Days Like This (19 page)

JUNE WAS SPRAWLED out across
the backseat of the car with her head on one side and her feet on the other.
Mom was next to me, smiling and singing along to the playlist that she helped
me create. I even put a few tracks from some of June’s music—bands I’d never
heard of because I was, indeed, a music snob. I was missing out on something
good because I hadn’t tried to find it.

“This is my
jam, Cassie—turn it up!” June yelled from the backseat.

“Who’s this
again?” I asked as the music started up. It wasn’t a bad intro.

“The Lone
Bellow. They are going to be big, girl. Mark my words.”

Music mingled
in the wind as we sped across the interstate toward the beach. June sang
off-key, and Mom smiled the whole time. Enjoyed the moment.

I kept looking
over at her as we drove, waiting for something to change. For her smile to slip
or her eyes to look at me and not see me, but that didn’t happen for the whole
drive. It wasn’t much time, but I’d take it.

This wasn’t a
pretty day. It was just a day.

A summer day
at the beach with my mom and my best friend. It was almost like I was normal.

I SAT INSIDE my apartment and
stared at my phone. Molly would call me back. She had to call me back so we
could talk. I’d left her three messages since last night, but I wanted to
explain. I wasn’t sure what I would say. I’d made a mess of things, but I
didn’t want her to hate me.

I dialed her
number again. If she didn’t answer this time I’d go to her work. I’d stop by
her aunt’s house. Something.

Three rings,
and she picked up.

“What do you
want?” Her voice was sharp. She was angry. She had every right to be.

“Please let me
explain, Molly.”

“I don’t want
your excuses. Please stop calling me.”

“Ten minutes,
Molly. Please give me ten minutes. I don’t want to do this on the phone.”

She was quiet,
and I wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Then: “I get off at eleven.”

I exhaled into
the phone. “Thank you, Molly. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank
me. Ten minutes—that’s all you get.”

Then, she hung up.

JUNE SPENT MOST of her time
in the water, while Mom slept on the beach. June had never been to the
Atlantic, and this was different water. That’s what she kept saying; whether
different was better or worse she never said. While she was in the ocean, I was
sprawled out on the sand. I couldn’t stop listening to these new bands—in the
four hours we’d been there, I’d listened to three albums completely through and
took some notes in my notebook. There were a couple songs I loved, a couple
that I thought I could’ve been arranged differently to bring out some of the
uniqueness, and only one or two that fell short. Overall, it was good, and it
was from this century.

June plopped
down next to me and snatched an earbud from my ear. I smiled, and when a few
lyrics passed June sat up on her knees. “Is Cassie Harlen listening to my
music? The world is ending!”

“It’s good.”

She threw her
arms over her head. “The sky is going to fall!”

I pushed her
and she laughed. “Seriously.”

“Have you
tried Rohan again?”

“Whoa, hello one-eighty,”
I said, pausing the song so I wouldn’t miss anything.

“New music,
old musician boyfriend—it totally transitions.”

I shrugged. Rohan
was still in the “unfinished” column. “I’ve called him twice. I left a message
last time.”

“Third time’s a
charm, right?” June said.

“You’re
pushy.”

“That’s what
good friends are for!”

June lay on
her back, dripping some water from her hair onto my journal. I moved it before
she completely ruined it.

“I thought
good friends were for support and encouragement?”

“They are. How
do you think they do that?” June definitely had the pushy down.

We didn’t move
while the sound of the waves and kids nearby and my mom snoring filled the air.
It was busy enough to feel alone and lost in the noise. Everyone scattering in his
or her own path and not looking back. Even the wind had a direction, and I was
stuck.

Stuck
unmoving // Destiny looming

I closed the
journal.

“So what’s up
with your sister?” I asked, looking at June. She adjusted her sunglasses, and
let out a sigh. “How long are you going?”

“I don’t know.
Until school maybe? I haven’t thought about it.”

I couldn’t see
her face well, but her tone changed. There was something about LA and her
sister that she didn’t want to talk about. I started to ask when Mom popped up
next to us abruptly.

“We should
go,” Mom said, stretching. “I want to make a stop.”

THE OLD STRIP of pink, blue
and orange stores used to sit on the right side of the highway off exit sixty-seven,
that’s why we would always go before home. The stores were no longer colored—no
longer this magical place over the rainbow. They were an industrial shade of
metal. Mom frowned and deep lines appeared on her forehead.

“What’s this
place?” June asked.

Nothing
anymore.

“Cassie and I
used to come here when she was a kid,” Mom said.

“It was better
then,” I added.

“What is it?”
June asked.

I unbuckled my
seatbelt, but Mom grabbed my arm and shook her head. “A memory that I’d like to
keep as it was,” she said. I looked back at the building. Mom was right. Even
if this place only mattered because it was Pretty Day, it still mattered. It
was as deeply a part of me and us as the bad ones.

Some things
were better off left in the past where they couldn’t be touched or changed. Others
were full of promise.

“We should
go,” she said.

I couldn’t
agree more. I put on another one of June’s albums, and we left.

I WAS ALREADY at the door
when Molly came to it. Her blonde hair was curled, and I always liked that. She
looked less than happy to see me. I had some major damage to repair here, if I
could even do that. Molly crossed her arms over her chest as she approached me.

“Hey,” I said.
I opened the door a crack to let her come in. She hesitated at first, but then
she went past me up the stairs.

Molly was in
my living room, unmoving, while we stared at each other. I tried to hug her,
but she took a step back from me. “I don’t really know why I’m here,” she said.

I reached out
for her hand, but she wouldn’t let me touch her. She even took another step
back. I really messed this up. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You have to know I
didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t know
that,” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve been different
since she came back.”

“There’s
nothing between her and me.”

“You called me
her name last night!” Molly yelled. Her eyes were glassy and I really didn’t
want her to cry. “What do I do with that?”

I shoved my
hands into my pockets.

She shook her
head. “What is it about her? You need to tell me. I deserve to know.”

I didn’t want
to tell her. What could I say? She was Cassie. We had a history, an unfinished
history, a relationship with no answers, an appeal and connection I couldn’t
explain. She wouldn’t like any of that. How could I tell Molly what Cassie and
I had been and not lose her? She shook her head and walked toward the door.

“Wait—” I
yelled. She turned around to me. “She was the first girl I loved. I met her
when I was nine.” Molly’s eyes widened, like she waiting for more. “This will
take longer than ten minutes.”

She sat on the
couch across from me and I told her the whole story. All the details I’d never
shared before. That Cassie and I had such a long history. That I held her up
and let her guide me and planned to spend my life with her. That she left me
and even after I went to get her back, she refused me.

When the story
was done, Molly was quiet.

“Do you still
love her?” she asked.

I didn’t know
how to answer. “I don’t know.”

“That’s
probably the first honest thing you’ve said in months.”

Was it? I
really meant what I’d said. I never meant to lie to her. I wasn’t with Cassie,
but I did wonder. I wondered a lot of things—why she left, what I meant to her,
what she wanted, what I wanted. Was all that because I still loved her?

Molly stood up
without another word. I jumped up too.

“Don’t leave,”
I said.

“I need to
figure this out,” she said, putting her palm up at me. She moved toward the
door and I didn’t stop her. I knew I didn’t have the right to ask her to stay.
Not when I didn’t know what I wanted, or when I did know what I wanted and it
wasn’t something I’d sworn I was over. Either way, she left.

I STOOD OUTSIDE on the porch,
and Mom and June were inside talking more about June Carter Cash. It seemed
like the perfect time to step away. I inhaled and stared at Rohan’s name and
picture before I pushed the call button. I needed to start fixing things, and
this one seemed a little easier than the one a yard away.

The phone
rang, and rang and rang. I was nervous about what to say to him. He answered
with: “I can’t believe you’re calling me.”

“Yeah, I know
it’s random. I just—”

“I left you
messages,” Rohan said. A few of them. All deleted.

“I didn’t know
what to say,” I said. That part was true. Even now, I was a little too nauseous
to let my guard down, and I was the one who’d left. Silence echoed on the other
end. I could hear him breathe, slightly, and the noise around him. Other
voices, clattering.

“I’m sorry,” I
said. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I was wrong.”

“I thought you
were happy,” he said. His voice was extremely calm. A lot calmer than I’d
expected.

“I don’t think
I’d been happy for a year. I loved someone else. Someone who I hurt, and I
tried to replace him with you. I’m sorry; that wasn’t fair. I was too scared to
leave, to admit what I’d done, and then my mom happened,” I said. It was nice,
actually, to say all that out loud. I hadn’t admitted to anyone, barely even to
myself, but this was freeing. “I freaked out, Rohan.”

Rohan was
quiet again except the noise around him. I expected him to yell, to say
something, to call me a name, but he didn’t. He let out this sort of short,
stifled laugh. “You know what, Cassie? I think it was the best thing that’s
ever happened.”

Okay, I did
not expect that.

“Don’t get me
wrong, I was pissed. So pissed. You didn’t answer and June said you called her
once and I felt like I never mattered, but you made me.”

“Made you?”

“The song I
wrote about you? I’m doing what I love because of you. You left and I was
thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? I don’t want to be an engineer.’ You
leaving pushed me into music. You helped me in a weird, messed-up kind of way.”

I smiled. “I
take it back then.”

“What?” he
asked.

 “I’m not
sorry.”

Rohan chuckled,
and then he grew silent. “Take care, Cassie.”

“You too, Rohan.”

“I hope you find
your happiness.”

Then he hung
up, and that was it. There was no yelling. No anger. We were extinguished,
properly. I could let it all go.

I turned to go
inside when I saw Molly headed back from Graham’s place. She looked exhausted.
I glanced back at my phone, but I knew she saw me watching her and she beelined
toward the porch and me.

“Cassie,” she
called. This wasn’t good.

“Molly,” I
said back.

“Can we talk?”
she asked. Yeah, because that was what I’d wanted to do. Talk to Graham’s
girlfriend. I pointed to the chairs and she took a seat. “I don’t really want
to beat around the bush here. You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

I swallowed.
“Graham and I have a histo—”

“That’s not
what I mean,” she said. She looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “I know about
him fixing things at your house, and bowling, and coming over to hang out with
you. I don’t really like games. Life is too short for that. So can we be honest
with each other for a minute?”

I nodded.

“I like
Michael—Graham, whatever you call him. Really like him. We’ve been together for
seven months now, and when I met him, he was a mess,” she said with a pause and
I tried not imagine Graham as a mess. Or how leaving me at school changed him.
That had been hard for me. I’d barely survived giving back his ring, and it was
my choice. I couldn’t imagine what it’d done to him...

“He was angry
and confused. He didn’t know which way was up. He told me once that he was
broken by some girl he loved, and that was you. I was there when he put himself
back together,” Molly said. “But I’m not you, and you’re back. He doesn’t look
at me the way he looks at you. I didn’t want to admit it, but now—”

“There’s
nothing between us.” I said. I did it with a straight face, and if I didn’t
know myself, I would’ve believed it. We were nothing, but we were everything.

“Don’t tell me
that. He didn’t spend weeks fixing my house. He didn’t take care of my family
when I left for college. He didn’t save my mom from a burning building.”

“He what?” I
asked. We stared at each other for a second, and Graham’s voice played in my
ear. The one from that first call when he said Mrs. Pearson saved her, and
firemen and the hospital. How he was there. He’d always been there.

“You didn’t
know?”

I shook my
head. Graham saved my mom. He…?

Of course,
Graham saved my mom.

Molly exhaled.
“I’m not saying I want to give him up, because I like him. But I think you
confuse him. Ever since you came back, he’s been different. So please, let him
go.”

“What?”

“Let him go,”
she said, and then she left me and walked to her car.

I stared after
her, squeezing my phone in my hand until she was out of sight. My knuckles
started to ache. I wasn’t anything to Graham. Was I? There had been some things
before. No. It didn’t matter.

Let him go.

What the hell?
Was that what Graham wanted? That he wanted me to let him go? Fuck that. If he
wanted that he could tell me himself.