The Suite Spot (Beck Sisters #2)(32)
Mason rubs his hand over his mouth like he doesn’t want to tell me. “My middle name is Asahi.”
“Like, the beer?”
“Unintentionally, but yes.”
“Wow. Sometimes fate has zero chill.”
His cheeks dimple as he laughs and the smartest thing for me to do is leave this office, pack up my belongings, and move back to Florida before this aching crush makes me do something foolish. Like tell him how I feel.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
I’ve always been interested in the meaning of words, especially words in other languages that aren’t directly translatable into English. There’s a Bengali word, ghodar-dim, that literally translates to “horse’s egg” but conceptually it means “false hope” or “nothing.”
“‘Morning sun,’” Mason says.
The meaning makes me think of waking up—specifically, what it would be like to wake up to his face in the morning. It’s another thought I have no business having, but I can’t help thinking it would be a glorious thing.
“Rachel means ‘ewe,’ as in a female sheep,” I say, redirecting my brain from that ghodar-dim. “And biblical Rachel was embroiled in a hot mess of a relationship, which—okay, never mind. That tracks.”
“Maisie’s dad?”
“Yeah. He was not my best decision.” I realize we’re veering into personal territory. I want to know more—everything, really—about Mason, but I already understand that if we continue talking about relationships, he’s going to shut down. “Anyway, I found a flight for next week, so I’ll book it if you’re sure you can live without me for a few days.”
“I’ll try to manage.”
* * *
On the drive to the airport, we listen to a podcast about brewing sour beers. I start off at a disadvantage because I don’t know what a sour beer is, and it only gets worse. I know all the words the hosts are saying, but they’re arranged in a way that makes me feel like I’m listening to another language.
“How do you understand this?” I ask when the end music fades away.
“It helps that I have an interest,” Mason says. “But I’ve also been doing this for more than twenty years. I brewed my first batch of beer in my parents’ basement during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college.”
“Were you even legal to drink?”
“Nope.”
“How’d that turn out?”
“It may not surprise you to know that the bottles exploded,” he says. “Beer on the ceiling, glass all over the floor. My mom wanted to murder me but settled for banning me from ever making beer in the house again. She also made me clean up every last drop and shard. It took me a week.”
“I bet she was proud when you got it right, though.”
His eyes are shaded by sunglasses, but from the side I can see the corners crinkle as he smiles. “She was.”
“Are you an only child?”
“I have an older brother and sister, Owen and Laurel,” Mason says. “You?”
“My sister, Anna, is almost two years younger.”
“Do you get along?”
“I don’t really know,” I say. “We were close when we were little girls. Constant companions, you know? But as we got older and our interests changed, we drifted. Then I got pregnant with Maisie and she met Ben—it’s a long story. I haven’t seen her in over a year, and I think we might be okay, but this trip will probably tell.”
The conversation pauses when we pull into a toll plaza and Mason cranks down the window to pay the fifty-cent toll. Most of the toll plazas in Florida—at least in my part of Florida—have been replaced with toll-by-plate cameras, so having to stop is kind of charming.
“My relationship with my siblings has improved with time,” he says, pulling away from the plaza. “Owen is older than I am by four years and Laurel by three. They were a unit and never wanted me around. One time, they locked me in the dog’s crate—”
I burst out laughing.
“Oh sure, it’s funny now,” he says. “But I was in there until my dad got home from work and found me.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“I tried to convince the dog to let me out.”
“Poor you.”
“I’m traumatized,” he says, but the corner of his mouth hitches up in a grin.
“How regularly does this memory come up at Thanksgiving?”
Mason laughs. “Every year, like clockwork, I remind them how terrible they were.”
“When Anna and I were little, I tried to convince her that some cat poop in the backyard was candy,” I say. “But that backfired when she picked it up and smashed it on my leg.”
“As a younger sibling, I salute her.”
“Mama,” Maisie says, taking off her headphones. “I have to go potty.”
“We’re almost at the airport,” I say, glancing over at Mason, who responds by pressing down on the accelerator. “Can you hold it?”
“Only a little bit.”
A couple of minutes later, the airport comes into view and Mason’s attention is on the exit and departure signs, and I’m sad our conversation had to end. There was no awkwardness this time. No emotional retreats. I love his smile. And his laugh. And … oh, it’s a good thing I’m getting on a plane.