She, Mason, and I sat on the balcony and talked for a while—really talked. It sounded like Alyssa had learned to hold her own a bit better in her projects with her male peers—or at least I hoped that’s what’d happened. She also had some interviews lined up, including one in Louisiana. “They’re actually flying me out there,” she gushed.
“Of course. You’re a strong candidate,” Mason said. He stared at the mountains in the distance, so I didn’t think he saw the way Alyssa’s face lit up after he said that. Later, as she was leaving, he gave her a hug, thanked her for joining him for lunch… and then told her that she was not, under any circumstances, allowed to lend me her clothes.
So, it was mostly a success.
November arrived along with a bunch of tests. By that time, Parker was guiding our cohort through other issues, but we’d spent a couple of weeks brainstorming ways to run a fictional bar, and I’d learned a lot.
A week before Thanksgiving, I called my uncle. After we caught up, I told him I wouldn’t be coming home for Thanksgiving because I had so much schoolwork. It wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth. Jude, Mason, Parker, and I had decided to shoot for another staycation. A lot of students went home over the Thanksgiving holidays, so figured we’d close the conversation club and spend some quality time making each other scream with pleasure.
I still felt a bit guilty, though, so I talked to my uncle for longer than usual, and I assured I’d be home for Christmas and I’d teach him all the new drinks I’d learned to mix in ‘that dang mile high city’ as he called Denver.
It took me a little while, but I finally figured out Alyssa was disappointed Mason wouldn’t be joining her and her parents for Thanksgiving. Once I realized she was hurt, I called and explained Mason wasn’t avoiding her… he just wanted to spend more time with me. I didn’t go into too many details, but she got the gist and seemed to feel better after that.
And then Thanksgiving arrived and it was five days of bliss. We fooled around so much that Mason renamed it Fucksgiving. It seemed a bit irrelevant, but one night, as we snuggled on the couch and drank cocktails I made, he told me what that term meant to him.
“You know how people say, ‘I don’t give a fuck?’” He had his large arm around my shoulders and I pressed myself against his bare chest. Jude and Parker were out on the balcony.
“Sure.”
“Well, Fucksgiving is kind of the opposite. Instead of not giving a fuck you do give one.”
“So… you mean, like, you care about things.”
“Exactly,” he said, squeezing me tighter. “So yeah, we’re living out our fantasies this weekend and fucking like rabbits, but it’s also like, we care.”
“About?”
He kissed my temple. “Don’t play dumb. About each other.”
That warmed my insides as much as his touch heated my skin. “I care about you.”
“I know,” he said with a smirk. I elbowed him—it was like elbowing steel—and he grinned. “I care about you too.”
“And I care about Jude and Parker.”
“Me too,” he said, and then he grinned. “Though probably not in quite the same way you do.”
“Is that a problem?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like it to me. I think we—you and me and Jude and Parker—work. I don’t need to understand it to know it’s true.”
“Me either,” I decided.
“Good,” he said. “Because I’ve just decided the first rule of Fucksgiving is no thinking too hard.”
“It’s a holiday with rules? What’s the second?”
“The second rule of Fucksgiving is that any and all bartenders and women named Kylie must be naked as often as possible.”
I giggled. “Are you sure that’s what it says?”
He nodded solemnly. “I looked it up this morning.” His eyes scanned the oversized sweater I wore and his brow furrowed in mock disapproval. “Now, are you going to obey rule number two, or will I have to punish you?”
“How about both,” I said with a grin, climbing onto his lap, straddling him.
It was the best Fucksgiving ever.
And then it was over. Reality intruded into our happy little bubble. As our fellow grad students returned home after the holidays, a lot of them knocked on our door to ask when the conversation club would be open again. After being interrupted for the fifth time Sunday afternoon, Parker hung up a sign on the door saying the conversation club would resume on Monday evening. After that, only one idiot knocked. Mason answered the door and glared at him so hard the poor guy practically ran down the hallway.
On Monday after classes, I got the bar set up again. Mason had recently expressed an interest in learning to mix drinks—though only the ones he considered to be manly drinks—so he helped. Jude and Parker arranged the furniture and made sure the bathrooms were cleaned and stocked with the essentials.