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“You know, I was wondering where that shirt went.” I nod to her distressed Gilded Cage T-shirt. “I thought that I lost it somewhere. Never thought that you were the kind of woman to steal my shirt.”
Cassie blushes a darker shade of red. “It was mixed in with my clothing when I moved out. Must have thought it was mine.”
My heart crashes through my chest as I walk over to the edge of her bed. “Cassie, you had eight years to throw it out. Why do you still have it?”
She shrugs and pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “It reminded me of the person you used to be before the success of the band ruined you.”
I lean over and cup her face with my hands. “Get ready to go out.”
“Go out where?”
“I want to take you out on a date.” The words are foreign to me. I can’t remember the last time I asked a woman out on a date. It was probably right before I met Cassie.
Her eyes widen. “You’re going to ruin the image you’ve built if you go out with me.”
I sigh and cross the room to sit down at the desk in the corner. “I don’t give a shit about my image right now, Cass. I’ve spent the last eight years worrying about what I look like to the media and look at where it got me.”
“Still, I don’t want to ruin your image. Not if we don’t know where this is going or what it means.”
I suck in a sharp breath but nod. As much as I may hate it, Cassie’s right. With a show coming up, if we date publicly, then there are going to be cameras following us. There will be pictures splashed all over the internet and if our relationship ends, she’s still going to be followed around by cameras.
“We’ll keep it a secret for now, then.” I run my hand through my hair, hating the fact that I have to keep Cassie a secret.
It’s for the best right now. If she decides that she’s better off without me, she deserves a life of peace.
She goes over to her dresser and pulls out a pair of jeans. My gaze travels along her legs before taking in the posters on the wall. Various tour posters from when we first started are framed. Pictures of the four of us when we were too young to know what we would all become stare back at me.
“How did you manage to get a copy of all these posters?” I ask, getting up to go look at the one from our first big show. “I tried at every show to get one and they would never give me any.”
“Probably because you were an asshole and most of the crew didn’t like you.” Cassie shimmies into her jeans and tucks part of her shirt’s hem into them. She steps into a pair of platform sneakers and walks over to join me. “If you’d been nicer to people on those early tours, they would have been willing to get you posters before the venue took them down.”
“Well,” I say, laughing as I head for the hallway. “You’re probably right about that. How did the rest of your evening go?”
She follows along behind me, talking about one of her students as we head out of the townhouse and to my car. Her entire face comes to life when she talks about teaching children. Cassie ispractically vibrating with excitement as she tells me about the songs they were able to get through before the student left.
The more she talks, the more I know that there’s no going back to a life without her. I forgot about the passion she has no problem showing. She’s excited about everything she does. She loves to see people succeed.
Cassie is intelligent and wildly talented. She’s everything that anyone would be lucky to have.
And somehow, I’ve convinced her to get in this car with me.
I take her through Seattle and down to a little restaurant we used to spend hours at back in university. Cassie bounces in her seat as I pull into the tiny parking lot beside the white stone building. She lets out an excited squeak as she turns to face me.
“I haven’t been here in years.” Her smile wavers slightly. “There are a lot of old memories I didn’t think I was ready to face.”
Leaning over, I kiss her cheek. “We’re here to make new memories.”
As I get out of the car, Cassie sits in the passenger seat and stares at the building. The scent of garlic bread and rich tomato sauce wafts out one of the open side doors. I nod to the chef sitting on a milk crate in the doorway before rounding the front of the car.
Cassie looks up at me as I open her door. Hesitancy shines in her eyes but when I hold my hand out, she takes it.
We walk into the dimly lit restaurant and are led to a booth in the back. Cassie’s eyes water as she slides into the booth and looks down at the wooden tabletop. She traces her fingers over the little scratches in the corner.
“I can’t believe our names are still here.” She pulls out her phone and takes a picture. “I would have thought that the table would have been sanded down a couple times over the years.”
I grab one of the menus from the center of the table and start scanning through it. A lump in my throat threatens to choke me. The day we carved our names in the table was the day we wrote our first song together.
Cassie had wanted to commemorate nearly two weeks of sitting in this booth and trying to write a song. We had come here nearly every day after classes for the garlic knots and the buy-one-get-one-free glasses of cheap beer.
