A week later and Mason had almost completely recovered from watching the messages they’d been sent from family back home. He hadn’t watched it the first day the dvd had been in his possession. Seriously considered snapping the disc in half and tossing it out into the street. He’d come close; tested bending it in half, but in the end decided to bite the bullet and watch the fucking thing.
Seeing the faces of his baby brother and Cade and even his mum, made him miss them (even the latter, if only slightly) that much more. Only after the video returned to the menu did he decide he regretted watching it. Snapped the thing in half and flung the pieces like broken Frisbees off the side of the roof.
He’d almost put it out of his mind when Ren plonked down in her usual place and said six words that brought it all rushing back to the forefront of his mind. She didn’t need to elaborate for him to know what she was talking about. It was all she seemed to be interested in yesterday. Nor was he the type to begrudge anyone for how they wanted to spend their birthday, even if he was personally fond of the tradition of drinking and doing stupid shit to pass the time.
Mason flicked his gaze up from cleaning one of his guns. Ren hadn’t talked about what was in her message. He hadn’t asked, assuming it was probably mostly the same as what had been said to him. There was a span of seconds in which the man said nothing at all, silently gauging from those few words what his cousin’s opinion of the messages was. Happy. Depressed. Angry. Those were the only three emotions he could come up with. If she’d been angry, chances were she’d be throwing things around and breaking shit. The former two were easier to repress.
Taking the small bore brush to the gun barrel, he straightened up from his slouched position over the coffee table. “Need your gun cleaned?” Five words formed a question that had nothing at all to do with what Ren said. He considered leaving it at that, wasn’t sure he wanted to give in to the part of him that missed family back in Perth.
Mason flexed his jaw, then said, “Was it worth it? Waiting to watch it on your birthday?”