Page 119 of Tell Me I'm Enough

And now I’m scared.

Rightfully so with this one.

“No…wait! I don’t think I can do this, Simone!”

She laughs at me and walks closer, taking my hand. “Shh. Squeeze my hand and stop thinking about it.”

I squeeze her hand and shake my head. “How did I let you convince me this was a good idea?”

The lady walks over with the needle, and I start shaking.

“Mason, calm down,” Simone says, laughing. “I just got mine done. It wasn’t that bad.”

“You have like ten piercings in your ears…I’ve never done this before.”

“You’ll be fine, I promise. You have tattoos. I’ve seen a couple.”

I look over at her, squinting. “You been checking me out? All my tattoos are hidden.”

She shakes her head, ignoring me. “Aren’t you supposed to be some big macho football player who gets tackled all the time and loves to get into fights on and off the field? You can’t handle alittleneedle?”

I glare at her, and she giggles.

“It’s gonna make you look hot, I promise. The ladies are gonna love it.”

“I’m already hot,” I tell her.

“Well…morehot then.”

“Not possible.”

She shakes her head. “You’re insufferable.”

The lady laughs at me when I scream as she pierces my ear, and I glare at Simone the entire time.

Back in the car, Simone looks over at me and smiles. “It lookssogood.”

“This was a ‘Yes Day’ foryou, not a ‘put Mason through pain and laugh about it for some sick pleasure day.’”

She pats my thigh. “You’ll be okay. Plus, now you’ve got this little edge to your surfer boy look. It’s really working for you.”

“Are you trying to tell me you think I’m cute, Simone?”

She waves me off. “You don’t need your ego boosted by me. There are enough girls who already do that.”

“Eh, they’re just trying to use me to get in my pants,” I tell her. “At least with you, I know the compliment is genuine.”

Back on campus, Simone somehow talks me into taking her up to the press box above the football stadium. We have to sneak in there, and I tell her that if I get in trouble, there will be a lot of fans coming after her.

We sit up there talking for a while about anything and everything—about her dreams, what the future could look like, how much of an escape college has been, and how lucky we both feel to be here.

“So…” she starts, staring out of the glass window. “If you could paint the perfect picture of a day in your life in ten years…the wayyou’dwant it to be, what would that look like?”

I think about it for a moment.

“Um, I guess I’d probably wake up with my super hot wife beside me…have some hot married morning sex—”

She shoves me, laughing. “Ew, gross. I don’t wanna picture that.”