Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,18
‘Very retro.’
Mason could tell she was stalling about getting out of the car. He’d purposely suggested a movie for tonight’s outing, then kept the car stereo loud on the way home. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation, and talk was all Rina ever wanted to do these days. Talking about feelings. Talking about the future.
How had he let it get this far?
‘We should take a road trip,’ Rina said, turning in her seat to face him. She still hadn’t taken off her seatbelt. ‘Just the two of us. Maybe after Christmas? We could throw some sleeping bags in the back and drive down to Merimbula or something.’
She slid a hand onto Mason’s knee and his eyes bounced to the dashboard. He didn’t want to say he’d already suggested the same thing to Tom and Raf. Camping with Rina honestly hadn’t even crossed his mind.
He knew there was probably something wrong with that, the way he didn’t think about Rina when he wasn’t with her. When he’d picked her up earlier in the night she’d said she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since the weekend, and he’d had to lie and say he felt the same way. Even when he was with her, his mind often drifted to other places while his body responded on autopilot.
Something’s not right with you.
Whenever Rina whispered in his ear about how he made her feel, Mason scanned his own body for a reaction, coming up with nothing more than a numb kind of dread.
It should never have gone further than that September night when Rina found him on the banks of Shallow Reservoir. Mason thought he was alone with half a bottle of his mother’s whisky, not realising Rina had followed him there from the party on Coleman Road after he’d fought with Tom at the bonfire. Their disagreement hadn’t become physical, but Mason still felt bruised; tender with embarrassment. When Rina emerged from the bush track in the moonlight, Mason’s first instinct was to growl at her to go away. They’d known each other since they were kids, though, and she’d always been sweet and harmless. So Mason offered her the whisky bottle as she sat in the sandy dirt beside him, and in return she offered him a hug.
He’d wordlessly leaned into her, suddenly exhausted, sick and tired of overthinking. When Rina surprised him with a kiss on the forehead he glanced up and gave her a weary smile. Next second her lips were smashed up against his, her hands in his hair. Mason decided it was easier to roll with it. He couldn’t tell if he was responding to Rina because he liked her or because he was drunk.
What stuck with him from that night, more than hooking up with Rina, was the argument with Tom. It had started out as gentle teasing over nothing in particular and somehow morphed into sarcastic insults fuelled by alcohol and frustrations Mason couldn’t quite articulate. Was it jealousy? Maybe. Tom had just announced he’d completed his applications to study in Canberra next year, and this filled Mason with a suffocating sense of panic. Was it because Mason wished he was getting out of here? Or was it because he was going to miss Tom?
They’d met all the way back in preschool when a rough kid called Darren Foster started hassling Tom in the playground. Mason had watched on as the louder, bigger boy ran up to the quiet curly-haired kid with glasses, demanding he hand over a ball. Tom surrendered it without a fight, running to hide in the cubbyhouse. He’d always been like that – not a fan of confrontation – and Mason understood what it felt like to want to hide out until the storm around you had passed. He made both an enemy and a friend that day when he snatched the ball back from Darren Foster and marched it over to the cubbyhouse.
Both of Tom’s parents were still around back then, before the court case and his dad’s prison sentence, before his mum fled to Queensland, promising to move her son up with her when she was in a position to do so. That never happened. Excuse after excuse, and in the end she agreed it was more stable for Tom to stay in The Shallows with her in-laws. When Tom went through that whole mess, Mason was his rock. Tom had told him so many times.
All through primary school and high school they’d had each other’s backs, especially when