I sit down beside her. “Your mom wants you to do that? Is she fucking nuts?”
She cracks a tiny smile. “Like mother like daughter, huh?”
“You’re not…” Hell. “You’re not nuts or stupid, Cass.”
“She’s upset with me. Because of you.”
Christ, I want her on my dick. I want to sink inside her, but this snaps me out of my trance. “Me?”
“I told her...” She swallows, looks away. “Told her I want to be with you.”
“Jesus, Cass.”
“See? I am stupid.” She pulls away from me, swings her legs off the bed and prepares to stand.
“Where are you going?” Shit. “Cass, wait.”
“She was right,” Cassie is muttering, tugging half-heartedly on her sweater. She won’t turn around, let me see her face, but her voice is cracked. “Don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I shouldn’t have said it, shouldn’t have expected anything, but I couldn’t stop myself—”
“Cass.” I throw myself at her, grab her around the waist before she gets up. I wrap my arms around her slender frame, hold on tight. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You never said it back.”
Okay, I’m officially lost. “Said what?”
“Let me go.” She twists in my hold, breaks it and gets up. She spins around to face me. “You don’t get it.”
That much is obvious. I get up, eyeing her warily. “What is it that I don’t get?”
“This.” She waves a hand between us. “Me.”
The headache is back, hammering behind my eyes. “What the fuck do you want from me, Cass?”
“Are you seriously asking me this?”
“You know what? Fuck this.” She won’t even explain, and I knew. I knew from the start I wasn’t what she needed.
“Really? That’s what you got to say to me?”
“I don’t know what the hell you want me to say. I ain’t no mind-reader, and I’m fucking tired, so I’m going home. Enjoy your day off.”
I take her pendant off my neck and the rubber band off my wrist and throw them on the bed, then cross the apartment and walk out.
Someone with as much baggage as myself, so damn fucked up in the head, well, I should have known I’d end up on my own after all, and that this wasn’t real.
It was too fucking good to last.
***
I miss her. Miss her so damn much.
I find myself reaching for the pendant every single fucking time. Reaching for her. When I wake up from yet another nightmare, she’s not by my side. When I pour my darkest memories on the paper, she's not near.
She’s gone.
The days go by, slow, empty. Dark. The therapist keeps asking me what happened. Says I’d been doing better, but now I’m backsliding.
Without her, I’m tethered to the past, not the present. Losing sight of the goddamn future. If ever there was one for me. I used to doubt it, and now those doubts are back.