Page 47 of Tell Me I'm Enough

She’s beautiful. Not the loud, in-your-face kind. Just quietly beautiful. She’s beautiful in a soft and angelic kind of way.

Most girls just look the same to me—pretty faces, nice bodies, easy attention. All the same thing in different fonts. But there’s something different about her. I just can’t put my finger on it.

I help her down, and she keeps working beside me with another strand. For a few minutes, the silence isn’t so bad.

Then it slowly hits again—the weight in my chest. The ache. The fog that’s been there all day. It runs through me like painful waves.

“Can you hand me that hook?” she asks.

I don’t answer. I don’t really hear her at first. My mind is stuck somewhere else.

“Mason?” she says, her voice softer now.

I blink and look over at her. “What?”

“The hook,” she repeats.

“Oh. Yeah.”

I pick it up and hand it to her.

She studies me for a second. “Is something bothering you?”

The question catches me off guard, and I shake my head no. “I’m fine.”

She tilts her head, not buying it. “You’re definitely not. I can tell.”

“Yeah?” I ask, trying to sound bored. “How?”

She shrugs. “People have tells. And you’ve got a few obvious ones.”

I smirk a little. “You study people for a living or something?”

“I just know how to pay attention,” she says quietly. “You start noticing things when you’ve been around enough hurting people.”

That makes me stop and look at her for a second longer than I should.

I clear my throat and hand her another strand of lights. “Here. Hang these up.”

She gives me a small smile, like she knows I’m changing the subject on purpose, and lets it go.

* * *

It’s been a long, wild night, and I still don’t have enough alcohol in me to quiet my thoughts.

I’ve got a beer in my hand and no real plan except to make it through the rest of the night and try again tomorrow, hoping the pain eases up and gives me some kind of break by then.

The alcohol eventually starts to help—just a little. It makes everything blur just enough.

Chase drops onto the couch beside me, already drunk, shirt unbuttoned, eyes glazed over.

He takes a sip from his beer, then leans closer. “I think I just slept with someone’s wife, man.”

I laugh. “Whose?”

He grins. “Mine.”

I start cracking up. “You’re so drunk.”