“And that’s why we were thinking about Mexico.” Julia finishes what was obviously a much longer thought. “What do you guys think?” She’s holding Zach’s hand under the table and has to let go of him to get more animated. “It could be really great, but we wanted to check with you guys first. Zach’s sisters are all in, but if you two think it’s a bad idea then we could reconsider.”
“Mexico?” I ask like the dumb ass I am tonight. “What about Mexico?”
Julia’s brow crinkles in irritation. “For the wedding. Like I just explained for ten minutes. Were you really not listening?”
I shrug. Might as well just confirm my status as the biggest jerk at this table.
“We’d go down for the week or a few days, whatever works best for everybody. And it would limit the numbers for the final headcount if we had a destination wedding. We’ve both been married here before so it wouldn’t have any of the old mojo, you know? Fresh start and all of that. Plus, it could be a vacation, which could be fun.” Julia seems to be trying to convince herself as much as she’s trying to convince us. “You think it’s stupid.”
“No,” I start, hoping Cassie will chime in. I’m sure she doesn’t think the idea of vacationing in Mexico with me sounds anything like fun. “I just need to think about scheduling. When are we talking about?”
“December, maybe? That gives us six months.”
“Six months of prep?” Cassie blurts out. She’s clearly not thrilled.
“No, that’s the best part. If we find a place that does most of the wedding stuff as a package then there isn’t much prep. They give us options and we choose. Easy peasy.” I watch as Zach slides a hand onto Julia’s thigh and gives it a squeeze. She beams at him and my heart constricts a little.
“So, no prep and some time on the beach when it’s cold as balls here. Is that what you’re telling us?” Cassie asks.
“My balls aren’t cold.” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it. The look on Cassie’s face almost makes it worth it until I remember that I’ve been accidentally horrible to her since we were kids. Remembering that she’s more than familiar with my balls makes her irritated eye roll even more regrettable.
Zach doesn’t seem to appreciate my joke either, possibly because he knows that the temperature of my balls is something his future wife is familiar with as well. I think about crawling under the table. Zach clears his throat and addresses Cassie, ignoring me and my inability to be a reasonable dinner guest. “Yep. Less prep and some beach time. Do you think you could make that work? We’d help pay for your plane ticket and hotel. We don’t want it to be a burden for anyone.”
“I would gladly pay for a Mexican vacation if it meant I had to spend less time with Graham for the next six months.” Cassie gets right to the point.
Ouch.
“There is that advantage.” Julia’s not afraid to pile on either, I guess. I think about standing up for myself, but tonight’s not the night for that. Julia’s already rising from her chair and moving toward the kitchen, calling out over her shoulder, “Who’s ready for dessert?”
“Hey, I’m sorry about tonight. I’ll work on being less of an asshole from now on.” My apology to Julia earns me an arm pat. It’s a far cry from the kisses she used to give me, and I try to keep myself from leaning into her touch.
“I’m not really the one you should be apologizing to.” She tilts her head in Cassie’s direction. “You need to work things out with her or this wedding is going to be a nightmare.”
This wedding is my nightmare even without this Cassie friction. But I can never tell Julia this. I’m sure Zach suspects I’m still carrying around feelings for his fiancée that I should have gotten over long ago, but if Julia agrees she’s not saying anything. We had our chance and I blew it so now I have to live with the consequences. Which makes the Cassie thing so much more important to fix. I can’t shake the feeling that while I’ve been thinking I’m basically a good guy, that’s never been the general consensus.
“I’ll fix it.” I pull her in for a quick hug. She smells like I always remember, and I close my eyes for the briefest second before making myself let her go. “I need to see if I can get an Uber out here.”
“I thought your car was at my parents’ house. You’ll never get an Uber in the suburbs on a Sunday.”
“Your dad picked me up after his golf game. I can figure it out.” I’m already swiping at my phone. “It won’t be a problem.”
“Why don’t you just ride with Cassie?” Julia suggests like it’s the most innocent thing in the world. “She goes right past your place.” She yells to Cassie in the kitchen, “Cass, Graham needs a ride home!”
When Cassie looks up from the sink, I see the animosity clearly on her face.
“You can drop him off, right?” Julia yells, not even giving Cassie the chance to protest. We’re fighting, sure, but it doesn’t make sense for Cassie to tell her no. Not that this will stop Cassie if she decides not to cooperate. Even worse, I have flashes of Cassie dumping me on the side of the interstate once we leave here. Or of her driving me down some secluded country road and leaving me there to teach me a well-deserved lesson about keeping my big mouth shut.
“I can figure it out. I don’t need a ride.”
“You do need a ride and I’m not going to let you sleep here. Just go with her and it will give you a chance to talk without an audience. She has to listen in the car.” Julia seems to have forgotten who we’re talking about. Cassie never has to listen, not if she doesn’t want to hear what you’re saying, and she’s done listening to me today.
Cassie stares me down, the space from the kitchen to the living room crackling with anger. Her eyes locked with mine are all the warning I should need but when she gives in, I don’t fight it. She shrugs. “Fine. Be ready to go in five.” And she’s back rinsing dishes and ignoring me.
When I finally slide into the passenger seat of Cassie’s car, the last thing I want to do is beg for her forgiveness, so we sit in silence for the first ten minutes. She’s waiting me out, not even trying to make small talk. I can hear her breathing over the hum of the engine as we play a game of chicken to see who’ll blink first.
I lose, of course, because I’m the one who should be talking here. I clear my throat and examine Cassie’s profile. “I’m sorry,” I start but then fizzle out. I know what I should be saying here, but there’s only so many ways to say you’re sorry and I’ve got plenty to apologize for tonight.
“It’s fine,” Cassie lies. “Can we please not talk?”
“You and I both know nothing is fine right now, Cassie.”
Silence. Not even so much as a sideways glance. She keeps her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel. There’s no way I can talk to her like this, not when she’s planning on ignoring me in the name of safe driving.
“I swear I didn’t remember all that about the nickname. I would never have called you that if I had remembered how it started. I don’t even remember you being that fat.”
That does it. Cassie’s head swivels, her lips already snarling. “You don’t even remember me being that fat? That’s supposed to make it better? Of course you don’t remember. You don’t remember what I looked like; you don’t remember how I got that nickname. You don’t remember because it wasn’t a big deal to you, but it was a big deal to me. Just shut up, Graham. You can’t make this better right now.”
“Cassie, just…” I can’t talk to her while she’s driving, not if she’s going to get upset. “Can you pull over? Just stop the car for a second, okay?”
I’m shocked when she eases the car over to the side of the road and puts it into park. She doesn’t turn to face me, doesn’t take her hands off the steering wheel, but she’s listening. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything worth saying.
“Can you look at me, please?” I know she doesn’t want to, but she turns her stony face away from the windshield. “I would never have kept calling you that if I had any idea that it was hurting you. I�
�m not mean, Cassie. I like to rile you up, sure, but I’m not mean-spirited. You have to know that.”
“How would I know that, Graham? From my perspective you’ve always been like this. You’ve always called me a name I hated. You don’t take no for an answer and I don’t mean that as a compliment. You’ve always been that guy. You’re great to Julia, but not to me. So, sure, I know you can be a good guy, but you do things that aren’t always considerate. You’re overbearing and controlling. Basically, you’re a dick. That’s what I know.”
I stare at Cassie, unsure of what to say. “I’m not a bad guy, Cassie.” I say it as much to myself as to her.
“Graham.” She turns her body in her seat, twisting in the seatbelt. “Last night you fucked me and then this morning you called me my fat girl nickname. You saw me naked and right after you reminded me of all the stupid, hurtful things people ever said to me about my body. So, no, you don’t get to defend yourself right now.”
“But I didn’t know what I was saying! Jesus, Cassie. Forget about the sex for two seconds—which was fan-fucking-tastic, by the way, since I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you ran out this morning.” Cassie raises an eyebrow, clearly not impressed with my apology so far. “But you have to know that your body is amazing. Guys look at you all the time. Even today when I was waiting for you in the coffee shop dudes were checking you out on the street.” Cassie’s eyes narrow. Reminding her about this morning is not one of my smartest moves. “Look, this is coming out all wrong.” I slam my head back into the headrest with a groan and squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry. I’m horrified at my own behavior right now. But for the record, I think you’re gorgeous and I’ll never call you that name again. Ever.”
“Okay.” Cassie lets the word linger between us. She’s wary, waiting for me to say something to make her feel bad again because that’s apparently what I do.
“Okay?” It comes out more hopeful than I’d anticipated. God, I sound like I’ve just asked her to the prom or something.
“You think I’m gorgeous?” Cassie says it like she doesn’t believe it, eyes still narrowed.
“Yes. Damn, Cassie, like you’ve never looked in a mirror.” I open my eyes and look into hers. “And, while I think we both regret last night, I don’t regret seeing you naked. At all.”
Her eyebrow shoots up again as she lets out a little puff of air. “You’ll never call me ‘Mama’ again? You promise?”
“I promise.”
“And we’re still never telling anyone about last night, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s all in the vault.”
“Yep. In the vault.” I offer her my hand to shake on it and Cassie slides her palm against mine. I close my hand over hers but neither of us makes the move to shake and instead we end up awkwardly holding hands across the center console. Her hand is small and soft and I forget to let her go. We stay like that for longer than necessary before Cassie pulls her hand away, flexing her fingers and moving to put the car back in drive.
As she eases us back onto the road, I let myself exhale.
“Too bad you’ll never get to see me naked again,” Cassie tosses over her shoulder at me, her head turned to check for oncoming traffic.
I laugh. Flirty Cassie is back.
“I’ve got my memories.” I tap the side of my head like an idiot. “It’s all up here.”
Cassie scoffs, but she’s laughing too, turning the radio on. Maybe I’ve dodged a bullet here.
“And since we’re apologizing, I should tell you I’m sorry about getting so aggressive on the way home last night. That wasn’t reasonable. I should never have grabbed you like that.”
“Apology accepted. Obviously I didn’t have much of an issue with it in the end.” Images of Cassie climbing into my lap and sliding her hand over my stomach have me shifting in my seat.
“Well, that isn’t my usual method of convincing someone to take me home. I promise I’ll find another victim next time.”
This should make me feel relieved. I should be laughing along with her, glad to have gotten this worked out. So why am I mentally flipping through every moment of last night like I’m watching old game tape? Why am I thinking about asking Cassie to pull over again so I can lean in and kiss her? Why does the thought of her with someone else suddenly make me want to put my fist through the window?
5
Cassie
The flowers are there at the nurses’ station when I come in for my shift Monday night. A huge vase full of summertime—sunflowers, roses, lilies, and some kind of purple flower I can’t identify. Someone must have really messed up to be sending these to the hospital.
“Who got flowers?” I ask as I breeze around the corner of the desk. I touch the edge of the vase longingly. I’m not a girly girl exactly, but even I appreciate flowers every now and then. Being a strictly no relationship girl means getting a bouquet hardly ever happens. And flowers at work? Never. My own occasional purchases of cellophane wrapped bunches from Whole Foods have to be enough. “Who’s in the doghouse?”
“We were all about to ask you that same question.” Delia swivels in her chair. “Getting something like that,” she gestures to the floral explosion, “means you’re on charts all night. We all agreed.”
“What? Those can’t be for me,” I protest. “Who would send me flowers?”
“Maybe that guy from 328 last week,” Stephanie suggests. “The one who kept asking you for sponge baths?”
I roll my eyes. Delia and Stephanie both giggle and high five. They’ve been waiting for a chance to remind me about that pervert.
“I don’t think I was the only one he was trying to get to rub him with a sponge.” I point a finger at Stephanie. She’s barely out of nursing school and gets her fair share of inappropriate comments from unruly patients. You’d be surprised what people ask nurses to do when they’re supposedly recovering from surgery.
“I think he had this hospital confused with that strip club down the street,” Delia says, shaking her head. Her braids sway as she laughs. “He kept complaining that we weren’t ‘full service,’ whatever that means. He’ll probably ding us on our evaluation.”
“What’s he going to complain about?” I ask. “No one would get really, really close to my penis?”
Stephanie laughs. “He won’t phrase it that way, I’m sure. He’ll think of a better way to say, ‘I really wanted a hand job and no one would give me one.’”
Delia pulls her bifocals from inside her scrubs where they hang on a long chain. I’m always teasing her about her glasses, but in the years we’ve worked together she’s never lost them during a shift. She sees me eyeing the crazy chain around her neck and scowls at me, pulling the card from the plastic spear in the flower arrangement. “Are you Miss Cassidy Blake?”
I reach for the card but I’m not quick enough. Delia holds it just out of my reach, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Wait, wait. We need to know what happened this weekend that would convince someone to send you flowers. You were off Saturday and Sunday so we’ll give you a minute to think through the possibilities.”
“How should I know?” I ask. “Give me the card.”
Delia hands it over, but gives me no privacy when I go to open it. I’m hoping it isn’t from a patient. I’ll never hear the end of it if it is. I pull the envelope open and slide out the tiny cardboard square inside. I’m confronted with a message in all block letters:
APOLOGY FLOWERS
— G
A ping from the call system diverts attention away from me for a second. “Which room is that?” Stephanie leans over to look at the computer screen. “I can take care of it.” Her blonde ponytail swings behind her as she moves down the hall. “I expect to hear all about these mystery flowers when I get back!” she calls to me as I worry my bottom lip between my teeth.
“Why are you making that face?” Delia asks.
“What face?”
“The one you m
ake when you smell something terrible. That guy from 328 didn’t really send you flowers, did he?” Delia pulls the card from my fingers. Her brow knits as she reads what Graham has written. “What kind of a card is this? Doesn’t he, and I assume it’s a he, know that the card is supposed to have an actual apology written on it?” Delia shakes her head. “Who is this fool?”
“He’s just a friend. He apologized in person. I don’t know why he sent flowers.”
“Oh, he’s a friend, is he?” Delia asks. “Is he your usual kind of friend or is he a friend like from the normal definition?”
I purse my lips. A few days ago I would have hesitated to call Graham any kind of friend at all. Now I’m struggling for the right words to explain our relationship.
“I think that long pause is all the answer I need,” Delia tells me. She’s got that look on her face that lets me know I’m about to get a lecture. “Why can’t you just find some nice boy to date? Why do you always have to choose these knuckleheads?”
“I didn’t choose this knucklehead, exactly. He’s always been around. And I don’t date so I can avoid most of the knuckleheads, you know that.”
Delia is unconvinced. “At least this one sent flowers even if he got it wrong. Do I even want to know what he did?”
“No, you don’t.” The story doesn’t make either one of us look like anything less than crazy. And I’ve put all the real details in the vault anyway. I can’t be telling it all over work. Eventually Delia would put two and two together and she’d be sure to have a problem with me sleeping with Graham. Even if it was just a one-time thing. Which it was, making these flowers even more confusing.
Forget About It Page 4
