Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE “EX” FACTOR – “It’s not you, it’s me.” But what if it is you?

I t wasn’t Mason’s first time tagging along for dress shopping, but it was definitely the first time it was fun. And not just because there was champagne.

Watching Sawyer strut in and out in the ones she felt best in, the shimmies and shakes she’d do for him from when Celia wasn’t looking, the way he wanted to hide her in his coat when he could tell she was self-conscious in one.

He hated that she’d turned their shopping trip into a list item, like it was all there was between them.

He’d spent half an hour being frustrated with Sawyer and then the past few days being mad at himself. He’d picked up his phone to call her a million times, shoving it between the couch cushions before he could hit dial. He wanted to apologize, ask to rewind, go back to how things were before, but there was no going back for him. He thought he could do it. Wait for her. But feeling about her the way he did and having her want nothing but sex had gutted him.

They’d gone to IKEA to ruin 500 Days of Summer , but this fight, this feeling, was truly ruining that movie for him. He, too, had fallen for the girl who told him she didn’t want anything serious. But the way he felt about Sawyer—it wasn’t like anything he’d felt before. He didn’t care about fancy yacht dates or tree farms or ice skating under twinkly lights, he just wanted her. Maybe their list was working. Maybe he was changing. But maybe… he just didn’t get to be different with her. The thought didn’t sit right with him. Maybe their list wasn’t working, because he couldn’t quite let go of the idea that all of this had to mean something. But he didn’t know what else he could do about it either.

Mason hadn’t meant to fall for her—but now that he had, he couldn’t pretend things were casual for him. It felt like lying. It made him feel cheap. He wanted someone to care back, to want him as much as he wanted them. Was that too much to ask? What was it about him that made him so easy to stay detached from?

He knew he’d done the right thing, but that didn’t mean he felt good about it. He felt like he’d broken her trust by doing the one thing he said he wouldn’t, but he couldn’t keep pretending they were just friends. The thing was… the more he thought about it—and he thought about it a lot , no matter how he tried to distract himself—he didn’t think she thought of them as friends either.

Or… was he just seeing what he wanted to see? Whether she had feelings for him or not, if she didn’t want more, he could accept that. He respected her boundaries, but if they were going to stay friends— just friends —he needed to set a few of his own.

With a sigh, he pulled the script on his coffee table into his lap. Twirling the blue pen in his hand, he tried to pick back up where he left off, but he’d lost the thread of the scene. He’d given his agent the go-ahead to notify Diagnostics that season six would be his final season—after the New Year, of course. He didn’t want to spend the entirety of the New Year’s Eve party explaining where he was going and why. But ever since he’d done it, and even though he knew it was the right call, he felt exposed. Even more exposed than when the tabloids had been writing lies about him. He felt raw, like he’d shed a skin and this new one hadn’t quite toughened yet. Reading the script for the season six premiere made him feel like a fraud, and reading about Dr. Santiago and Nurse Lia’s breakup over a simple miscommunication made him want to throw the script at the wall. He knew they had to write Kara out somehow, but this was just bad writing, and the showrunner’s not-so-secret dislike for Kara was practically jumping off the page.

Tossing the script back onto the coffee table, Mason let his head fall back against the couch. This was the whole point, wasn’t it? Things would be different at Guiding Light. They could be the change the industry so desperately needed. Granted, they were a small company, and they couldn’t change everything, but it felt good, it felt right that they were doing something, trying.

Mason felt like he’d been trying for years. Trying to be a better son, better actor, better boyfriend. Sure, his life wasn’t terrible by any means, but he thought he’d be happy by now. He kept thinking if he got this role, or made his partner happy, or even got some rare Moira West praise, that he’d finally feel content, and yet… he was still searching. What the fuck was he doing wrong? Was it him?

And how did he fix things with Sawyer? Somehow, his thoughts always spiraled downward back to her.

He had no fucking idea what to do. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to race across town and explain himself better. That, yes, he was done with their list because he didn’t think he could stop being a romantic any more than she could stop being a romance writer. And he hoped Luis was right, that once the list—their obligations to each other—was off the table, she’d want to be with him anyway. He didn’t care if it was irrational or that he was leaving in a few months: this thing with Sawyer felt different in a way he couldn’t explain, and it was killing him not to know if she felt it, too. If she’d let herself feel it.

He had to get out of his own head.

Pulling his phone out from between the couch cushions, he pulled up Alissa’s contact and hit dial.

“Guiding Light Productions, Alissa Moreno speaking,” she said crisply.

A smile spread over his face, the muscles in his face aching. He hadn’t smiled in days. “Um, yes, hi,” he simpered. “I was hoping you might be hiring.”

Alissa laughed on the other end of the line. “I am so excited for the announcement to go live.”

He loosed a long sigh. “I’m excited for it to all be in the open.” He’d already filled her in on the disaster reveal at Christmas and the ensuing conversation with his mother that had somehow been more about her than him. “And I promise no more tabloids for the next few days.”

Alissa scoffed. “Fuck ’em. It never wavered my belief in you or my desire to have you on board. I am glad they seem to be leaving you alone, though. I want you to be able to enjoy this moment.”

They’d been working toward this for years, but he couldn’t help feeling like it was happening all at once. The Guiding Light announcement would go live a week into the New Year. He hoped he was up for the job of managing it all. It was easily the most responsibility he’d ever had on a production, and he spent more time than he’d admit daydreaming about call sheets and schedules and whom he’d hit up first for investor calls.

Oblivious to his inner turmoil, Alissa plowed on. “I just signed off on the social media graphics for the announcement. You have impeccable timing. I also—” The line went silent for a moment, the whoosh of an email sending the only sound. “Just sent you a pitch deck. Potential first project.”

Mason switched his phone to speaker so he could open the email that had just ding ed into his inbox. “I thought we already had that lined up.”

Alissa hummed noncommittally. “Me, too. But now I’m thinking it feels more like a second project, and we should go a little more mainstream for the first one before going down Artsy Fartsy Lane.”

“Trust your gut, Alissa. The first script was perfect,” he reassured her. And he meant it. He’d read it one sitting, staying up well into the night to finish it.

She sighed. “You may be right, but it’s your fault I’m questioning this.”

Mason blinked. “My fault?”

“Yes,” she groaned. “I tried to get the rights for that book you sent me, and their agent auto-rejected me.”

“What?” Mason asked hollowly, a ringing starting in his ears.

“Yeah, apparently the author won’t sell her rights, so thanks for the tip, but it might be a no-go. I sent her agent another email requesting an audience with the author. It would be the perfect first project for Guiding Light. As soon as I read it, it felt like everything was falling into place. It’s everything we stand for. Written by a woman, queer rep from a queer author, would have mass appeal as a rom-com, but also there’s so much depth and weight and realness that I could see it sweeping at Sundance—which I know we’re not supposed to talk about, but… I just felt like I could see the future of Guiding Light and that was our jumping-off point to doing everything we wanna do.”

Mason felt like an ice bucket had been dumped over his head. “You requested the rights for Why We’re Not Together ?”

Alissa was silent for a moment, her confusion palpable on the other end of the line. “Yeah? Isn’t that why you sent it to me?”

Mason ran a hand over his face. It was why he’d sent it to her. It would be a perfect debut project, but that was before everything, before he really knew Sawyer. He hadn’t thought about it in so long, hadn’t realized Alissa had been thinking about it for the past month—not just thinking, working on it. “Yeah, I did. I just… I know her—the author.”

“What?” Alissa screeched. “Put me in touch with her! I know I can convince her if I could only—”

“I can’t,” Mason said numbly. The following silence on the line was heavy. “We’re… not really speaking right now.”

“I see,” Alissa said slowly. He could practically feel her words welling up behind a dam, threatening to burst free. “Mason, I swear to God. If your dick is what’s ruining this for me—”

A laugh burst out of him, flat and humorless. “My dick wasn’t the problem. My emotions were.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, that—that really sucks, actually.”

“It’s fine,” he sighed heavily, not feeling fine in the slightest. “It’s just fresh. And honestly, I’m sorry. First the tabloids delaying the announcement and now this—”

“Mason—” She cut him off. “I love you, but this one’s not about you.”

He nodded. “She had a bad experience with her first book’s adaptation.” He could feel Alissa’s attention sharpen on the other end of the line.

“How so?”

He did his best to relay what little Sawyer shared, and he knew what Alissa was thinking—all the ways Guiding Light would be different from that big studio. He could already visualize the PowerPoint Alissa would put together at four in the morning when her hunger for this project kept her awake. When he finished, however, instead of spitting out all the reasons Sawyer was wrong, Alissa was quiet.

“Now tell me about her.”

And just like that, the whole story came tumbling out of him. After their fight outside Celia’s, he’d contemplated calling Luis and telling him what happened, but he hadn’t been ready for anyone else’s opinions. But between work and Sawyer and now this unexpected overlap between work and Sawyer, he needed to let it all out. By the time he finished, he felt wrung out but lighter. “I don’t know how I keep ending up here. Even while trying to unlearn this pattern, I repeated it.”

Alissa went silent for a beat. “Have you considered Why We’re Not Together –ing yourself?”

“Did you really just make that a verb?”

“I did. It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

He heard the sound of a door slamming on her end of the line, Alissa’s girlfriend screaming something lewd in the background that he pretended not to hear. He coughed to cover his laugh. “I’ll let you go. Sounds like you’ve got a date night to get to.”

Alissa giggled on the other end of the line. “I do. I love you. Thank you for calling.”

Before he could warn her not to make any further moves on Sawyer’s film rights, she’d already hung up. He didn’t want to interrupt her evening, so he hit the side of his phone to make it go black, making a mental note to mention it the next time they spoke.

He exhaled heavily, his head drooping back onto the couch cushions. He was happy for Alissa, but he couldn’t help the ugly twinge of jealousy. He wanted someone to celebrate the wins with.

He dragged the script back onto his lap, clicking his pen purposefully. Only, he couldn’t stop thinking about Alissa’s last question. Sawyer had asked him nearly the same thing after the tree farm. Was John Cusack on to something? Did his exes have the answer to why his relationships never lasted?

He scrolled through his phone, summoning up the same name he’d pulled up that day in Sawyer’s apartment. Only, this time, there was no Sawyer to stop him from hitting dial. The phone rang twice before connecting. He clutched a pillow to his chest for moral support.

“Hello?”

What he was doing finally sank in, and he blinked down at the phone in horror, mouth open but no words coming out. In hindsight, he was grateful he hadn’t done this in front of Sawyer. He envisioned her smirking at him from the other side of the couch, mouthing, Smooth . He waved the visual away.

“Mason?”

The sound of his own name jerked him out of his stupor. “Hi!” he said a little too brightly. “Kara, how are you?”

“I’m good,” she replied, still clearly confused. “How are you?”

Clearing his throat, Mason leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I’m great,” he lied. “How are you?” His eyes fluttered shut as he realized he’d already asked that.

On the other end of the line, Kara laughed softly. “Good to know I’m not the only one nervous about the party tomorrow. I wanted to call you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.” She took a steadying breath. “That wasn’t how I wanted people— you —to find out about the engagement.”

“Congrats, by the way.” He meant it. They’d been friends for years before dating. As lost as he felt right now, he wasn’t so lost that someone else’s happiness made him bitter.

“Thank you. And you should know, I’m bringing Peter to the party. If I have to spend my New Year’s with our shit boss, I’m not going solo.”

He knew exactly why she was telling him.

His mother’s advice rang in his ears.

You should be seen out with someone new, dear.

It pained him to admit he’d unwittingly planned to follow his mother’s advice. But damn it, she was right. Facing Kara again—with her man in tow—would be easier for everyone if he had a date of his own. It was why he’d initially invited Sawyer, but he’d been so hung up on missing Sawyer that he’d completely forgotten about seeing Kara. Every eye in the room would be on them to see how they behaved, a litmus test for how they’d be around each other when filming resumed.

“I’m bringing someone, too.” Well, he hoped that was still true. “But that wasn’t why I called.”

The quiet hum on Kara’s end of the line seemed to ask, So why are you calling?

“Well, I guess, it kinda is why I’m calling. I think I’m bringing someone. I hope, at least,” he laughed humorlessly. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, trying to figure out what I keep getting wrong. And I figured if anyone could tell me, it’d be you.”

He resisted the urge to hide his face in embarrassment. He had grossly underestimated how uncomfortable this would be. Neither High Fidelity nor Why We’re Not Together had prepared him for this.

“Oh,” Kara said awkwardly. “Mason, you were a great boyfriend.”

“Sorry,” he sighed. “I know this is weird. I’m not calling to win you back, or make you feel bad, I just—I try so hard to do everything right, but clearly I’m missing something. I want to know what I’m doing wrong so I can stop fucking it up.” He laughed hollowly, hoping the manic tinge to it didn’t translate.

Kara exhaled heavily on the other end of the line. “Okay,” she said, as if hyping herself up.

Mason sat up straighter.

“It’s that you do try so hard. Before we dated, I thought, ‘ God , if I could just find a man like that. One who wasn’t playing games, wanted to commit, wasn’t scared to talk about a future.’ And then, when we did date—”

She took a steadying breath on the other end of the line. “You were so goddamn perfect,” she laughed. “Our first date was a fairy tale, except you were the idyllic Disney prince and I was the slightly terrifying Hans Christian Andersen version. You were doing everything I thought I wanted, but it’s like, as soon as we started dating, you stopped being my best friend who I decompressed with in the makeup trailer, and started playing the role of the perfect boyfriend. I just wanted Mason. I thought, maybe it’s a growing pain of our relationship changing, but then you told me you loved me and wanted to come to LA with me, and I felt like I knew you less than ever, and—I panicked. It was so much so fast. I thought taking a break while I was in LA would shake us out of it, but… then I met Peter, and from the jump he was so open. Everything that was missing with us was just there , effortlessly. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Mason nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. It had been the same for him with Sawyer. Effortless. And he’d still fucked it up.

His brain whirred with everything she said, unsure what to do with the information.

Kara let out one of the high-pitched laughs she only did when she was nervous. “I feel like a dick. It’s—you didn’t do anything wrong, but that was kinda it. I didn’t want media-darling, hopeless-romantic Mason West. I just wanted my friend.”

He nodded numbly. “I’m sorry.”

She laughed. “Mason, I’m not mad. You’re the only ex I still consider a friend. We were just better as friends. You’re gonna find someone you can be your whole self with, and she’s going to be so fucking lucky to be with someone who has such a big heart and wants to go above and beyond. But… don’t rush it. Give her time before dropping the L-word,” she laughed. “Happily ever after is a journey, not a destination.”

He laughed with her, but it was forced. He was fairly certain he’d already found that person.

They chatted a bit more, but as they talked, Mason could feel how he was holding back. And yes, maybe it was because this was the first time they’d really talked since breaking up (again), so he had no business diving deep right now. But now that she’d pointed it out, he realized it was true. He’d grown up under the thumb of Moira West, who coached him how to navigate the public eye, how to be genuine while also maintaining a level of privacy. Had he let that infiltrate his private life? He always blamed his transient lifestyle for the end of most of his relationships, but maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe he was so easy to leave because he’d never let them in in the first place.

He thought he’d been doing all the right things, anything to make them happy. He hadn’t wanted to burden anyone with his problems. He didn’t realize that in doing so, he was hurting not only himself, but their relationship. But the more he thought about it, his thoughts inevitably drifted back to Sawyer.

Sawyer, whom he’d let in more than anyone else, because they were never supposed to be anything more than friends. And yet, he’d fallen for her in a way he’d never expected, felt more than he had with anyone before, because he’d let her all the way in. And the irony was, she might actually—finally—hold up her end of their bargain, and ruin him.