Mason Lockhart

Camilla scoffed when Mason suggested that he had come to a decision with Lily. She didn’t buy it for a second. Regardless of what they said, the feelings between them never ended, which made what she did even worse because she had known the entire time. She chose not to comment on it anymore, after all she wasn’t the type to listen to advice and actually take it. The whole ignoring one another seemed to work fine with their junior year so why not their senior? Like she had said, pretty soon they would be off to different places and none of this would matter anymore.

“We live in the now,” she repeated as she took the bottle from him once he was comfortable. Camilla drank till she felt comfortable and put the cap back on the bottle before falling backwards on the bed in the opposite direction. She let the bottle fall onto the sheets and stared up at the ceiling, unsure of how long the pair laid there in silence. A buzz from her pocket signaled a text message and she pulled the phone out, squinting at the screen to read the small font. “Party tonight for seniors, bonfire in the woods. You down?”

“Carter knows better than to say anything, I’ll beat the shit out of him. And I think part of him worries that it meant more than what it was.” Camilla shrugged as she looked at him, their position was similar to the nights they spent in New York. Most of them had ended like this, nights of debauchery wrapping up on a bed or a couch or the hood of her driver’s car that they ‘borrowed’. The last thing they had ever talked about though was trying. It wasn’t like either of them to try to be something that they weren’t and yet there they were, both of them trying to be better for the sake of someone else.

Camilla hated feeling anything and so she quickly took the bottle back, chugging past the burn that formed as the amber liquid spilled down her throat. She wiped her lip with her thumb before drying it on the sleeve of her sweater. “You’re probably right. Lily and I barely speak now, let alone when we graduate. You’ll pull another disappearing act and Carter… He’s going to get a baseball scholarship to some great school and forget all about us.” She pressed her lips together, one hand wrapped around the bottle with a fingernail picking at the label. “And me… I don’t know where I’m going to end up. Hopefully on a beach somewhere.”

Mason laughed. “I’ll knock him back down when I see him,” he promised. “You should go see Lily too,” he said, serious now as he looked at her. “We came to a decision and I think we’re going to stick with it. And you were part of it,” he admitted, though said no more as he took a swing of the bottle. He didn’t think he had to. There was a lot that they didn’t talk about and Mason preferred it that way. “Just go talk to her, yeah? Besides, you can’t avoid her now. She’s Billing’s head,” he said. Along with himself and Carter, Lily had managed to bring herself to the top, just like she always wanted. This time a year ago, he might have been bitter about the whole thing, but now, it felt trivial. That still didn’t stop him from taking another swing. 

The first rule was one she could agree with. It should have been in place long ago, but instead of thinking logically they allowed themselves to be carried away by memories of the flesh. Lily was quick to agree with a nod to the first but the second caused the words to get caught in her throat. Room 228 in Gwendolyn Hall had become a safe haven for her, the place to run to when she felt like the expectations were starting to slowly drown her, stealing her breath from her lips until they turned blue. The room served for a place of meetings in the dark, secrets cradled close to the building’s wooden bones, walls witness to the way their lips collided and they craved to be touched by the other. Staying away from the place would prove to be a difficult task but fighting against it now would mean admitting to something they were both trying to forget, so instead she wrote it down and moved on. 

“No sex, no room, no arguing about the past, no house rivalries,no comments on Camilla─” A rule meant for her, and the list grew, ten items on it that would be easily kept by both sides. Lily looked the list over one last time before signing her name at the bottom then handed the pen over to him. He couldn’t be trusted with safe keeping, but holding it in her position would mean she considered herself above him and they were trying to do away with social hierarchy, asking for someone else to hold it would mean bringing in a third party and neither of them wanted that, which left one other option. Reaching for a jewelry box, she emptied out the contents worth thousands in diamonds and rose gold, she placed the paper inside, neatly folded and handed over the box. “We’ll store it in 228, we’ll both go to make sure it’s hidden and that will be the last. We’ll put this behind us and I don’t know, maybe we’ll ask Carter and Cami to do something afterwards, deal?”

Mason said nothing at the other rules, merely offered a nod here and there before accepting the pen. He looked down at the list, taking a deep breath. This was what he wanted. Wasn’t it? Without a second thought, he lifted the pen and signed his name beside hers, marking the document as officially as he could. He tossed the pen into the container afterward, waiting for the ink to dry before carefully folding up the document. He didn’t know what they’d do with it. If they lost it, would it make their rules any less significant? And if they didn’t, would they still have its hold? Mason didn’t know. All he knew was that he found himself agreeing to her plan. “One last time,” he agreed, handing her the paper. 

“Tempting, but I don’t need to give Carter’s mom anymore reasons to hate me.” Camilla scooted off the bed towards the pile of suitcases in the corner and unzipped the one near the top. She turned to look over at Mason as he proclaimed that he was done with Lily and scoffed. “Yeah okay, you two are like a broken record. I give it till Christmas before you two are in each other’s pants.” She threw some of her clothes out of the suitcase until she found the small bottle of whiskey tucked away between rolled up socks.

Camilla unscrewed the cap as she walked over to the bed and took a swig before handing it over to Mason. “She won’t forgive me, you know. This whole idea of having the best year of our lives is dandy and all but she’s always going to see me as the girl who slept with the guy she’s in love with. And Carter, well he won’t admit it but I don’t think he’s entirely let it go either.” The brunette made herself comfortable on the center of the bed as she tucked her legs Indian style and shrugged her shoulders. “We can all fake it till graduation though.”

“But I mean it this time,” Mason said. Still, he knew. If it had been anyone else, Mason would have already started the betting pool. “I’m really going to try to make it work. It’s all too important not to try,” he said. The last thing Mason wanted was to look back at high school and think about all the time he wasted, pretending to stay mad at Lily for something as stupid as a housing rivalry. Mason would always be Drake, in his bones, he’d always be Drake, but that would mean nothing after all of this was through. 

Summer had came and gone in the blink of an eye, the rolling hills of the Scottish country side had been replaced by ivy covered walls and cobble stone paths. Easton had welcomed her with open arms, the smell of fresh paint still lingering in the common rooms as helping hands worked their quickest to rid away all spider webs that could’ve collected during the abandoned summer months. Senior year was finally here and Lily was holding a title that every girl in her family had once cherished dear to their hearts, head of Billings and all eyes on her.

The largest bedroom in the house had been awarded to her, the entire previous year spent bending over backwards to achieve perfection until it’d finally paid off, and now she sat in a fully decorated room, accented in silvers and golds. It had been set up even before she arrived, a gift from her mother and a note left behind that read ‘good luck’. It gave the title of Head of Billings more meaning than before.

Lily sat at the only desk in her room, facing a large bay window that overlooked the front of the house and her back to her bedroom door. There was music softly playing  in the background, the name of the obscure band escaping her as she let herself get lost in thoughts of what the school year would bring. She knew that eventually she’d have to see Mason, but she wasn’t expecting him to arrive so early. Startled by the knocking, Lily jumped in her seat and turned to face the door, gasp catching in her throat as her eyes settled on his familiar brown eyes. “You’re supposed to wait for permission to enter.” She corrected him with a smile that lingered on her lips for two seconds too long.

His eyes centered around Lilian Buchanan the instant he slipped through the door. When she smiled, he realized this was easier in his head than it would be now, yet he needed to do it all the same. “I could go back and do it again, but you might not jump the second time,” he teased, an easy smile falling onto his as he approached her.

There were very few people in the world he contacted over the summer, even less that he thought to text first. Lily was one of the few, but every time he stared down at his phone, no words came to him, nor even the slightest clue where to begin or how. So instead, he spent the entire summer away, not once speaking to her, let alone seeing. With the mess they left for each other the previous year, he wasn’t sure he had any right. They might have been done hating one another, but they were on less solid ground than ever before. That was what Mason came here to change. 

“I wanted to find you before we ran into each other on accident,” he began. And of course, they would have to run into each other. Carter was King of Ketlar, Mason for Drake, and Lily had secured the title of Head of Billings. The two would be forced into a room with one another sooner or later, and Carter deserved better than to be the one to cut the tension between the two. No, this had to happen. He was sure of that when he was sure of nothing else. 

Mason and Carter had been best friends for as long as Carter could remember. Birthday parties, house parties, the first day at Easton - they had done all of it together. Over the years, however, the two began seeing less and less of each other. It could be said that Carter wanted nothing to do with Mason since his fall from grace landed him in Drake but that wasn’t it. As much as the blonde boy despised the lesser house, he never viewed Mason in the same way he’d view another one of his house rivals. Perhaps it was because Carter knew that Mason deserved to be in Ketlar or maybe he just didn’t care about the politics of it but that wasn’t the reason the pair had drifted apart.

Busy was one word for it. During the school year baseball and soccer took up much of Carter’s time and this past summer he had spent with Cami in Spain. The time away from the school had been just what the new couple had needed but was cut short when his mom demanded he join the rest of the family in the Hamptons for the last two weeks of summer. Once back on campus, Carter barely had time to settle in before soccer picked up. Any free time he had was devoted to Camilla and resting his legs which acted up every now and then from his surgery.

That was exactly what Carter was doing that humid afternoon. Soccer had ended early due to the heat and he couldn’t think of a better way to spend the rest of his afternoon than playing video games in a cool, dark room. Like Mason, Carter too had risen to the top of his house and with it came the best room the dorm could offer. It made his girlfriend happy to have a little more privacy and hell, that made him happy too.

Blue eyes were glued to the television as his thumbs clicked away on his Xbox controller when he barely heard the knock over the sound effects of his game. Before he had the chance to pause it an all-too-familiar voice announced his arrival and the male couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear. “Mason fucking Lockhart. You didn’t burn when you set foot in the building?” he jested, just happy to see his friend.

Mason grinned at the sight of his best friend. It had been an entire summer since he’d seen him last. He could hardly remember the last words he uttered to Carter, let alone when he’d last seen him exactly. It must have been during the end of the year party, but Mason held little recollection of the events of that night. He’d blame the alcohol, but the truth of it was, last year seemed a like a lifetime ago. 

“You got sassier since you started dating Cami, you know that,” he teased, his hand reached forward for his old friend, embracing him in his greeting. “And look at you. King of Ketlar,” he added, a proud statement following a nod. Sure, he was meant to hate the house and the Drake in him did, but he loved Carter. They had made it to the top together, both earning their places in their own way. Mason got his by being the likable party boy he was; Carter got it through hard work and a good reputation. Yet both of them were still on top. “I mean, it’s not as nice as Drake. Little too prissy for my taste, but if that’s your thing,” he went on, turning back around to Carter, his chin gesturing towards the chin.

[text] Yeah, me too.

[text] wha-pshhh. You’re so whipped man. 

[text] Congratulations. I’m happy for you two. 

[text] About me?

[text] Camilla nice.

[text] It didn’t seem important.

[text] I’m kind of surprised she told you.