I was touched though I felt that it was unnecessary. Dad didn’t need to do this for me or anyone else. This was his house and he should do as he pleased with it.
“Which, I guess is what he’s doing,” I said aloud to my empty room, shaking my head a little. Of course, the thing that he would want to do with it was to keep it set up for his kids to come back and visit.
Stifling a yawn, I ruffled my thick hair and padded out into the hallway. I needed to use the bathroom. As I headed in that direction, I spotted Ashley’s room. It made me pause as I considered my stepsister and the feelings that were forming between us.
Part of me wanted to go over there and knock on her door, to ask her how she was doing and to just sit down with her and talk it over. I knew things were difficult right now. Last night had really freaked her out or embarrassed her or whatever, but I knew that if we could just talk about things, we’d make it past this.
We had to, right?
In the end, nature called and I answered, so the bathroom was the first stop. I also took the time to brush my teeth and splash water on my face—just in case—so that I looked presentable when I approached Ashley. I went down the hall to her door right after that and knocked. I gave it a few minutes, but when she didn’t answer, I thought that maybe she was still asleep. It was a little late, but I knew that with the travel and everything that was going on, there was a chance she was just exhausted.
Heading back to my room, I went inside to grab some clothes so that I could get showered and ready for the day. I needed to talk to Ash, but I knew I’d have time, so I’d give her space for now.
As soon as I stepped over the threshold, however, I noticed something at my feet. I had been so sleepy earlier that I must have missed it when I headed for the bathroom. It was a small white envelope with my name written across it in smooth, careful handwriting that looked a lot like Ashley’s.
Frowning, I bent over to pick it up. It was definitely a letter.
I tore it open and read through it quickly.
Danny,
I can’t do this. This is wrong, we’re wrong, and it’s time we grow the hell up about it. No more table footsies or flirting or anything else. I know now that no one would ever be able to accept us, and they shouldn’t. We were never meant to be together like that and it’s wrong for us to try.
You’re so important to me, Danny, but as a brother. That’s all you can ever be. I’m so sorry; I wish I hadn’t been such a stupid little girl about this, but I was. Now I’ve got to do damage control and that means leaving. I’ve gone back to NYC. It’s for the best, I know you’ll see that someday.
I know I’m being harsh, but this is the only thing I can do now. I’m so sorry and I hope that one day you can forgive me.
Your sister,
Ashley
I blinked. For a moment, I stared at that piece of paper like it was written in a foreign language. What? Then I flipped it over in my hand, searching the back and inside the envelope like there might be more. There must be more. Another page, double sided, a P.S…. But there was nothing. It was just that. That letter. That note that told me everything I already knew, but couldn’t face. That letter that made me feel like someone had just dug around in my chest and ripped out my heart.
That letter that reminded me this was a pipe dream all along.
With shaking hands, I shoved it back into the envelope and then crumbled up the entire thing. When that wasn’t enough, I uncrumpled it, tore it into tiny pieces of confetti paper, and threw it into the trash.
This wasn’t happening.
This couldn’t be happening.
I dressed quickly after that, getting my things together and not bothering with a shower. When I got downstairs, I found Dad in the kitchen.
“Hey, Danny,” he greeted, cheerful, but not as cheerful as we all had been last night. “Sorry you missed Ashley, but she had to head back. She said you needed your rest and she didn’t want to wake you.”
Liar, I thought bitterly, anger surging through my system like boiling water.
“That’s fine. She mentioned it last night,” I lied smoothly.
Dad eyed the duffle bag I had slung over my shoulder and his expression shifted, his smile dropping instantly. I shifted uncomfortably. I felt bad for leaving him suddenly, but I couldn’t stay here. Not with memories of Ashley right around every corner, haunting me, teasing me.
No. It was time to go home.
“Sorry dad,” I apologized. “But I need to talk to coach today. Give him an update. And I appreciate you putting me up and all, but you don’t need to be taking care of me. I need to get settled back into my own place.”
Dad took a few minutes to try and convince me to stay, but my head was buzzing and my heart ached and I’d come up with a plan. A dangerous, stupid plan, and now that I’d thought of it, there was no going back.
Finally, we parted with a hug. Dad drove me home—I realized belatedly that my car wasn’t here—and as soon as I was there, I grabbed my cell and dialed.
I got coach on the first ring. “Cassidy, what’s your status.”
“I’m cleared to play, coach.”
Chapter Thirteen
The flight was miserable, but I was ninety-nine percent sure that was due to my attitude. It’s hard to have a good flight when you spend all of it moping over the guy you left back home. Suddenly everything seemed worse; the guy next to me was sitting too close, the lady by the aisle smacked her lips as she chewed her gum, the kid behind me wouldn’t stop kicking the back of my seat. When we finally arrived at JFK airport, I was more than a little relieved. I told myself it was because of the damn kid kicking my seat and a general relief at having arrived home finally, but I knew that wasn’t entirely the truth. I was relieved that I was far enough away from Danny now that there was no chance I would have to face him. I was, at least, a phone call away and phone calls were plenty easy to ignore.
We departed the flight and I was grateful that I only had the one bag. Pulling out my cell phone, I turned it on now that we were safely off the plane, and made a beeline for the arrivals area. When I glanced down at my phone, getting ready to call my ride, I saw that I had a missed call. Actually, five of them. When I scrolled through them, I found that one was from dad. The other four? Danny.
I had messages, too. Text messages and voicemails and probably e-mail, too, given his persistence. They were all from Danny and I promptly swiped all of them to the side, ignoring him with an ease that I was so grateful for.
Ignoring Danny’s attempts to get ahold of me, I dialed Cindy and let it ring twice before I heard her voice on the other end.
“Hello? Ash? Did you get in yet?”
I nodded though of course she couldn’t see me. I forced the tension from my shoulders, putting as much cheer and pep into my tone as possible so Cindy wouldn’t immediately ask me what was wrong. “Yeah, I just got in. I’m headed towards the arrivals section along with the rest of the masses.”
“Alright! I’ll meet you there. It took a minute to get in, but I’m right outside the international section. It was all I could manage to get in; domestic flights are crammed.”
I laughed a little. Getting to and from the airport was a real pain in most situations, but JFK was especially bad. I was a little surprised that it was the international section that she’d managed to squeeze into, but I guessed that was how it went sometimes.
When I got outside with everyone else who was looking around for their rides, I found that it was a little chillier than I’d been expecting. Not downright cold; not yet. I tugged my sweatshirt around me tighter, trying to bite back the chill. It would only get colder as the season wore on and I knew that pretty soon I’d have to crank up the heat in my crummy little apartment and pray for the best. My apartment wasn’t very efficient when it came to the heater.
For a moment, I just stood there. I scanned for Cindy, searching out her dilapidated bug—it wasn’t usually all that hard to spot since it was a Pepto pin
k color that screamed look at me—and finally found it where she said she’d be. Except that, she wasn’t in her car. Instead, she was standing with her driver’s side door opened, arguing with a fat little man with a really bad toupee.
“Christ,” I muttered to myself with a shake of my head. “Every damn time.”
I headed that way, hiking my duffle bag up higher onto my shoulder, preparing myself for the worst. Cindy had a bit of a temper, not scary, just easily set off. It wasn’t bad if you were her friend, but if you thought you had the right to something that was hers (whether it was rightfully yours or not) then there would be hell to pay.
I was willing to bet that was the case here.
When I arrived at the other side of Cindy’s bug, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I didn’t even glance to see who was calling me—it definitely wasn’t Cindy—and clicked ignore as it sat in my pocket. As I got closer, I saw that Cindy’s cheeks were as pink as her bug and her jaw was clenched. She looked a bit like a petulant child though I’d never tell her that.
“… did not cut you off!” Cindy all but screamed at the little man, her hands balled into fists near her side. “You were the jerk who tried to run me into that other car back there!” She jerked her thumb behind her to indicate some car within the sea of traffic. “I ought to call the police on you!”
I let out a sigh and shook my head. Oh, this was going to go badly if I didn’t stop her before she got too crazy. The man opened his mouth to respond to her accusations—I could guess that she was definitely overreacting, but there was a good chance this man was in the wrong, too—but before I let either of them go any farther, I cleared my throat to get their attention.
Cindy turned my way and, as though I had never even left, thumbed towards the squat little man, “Can you believe this guy? Some people!”
The man looked at me, then back at Cindy, his face turning a reddish, plum color. “Why you—!”
But before he got the chance to finish that sentence, I interjected. “You know, I am the person she is picking up,” I told the man earnestly in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “So if you want to slide right in after us, I think we could all get out of here a lot sooner with no police involved. You know?”
Cindy opened her mouth to respond—likely to tell me that I was crazy if I thought she was going to let him get away with being a New Yorker—but I shot her a vicious look that spoke volumes about how I was feeling, namely get me home now.
After a moment, the man huffed a little bit but finally nodded. “Fine. Just keep your crazy girlfriend away from me!”
Cindy made a sound that exemplified her indignation, but I waved off her insult. “Let him go. I just want to get home; it’s been a long trip.”
There must have been something in my voice because Cindy frowned at me. She glanced between me and the little man who was getting back into his car, then let out a sigh. She told me, “He’s still a jerk,” but still slid into her car and slammed the door after her.
I smiled a little, rolling my eyes at her childishness, but let it go. I slipped into the passenger seat and as soon as I was buckled in, Cindy was tearing out of the airport like there was a fire directly behind us.
“God, you’ve missed so much since you’ve been gone!” Cindy gushed, weaving through traffic in a way that made me grip my seat a little tighter than usual. Cindy was just like that. “Darien—you remember, my ex?—he asked me out again!”
“Wait, I thought your ex was Christopher?” I said, thinking of the guy she was planning on getting over this weekend.
She shook her head, her deliberately bleached blonde hair bobbing about her head. Her hair was just above her shoulders and crimped in that weird curling style that I’d thought went out in the eighties. “No. I just broke up with Christopher. Darien’s from way before. Like, two months before Christopher.”
That was one of the things about Cindy; she got around. It seemed like she had a new boyfriend every month and I’d mostly stopped trying to keep them straight. I definitely didn’t bother getting to know any of them. What was the point when they weren’t going to last the month, much less the next few years?
“Oh, of course,” I said in a flat voice that she completely missed. “How silly of me.”
“Oh, hey!” Cindy exclaimed suddenly, as though I hadn’t spoken at all. “That means you’ll be in town for my getting over Christopher girl’s night extravaganza!”
I couldn’t resist; I rolled my eyes. How did that make sense? “You’re still doing that?” I asked incredulously.
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”
She seemed genuinely surprised that I would think she wouldn’t do that, so I sighed and said, “Because you’re going to go out with Darien now. That means you’re over Christopher, doesn’t it?”
Cindy took one well-manicured hand off the steering wheel and waved it about. “Don’t be ridiculous. I haven’t given Darien an answer yet. I’m going to get over Christopher this weekend and tell Darien yes for our date on Monday.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out.”
She beamed at me. “Yep.”
We talked on and off about things—yes, including my stepmother Selene whose recent death left an ache in my heart—though we mostly tried to keep it light and I steered the direction of the conversation back towards Cindy often.
The phone in my pocket kept going off, buzzing to let me know that I had a call coming in or a text message or a new voice mail, but I ignored it the entire time. I didn’t even pull my phone out so that Cindy wouldn’t ask who kept trying to get ahold of me and why I didn’t just answer them.
Cindy invited me to stay over that night and catch up—as though I’d been gone months instead of only days—but I had to tell her no. I was exhausted and I knew I’d have to go through those messages eventually. I couldn’t do that with Cindy nearby. So she dropped me off at my little apartment and I went up what felt like ten thousand flights of stairs before I finally came to my door down the hall. For a moment, I just fell against it and leaned there.
It had been a long day and a longer night.
Now that I was alone and no one was watching, I let a single sob escape my lips. I could try to lie and tell myself that it was Selene’s death that was eating me up or even the pain on my father’s features at having lost yet another wife he loved so dearly. But I would never believe it. The pain in my heart was fresh and real and had so much more to do with the handsome, impressive young man I’d left behind.
Danny.
Since I was a kid, I’d wanted Danny in ways I wasn’t supposed to. I was his sister—well, stepsister—and that meant our relationship was never meant to be more than strictly platonic. But that wasn’t how I thought of him. I thought of him as the man I wanted to touch, whose hands I wanted on my body, bringing me to pleasurable, and unraveling ends.
And the trouble was that this last visit he had. Finally. And I’d realized that he wanted it just as bad as I had. He wanted me.
Which was exactly why I’d had to leave.
Composing myself, I’d straightened up and dug around in my pockets until I found my keychain. It had NYC in shiny chrome attached to it and only a couple of keys, one of them to the bar where I worked.
I unlocked the door to my apartment and headed inside, grateful to finally be back home even if home was a little small and a little shabby. I threw my duffle bag down onto the floor and headed straight for the bathroom. I began to strip off my clothes as I did so, enjoying the fact that this was my place and if I wanted to walk around in my birthday suit, well, damn it, I could.
I kicked off my panties and started the water, testing it and letting it run until it became a comfortably hot temperature. Letting my hair hang down, I stepped under the spray and allowed the water to wash down over me.
As my tired muscles eased beneath the hot water, I began to feel a little better—and more awful. I couldn’t keep from think
ing Danny.
I hadn’t intended to pack up and leave for New York again so quickly, but after last night, I didn’t feel like I would have much choice. Our neighbor, Suzanna had been living next door to us since the day we moved in, right after dad and Selene married. She’d been over with a welcome basket filled with fresh baked muffins and other goods—I think there’d been some homemade jams in there, too—telling us how thrilled she was to have new kids in the neighborhood. She had three of her own; two boys and a girl that was around my age. (The girl had been Elise and she was actually three years older than me. I was pretty sure that Danny lost his virginity to her and it was a big part of the reason I hated that girl even now.)
Of course, the kids were all out of the house now and Suzanna was divorced. As far as I knew, she was just as forcefully welcoming and nosy as ever and had been sending condolences for dad since Selene had gotten ill.
Crush Page 16
