replaced by a damp towel.
    Strange.
    “Thera,” Ben said with what sounded like a full mouth, his crutches squeaking down the hallway toward me, “you have to try these with ranch. It’s the shit.”
    Thanks to Ben, my eyesight hit the edge of the room and ghosted toward me, bleeding through the walls as he made his way down the hallway.
    I wasn’t in Ben’s room.
    I was in Mason’s room.
    I froze as my vision drifted over the space, toward the wall that separated it from Ben’s room. Though my sight dwindled along the curved outer borders, I could probably still see a good
half of the area.
    And it was unsettling.
    Surprisingly sparse and neat, it reminded me of an adult’s room. There were no piles of dirty laundry. No posters of half-naked girls. No
Sports Illustrated
magazines. The space
was punctuated by three pieces of sturdy-looking mahogany furniture: a squarely made bed, a dresser, and a desk. A photograph of Mason and his father—framed in mahogany, naturally—was
the only thing adorning the walls. From the thousands of pictures scattered all over the house, I knew that dark-haired, dark-eyed Mr. Milton had looked like an older version of Mason, and I knew
that he’d often worn athletic shorts and UConn T-shirts. But none of the pictures I’d seen were like this. The photo had been taken years ago, given Mason’s young age—maybe
three or four years old, tops. Mason was perched on his dad’s lap as they sat on the wooden planks of a pier, bare feet dangling toward the water. Mason grinned at the camera, but his father
was ducked down as he kissed the crown of his son’s head, his emotions shaken up like dice and spilled all over the scene—acceptance, devotion, reverence.
    My eyes blurred with tears and I turned away, took an unsteady breath, and tried to regroup by looking around. All in all, Mason’s room resembled a hotel room: overly tidy and overly
clean. Still, for some reason I could picture him here, curved over a laptop with his brows drawn together in thought and his fingers moving purposefully over the keyboard. I could see him striding
into the room after a shower, towel wrapped around his waist, shoulders dotted with little water droplets, and still-wet hair sticking out