Cassie’s warm, sleepy body moves against mine. At first she burrows into me, smelling sweet like vanilla. I tell myself not to get used to having her in my arms. My fingers ache when I stretch them out, letting the strands of her hair fall to the pillow.
I miss the feeling of them already.
“No. Oh, no-no-no.” She whispers at first, then gets louder. Panic wakes her up fast and pushes her out of bed. “Shit.” She grabs her phone from the table and starts changing clothes before I can stop her. Stripping off her old shirt and grabbing a new one from a bag at the foot of the bed.
I can’t not look. She’s right there, hopping around with the early morning light caressing her curves in a way I can’t. “Is... everything okay?”
Shit, she’s got a tattoo. A little Chinese symbol in the usual tramp stamp location. On her, it doesn’t look so cliché as I might find it on most girls. Well, there’s a no brainer.
“I’m so late,” she moans from inside her shirt. “I should’ve been at Delia’s making muffins like an hour ago. I forgot to set my alarm.”
“Shit. Sorry. I should’ve remembered.”
Color me relieved when she runs into the bathroom to do her thing, and comes out wearing clean pants. I couldn’t have handled seeing her in her underwear.
“I’m the one who should’ve remembered.” She runs water to brush her teeth and splash on her face, and the whole rush makes it clear she’s about sixty seconds from burning rubber on her way out the door. Not really much time to say anything deep.
There’s a lot I want to ask, about what she said last night. It’s all jumbled in my head.
I slide out of bed to find my shoes. “I guess it’s good you’re not sticking around much longer. Only so much trouble you can get into.”
We both stop when the meaning of that sinks in. I kinda don’t want her to go, and I’m guessing maybe she’s also got some reasons to hesitate. I see how she’s started to put down roots here, even if she hasn’t done it on purpose.
“Yeah. Guess so.” Standing at the door with her bag and keys, she lets out a long breath. “So are you ever going to tell me? This thing that makes you so unlovable?”
“Unlovable.” I clamp my teeth together at that one. I’d never put it quite that way out loud, but it’s true. A man died, after all.
So yeah. Unlovable.
I sigh. “I pissed off my stepmother. I left home early. Younger than you. Some bad things happened on my road to staying alive.” It’s way oversimplified, but she’s already late.
She clutches her purse in front of her. Like a barrier, or maybe that’s just me. “What happened? With your stepmother?”
“We really don’t have time for that kind of story.”
“Must have been bad.”
I look at her. My hands go back in my pockets. “Didn’t even stay for high school graduation.”
“That sucks,” she says.
It lightens something inside me, the way she parrots my own lame words of sympathy. We both dealt with something impossibly fucked-up. We kept going. We’re still here. I manage to smile.
Looking at her standing there in the morning light, it’s not hard.
She drops her arms and steps forward. “I wish you had someone to trust with this,” she whispers. “I’m here if you decide you can tell me. I swear.”
This time when she steps up on her toes to brush her lips over mine, I don’t push her away. I don’t want to.
If someone like her likes me, sees me as someone who could be good to them. For them. It’s not something I can afford to keep throwing away. How many more people like Cassie will walk into my life?
I give myself the luxury of squeezing my fingers around hers for a few seconds. “You really might not want to know.”
She squeezes back. “I’ve been hurt. Not only by strangers but by people who were supposed to love me. You’ve done nothing but try to protect me. The way you go about it has sucked a couple of times, but you have. So listen, I believe in you.”
“Hey.” I rub my thumb along the side of her face, right where a sliver of sun kisses her jaw the way I’d like to. “About last night... About what you said. You’re okay? Really?”
She takes a deep breath. Her eyes open a little wider, but they stay right on me. “All things considered?” She shrugs. “I feel like I’m getting there. I mean, I’m learning that everyone’s got something to deal with. This is my thing. Sometimes, like the night we met, it’s hard. But it gets easier, and I think it will continue to over time.”