If the Fates Allow: A Short Story(10)

After dinner, she helped her mom and her aunts clear the table. Reagan picked up the glass lasagna pan of Jell-O salad that she’d brought. It was still half-full. She grabbed two wet spoons out of the dish drainer and headed out the back door. “Be right back.”

He was standing on his deck, leaning on the railing, looking out into the field. She’d known she’d find him out here . . .

No, that wasn’t quite true. She’d just hoped that she would.

Mason turned when he heard her door open. He smiled a little. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Reagan said. “Who’re you hiding from this time?”

“I’m not hiding,” he said.

It was still full daylight. Winter daylight—bright yellow shot with gray. Mason was wearing a red sweater with Rudolph on the front. His face was flushed. It wasn’t cold enough for a heavy coat—there wasn’t any snow on the ground—but he had on a faded denim jacket with a flannel collar. His hair was cut short over his neck and ears. That must have been Covid hair, last year. This was what he really looked like.

Reagan held out the pan of Jell-O salad.

He lowered an eyebrow.

“I’ve got spoons,” she said.

Mason laughed and sat down on the edge of his deck, hopping off.

He came around the side of her grandpa’s deck, taking the steps. Reagan prepared herself for it. She still wasn’t good in these moments, when someone was approaching her.

She saw the top of Mason’s head on the stairs. And then the rest of him. She could see his body more clearly than she had last year. He had broad shoulders and a barrel chest. Thick arms. A belly. He looked young. The way country boys look young. Even this side of thirty.

When he got to the deck, Reagan took a step back. He stepped back, too, to the edge of the stairs.

She kind of shrugged the pan at him. Like she wasn’t sure what to do next. There weren’t any chairs out here, and she was already losing her nerve.

“I have a mask,” Mason said, reaching into his pocket.

“It’s okay,” Reagan said. “We’re outdoors. And . . . it’s okay.”

“Here . . .” Mason backed down a few steps and sat, leaving room for Reagan at the top. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, sitting. She stuck a spoon in the pan and passed it down to him.

He took it. “Is that what I think it is?”

It absolutely was. Raspberry pretzel Jell-O salad. Reagan didn’t say anything. Just watched him take a bite.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Why don’t people still make this?”

Reagan laughed. He held the pan out to her, and she took a bite, too.

Mason was clean-shaven. His eyes were blue. He was square-faced and handsome.

He motioned at the front of his sweater with his spoon. “We do this ugly-Christmas-sweater thing now.”

Reagan nodded. “My family does that, too.”

He looked down at her chest, confused. She was wearing a snug black V-neck.

“Not me,” she said. “Fuck that.”

Mason laughed and offered her the pan again.

Reagan took another bite of Jell-O salad. There were three layers—raspberry Jell-O, whipped cream cheese with sugar, and crushed pretzels. “So are you back in DC now?”

“I was,” he said, “for a month or two. Then I bought a house in Omaha.”

Her head jerked up. “You moved back to Nebraska?”

Mason nodded. He was more earnest-looking this close. In the daylight. (And he’d already seemed pretty earnest in the dark.) “Yeah, DC just felt too far, after everything. And my apartment seemed so small . . . So I bought a house in Omaha. My brother says I got ripped off, but it’s palatial compared to what I could afford back east. I feel like a Major League Baseball player.”

Reagan laughed. This was a lot of laughing. “Did you quit your job?”

“No. I’m still remote.”

“Me, too.”

“That’s good.” He frowned. “I mean, is that good?”

“It’s what I wanted,” she said.

“Well then, good.” He took another bite of Jell-O salad. He had the pan in his lap. “I’m eating a lot of this, is that okay?”

“God, yeah,” she said, “my nieces and nephews won’t touch it. They say dessert shouldn’t be salty.”

“Okay,” he said with his mouth full, “well, one, this isn’t a dessert; it’s a salad. And, two, the saltiness is the best part.”

“You can have as much as you want,” she said.

“I will.”

Reagan smiled—then bit both her lips for a second. “Was, um . . . was everything okay last year?”

Mason looked up into her eyes. “Last year? You mean . . .”

“With your family,” she said. “Your brother coming into the house.”

“Oh, yeah.” He shook his head. “It was fine. I mean, of course it was, right? What were the chances?”

She nodded. “Did you get vaccinated?”

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “I don’t care if it makes me grow another leg. I was first in line.”

Reagan nodded some more. “Yeah, same.”

“Give me some of that hot, fresh gene therapy,” Mason went on, chewing. “I mean . . . hopefully we don’t all grow extra legs . . .”