MY EARS FELT LIKE THEY were going to shatter when Adele and Joseph threw all of my belongings out of their place right after they found out what has become of me. That I had been a waste of their time and money. I should've been wiser to keep my bank account away from them, but it was too late. All the money I had made while working on Descending 99 had been transferred to their account before I even got to the bank. So here I was, no money, no job, no home.
As worst as it was, I wasn't about to go laying around on the streets. And even stripped from my job, I went crawling to Mason's doorsteps. I felt embarrassed, not only because I had been practically fired in an unfair way, but also because now that I no longer have any connections with Mr. Wang, that also meant I had no more connections with Mason. He was no longer my assistant or manager.
His apartment, which I've never exactly been to, was very old, vines growing on the sides of the building. When he opened his door and found me, I could smell the terrible scent of cigarettes from his roommates.
He closed the door behind him instead of letting me in, and I still remember those pair of furrowed eyebrows he wore so often. Mostly at me.
I didn't have any right to go to him, and it felt like he wanted nothing more to do with me now that he didn't have to. He could tell me to go right now and I think if he did, I would have done that. I would have packed my things and gone back to my mother.
"What are you doing here?"
It was a surprise he still hasn't seen the Weibo I posted. Correction: forced to post.
His eyes wandered to the duffle bags and suitcases behind me.
"Do you still want me?"
He stared at me, and for a long time I was starting to wonder if I even asked that question. If it was just a dream, if maybe I'm out on the streets right now and this is a dream. And if it was a dream, I knew he'd take me in, because in dreams you can wish for the things you want. And that was what I wanted, Mason to tell me he cares for me, that Mr. Wang has never been the reason he looked out for me.
It was not a dream.
But dream or not, he was Mason. And he had a heart that was too big for this world.
"Maeve, what are you saying? I'll forever be here with and for you."
He didn't ask me what happened, or as obvious as it was, I was homeless. But he never really asked me things unless I told him it myself, he never pushed. Now I do wonder if that is good or bad.
I let myself sink into his arms, I let him wrap his warmth around me so that I felt once again alive. And right then even with all the loss I had, at least I had a best friend.
LET ME TELL YOU this: the conditions were horrible.
I moved into his place, and I felt more trapped than ever. The apartment itself was already small, but adding on his two roommates, or was it three? The place was cramped, and in addition to that they had a terrible attitude, complete opposites of Mason.
"How the hell do you deal with these people?" I asked him, laying on his small queen bed I had been sharing for about a week with him. Most days, while Mason still worked for Mr. Wang, now as Bridget's manager and assistant, I locked myself in his tiny room. But even that, the smell of cigarettes from outside managed to escape in. I hated those brats.
He chuckled when I wrinkled up my nose at the smell of that toxic lung-filling thing. "Have you never been through any kind of hardship before?"
I didn't smile back. I had been through hardship before, I had been hungry to the point I ate my own fingernails. I had been hit where the next day I had to limp when I walked. But he didn't know that. I haven't told him anything and he hasn't asked. I knew he would be wondering though, why my own parents had kicked me out. And I know I couldn't keep all of these things hidden from him forever. Mr. Wang knew all these things about me, and how could I know that he knows while probably the only person who cares about me right then didn't know?
"Mason, there's something I need to tell you."
He was still smiling as he sat down on the bed with me.
And then I told him. Starting with my real name, the village. And then I told him about my mother, about the foreign father I never knew. How my mother despised me, how she would shame me and how she had hit me. I told him about how I knew she would get rid of me the moment the time came, and how I would be married off to some older guy I won't even know. Then from that to when Mr. Wang came, how I went with him. And then to the truth about Adele and Joseph, how I had to change everything, how I had made another identity.
I was avoiding his eyes while I talked, but between it all I looked up at him once. I couldn't read his face.
I continued to when Mr. Wang finally made the C-Pop group, and how I met Bridget. Then, as much as I wanted to leave it out, I talked about Ya Kai Jun. How he had touched me, how I thought I deserved it because I led him on. I still did at the time when I told him, and my cheeks grew hot when I had to go through all those memories again, the images flashing when his grip on me felt dangerous.
Then I got to the captain spot with Bridget. That was what I was the most scared about, but I talked through it without pauses, without checking to see how he was reacting. Then I stopped to the part with Klarise, not getting into the specific details, and I told him how I thought I might be defected. Defected because I was different, built wrongly, that Klarise had left me because she didn't want to become defected too. But I already was, always had been since Ya Kai Jun and now Nathan Ma. It all proved it.
The moment I said I was defected, he took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye. His grip was gentle but firm, and I had no choice but to look back at him, see the brown sparks in his eyes, the concern of it all.
"You are not defected."
I swallowed, my eyes burning to stay open and look at him. "You don't know that. I couldn't make myself touch them, I couldn't love them."
He shook his head. "That doesn't make you flawed, that doesn't mean anything."
"Yes it does, it means I'm built wrong. That I'm disgusting."
He slightly flinched when I said that, eyes flinching away just for a second. A long pause.
When he finally adjusted, he asked, "Why do you hate yourself because of this?"
"I don't hate myself."
"You're making it sound like you do."
I looked down at my hands, the hands that had gone through so much. Hands that were forced to touch Ya Kai Jun because I didn't want to be different. Hands that put a drug in Bridget's drink. Hands that had signed a contract to leave. Hands that had touched Klarise, touched her hair, her cheeks, her skin, her. Hands that do nothing at all now. Did I hate myself?
"There's nothing wrong with you." He finally says at last, making me look up.
"Then if not that, tell me why Klarise has left me."
He hesitated, his hands slipping off my shoulders. "I don't know, but it's not because of this. Being the way you are doesn't make you wrong, it doesn't make us an aberration or whatever you're thinking right now. It does not."
He wasn't looking at me when he said that. It took me a while to realize what he was telling me, what he was doing. He was opening up to me the way I had opened up to him. He was stripping himself bare, showing me the truth of himself like how I have. I knew how it would feel, like taking all of your clothes off and showing yourself to someone fully. Maybe with shame, maybe without shame, but it was a fearful thing to do. He looked scared. I was too.
I reached for his hand and squeezed it tight in mine. And instead of asking him what he meant or any of that, I held him like he had held me. "Maybe you're right, none of this makes us wrong."
"It doesn't. And know that even if the whole world decides to turn itself against people like us, we will have each other."
"The whole world is against us."
He didn't say anything after that, because it wasn't something to deny. Even as oblivious as I was about the LGBTQ+ community at the time, I full well knew that this world has a lot of waiting cages and harm for people like us. It was almost like knowing that the day will end and night will come, it was as apparent of a knowledge as that. He knew that too.
It was time for Mason to go to work, but he didn't. We just held each other there, and he didn't ask me about my past. He didn't question me about Bridget. He didn't ask anything, and even though I knew some part of him probably didn't like what I had done to get where I am, he had always accepted me. He always chose to believe me even during the worst circumstances, even when it is obvious that it was my fault. He always believed me and trusted me. Sometimes I wished he didn't.
Note: Some extra Mason content for y'all ;)
Also thank you for reading!!