“It was a few years ago, right after college. I’ve always had a thing for the bad boys. For some reason, they just always appealed to me and made me feel that thing.”
“That thing?” Mason asked. His eyes were full of surprise and amusement. He was enjoying this already.
“Anyway, I’d just graduated from college and I met this guy at a club one night when I was out with my friends. We hit it off and we started dating. But after a bit it became clear to me that he was actually not who I thought he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he told me he worked in construction. I’d been to his site a few times and I’d seen him working there. It wasn’t a weird thing. But then one day when I was at his house I noticed he had a tool box in the garage open. I’d gone down to his basement to get some more beer out of the refrigerator down there.”
“He had an entirely separate fridge for his beer?”
“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but whatever.”
“Ok, and what did you see?”
“It was crazy,” I said. “I saw a couple bags of white powder. I had never seen drugs before, but I was certain that’s what it was. When I asked him about it he got all angry and evasive. Like, he told me to mind my business and to never question him.”
“Damn. So, what happened next?”
“Well, I tried to avoid him and he started acting like some crazy stalker on me. I was just about to get the cops involved when I heard that he got raided and arrested. Someone tipped the cops off about his little drug dealing he was into. It wasn’t me, so I had to wonder who else he was involved with.”
“Wow, it seems like trouble just likes to find you,” Mason teased.
“Sometimes, I think so,” I said. “I was worried for a while that he might send someone after me, but I guess he never thought it was me, or he knew who it actually was. I think he’s still in prison and I haven’t heard a thing from him.”
Mason sat back and crossed his arms. “Is that why you were so hesitant to get involved with me? Because you thought I might be some kind of bad boy?”
He seemed amused at the idea.
“Well, aren’t you? I mean, you are this wealthy entrepreneur who made a bunch of money at a young age, the rules don’t seem to apply to you, and I do remember when TMZ and all the other celebrity gossip channels had you out with a different woman every night. So, you can imagine how my mind did start to wonder about those things.”
“Yeah, but that was also a long time ago. I’m a family man and have been for some time. Yes, when I was younger I did my fair share of sowing my wild oats, as everyone does. But when you hit the nerve of success at such a young age and everyone is watching then you can expect to be plastered all over the place. But I hardly think I was a bad boy. I was just a young man enjoying life.”
“There is nothing wrong with that,” I said. “You should never feel ashamed of it.”
“I don’t,” Mason said. “But it looks like you were.”
He placed his bowl in the sink and rinsed it out.
I was a little worried that I’d offended him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it to sound like I thought you were a bad person.”
“It’s fine,” Masons said. “That is the thing about perceptions. Our perceptions are rarely our own, especially these days. Everything we think we know about someone is usually filtered through someone else’s lens.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But in our case, I think a big part of my assessment was right on the money.”
“How so?”
“Well, you may not be some kind of a player or a womanizer, but you do have some dark secrets that most people don’t know, for instance your ties to organized crime. That isn’t exactly something the boy next door has going for him.”
Mason laughed. “True, you are. But even then I don’t like the label. I was an angry, misled young man who needed a good outlet. Luckily, I found the right mentor who steered me on the correct path, and he did it from that side of things. That’s what I never expected, nor would anyone else believe it if I told them.”
“Something is on your mind,” I said. “I can see it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but when your mind drifted to the Zeffaris… you changed somehow. Like it is something you’ve been thinking about for a bit. I’d just love to hear it if you would like to share it with the rest of the class.”