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Felicity left, and I herded my daughters into the living room, where Cass greeted them warmly. “You must be Ada and Em. I’m a friend of your father’s from high school.”
Friend.It made me vaguely sick that Cass found it so easy to refer to me that way.
“Do you girls want to talk about the Brianna situation?” I asked.
“No thanks,” Em said. “Can we have fruit snacks?”
“Uhhh…sure.”
They both hurried into the kitchen. I crossed the living room to Cassidy and kissed him again. He returned it. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I whispered.
“I know.”
We kissed once more. “Wecan’tdo this.”
“I know,” he repeated, breathless.
Another kiss.
“Daddy,” Ada called. “We can’t reach the fruit snacks.”
One more.
“Are you going to help them get fruit snacks?” he asked.
“There’s a step stool. They’ll be fine.”
“Seriously.”
“Of course I’ll help them get fruit snacks.” Reluctantly, I stepped back. But before I could turn and go to the kitchen, I met Cass’s gaze and asked, “Did you really try to call me? After I left?”
Cass’s expression was pained. “Fran, it was eighteen years ago.”
He knew exactly what I was talking about. “You did.”
“I did.”
“And then you just gave up?”
“Come on.” He shook his head. “We were broken up. You lied about not getting into OU, because you couldn’t justtellme you wanted to go somewhere else. I said some shit to you I wasn’t proud of, and you definitely deserved a lot of it, but I didn’t want that to be the way we left things. So yeah, I tried to call. I left a message and you never responded, and that seemed, at the time, like it was probably for the best.”
“I’d changed numbers.”
“I figured.”
“What did you say?” And what poor unsuspecting soulhadgotten Cass’s message?
He dragged his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It was probably half apologizing, half furious. I wasn’t at my most eloquent, I’m sure.”
“You could have asked my mom for my number, or emailed—”
“We were done. I wasn’t going tostalkyou.” His forehead furrowed. “Is that what you wanted?”
No. What I wanted was to go back in time and not break his heart.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “And no. It was a really shitty way to treat you, lying like I did. So maybe I wish you’d tried harder, because I wanted to talk things out; I wanted to see if we…but that’s only because I was a total dumbass and you were always the smart one, and if anyone could have fixed it, it would have been you. But that’s not fair, and I know, and I’m sorry. And I didn’t want you to fix it, not at the time, because I thought we needed a clean break—Ineeded a clean break. I thought I had…plans.”
Except now, looking at him, I couldn’t remember why I’d been so sure that Cassidy Sullivan hadn’t fit into those plans. Why I’d been so sure we’d grow apart instead of growing together. What had I been thinking before we’d kissed? That seventeen-year-olds are stupid. Which, true. Undoubtedly true. But here I was at thirty-six, and I didn’t feel any smarter than a teenager at all. I just felt kind of...tired. I should have been floating after our kisses, but I felt like a half-deflated Pony Pals helium balloon, bobbing sadly around the room at eye-level for a week after the birthday party, until it finally gave up and sank gratefully to the floor.
