Mason had his turn. I should get mine.
“So you’re saying I should go to DC?” I ask Peggy.
She nods.
“And if he refuses to see me? If he won’t talk to me?”
Peggy looks at me. “Honey, are you telling me you’re just going to give up like that? If you want him to listen to you, you have to find a way. Don’t you dare come back here without having seen him, without having talked to him, without having convinced him to take you back.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “I thought you wanted me to stay here.”
“I never said that. I just said you shouldn’t have left without saying goodbye and that you should have kept in touch.”
Oh.
“I definitely don’t want you here if you’re like that.”
Right. So I have to see Mason, talk to him and convince him to take me back. That last one seems the hardest.
“Mason said he’s done loving me,” I say. “What if that’s true?”
“Honey, you can’t just be done loving a person,” Peggy answers. “Especially not after you’ve loved them for a decade.”
I hope that’s true.
Peggy places her hand over mine. “All this time, Mason has been waiting for you patiently. He could have stopped loving you a long time ago, but he didn’t. He even married you. Have some faith. Have at least a bit of the faith that he had.”
I nod. Peggy’s right. I owe Mason as much.
I draw a deep breath and gaze at the horizon, now turning purple with streaks of red and gold.
I guess I’m going back to DC.
~
I wait in Mason’s apartment, in the library, for almost a whole day. I don’t tell him I’m here. I don’t want to disrupt his schedule. He was patient for years. I can wait a day.
Finally, at around nine, I hear footsteps coming down the hall. I told Frank to tell him I’m here at the library once he comes home. It’s up to him if he wants to see me or not.
The footsteps pause outside the door. I hold my breath. Then it opens. Mason stands in the doorway in a charcoal grey suit paired with a maroon shirt and a black tie. Striking as always. I stand up and give him a smile.
“Hey.”
He glances at my dress – knee-length, white with purple flowers – then steps in and closes the door behind him.
“Thanks for seeing me,” I tell him.
He takes another step forward. “You’ve been waiting here all day?”
I nod.
“Did you forget something? One of Bart’s toys, maybe? Or a scarf?”
“Actually, yes,” I answer as I, too, step forward. “But none of those.” I draw a breath. “I… left my wedding ring.”
I hold up my left hand.
Mason nods. “Yes. You left it.”
“And now I want it back.”
His eyebrows furrow. “You want to keep your ring even though we’re getting a divorce? Well, that’s fine. You can keep mine, too.”
“No.” I dig into my pocket and take out the gold band I’ve been carrying in it. “I’m giving your ring back.”
Once I decided to look for it, it took me only a minute to find it in the grass. Its gleam under the sunlight was hard to miss.
Mason shrugs. “But I don’t want it.”
I shake off the sting of his words. “Listen. I came because I wanted to say a few things.”
“Aster…”
I hold my hand up. “Last time, I let you get everything off your chest. Now, it’s my turn.”
“Okay.”
He sits on the arm of a chair and folds his arms over his chest.
I draw a deep breath. “First of all, I want to say again that you misunderstood what you saw. There’s nothing going on between Leander and me. There never was and never will be.”
“What? Did he reject you? You’re giving up on him already?”
“The truth is… I gave up on him a long time ago.”
Mason’s eyebrows furrow.
“You’re right. I had a little crush on him for a while.”
Mason snorts.
“Fine. A huge crush. But all little girls have crushes, and most of them outgrow theirs. I outgrew mine.”
“Are you sure?”
I pull on my fingers to ease my nerves as I prepare for my confession. “I think I outgrew mine around ten years ago, when the boy I least expected stole my first kiss.”
Mason exhales. “You slapped that boy, remember?”
“Because he seemed to be making fun of it. To him, it was just a kiss. To me, it was… more.”
Mason’s eyes narrow. I look away from his intense stare.
“To tell the truth, I was sad when he left. And when I heard he was becoming successful? I was proud of him. I didn’t think of him every day, but I never forgot him. A girl never forgets her first kiss, whatever the circumstances.”
“Or her first love.”
“I wasn’t in love with Leander,” I tell him. “I was a child. I didn’t know what love was. At least, not the love a woman is supposed to have for a man. You’re the one who taught me that.”