Days Like This (3 page)

Thinking about
what I left hurt. If I had stayed, maybe we’d be married right now, going to
school together and I’d be really seen, really known. But I hadn’t stayed. He’d
put a ring on my finger, but Mom’s secret about my dad leaving freaked me out, so
I left. I couldn’t go back to that. It was gone. I had made sure of that.

Someday I hoped I
would be able to apologize.

“What's going on?”
I asked again, maneuvering my body away from Rohan.

Rohan dropped his
hands and for the first time it felt cold. The lights came on and Rohan smiled,
arms out. A grungy, faded, white RV was parked in front of us. "What do
you think?"

“What is it?”

His smile
dropped. “For this summer. You, me, traveling across the country.”

“What?”

“It's what you
said you wanted. To travel. It needs some work but nothing we can't fix.”

“You can't do
that, Rohan.” He gave me a look like I killed his pet turtle. The same one
Graham had when I’d actually killed his in middle school.
Stop thinking
about Graham
. “What about summer classes? You can't blow it off.”

Rohan shrugged. “I
thought it was me and you, Cass.”

I froze. He'd
never, ever called me that. That wasn't a name he could use. Only Graham had
ever called me that. Letting Rohan call me that was wrong because it wasn’t his,
and I didn’t want it to be. It would never be anyone else’s. I shook my head. “I
can't go with you all summer.”

Rohan grabbed my
hand and guided me toward him. His scent wrapped around me as his lips grazed
my neck. I was not a weak girl; this wouldn't work, but I didn’t move away.

“Think about it,”
he said. His voice was low and in between words he kissed my neck. “Please. For
me.”

His hand trailed
up the bottom of my shirt, warm against my skin and somehow I said, “I will.”
There was a smile on his face, and then his lips crashed against mine, a force
so strong it pushed me against the dirty RV. His fingertips gave me goosebumps
as they found any place they could touch while he pulled off my shirt. We
stumbled backward, and I shivered as Rohan pressed me into the side of that RV,
my back flush against cool steel, my lips on his, and my mind drifting to
another boy. I felt a little guilty about each thought even though I knew the
relationships weren't the same.

When Rohan looked
at me, he didn’t see the girl I used to be; he saw the sexy nurse. It was scary
in a way completely different from Graham. Rohan didn’t have the history with
me that Graham had, and maybe I needed to be seen a different way. To be seen
by someone who didn’t know everything about me. He knew the Cassie I presented
to him, a girl who dreamed and listened to his punk rock pop crap; not the one
scared of never finding her own way.

I liked him, but
a whole summer? It would never last a whole summer. The sex wouldn't be enough
to glue us. He'd get bored, or I would get scared, and it would be done. I’d
been scared before. I was scared when I left Graham, even more scared when I
let him walk away, but what we had was real. Forever, even when I’d walked
away.

Rohan and I
weren’t forever. We were a flame.
From the second we met, there was something that
burned hot and fast and bright. But it wouldn't last. He didn't know me. Only
one person ever got that close to me, and I broke him. It wouldn’t happen
again. Rohan and I had lips and bodies and nights, but deep down I missed the
thing I’d let go. I let it go for the right reasons, but wanted it back for the
other ones.

CLYDE’S BAR WAS packed at
seven on Tuesday night, but Lou was working, so it wasn’t a surprise. He was
the only bartender in the surrounding cities who didn’t ID. Molly laughed next to
me, and her hand rested on my thigh. She flipped her blonde hair over her
shoulder. Each time she did it I smelled her shampoo. Lilacs or some shit.
Girls always smelled like flowers or fruits or spice. It was part of their
secret powers.

Molly knew how
to use all hers.

The guys from
the bar couldn’t stop staring at her. Her legs, her chest—everything really. James,
my late-twenty-something boss, was staring a little too much, so I kicked him
under the table. He shrugged.

“We should go,
Michael,” Molly said. I hated my first name, but Cass was the one who started
getting everyone to call me by my middle name. When she left, I wanted to be “Michael.”
“Graham” always had Cassie. “Michael” made it feel less like she was missing.
At least, sometimes.

“We have that
thing,” Molly added when I didn’t move.

I took a swig
of my beer. “What thing?”

She batted her
eyelashes, rubbed her hand across the crotch of my jeans, and leaned in to my
ear. “
The thing that
involves you and me being naked.”

I spit out my
beer and she smiled, like some innocent little angel. But she was a devil under
her southern girl charm.

Cass would
never have said something like that to me. They were completely opposite in
every way. I think that was why I liked Molly so much. She surprised me. By day
she was a do-gooder, a nursing student holding people’s hands while they died,
solid and driven. By night she was someone who lived every second of life.

“We have to
go,” I said, helping Molly off her stool.

“See you
tomorrow,” James said, nodding toward me. I’d been helping James at a
residential construction site. Tomorrow, it would be done. Building houses was
a science and an art and a miracle at once. Construction was a lot like
architecture, and even though I hadn’t designed that house, I still had pride
in it. Nothing was there a few months ago, and now there was a house. There
would be a family. And it was all because of us.

“Sure thing.”

“You bring the
coffee in the morning, Mikey!” James yelled after us.

WE WERE OUTSIDE Molly’s apartment
about six minutes later. That was the nice thing about a small town—it didn’t
take long to get places. She smiled at me, blonde hair falling in her face, and
I couldn’t help but smile back. Molly found me four months ago at Clyde’s. I
was there with two friends, Eric and Lila, who were in for Christmas break,
when Molly walked right up to us and asked me to dance.

“There’s not a
dance floor,” I’d said.

“We’ll make
our own.”

Eric had practically
pushed me out of the booth into Molly. I didn’t think I was ready, but they
disagreed. They both went to high school with Cassie and me, and when she left
I guess I won the straw that said they would be my friends and not hers.
Strange how that had happened.

“Have fun,”
Eric had said.

“Move on,”
Lila’d added.

Molly had been
a casual thing at first. She made me smile, made me forget, and that was
something I needed after Cass. I’d found my own way in the months after she
left me—architecture school, construction, friends, a plan—and then Molly. Cass
leaving may have been a good thing, because before that day, I was content to
follow her. Now, I made my own path. Somehow Molly fit into that, at least currently.
If I was accepted into college then I didn’t know, but Molly didn’t seem to
mind the unknown. She had her own dreams.

I wondered if
Cass had found hers. That was part of why she left, at least the only part she
admitted to, and I hope they were worth ending us. I hoped too that it wasn’t,
and she missed me every day and regretted it. It felt wrong to want both things
for her, but I did.

“You ready?”
Molly asked.

I didn’t
answer. I jumped out of the car, went around to her side, as a gentleman
should, and guided her out of the seat. My mouth found hers and we walked
backwards, lips not parting, until we made it to her door.

THE WHOLE BLOCK was dark and
quiet around me, save the sound of my engine and the hum of the streetlights. I
parked outside my house and it was already after midnight. Four hours of sleep
was better than zero. I slammed the door shut and walked toward the back of the
house to my apartment above the garage.

Cass and I
used to sneak up there when we younger, back when we were “Cass and Graham,”
before I graduated and moved into it to wait for her to graduate. Before she
left me with the memories of waking up without her. We’d sneak up there in the
night and talk about nothing, about everything, and make out until my lips
hurt. It was our place. It was where I figured out what every inch of her felt
like, and where to touch her in a way that made her sigh, and how to make her
body tremble with pleasure, and have her cry out my name in that way that made
us both come undone.

That felt like
forever ago.

I shook away
the thoughts, and paused to unlock the door. That’s when I smelled something
burning in the air, like in the summer when every house on the block grilled
out. No one grilled at midnight. This was something else. I turned around,
scanning the woods for anything off. If there was a fire in the woods it would
be at our houses in minutes.

Then I saw the
smoke. And it wasn’t coming from the woods.

Fuck.

“Mrs. H!” I
yelled, and took off in a sprint toward Cassie’s house. I raced over there. It
felt like I wasn’t moving at all, like I was running through water. I jumped
over the half-broken fence between our backyards, and rounded toward the
backdoor of her house. I could see the flames and the smoke thick in the air.

The door was
locked so I pounded on it, calling her name. I made out the top of her head
from where she was curled up in a ball on the couch. I grabbed a rock from the
ground and smashed in the window on the door. Glass crackled against the tile
floor, and I yelled her name as I crossed into the house. Smoke stung my eyes,
a grey haze that draped over everything.

Mrs. H was
sitting on the couch, and she was bawling. “It’s so small in here. Too small.”

Shit.
The whole wall where she wanted the
window was engulfed in flames. We had to get the fuck out.

“I know. Let’s
go outside where it’s not small,” I said.

I tried to get
her up, but Mrs. H fought against me. Her arms thrashed in the air and I wasn’t
sure what the hell I was supposed to do. She wouldn’t stand up. She kept throwing
herself on the ground.

“I want
Cassie! Where’s Cassie? It’s too small here, but it’s bigger now. Cassie!”

I bent down
and titled her face up to mine. “Cassie isn’t here. She’s at my house, Mrs. H.”

Her eyes widened
like I was Santa. “Your house?”

 “Come on, you
can see her.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I knew I was really yelling. I
had to get us out of there. Lying seemed like the only option. I’d seen her
before like this, and it’s what Cass always did. Lied to her.

Mrs. H started
to stand, so I swooped her up and carried her out of the house. We collapsed in
the backyard.

I dialed 911,
out of breath and tired, and beside me Mrs. H was still crying. I didn’t know
what to do to calm her down. So again I did what Cassie would have done and
started humming while we waited. Mrs. H was still crying on the ground, legs to
her chest, so I sat down beside her and watched the smoke trail up from the
house.

“Sometimes,” I
whispered, trying to sing. Singing wasn’t my thing, but I sang “
Angel”
the best I could. I knew the words as if
it was my favorite song, but I hated that song. I would hate it forever.

Mrs. H rested
her hand on my arm. “Where’s Cassie?”

I didn’t
answer. It was hard to believe that this happened and Cassie was nowhere
around. Did I miss the signs? I knew them. I learned them four years ago when
Mrs. H was diagnosed as bipolar.

I’d realized something
was wrong when I was twelve, and I’d found them in the snowstorm, but I’d kept
it a secret. I’d been there when Cassie put Mrs. H to bed, or ran guys out of
their house, or cried herself to sleep, or disappeared for days. Cassie didn’t
talk about it much, even to me, and I’d never pressed her.
She was the type who closed up tighter
and recoiled if
I
’d tried to force her into something.
Instead, I’d been there for her. I’d signed that emergency contact form when I
turned eighteen because they wouldn’t let Cassie sign it yet. I did anything I
could for her, and yet...

“Where’s my
Cassie?”

She left.

The sirens blared around us, and
firefighters worked to put out the flames. A medic wrapped a blanket around
Mrs. H. “Where’s Cassie?” Mrs. H asked again. I didn’t want to hear her name. Not
when it was the one that started all of this. Not when it was her who should’ve
been here instead of me.
And especially
not when that fire meant I had to fucking call her after all this time.