His heart was beating fast; lungs feeling like they were constricting with every step he made his way through the sea of Frostfordians. He wasn’t sure what had happened -- wasn’t sure where the anxiety had come from - but somewhere between the skeeball and the corndogs, the man had lost his calm. Feeling like he needed to be anywhere but in the Praline-Loving crowd around him as he wandered nearly aimlessly for an exit from the festivities. Mason kept his head low in fear that he might catch the eye of someone he recognized... knowing that there was hardly an eye-line that wasn’t familiar. Not a single expression that he hadn’t seen a thousand times before. 

But maybe that’s what made it even more shocking when he ran head first into the one woman he had truly been avoiding since he had made his way back to Frostford. One of the few faces that could make his heart ache, even after all the time they had spent apart. “I didn’t mean to...” Mace tried to brush off the interaction like something as simple as a run-in. Looking anywhere but Anna’s face as he did everything he could to get away before she could see the distress fixed on his expression; an embarrassed blush tinting the high points of his cheeks. “I - I didn’t mean to bother you. Sorry.” 

“Look, I know I probably should have called first, but it was hard enough tracking your address down without adding your phone number into that hunt, so... ” Mason raised his brows up at Anna, leaning into the frame in her doorway with something that resembled a grin slowly making it’s way over his expression. He was more than happy to see her - he was the one who had just showed up on her doorstep, after all - but there was something within him that couldn’t be sure that she would be quite so happy to see him too. Maybe it was just his regular brand of anxiety eating away at him, or maybe it was just the years they had spent avoiding each other... either way, he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that she was better off without him in her life again. “Here I am. I figured I’d take my chances on surprising you, and just give you the option to tell me to get the hell out of here if you needed to. Hope you, uh... don’t mind.”