He rolled over and grabbed his phone from the bedside table.
It's Jack Winter. I owe Cassie some money, and I'd like to pay her, but I'm having trouble getting ahold of her. Can you help?
He was on his way to the shower when the buzz of an incoming text summoned him back.
You asshole, you owe Cassie a lot more than money. You're lucky she won't tell me where you live.
Jack sighed.
Look, I just want her to get what she's owed.
A nice check to go with her broken heart? Sorry, can't help you. I'm too busy picking up the pieces of the aforementioned heart. Ass. Hole.
What the hell was he talking about? Had Junior thrown her over already?
???
Motherfucking entitled rich ASS. Don't pretend you don't know. Stop texting me.
I really don't know what you're talking about. I know Cassie doesn't want to see me, but I can't just not pay her for a business service she provided. How about I make the check out to you, and you buy her something with it?
Silence. Damn. So much for his obvious solution.
He was so on edge, he jumped when the phone rang in his hand.
Jack picked up, and before he could get a greeting out, Danny said, "Wait. What?"
"Will you just give me your address so I can send you a check? She's refusing delivery at her apartment, and I'm getting 'no longer at this address' when I try the restaurant."
"She quit."
Jack thought his head might explode. "It shouldn't be this hard to give someone fifty thousand dollars."
"What did you mean when you said you knew Cassie didn't want to see you?" asked Danny.
"Exactly what I said."
"So is that why she's been crying her eyes out over you for the past three days?" Danny shouted. "Because she doesn't want to see you?"
Jack's stomach dropped, and it was his turn to say, "Wait, what?"
"You broke her heart, man," said Danny, his tone less menacing. "You have to know that. You left after the deal was done, without a word. In the middle of the night."
Hope. A little tiny mote of hope. It felt like a spark. Not even a spark, just the sound of a match striking. "You have it backward," he said slowly, finding it hard to make his clumsy mouth form the right sounds to propel the conversation forward. "Cassie broke my heart." Please, please let it be true.
"Why the hell would you say that?"
"Because I saw her text messages to you. About making her say please and all that. She was tired of pretending. She wanted to get out."
There was a long silence. Then, "Oh. My. God."
Then a weird jaggedy inhale that seemed to be coming from his own throat.
"She was talking about Wexler," said Danny. "The young one-the gross one. They had a meeting and he, like, made her ask him nicely not to block the sale. Apparently he was a complete jerk, and she hated doing it. She was glad that was over."
It was Jack's turn to talk, he knew, but he had started shaking, and he didn't trust his voice.
"But you?" Danny went on. "She hoped you would sneak into her room that night. She was waiting for you. You, who kept telling her you didn't do relationships. You and your fucking precious rules. She fell in love with you, asshole."
…
Cassie stood slumped against the cold red brick building, silently cursing Danny for insisting they meet at this random corner at the south end of the university, rather than, say, a bar where she could drink approximately a liter of scotch.
But thinking about bars made her feel worse, and not just for the obvious reason. In the midst of everything that had happened, she missed Edward's, the clatter and bustle, the steady, predictable anchor it provided. But, no. She straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and gazed at the sparse parade of pedestrians on campus on Christmas Eve afternoon, dark blots bundled up against the snow, which was beginning to fall in earnest. Quitting Edward's had been the right thing to do. She'd always told herself she wasn't a lifer as a bartender, so, she'd asked herself before handing in her resignation last week, what was she waiting for? What had been keeping her there? In the midst of all her crying, she'd been ruthlessly interrogating herself about every aspect of her life, and the honest answer was fear.
If she wasn't a lifer, she had to stop wasting her life, assuming that it would really start at some fictional future date. She had to give Jack some credit for the revelation. If nothing else, her time with him had made clear what she wanted out of life-a quick end to her degree and a career in business. He'd shown her a wider world she hadn't known existed and had somehow managed to give her the confidence to stand up to her mother. Laura had shown up two nights ago, on schedule, insisting she was ready to go back to rehab. Cassie had been tempted to reenroll her in the pricey program she'd abandoned mere weeks ago, but instead did some research and helped her mother apply for a government-subsidized program. Then she gave her two hundred dollars and told her not to come back until she'd been clean for six months.
But she did feel bad about quitting so abruptly on Edward. She'd decided to go back to school full time for one final semester and finish all her outstanding credits. She'd live on student loans and credit cards. She now had confidence that she'd be able to get a good job after graduation, so she'd be able to pay back her debt quickly. Still, there was no reason she couldn't have given Edward two weeks' notice. It was one thing to make major life decisions, another to be a jerk about it. But in her irrational, wild grief, she'd wanted to make a clean break from everything, to leave her old identity behind and catapult herself into a new, better future. After Christmas, she'd seek Edward out and try to explain to him. Maybe they'd even talk about Cassie's dad a little.
She glanced at her phone. Two o'clock. Danny was pushing it if he was going to get to the farm before dark. She typed a text.
Will you hurry up already so I can pass inspection, and you can leave? I haven't cried all day.
It was true, mostly. She'd spent the morning culling her closet. She wanted to get rid of everything she didn't need, like a snake shedding its old skin.
"I'm not sure I believe you."
She didn't bother trying to look away as he approached. Even through the snowstorm, Danny would see everything. She lifted her chin. "Well, I haven't cried since ten this morning. Is that good enough for you? And why are we meeting here?"
He didn't answer, just wrapped an arm around her shoulder and opened the door they were standing next to, giving her a little shove that discharged her into an unremarkable, institutional hallway. She turned, just in time to hear him shout through the closing door, "Text me if you need me! You know I only need the slightest excuse to abandon the farm!"
What the heck? She looked around, trying to get her bearings. She had probably passed this building a thousand times, but since she'd never had a class in it, she'd never taken note of it.
The door clicked open behind her, and she shrieked a little. But it was just Danny. "Go down the stairs right in front of you! I forgot that part!"
Okaaaay. Well, what the heck else was she going to do? She made her way down the dim stairwell and stopped at the bottom in front of a classroom door not unlike the dozens of doors she'd walked through for her own classes. What was going on?
Oh. She couldn't prevent a gasp. "Planetarium," she said, reading aloud the word on the sign outside the door.
Then, again, because she couldn't quite believe it. How had she not known about this place? "Planetarium." The word felt simultaneously familiar and strange in her mouth.
Her reflex was to tell herself to fake it till she made it, but for once she thought she might be facing a situation in which faking simply would not work. So she just took a deep breath and pushed open the door, stepping into a giant, dim classroom. Inside was a big puffy black dome made of some kind of inflatable material. It looked like a bouncy castle you'd see kids jumping on at a fair.
It had a door. A door she was obviously meant to walk through.
So she conjured Brave Cassie, the one who'd quit in order to start living her life in the here and now, and walked through it.
She stepped into the night sky.
"Oh my God," she breathed. It was so beautiful, yet so impossible. Her legs started to shake, like they didn't know whether to buckle or to bolt.
"Cassie."
Without even taking her eyes from the stars, she knew it was him. Of course she did. She'd known from the moment she saw the sign on the door that he was behind this, hadn't she? It was what she wanted and what she dreaded, at the same time.
She dragged her eyes from the pinpricks of light on the ceiling. There wasn't enough light to really see his face, but he held up a palm, his hand a pale presence in the dark. And the smell of him-the lemon tree in the bog-was an assault in the enclosed space. How had she ever thought she could get over this man?