Days Like This

by Danielle Ellison

  A horn honked from outside, and suddenly I didn’t want to say goodbye. I pulled her into a hug. “You’ll call when you get there?”

  “Of course. You’ll call when you and Graham figure it out? I’ll want all the details.”

  “If there are details.”

  “There will be.” She winked. I wished I shared her certainty.

  I walked her down the stairs and Mom hugged her, too. “You can come here anytime, June.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Harlen. See ya,” she said over her shoulder.

  Mom and I watched from the doorway as June got into her cab, and then, when it drove off, it was the silence and us. This one was more normal than before. Not filled with tension or unsaid words.

  “You hungry?” Mom asked.

  She wrapped her arm around my shoulder; I thought that maybe this would be okay, and somehow, all this could end in a good way. “Very,” I said.

  48.

  Graham

  CASSIE. CASSIE. CASSIE.

  Sitting in my apartment reminded me of her and last night. I lay awake all night thinking about her. I usually did, but it was more intense. Where I was usually awake, angry or confused, last night I was awake with thoughts of her touching me. Her pressed against the wall. Her hands on my chest. Her lips on mine, her hands roaming, my body’s response, the look on her face before she left. Every thought of her made my heart race faster.

  My phone rang, and I thought it was Cassie, but it was Molly. “I’m downstairs,” she said.

  “Come up,” I said.

  “You come down.”

  I opened the door and I started to talk, but she turned away and lowered herself on the single step outside my front door. I gulped down my nerves.

  “I have a question,” she said before I could speak. I sat next to her, but as soon as I did she stood and blocked the afternoon sun from my face. “Just one question.”

  I nodded.

  “Have you been in love with her since the beginning of our relationship, or was it just because she came back?”

  “What?”

  Molly’s hands moved around in the air while she spoke, and her words were fast. Almost running into each other. “Because I’ve been thinking about it. I was either a way for you to try to move on from her, or I was more than that and when you saw her it all came rushing back. Which one?”

  I rolled my neck. “Both? I didn’t know I still loved her until she came back. And now—”

  “Now you want her.”

  I nodded slowly. Was that what I wanted? Yes. I think it was. “I’m sorry. I swear I—”

  “Didn’t mean it, I know. I should’ve run as soon as you told me about her, or when I learned you saved her mom, but I liked you,” she said. “You were cute and funny and you made me feel…” she paused. “I never should’ve stayed.”

  “Molly.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been there for you since the very beginning. I was patient. I listened, but I’m never going to be the girl next door. I’m Molly, not Cassie, and I can’t be with you when you’re in love with her. I won’t. I’m not second best, and I refuse to settle for that with my man. I sacrifice enough for other people.”

  “You deserve so much more than I can give you. You should have that guy who feels so crazy in love with you that he can’t breathe.”

  Molly nodded slowly. “The way you feel about her?”

  I didn’t respond, but I didn’t need to. We both knew the answer already. There were no other words between us, and she turned away and walked down the path back to her car. The last I saw of her was the sun bouncing off her blonde hair.

  49.

  Cassie

  FOUR DAYS AGO I kissed Graham. I hadn’t seen him since. Not in passing or a text. I’d been thinking a lot since that night. Maybe he was right about all of it. I was selfish, and we were wrong, and there was no future for us. Even if I thought I wanted it.

  Dr. Lambert had been helpful. She told me to find the thing that gives me passion. I wasn’t sure where to start, but I kept listening to June’s music. Buying things on iTunes and ordering new vinyls. There was some good music out there. I was writing more lyrics than I knew had existed inside of me. Somewhere in all the thinking, in the debating about Graham, in watching Rohan’s song hit number one on the charts, and in listening to my heart, I found my path. It only took four days, give or take a few years.

  I clicked send on my seventh application to a label internship. This one was for producing. I wasn’t really sure where in music my heart lied, but I knew it was, and had always been, for me. I’d had a lot of free time to research while I waited for Graham.

  My phone rang, and it was June. “I knew you’d be awake.”

  “I am. You made it?”

  “Yesterday. Then I slept for fourteen hours. What are you doing? Miss me yet?”

  I clicked a new tab on my computer. “Applying to internships.”

  June gasped. “Internships? Little Cassie found a path? What is it?”

  I paused. “Music.”

  “I bet you feel like an idiot now.”

  I laughed. I guessed I did; I thought it would ruin me, like it did my parents, but it really saved Mom. At least for a while. “It’s the only thing that has ever made me happy.”

  “And Graham.”

  I sighed. I still didn’t know if there was a place for our feelings or my happiness. “He hasn’t even talked to me since.”

  “He will. You have to make him want to be,” she said. “I forgot how fucking sunny it is in LA.”

  “I have no remorse for you,” I said with a smile.

  “So, if you get one of these internships, what happens?”

  “I don’t know if I can even leave Mom again. What if something happens? She needs me. I probably won’t get picked anyway. We’ll see.” I’d take it one thing at a time. I couldn’t abandon her this time, and I couldn’t lose myself either.

  “I don’t think your mom would want you to stay,” June said.

  “We’ll see,” I said, but I didn’t feel hopeful. “Go enjoy your sunshine.”

  “Yes. Gotta track down some hot celebs or something! Bye, Harlen.”

  50.

  Graham

  I PUSHED SEND on the last of my forms for Rice. I had a schedule, loans to pay until I die, and a roommate. This was happening. Two months until I started my own life. I closed the computer and saw a light across the yard from Cassie’s room. I was being an ass, I knew that, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t have anything to offer her; I was moving. She wasn’t going to stay here, and neither was I. We couldn’t be anything.

  Someone pounded on my door, and I knew, pretty much immediately, that it was Cassie. No one else would be here at two in the morning.

  I bolted down the stairs and sure enough, she was in front of me. Her hair sticking up all over the place, and getting longer like the Cassie I used to know.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  With the words, her voice cracked a little. Cass didn’t cry.

  “Come inside,” I said, opening the door for her. She shook her head.

  “I was wrong. When I left you. You haven’t asked me about it since I’ve been home, but I want you to know. I need you to know, Graham, that I loved you. That I still love you.”

  I stared at her for a moment. We were really doing this at 2 a.m. “Let’s at least sit.”

  I closed the door and we sat on the wicker couch on my parents’ back porch. She hesitated for a moment before moving past me. My mind was racing with questions, and my heart was a jackhammer out of control. I really wanted to touch her, but I also knew I should keep my hands to myself. This was confusing enough, and she came here for a purpose. One I wanted to know, too. I was barely seated when she turned back to face me.

  “I know I was wrong.”

  I swallowed. Did I really want to hear this?

  “This doesn’t make it right, but I was scared.”


  “Of me? Of us? What?” My voice was low because I couldn’t decide what I felt. Angry or disappointed or sad. All of the above.

  Cassie shook her head. “Not you—never you. Not even us, because I needed us. You were all I knew that was real, and I would never have survived without us. Without you.” She paused and stood, moving around again. She couldn’t sit still. Was she really that nervous? “I was scared of myself.”

  I didn’t know what to say. This whole thing was a lot to process. The last week had been a crazy whirlwind. Ever since she’d come back, really. I didn’t know up from down.

  Cass bit the side of her cheek, and looked off into space. As she spoke, her hands twisted around her shirt. “I had all these acceptance letters to schools all over the country. I knew you’d go wherever I wanted, but I didn’t get to tell you. Then, you asked me to marry you and I told myself that we could have it all. I could go to school, you could go to school, and we could be married. I wanted it, I really did.”

  She sat again on the edge of the wicker couch, so close I could’ve shifted a little right and our knees would’ve touched. I told myself to breathe, because this was the part I’d been wondering for a year. The part that I didn’t have the courage to ask about.

  “We’d been gone all that weekend, and I picked up some of Mom’s favorite éclairs to bring with me.”

  I’d kept her busy those few days. I still remembered them like they were yesterday. We were together, completely happy and alone in those three days in a cabin in the mountains. Happy and alone and engaged.

  “I was going to tell her about the engagement, like I said I would, but when I got home she was in a manic state.” Cassie pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. It was just long enough now to stay there. “Mom talked to me like I was someone else. Not Cassie; Cassie was a baby. A friend. She kept saying she wanted my dad back. She wanted him back. I said he was dead, and she said he wasn’t, that he left because he couldn’t handle being with her and her mood swings. She said she ruined his life.”

  Her dad. All this happened because of her dad? Shit. “Cassie—”

  “It was all I could think about for days, Graham,” she said. Her hands wandered along her legs, and I couldn’t look away from her face. Her voice cracked and I had to fight the urge to touch her, to comfort her. “I had your ring on my finger, and you were promising me yourself forever. I wanted that—you have to know I wanted that—but what if I got sick? We were young; we are young. There were no clues about what could happen, but I felt like, for months, like I was losing it.”

  Around us, everything was quiet. Even the cicadas were listening to this moment. She thought I would leave her, so she left me. That logic made no sense.

  “I would never leave you,” I whispered after a pause.

  “I know,” she said. She smiled lightly, but I wasn’t smiling. I was confused. If she knew then why leave? “That was the thing: you would stay. You would take care of me the same way I had to take care of my mom. That sucked for me, and I hated her for it, and I didn’t want to ruin your life that way, Graham.”

  Even as she said it, a tear fell down her face. She didn’t get it. I closed that little space so our knees bumped. I couldn’t believe that was why she left.

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. So I left you. I thought I was saving you. I did it for you,” Cassie said.

  “A life without you? That’s harder. I woke up and you were gone. Gone. No note, no phone calls, nothing. Do you know what that was like for me?” My voice sounded a little bitter, angrier, than I wanted it to. But she left. All of this separation was because of something that could’ve been cleared up with a conversation. If she would’ve trusted me enough to tell me this before, then we’d be together right now. Right now we’d have a life together, somewhere else, instead of being here like this.

  God, if I would’ve said something sooner. She’d stood there the day I went after her and admitted she loved me, but she kept saying she wasn’t good for me. She’d said she would hurt me. I should’ve known something was wrong. I should’ve seen it when she looked at me. It was our language, the words beyond words. I’d missed it.

  “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything, but I am. I never wanted to hurt you.” Her voice was low, and she nestled her legs under her.

  “What about when I came to school?” I asked.

  Seeing her there that day felt like waking up without her all over again. My heart didn’t know what to do. I’d felt it all at once. The love for her, the anger, the disappointment, the doubt. I’d half expected her to run into my arms like in those movies, but she hadn’t. She’d lingered a few feet away from me, and we’d stared at each other. All the words I’d planned to say drifted away, and that’s when I saw the look was in her eyes, the one that I’d known so well. The one that I’d hated, filled with uncertainty and fear. I should’ve known. I did know, but I didn’t want to see it. I’d been stubborn. I didn’t want to let her go, to admit that she was lost, and that I was lost.

  I’d still loved her when she gave me back that ring, just like I still loved her now. I wish I didn’t anymore, that I could let go. She’d left me. That should’ve been enough. But ten years of being Graham and Cassie wasn’t easy to give up on. She’d taught me how to be that stubborn, and until I’d left that school with nothing but a ring and a broken heart, I didn’t know how much I’d needed that lesson.

  Cassie stared at the ground like it was the most interesting thing in the whole fucking messed up world. Everything was quiet, too quiet. “That killed me. I never expected you to come. I didn’t leave my room for a week after you left,” she said.

  That didn’t make up for what happened. I’d been there. I’d laid my heart out for her, and she turned me away. She told me to leave, to move on. She said we wouldn’t work—and all that time, she’d loved me. We’d wasted all of it.

  “Why not tell me? I knew there was something else going on, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

  Cassie stood up again, her arm brushing against mine as she did. “Would it have mattered? If I had told you I was scared, you would’ve stayed anyway. I thought through every scenario and the one constant in all of them was you.”

  I didn’t want to hear that shit. Not after all we’d been through. She could’ve told me something real, instead of that “she wasn’t good for me” shit. That was the worst about all of it. That hurt the most because since when had I not been enough for her?

  “You trying to save me—you should’ve talked to me, Cassie.” But how many times had I done the same thing? Tried to protect her without her knowing. And how many problems had it caused?

  “I know.” Cassie picked at her fingernails, barely looking at me.

  “Did you even think about what it was doing to me? To think that you didn’t want me after all that we’d been through?” I wanted to stop talking because I could tell it was hurting her, but all the words kept rushing out. All the things I hadn’t said, and had wanted to say. Once I admitted one of them to myself, they were all too big to ignore. “I felt like shit. Like less than shit. I wanted to hate you. I really did, but I couldn’t. I loved you. I loved you and I knew there was something else. I knew it.”

  I never should have let her go. I should’ve fought harder, and then maybe…

  Cassie froze in front of me. “I thought you would be happier without having to worry about me. To wait for me. To follow me. I thought you could find your own life, one without me. I thought you would be better off.”

  Tears streamed from her eyes, and she was close enough that I could pull her near. This girl who I knew I still loved despite all this stuff she was telling me. I’d only seen Cassie cry once in all our years together. She was always so strong, so together. She didn’t like to show weakness, and here she was baring her soul to me. I reached out and took her hand. She looked at me again, and I saw her. Really saw her. She was still scared, but underneath all that, there was something she did
n’t have before. Maybe in all the years I’d known her, there was hope.

  She left her hand in mine, and I stroked the top of it with my finger. “I didn’t tell you all this to convince you to love me again. I know you’ve started over; I know I hurt you. I just wanted you to know—you deserved to know. It was never you. It was easier to run away from the things I was afraid of, instead of facing them. I’m not brave like you.”

  I shifted in the seat so I was facing her. “What? That’s crazy.” I wasn’t brave. I had done things, kept things from her, from myself. I led Molly on because I didn’t want to face my feelings. That wasn’t something someone brave did.

  She laced her fingers with mine, and my whole body exhaled at the movement. “I know you saved my mom from the fire.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. How did she know that?

  A small smile was on the corner of Cassie’s mouth. “Molly told me. Mom verified. Why did you tell me it was Mrs. Pearson?”

  I stretched my arm across my knee, careful not to disrupt our hands. I didn’t want to let go now that she was linked to me again. “I thought if you didn’t know it was me, you’d come back. I didn’t want you to stay away because of me, or to come back because of me. I wanted you to come back for her. For yourself.”

  “Part of me did come back for you. You’re always part of everything I do, Graham.”

  I didn’t expect her to say that, and it lifted something inside me. Who was this girl? If she could be honest, I had to be honest. “That phone call was difficult. I didn’t want to face you. I’m not as brave as you think I am.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  We stared at each other for what felt like hours, but it was only seconds. Only a few beats of my heart. I felt my body leaning in toward her, feeding off the bond between us. I looked at her lips, and wanted to taste them again. I leaned in toward her, and she started to do the same. I wanted all this stuff between us to be in the past, and I wanted her.