ten
“Mmmm!”
“Oh, yeah!”
“Why don’t we do this more often?”
“Heck yes!”
“This is so good!”
“Mmmmmmmm!”
“Jesus!”
“Holy shiz!”
“Ohhh!”
“I love you, Mason.”
“I love you, too, Natty.”
With one final and slightly sexual, “Mmmmm,” emitting from my mouth, I finished the last bite of my gourmet burger, wanting nothing more than to rewind time, just so that I could experience eating it again. Mason had been in a giving mood lately, after the little club incident (he realized that he was in the wrong, but that didn’t stop the fangirls from wanting to date him even more, considering that he freaking punched a guy for his “girlfriend”). This morning, he had dragged his attractive little butt out of bed and to a local diner that had food better than the shit on Top Chef, only to bring back two burgers and shakes. Currently, we were both sharing food orgasms as we ate meat at ten in the morning. On the bed. In my room. At Mason’s house. As we hid from the cleaning people.
Mason happened to have a rather ginormous abode. He also happened to be a member of the male gender, thus placing him into the “slob” category of life. As a direct reflection of himself, his house was often highly on the shambolic side, and since he was an international superstar, he didn’t have time in his schedule to mop the floors and organize all of his teddy bears by himself, so hired people to do it for him.
The individuals that were paid for doing the impossible and attempting to clean the home of Mason Grey had one limitation when it came to tidying up: they weren’t supposed to go into the bedrooms. Well, the inhabited bedrooms, that was (all two of them). Mason’s room was a warzone, so the prospect of even sending the very best of cleaners in was an absurd one. He would need a whole freaking army if he ever wanted to see his floor again. So, he just eliminated the hassle for all, and lived with the filth. I, on the other hand, was just paranoid about them touching my stuff and rearranging things, so settled for keeping everything nice and neat, because unlike Mason, I was a girl.
Before venturing out to procure sustenance, Mason Grey came sprinting into my room, only to inform me that today (one of our only days off) the cleaning people were coming. I thought this wasn’t a big deal at first, but then I learned that that meant I couldn’t get in their way. So, I was stuck in my room, eagerly waiting for Mason’s return, as I tried once again to continue not-so-binge-watching The Office. But then Mason came back with the burgers and melted ice-cream drinks, and I completely forgot about Steve Carell and Ed Helms. All I could think about were the burgers.
These weren’t some flimsy fake burgers from Wendy’s or someplace stupid like that. No, these were the real freaking deal. They were about two or three inches thick, and when you bit into them, all the juices and meat just came together to form an almost celestial experience in the mouth, that was almost as good as sex. When I first tried these burgers when I moved out to California, I knew that I would never be able to eat fake burgers again. I was no longer a virgin in the ways of real beef. They were some serious legit shit.
“So. What do we do now?” I asked, beginning to huff the wrapper that the now eaten burger was once previously wrapped in. It was pretty pathetic, but even the wafting fragrance of the fried food made my stomach flutter. In about thirty minutes, I would probably be going through withdrawal, and when that came, I had no clue what I would do.
“Well, we could always have sex and see which is better,” Mason proposed thoughtfully. I pushed his shoulder, but he didn’t budge even a bit.
“Sex with you or the burger?” I inquired for clarification. He nodded. “The burger’s better.”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried?” he mused smugly.
“Believe me, the burger’s better.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, and huffed, collapsing on the mattress so that his vision was directed upwards, towards the ceiling. I patted my stomach affectionately, and then picked up my phone, snapping a quick picture of Mason in a not-so-deep-realm-of-contemplation. Pulling up some social media app, I posted it with the description, “@MasonGrey just brought burgers. Now we’re in food comas. #food.” Then I set my phone back down, and focused on my real life and what was actually happening.
“We could watch that video of me punching that dude, again,” Mason offered, no trace of humor detectable in his tone. I groaned, as I had seen that particular video probably fifty times in the past two days alone. Though Mason had acknowledged that there were other ways he could have dealt with the situation back at the club, that didn’t stop his egomaniac side from emerging when he learned that one of the videos taken that night of him had received over fifty million views and counting. As predicted by Rob, people loved it. Mason happened to be one of those people.
“Or we could edit a script,” I countered. Mason shook his head, and then sat up, reaching over me to grab his guitar that was conveniently located right on my bed. He had brought it into the room along with the food, knowing fully well that we would be trapped for a good three or so hours until his house was finally presentable to some.
Mason positioned the instrument in his arms, so that his elbow was resting on the base, and his other hand supported the neck. His fingers pressed down on some of the cords, and then he gave it a melodic strum. Reverberations echoed through the large space, and I observed with interest as he focused hard on the deployment of his hands. Whenever I got the opportunity to listen to Mason play guitar, it felt like he was allowing me to eavesdropping on something intimate.
“I’ve been working on some new stuff lately,” he told me, running a finger over the strings, “mostly acoustic. Wanna hear?”
“Is the Mason Grey offering to play me exclusive tracks unheard by anyone else?” I gaped, genuinely more excited than my sarcastic teasing made me out to be. Whenever Mason asked if he could play me some of his “new stuff,” there was only one answer: yes. Mason was pretty talented—I wasn’t going to lie—so having the access and ability to listen to his music before even some of his producers had heard it was by far one of the coolest perks to being his best friend and “girlfriend.” It was like my own mini concert of demos, that only I got the pleasure of hearing. Of course, I would never relay that information to Mason. It would be too good for his self-esteem.
“I guess that’s a no,” he taunted with a smirking sigh.
He moved to put down his guitar, but then I caved, letting out a frantic, “No! I mean—err, if you insist, then I guess I wouldn’t mind listening…”
Satisfied, he sent me a smug grin, to which I stuck out my tongue in response. He clutched his guitar loosely, and plucked at the instrument. Then, he began to repeat a tune that I hadn’t heard before a few times, before he tentatively opened his mouth, but then closed it, just humming along for a while as I stared at his fingers in fascination. I often envied Mason’s dexterities when it came to music. With me, I was just a pretty face. With Mason, though, he was a pretty face with actual talent. I was jealous, but proud.
“Natalie, Natalie is next to me/ I’m so hungry, Natalie/ Want to make out with me, Natalie?” he sang off-key, all the while playing his guitar and looking straight at me with a lopsided grin.
“No. I want hear your new songs,” I pouted, then adding as an afterthought, “but afterwards I wouldn’t mind making out.”
He smirked, and then adjusted his fingers so that they pressed down on different chords, creating an entirely new sound. His other set brushed against the hollowed out middle, and he bobbed his head again, closing his eyes in concentration. Cautiously, his lips began to move idly, mutely uttering words I couldn’t hear. Then his voice came in to join the music, and it didn’t feel like I was the luckiest girl in the world, listening to Mason Grey sing. No, it felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world, just listening to a boy do the thing that he loved.
“And we’re sittin’ here, in Nat’s room/ Hidin’ out until some time soon/ But it doesn’t matter because we’re havin’ fun/ And eventually this song will be done,” he free-versed, making it actually sound as if he had written the song prior to right now. Whenever he was procrastinating within the creative process, Mason would often make up lyrics and play a few melodies to go along with them. It kept him entertained, but anyone he was working with absolutely hated the habit.
“You know, you could always sing a real song,” I said as nicely as I could.
“And I’m starting to get a feeling that/ Natalie’s gettin’ annoyed/ But that won’t stop me from dealing with/ How she’s not overjoyed,” he went on with a smirk, instead of actually singing me something that hadn’t made up on the spot. “Because Nat-a-liee-ee is my best friend,” he strummed once with the pause, “and my girlfriend,” he strummed again, “and the only girl in the world/ Like I’m the only one that you’ll ever love/ Like I’m the only one that knows your heart!”
By the end, he had completely lost me and switched over to Rihanna, so all I could do was join in and laugh. But the second I started to sing, Mason stopped with the guitar and shut up, sending me a disturbed look. This always happened. Mason would be singing, and then I would decide to utilize my glorious vocal aptitudes, and he would just stop, only to stare at me like I had five heads.
“What?” I groaned.
“Nat, I love you, but you’re shit at sing. Stick to modeling, babe,” he stated, reaching a hand out to cover my mouth with it. I stuck my tongue out, grazing it against his palm, and he immediately recoiled. “Hey! I’m the one who’s supposed to do the licking in this relationship!”
“Yeah, well, too bad. Oh, and Mason, I love you, but you’re shit at acting,” I mocked, scowling at him. “Stick to singing, babe.”
“See, but that’s where you and everyone else is wrong, Natty,” he said with a faint smirk. “I can act pretty damn well, if I do say so myself.”
“Too bad you’re the only one who thinks so,” I trailed off, knowing that his acting capacities were a sore spot. He grumbled something under his breath, and then returned to the guitar in his hands, setting his fingers back in their designated spots.
He pressed down on the strings by the neck, and strummed, switching his fingers’ position back and forth for a while, leading into an intro. The beginning went on for a while, and then he finally began to sing, but instead of a new song that I had never heard before, it was a familiar one that I was pretty sure he had banned his entire team from listening to months ago. He loathed the artist with a deep seeded passion, but still somehow respected their music—not their popularity or their personality.
“If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go/ I can take you places you ain’t never been before,” he began, the tempo slow and steady. He was watching me as I watched him, and continued to sing, sounding better than Justin ever could. Right before he got to the first chorus, he stopped, his hands pausing momentarily as he waited for me to respond in some way.
“The Biebs? Really, Mason? I thought you were better than that,” I joked.
“If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go,” Mason spoke without music accompanying him. He set his guitar down on the floor beside his feet, and shifted his body, so that he was facing me. “Keep you on my arm, girl, you’d never be alone.”
“Mason, I get it. Justin wrote ‘Boyfriend,’ and you’re jealous. Totally understandable. It’s a really deep and inspirational song,” I said in the utmost seriousness. All he did was snort, not even bothering to correct me that Justin hadn’t written the song by himself and that it was not, actually, deep or inspirational in the slightest. Mason had some pretty dumb songs to his name, but none of them rivaled “Boyfriend”—a fact he held dear to his heart.
“I can be a gentleman, anything you want,” he replied in a steady tone, not singing it, but rather trying to keep a leveled voice as if we were just having a normal conversation. “If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go.”
“Good to know, Mason,” I rolled my eyes, suddenly longing for the experience of consuming that amazing burger once again. Why had he only bought two burgers? The boy had enough money to buy the whole freaking diner and then streamline it, but no, he had just bought two burgers, and expected me to accept it as he quoted Justin Bieber’s nonsensical lyrics from a song we both despised.
“I’m serious, Nat,” he said, breaking off from the chorus. “If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go.”
“You just told me, Mace. I got it. Thanks for the enlightenment.”
“Oh my gosh!” Mason exclaimed a phrase that he had prohibited from his vocabulary due to the sheer idiocy of it. He shook his head, and then ran a hand through his hair roughly as he began to think. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, because sometimes Mason was hard to read. He typically articulated exactly what was going through his mind, but there was the occasional time when not even a psychic would be able to understand that boy. “Natty, I don’t want to be your BFWB anymore.”
“Mason!” I gasped with a grin. “Are you breaking up with me?” Before he had a chance to say anything more, I jumped on top of him, pinning him down, and attempting to conjure up all the weight of a sumo wrestler in my actions. I was hovering above him, smiling widely, but Mason didn’t seem to be having as much fun as he should have been.
“I’m not breaking up with you, Nat,” he mumbled.
“Oh? Good. Because if you were, then I’d have to kill you,” I laughed, leaning down to peck him on the lips lightly. “So, if you’re not breaking up with me, then what are you doing?”
“Hopefully the opposite,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” I questioned, my arms about to buckle as I continued to prop myself up over him. Sensing the expiration of my strength, Mason quickly flipped the script so that he was on top of me, and I was lying against the bed. I smiled up at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes to return the expression.
Then our eyes locked, and I saw a million different emotions playing through them, ranging from fear to assurance. He was anxious, though at the same time completely and utterly calm. His eyes possessed confidence, but also retained a clashing doubt that was unbefitting for Mason Grey. “Natalie Perry,” he began, lacking the usual playfulness that his tone typically possessed, “will you be my girlfriend?”
At that, my entire world froze. I was looking at Mason, and he was looking at me. I had met him a little over two years ago. He had just turned seventeen, and I was about to turn eighteen. The first thing he ever said to me was, “Hi. You’re almost as hot as me,” to which I had replied with, “Actually I’m hotter than you. Check your facts, dude.” From there, we had developed a strong friendship that transformed from superficiality to what it was now. We had spent so much together, laughing, singing, insulting one another, tweeting, texting, Instagramming, and just being us.
Mason Grey was the boy I went to for everything. At the beginning, when I was still talking to my parents and they were trying to control my life, even though they were ones who had kicked me out of the house in the first place. Mason talked me through it, got his lawyers involved, and everything was okay. When I broke up with my first boyfriend from the West Coast, Mason was my shoulder to cry on. Even when my goldfish died, Mason was there for me. He wasn’t some stuck up star who had no scope of reality (he had one—it was just limited), but rather something so much more. Because of our complex friendship, I had gotten to see a side of Mason Grey that not even fan fiction writers could imagine. And now here he was, asking me to be his girlfriend.
“I—I am your ‘girlfriend,’” I stuttered out a response, not sure if I was reading the context of the situation correctly. Maybe Mason was just joking. Maybe he was quoting another song. Maybe he misspoke.
“Nat, I want you to be my real girlfriend. No pretending. No BFWB shit. I want to be with you, Natalie Perry,” he said, and I mentally debated whether or not pinching myself would be a good move, just to ensure that I wasn’t dreaming. All I could do was gape, and try to sort out my thoughts as best I could. “I don’t want to be your friend anymore, Natalie—I want to be your boyfriend. And I’m really tempted to start singing ‘Boyfriend’ again, but I won’t. So, what do you say, Nat?”
I just continued to stare at him, still in a state of shock. Yeah, I liked Mason in a not-so-platonic way, and yeah, I liked kissing him, and yeah, I had had lots of practice being Mason Grey’s “girlfriend” throughout the past couple of years, but this wasn’t pretend anymore. As far as I could tell, Mason wasn’t screwing around. He was genuinely asking me to be his girlfriend. His real girlfriend. It wasn’t for some stupid publicity stunt or because it was scripted. This was real life—my real life—but it felt like a fantasy.
There was absolutely no reason for me to say no to Mason. We had already established that we were attracted to one another, and our mouths seemed to possess two opposite ends to a magnet, when in a near vicinity. But he was Mason Grey. For two years, he had me convinced that he was gay. I was his beard, and he liked boys. Then, just recently, I had found out that it was all a lie. We became best friends with benefits, and now here we were. The progression wasn’t crazy, but I just couldn’t seem to grapple the concept that Mason was actually asking me to be his girlfriend. I was just dreading the moment when I would wake up and it would be over.
“When I saw that guy with you at the club, Nat, it just…set something off inside me. I don’t want you to be with anybody else. I just want you to be with me, Nat,” Mason said earnestly, his eyes boring into my eyes with an intensity about them that couldn’t even be captured on the most expensive of cameras. “I want to be with you, Natalie Perry.”
So, I impulsively gave him my answer by reaching up and bringing his head closer to mine. I attached our lips together, and smiled against the kiss as he eagerly returned it. His hands flew to my hair, and he began to run his fingers through it, all the while emitting passion into my mouth. Before long, our tongues had somehow found each other once again, and were off on an exploration. And the entire time, all I could think about was how right it felt to kiss Mason Grey.
“So, will you be my girlfriend, Natty?”
“You taste like burger.”
“Imma take that as a yes.”
And then I kissed my boyfriend, and my boyfriend kissed me.