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“Oh my lord, Cassie! What the hell happened to your eye?!”
Cassie threw open the door of the apartment and flopped on the couch. “Jamal. Jamal Jenkins is what happened to my eye,” Cassie grumbled. “Him and that crazy, softball playing kid of his.”
Callie was standing in the doorway of the hall in the tiny apartment, one towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her head. “Ohhhhhh,” Callie said, understanding dawning in her eyes. “You played softball.”
“How’d you guess?” Cassie responded sarcastically. “Could you tell from thehugeblack and purple bruise surrounding my right eye?! You’re so observant!”
“Hey, don’t get sassy with me, Alaska,” Callie responded, throwing out the name for Cassie she used when she was pissed, which wasn’t very often. The reason they were such good friends is because of how little they disagreed. “I’m not the one who went out and played softball with the prodigy of the sport.”
“I didn’tknowshe was a prodigy!” Cassie wailed, the tears she had held at bay while she was at Jamal’s house running down her cheeks. “I suck at every sport! And now, now I get to look like abattered womanin yourwedding!Also, why are you here? Why aren’t you at Kyle’s house?”
Callie ran over to her friend and wrapped Cassie in a bear hug. “I’m so sorry, Cassie. I didn’t know you were going to play softball with them. I didn’t even know where you were until Kyle got a text from Jamal saying you had fallen asleep on his couch and he wasn’t waking you up. You wouldn’t answer your cell phone. I was really worried about you.”
“Ididfall asleep on his couch and hedidn’twake me up!” Cassie sobbed even harder. “Now everyone is going to think I’m a hussy!”
Callie pulled back from her friend and smiled. “Trust me, Cass, no one is going to think you’re a hussy for falling asleep on a couch. Now stop ugly crying and tell how you wound up asleep on his couch. Also, I’m here because even though I’m living insinwith Kyle, as my daddy likes to say, I didn’t want to stay the last couple of nights before the wedding. I wanted us to be separate, ya know? So I’m crashing here. Don’t worry. I won’t try to squeeze on your bed with you. I’ll sleep on Aria’s big ass king bed with her. How she got that mattress in that room is beyond me.”
Cassie wiped her face off on her sleeve and blew her nose in the cuff. “Sheer will alone, I’m convinced.”
“Really, Cass? That’s disgusting.”
“We don’t have any tissuesanywhere!”Cassie said as the tears began flowing again.
Callie pulled a paper towel off the holder and held it out in front of Cassie. “You. Asleep on Jamal’s couch. Spill.”
“So we went to some park to play softball and then JJ threw the ball at me when I was staring at Jamal because he had no shirt on and he really is hot like you guys said and then it hit me in the face because I wasn’t paying attention and then we went to their house to watch The Sandlot because they told me that I had to put meat on my eye!” Cassie said in a rush between crying hiccups.
Callie laughed as she grabbed the towel before it dropped off her head. “It’s ok. We’ll find a way to fix it.”
“How can you fix ablack eye?!”
Callie gave Cassie a long, hard look. “Ooooh-kay, so I can’t, but Aria can. She’s a whiz at makeup.”
Twenty minutes later, Cassie was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her two best friends facing her.
“That’ssomeblack eye, Eskimo,” Aria said, staring hard at Cassie’s face. “Are you sure aballand not a fist did this to you?”
Cassie froze in fear and couldn’t find any words to say, thoughts of her past swirling around in her head. “I, I –” she stuttered.
“Relax, girl. I can see the imprint of the stitches on your eyebrow,” Aria said, a puzzled look on her face. “But are you ok? You seem shaken up.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” Cassie said. “Just not looking forward to having a black eye in a wedding, that’s all.”
Aria stared at Cassie with a thoughtful look on her face. “If you say so.”
“I say so,” Cassie replied.
“Can you fix it?” Callie asked Aria. “I don’t know the first thing about makeup. But I figure if you can do all of our makeup for Thunder games you could cover up a black eye. Please say I’m right?”
“Are you kidding? I had every cosmetic known to girls worldwide from the time I was thirteen. I had to hide it in my backpack and put it on at school so my dad wouldn’t find out.”
Cassie and Callie laughed at their friend and suddenly, Cassie’s black eye didn’t seem so life-altering after all. Callie gave Cassie’s shoulder a gentle shove. “Told you she could fix it.”
“I am reserving judgement for the final product,” Cassie muttered.
“Hey, now. I don’t have to help you at all, Eskimo,” Aria said, pausing from her makeup organizing to give Cassie the death glare and point an eye-liner pencil in Cassie’s face. “So stop whining.”
“Ok, ok,” Cassie said, holding her hands up in front of her face. “I’m sure it will look amazing, Aria.”
