I rub my forehead and glance at the yellow blanket, neatly folded at the end of the couch, the one Cassie washed twice because she said once was not enough to spiritually cleanse it of whatever Zane and I had subjected it to.
Cassie sets the cereal box down. The joking drains from her face.
“How long has it been?” she asks.
“That’s not the point.”
“So, not long enough for a missing persons report.”
“Cassie.” I sit up straighter. “The point is, he said everything he said. We did everything we did. Then he walked out of hereand started sending me texts that sound like they were written by a man trapped under a truck with one functioning thumb.”
Cassie blinks. “That was vivid.”
“I’m serious.”
I press a hand to my forehead and breathe out slowly.
Anger rises. It is easier than fear. It always has been. Anger stands upright. Anger has somewhere to go. Fear curls into a corner and waits to be proven right. And I have spent enough of my life in that corner to know exactly how the walls feel.
I would rather take my phone, throw it at the wall, and tell myself I am furious because Zane is an emotionally useless asshole who cannot string a sentence together when it matters.
But beneath the fury is fear. Because the last time Zane loved me and then went quiet, I spent years trying to find the edges of the hole he left and to figure out how to fill it. Some part of me still doesn’t fully trust happiness without pain arriving close behind it.
Cassie moves around the bench and sits beside me on the couch, her shoulder pressing against mine in that specific way she has of making contact without announcing it. The way she has always done since we were ten years old and the world was considerably less manageable than it is now.
For once, she doesn’t fill the silence right away. She just lets it sit.
I hate when she gets quiet. Quiet Cassie is serious Cassie.
“Did you fight?” she asks.
“No.”
“Did he seem weird when he left?”
“No.” I turn my attention to the yellow blanket. “You heard him. He couldn’t stop kissing me. He seemed… happy.”
I close my eyes for a second and the image of him that morning comes back uninvited. Tired eyes and a soft mouth, his hand against my face, the way he kissed me before he left, as if walkingout the door were something he intended to undo as quickly as possible.
Cassie goes silent again.
“He seemed happy,” I repeat, quieter now. “And then yesterday he said he would call but he did not. This morning he sent something. Said something came up and he is handling it, whatever the fuck that means.”
“It means something came up,” Cassie says.
I turn my head and stare at her.
She lifts both hands. “I know. Wild concept. A man possibly telling the truth in short, infuriating sentences. Call the Vatican. Alert the press. We have witnessed a miracle.”
“Do not defend him.”
“I’m not defending him. I’m defending reality against your trauma response, which has apparently stolen a car and is driving it straight into a brick wall at full speed.”
“He could have called,” I say.
“Yes.”
“He could have sent more than seven fucking words.”
