Rock Bay 2 - Letting Go Read Free Page B

that he’d just pass out, change of scenery or not. He’d only been in the city for a few years, but he’d grown to appreciate some of the parts of it. He kind of expected the usual noise of the 45th Street thoroughfare in Seattle, clogged with traffic sometimes even before the sun rose. Instead, he heard birds. Birds . And other than that, it was oddly, disconcertingly, quiet. Part of him did miss the city already, the knowledge that he could walk downstairs and a half a block to a great French bakery, Dick’s drive-in, family owned Thai or Mexican… even his friendly neighborhood gay dive bar with five-dollar mini pitchers filled with all sorts of yummy cocktails. They’d always let him in even though he was clearly underage. He missed all of it already.
    But he’d made the right choice.
Mason realized the city and the bars and the dating scene weren’t going to be what his life was
    about anymore. Not for a while at least. A long while. His career was more important, and he totally wasn’t going to miss the dating drama in Seattle. It was good to be away. It was. Mason sighed.
    He sat up and took in his new bedroom, his first time seeing it other than in the dark or online. It was nice—or it would be, with some TLC. As the top floor in a turn-of-the-century mansion, filled with scarred wood floors and all kinds of funky, angled ceilings, his apartment had charm and whimsy built right in. His landlord had told him he could paint, and he was really excited to get to the hardware store to buy some color for walls that were currently the color of slightly aged skim milk, an unhealthy looking bluish white with watery gray washed around the edges. Yeah, it was kind of gross.
    Mason was just thinking of the perfect pale gold to catch the morning sun when his phone vibrated from the vicinity of his nightstand. He flopped over and reached for the phone, toes pointed in the opposite direction for balance. With a smile, he dragged his mother’s name into the “answer” box on his phone’s touchscreen.
    “Hey, Ma, how are things in the ’Scratch?” “Mason, don’t be disrespectful.” He could tell she was holding in a smile, though. “We’re fine. Your father nearly took his arm off again trying to fix the lawn mower yesterday afternoon.”
“I thought you were going to take the mower down to that repair shop in Auburn when Dad was at work last week.”
    His mother giggled… yeah. Giggled . “I did. That’s why he almost cut his arm off. He wasn’t expecting the thing to actually start.” The giggles turned into outright laughter.
    “You didn’t tell him it was fixed?” Mason was having a hard time not laughing himself. It was a constant battle with his dad, always wanting to do things himself.
“No! He’d kill me for wasting the money.”
    Which was probably true.
“So he thinks that old thing miraculously fixed
itself?”
“I’m not volunteering any information. I’ll let him think whatever makes him happy.”
    “True.” He grinned. “Stubborn old goat.” “Mason! Don’t call your father names.”
He smiled into the phone. “I’ll stop if you do.”
    His mother tsked, but he could tell she was smiling as well. “How was your drive yesterday? Did I pack you enough food?”
    He’d stopped at his parents’ house on the way down south, which was a bit of a stretch, since Enumclaw wasn’t actually on the way to anything except for a few ski resorts.
“Yeah, it was great, Mom. Saved me from buying fast food.”
     
“I can’t believe you moved to Oregon. It’s so far.”
    Mason rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, Ma. There’s only a bridge between me and Washington. I’m not in Egypt. Besides, it was a good job, you know that.”
    “There weren’t any openings at Harborview or Swedish?” Those were two of the big Seattle hospitals where he’d done internships. They were both pretty intense. Harborview even had helicopters airlifting accident victims to the ER. It was too much