Days Like This (21 page)

CASSIE. CASSIE. CASSIE.

Sitting in my
apartment reminded me of her and last night. I lay awake all night thinking
about her. I usually did, but it was more intense. Where I was usually awake,
angry or confused, last night I was awake with thoughts of her touching me. Her
pressed against the wall. Her hands on my chest. Her lips on mine, her hands
roaming, my body’s response, the look on her face before she left. Every
thought of her made my heart race faster.

My phone rang,
and I thought it was Cassie, but it was Molly. “I’m downstairs,” she said.

“Come up,” I
said.

“You come
down.”

I opened the
door and I started to talk, but she turned away and lowered herself on the
single step outside my front door. I gulped down my nerves.

“I have a
question,” she said before I could speak. I sat next to her, but as soon as I
did she stood and blocked the afternoon sun from my face. “Just one question.”

I nodded.

“Have you been
in love with her since the beginning of our relationship, or was it just
because she came back?”

“What?”

Molly’s hands moved
around in the air while she spoke, and her words were fast. Almost running into
each other. “Because I’ve been thinking about it. I was either a way for you to
try to move on from her, or I was more than that and when you saw her it all
came rushing back. Which one?”

I rolled my
neck. “Both? I didn’t know I still loved her until she came back. And now—”

“Now you want
her.”

I nodded
slowly. Was that what I wanted? Yes. I think it was. “I’m sorry. I swear I—”

“Didn’t mean
it, I know. I should’ve run as soon as you told me about her, or when I learned
you saved her mom, but I liked you,” she said. “You were cute and funny and you
made me feel…” she paused. “I never should’ve stayed.”

“Molly.”

She shook her
head. “I’ve been there for you since the very beginning. I was patient. I
listened, but I’m never going to be the girl next door. I’m Molly, not Cassie,
and I can’t be with you when you’re in love with her. I won’t. I’m not second
best, and I refuse to settle for that with my man. I sacrifice enough for other
people.”

“You deserve
so much more than I can give you. You should have that guy who feels so crazy
in love with you that he can’t breathe.”

Molly nodded
slowly. “The way you feel about her?”

I didn’t
respond, but I didn’t need to. We both knew the answer already. There were no
other words between us, and she turned away and walked down the path back to
her car. The last I saw of her was the sun bouncing off her blonde hair.

FOUR DAYS AGO I kissed Graham.
I hadn’t seen him since. Not in passing or a text. I’d been thinking a lot
since that night. Maybe he was right about all of it. I was selfish, and we
were wrong, and there was no future for us. Even if I thought I wanted it.

Dr. Lambert
had been helpful. She told me to find the thing that gives me passion. I wasn’t
sure where to start, but I kept listening to June’s music. Buying things on
iTunes and ordering new vinyls. There was some good music out there. I was writing
more lyrics than I knew had existed inside of me. Somewhere in all the
thinking, in the debating about Graham, in watching Rohan’s song hit number one
on the charts, and in listening to my heart, I found my path. It only took four
days, give or take a few years.

I clicked send
on my seventh application to a label internship. This one was for producing. I
wasn’t really sure where in music my heart lied, but I knew it was, and had
always been, for me. I’d had a lot of free time to research while I waited for
Graham.

My phone rang,
and it was June. “I knew you’d be awake.”

“I am. You
made it?”

“Yesterday.
Then I slept for fourteen hours. What are you doing? Miss me yet?”

I clicked a
new tab on my computer. “Applying to internships.”

June gasped. “Internships?
Little Cassie found a path? What is it?”

I paused. “Music.”

“I bet you
feel like an idiot now.”

I laughed. I
guessed I did; I thought it would ruin me, like it did my parents, but it
really saved Mom. At least for a while. “It’s the only thing that has ever made
me happy.”

“And Graham.”

I sighed. I
still didn’t know if there was a place for our feelings or my happiness. “He
hasn’t even talked to me since.”

“He will. You
have to make him want to be,” she said. “I forgot how fucking sunny it is in LA.”

“I have no remorse
for you,” I said with a smile.

“So, if you
get one of these internships, what happens?”

“I don’t know
if I can even leave Mom again. What if something happens? She needs me. I
probably won’t get picked anyway. We’ll see.” I’d take it one thing at a time.
I couldn’t abandon her this time, and I couldn’t lose myself either.

“I don’t think
your mom would want you to stay,” June said.

“We’ll see,” I
said, but I didn’t feel hopeful. “Go enjoy your sunshine.”

“Yes. Gotta
track down some hot celebs or something! Bye, Harlen.”

I PUSHED SEND on the last of
my forms for Rice. I had a schedule, loans to pay until I die, and a roommate.
This was happening. Two months until I started my own life. I closed the
computer and saw a light across the yard from Cassie’s room. I was being an
ass, I knew that, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t have anything
to offer her; I was moving. She wasn’t going to stay here, and neither was I.
We couldn’t be anything.

Someone
pounded on my door, and I knew, pretty much immediately, that it was Cassie. No
one else would be here at two in the morning.

I bolted down
the stairs and sure enough, she was in front of me. Her hair sticking up all
over the place, and getting longer like the Cassie I used to know.

“I’m sorry,”
she said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

With the
words, her voice cracked a little. Cass didn’t cry.

“Come inside,”
I said, opening the door for her. She shook her head.

“I was wrong.
When I left you. You haven’t asked me about it since I’ve been home, but I want
you to know. I need you to know, Graham, that I loved you. That I still love
you.”

I stared at
her for a moment. We were really doing this at 2 a.m. “Let’s at least sit.”

I closed the
door and we sat on the wicker couch on my parents’ back porch. She hesitated
for a moment before moving past me. My mind was racing with questions, and my
heart was a jackhammer out of control. I really wanted to touch her, but I also
knew I should keep my hands to myself. This was confusing enough, and she came
here for a purpose. One I wanted to know, too. I was barely seated when she
turned back to face me.

“I know I was
wrong.”

I swallowed.
Did I really want to hear this?

“This doesn’t
make it right, but I was scared.”

“Of me? Of us?
What?” My voice was low because I couldn’t decide what I felt. Angry or
disappointed or sad. All of the above.

Cassie shook
her head. “Not you—never you. Not even us, because I needed us. You were all I
knew that was real, and I would never have survived without us. Without you.”
She paused and stood, moving around again. She couldn’t sit still. Was she
really that nervous? “I was scared of myself.”

I didn’t know
what to say. This whole thing was a lot to process. The last week had been a
crazy whirlwind. Ever since she’d come back, really. I didn’t know up from
down.

Cass bit the
side of her cheek, and looked off into space. As she spoke, her hands twisted
around her shirt. “I had all these acceptance letters to schools all over the
country. I knew you’d go wherever I wanted, but I didn’t get to tell you. Then,
you asked me to marry you and I told myself that we could have it all. I could
go to school, you could go to school, and we could be married. I wanted it, I
really did.”

She sat again
on the edge of the wicker couch, so close I could’ve shifted a little right and
our knees would’ve touched. I told myself to breathe, because this was the part
I’d been wondering for a year. The part that I didn’t have the courage to ask
about.

“We’d been
gone all that weekend, and I picked up some of Mom’s favorite éclairs to bring
with me.”

I’d kept her
busy those few days. I still remembered them like they were yesterday. We were
together, completely happy and alone in those three days in a cabin in the
mountains. Happy and alone and engaged.

 “I was going
to tell her about the engagement, like I said I would, but when I got home she
was in a manic state.” Cassie pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. It was just
long enough now to stay there. “Mom talked to me like I was someone else. Not
Cassie; Cassie was a baby. A friend. She kept saying she wanted my dad back.
She wanted him back. I said he was dead, and she said he wasn’t, that he left
because he couldn’t handle being with her and her mood swings. She said she
ruined his life.”

Her dad. All
this happened because of her dad?
Shit.
“Cassie—”

“It was all I
could think about for days, Graham,” she said. Her hands wandered along her
legs, and I couldn’t look away from her face. Her voice cracked and I had to
fight the urge to touch her, to comfort her. “I had your ring on my finger, and
you were promising me yourself forever. I wanted that—you have to know I wanted
that—but what if I got sick? We were young; we are young. There were no clues
about what could happen, but I felt like, for months, like I was losing it.”

Around us,
everything was quiet. Even the cicadas were listening to this moment. She
thought I would leave her, so she left me. That logic made no sense.

“I would never
leave you,” I whispered after a pause.

“I know,” she
said. She smiled lightly, but I wasn’t smiling. I was confused. If she knew
then why leave? “That was the thing: you would stay. You would take care of me
the same way I had to take care of my mom. That sucked for me, and I hated her
for it, and I didn’t want to ruin your life that way, Graham.”

Even as she
said it, a tear fell down her face. She didn’t get it. I closed that little space
so our knees bumped. I couldn’t believe that was why she left.

“I couldn’t live
with myself if I did that. So I left you. I thought I was saving you. I did it
for you,” Cassie said.

“A life
without you? That’s harder. I woke up and you were gone. Gone. No note, no
phone calls, nothing. Do you know what that was like for me?” My voice sounded
a little bitter, angrier, than I wanted it to. But she left. All of this
separation was because of something that could’ve been cleared up with a
conversation. If she would’ve trusted me enough to tell me this before, then
we’d be together right now. Right now we’d have a life together, somewhere
else, instead of being here like this.

God, if I
would’ve said something sooner. She’d stood there the day I went after her and
admitted she loved me, but she kept saying she wasn’t good for me. She’d said
she would hurt me. I should’ve known something was wrong. I should’ve seen it
when she looked at me. It was our language, the words beyond words. I’d missed
it.

 “I’m sorry. I
know that doesn’t mean anything, but I am. I never wanted to hurt you.” Her
voice was low, and she nestled her legs under her.

 “What about when
I came to school?” I asked.

Seeing her
there that day felt like waking up without her all over again. My heart didn’t
know what to do. I’d felt it all at once. The love for her, the anger, the
disappointment, the doubt. I’d half expected her to run into my arms like in
those movies, but she hadn’t. She’d lingered a few feet away from me, and we’d
stared at each other. All the words I’d planned to say drifted away, and that’s
when I saw the look was in her eyes, the one that I’d known so well. The one
that I’d hated, filled with uncertainty and fear. I should’ve known. I did
know, but I didn’t want to see it. I’d been stubborn. I didn’t want to let her
go, to admit that she was lost, and that I was lost.

I’d still
loved her when she gave me back that ring, just like I still loved her now. I wish
I didn’t anymore, that I could let go. She’d left me. That should’ve been
enough. But ten years of being Graham and Cassie wasn’t easy to give up on. She’d
taught me how to be that stubborn, and until I’d left that school with nothing
but a ring and a broken heart, I didn’t know how much I’d needed that lesson.

Cassie stared
at the ground like it was the most interesting thing in the whole fucking
messed up world. Everything was quiet, too quiet.
“That killed me. I never expected you to come. I didn’t
leave my room for a week after you left,” she said.

That didn’t make
up for what happened. I’d been there. I’d laid my heart out for her, and she
turned me away. She told me to leave, to move on. She said we wouldn’t work—and
all that time, she’d loved me. We’d wasted all of it.

“Why not tell
me? I knew there was something else going on, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

Cassie stood
up again, her arm brushing against mine as she did. “Would it have mattered? If
I had told you I was scared, you would’ve stayed anyway. I thought through
every scenario and the one constant in all of them was you.”

I didn’t want
to hear that shit. Not after all we’d been through. She could’ve told me
something real, instead of that “she wasn’t good for me” shit. That was the
worst about all of it. That hurt the most because since when had I not been
enough for her?

“You trying to
save me—you should’ve talked to me, Cassie.” But how many times had I done the
same thing? Tried to protect her without her knowing. And how many problems had
it caused?

“I know.”
Cassie picked at her fingernails, barely looking at me.

“Did you even
think about what it was doing to me? To think that you didn’t want me after all
that we’d been through?” I wanted to stop talking because I could tell it was
hurting her, but all the words kept rushing out. All the things I hadn’t said,
and had wanted to say. Once I admitted one of them to myself, they were all too
big to ignore. “I felt like shit. Like less than shit. I wanted to hate you. I
really did, but I couldn’t. I loved you. I loved you and I knew there was
something else. I knew it.”

I never should
have let her go. I should’ve fought harder, and then maybe…

Cassie froze
in front of me. “I thought you would be happier without having to worry about
me. To wait for me. To follow me. I thought you could find your own life, one
without me. I thought you would be better off.”

Tears streamed
from her eyes, and she was close enough that I could pull her near. This girl
who I knew I still loved despite all this stuff she was telling me. I’d only
seen Cassie cry once in all our years together. She was always so strong, so
together. She didn’t like to show weakness, and here she was baring her soul to
me. I reached out and took her hand. She looked at me again, and I saw her.
Really saw her. She was still scared, but underneath all that, there was
something she didn’t have before. Maybe in all the years I’d known her, there
was hope.

She left her
hand in mine, and I stroked the top of it with my finger. “I didn’t tell you
all this to convince you to love me again. I know you’ve started over; I know I
hurt you. I just wanted you to know—you deserved to know. It was never you. It
was easier to run away from the things I was afraid of, instead of facing them.
I’m not brave like you.”

I shifted in
the seat so I was facing her. “What? That’s crazy.” I wasn’t brave. I had done
things, kept things from her, from myself. I led Molly on because I didn’t want
to face my feelings. That wasn’t something someone brave did.

She laced her
fingers with mine, and my whole body exhaled at the movement. “I know you saved
my mom from the fire.”

I opened my
mouth and closed it again. How did she know that?

A small smile
was on the corner of Cassie’s mouth. “Molly told me. Mom verified. Why did you
tell me it was Mrs. Pearson?”

I stretched my
arm across my knee, careful not to disrupt our hands. I didn’t want to let go
now that she was linked to me again. “I thought if you didn’t know it was me,
you’d come back. I didn’t want you to stay away because of me, or to come back because
of me. I wanted you to come back for her. For yourself.”

“Part of me did
come back for you. You’re always part of everything I do, Graham.”

I didn’t
expect her to say that, and it lifted something inside me. Who was this girl?
If she could be honest, I had to be honest. “That phone call was difficult. I
didn’t want to face you. I’m not as brave as you think I am.”

She shook her
head. “That’s not true.”

We stared at
each other for what felt like hours, but it was only seconds. Only a few beats
of my heart. I felt my body leaning in toward her, feeding off the bond between
us. I looked at her lips, and wanted to taste them again. I leaned in toward
her, and she started to do the same. I wanted all this stuff between us to be
in the past, and I wanted her.

But Cassie pulled
her hand from mine, and kissed my cheek quickly. “Thank you for saving my mom.”