You and Everything After (20 page)

Chapter 24

Cass

The festivities were in full swing at the Owens’s house. Mom likes to make the house
smell
like the holidays. She says it’s her way of combatting the California weather, which keeps things in the high seventies. It doesn’t feel very much like fall outside, so my mom makes it seem like fall inside with batches of cinnamon, apples, and potpourri twigs in planters and bowls everywhere I look.

I used to love this when I was a kid. Today, the smell is making me nauseous.

Ty made it home okay. That was the highlight about my trip from the airport. Ty was already settled in, so I could text him for the entire hour ride from LAX to my parents’ house, effectively ignoring Paige.

 
I could tell she was nervous when we got home. She took over the conversation quickly, making sure my mom and dad wouldn’t notice how angry I was at her. She’s probably more concerned over the fact that her spilling the beans on Paul Cotterman might mess up my dad’s negotiations—break the nondisclosure clause. She doesn’t like disappointing our parents.

I’ll take care of the disappointment checkbox. Soon, my dad is sure to find out I filed a police report. I plan on telling him either way. I decided during the flight that I wasn’t going to get walked on during my time at home. I was done playing the part of the mistress girl who
once
got involved with a teacher. I was going to be strong, talk back, stand up for myself, and maybe slam a door or two.
 

Right now, all I want to do is escape to my room. That’s one thing my parents did right—even though they had twins, they never made us room together. My room is all my own, a space just for me. It’s always been my retreat—my walls covered in posters of my favorite bands and David Beckham. I think about slamming the door, just to see how it feels, but I’m exhausted from being angry for the last several hours. I’m going to need something to fire me up again to be able to pull off a slam.

The soft knock on my door is unwelcome.

“Come in,” I say, bracing myself.
Nobody
is welcomed from this house, it’s just a matter of which unwelcomed guest it is. My mom has a fresh set of linens for me, and I know this is a setup, because she could easily have changed the sheets before we came home. I’m sure Paige’s are done.

“I’ll take them, thanks,” I say, pulling the sheets from her hands. She holds on tightly to the pillowcase though, worming her way into the chore. She’s not leaving.

“So,” she starts. Great, we’re going to feign small talk. In my head, I pretend she’s going to say what she
really
wants to say…. “How’s the Cotterman situation? How’s your disabled boyfriend? Why couldn’t you just join a sorority or something like your sister…?”

“How is practice going?” she asks.

Okay, I didn’t plan for that one.

“Good,” I say, with caution. There’s a
but
coming somewhere. I wait for it, and wait for it. Mom keeps folding and tucking, and says nothing else.

“Okay, well, your sheets should be set. I’ll wash the dusty ones and you can take them back to campus if you need an extra set,” she says, smiling and moving to the door with my pile of dirty linens. She pauses right before she pulls the door closed behind her. “I’m glad practice is going well.”

All I can do is blink. She was neither fake nor genuine—and nothing about the conversation felt like a mother and a daughter. All I’m hit with is an unbearable weight of sadness over this relationship I somehow don’t have with her. Crawling under my freshly tucked blanket, I pull out my phone and slide through the few photos I have of Ty and me, and I think, for just a moment, about going to find my mom to show them to her.

But I don’t. Instead, I just pull out my ear buds and play my favorite playlist while I scroll through Twitter looking for naughty photos and good jokes.

After an hour of noodling around on my phone, I give in and join my family in the living room. The sun is setting, and the sound of the local news makes me nostalgic. My dad is out on the grill, and he slides the patio door open and closed a few times before finally calling us all to the table.

“What did he make?” Paige whispers to me. I shrug, both because I don’t know and because I still don’t want to talk to her.

“Fish?” I say, looking at a long, thin, grilled…
something
on my plate. We never eat fish. And I don’t think I really like fish.

“Salmon,” my mom says, pulling out her chair to sit at the table. “We’ve been eating a lot of it lately. It’s good for you.”

Paige starts cutting hers right away, so I make a few cuts to mine to taste a small piece. It’s fishy, but if I dip it in the salad dressing running from my lettuce, I can almost stand it.

“So,” my mom starts. The same way she started her last question. This all suddenly feels rehearsed. “Tell us about this Ty fellow.”

And here it is. I focus all of my energy on the fish meat on my fork. Heavy dipping in dressing. Long, drawn-out chewing. Hold my finger up to make my family wait for my response. And then, give them nothing of value. “What about him?”

My mom’s shoulders slump at my response, and I feel a little bad. Maybe she is trying, and not just picking?

“He’s nice,” Paige answers for me, and I can’t help but shoot her a glare. One, she doesn’t like Ty. I can tell. And two, she is the
last
person I want talking for me right now.

“Ha!” I say. I dip a bigger slice of fish—dip, dip, dip, and chew.

“What does that mean?” she asks. My parents disappear from my reality, and I put my knife and fork down slowly, place my napkin on my lap, and prop my elbows on the table. I stop short of cracking my knuckles.

“You can’t stand him. You
know
you can’t! And that’s why mom thinks what she thinks of him—whatever the hell that is. Because you just
had
to talk shit about him to someone, so you called up mom and gave her gossip before I got a chance to introduce him to her the right way,” I say, and the feeling of freedom in my chest, of letting this go, is fucking fantastic.

Paige tosses her napkin on the table, whispers an apology to our mom, and then slides her chair out to leave.

“Ohhhhh, so now you’re going to leave? We’re just getting started, aren’t we? Don’t you want to stay and talk about the
Cotterman issue
next? Maybe you can bring up all of those boys who called me Easy Owens in high school. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about how I must have a thing for older men, how I’m a homewrecker, how I slept with Kyle Loftman, and broke up his marriage…”

“I never said you slept with Kyle Loftman!” she interrupts, her fist heavy as it pounds on the table so hard it vibrates the water from our glasses. “I didn’t even know about him until mom told me!” This, of course, makes my mom squirm in her seat. My dad, though—he’s still cutting his meat, watching us talk—oblivious to the part he played in any of this. “What do you think, that I’m really out to ruin my sister? That…that I have some secret agenda to spread rumors about you? Seriously?”

“Girls, that’s enough,” my mom tries to stop our flow, but we barely even acknowledge her. This has been building in me, and it needs to come out.

“I don’t know, Paige! Somehow, when the rumors find their way to me, I always trace them back to you!” I practically shout.

“That’s because I’m the one trying to tell the
real
story! God, Cass…I’ve been trying to fix this since I embarrassed you by yelling at those assholes
who
treated you like shit in high school. I never meant for it to start anything, I only wanted them to apologize—to not get away with using you,” she says.

“Yeah, well, it started something anyway. You
ruined
my senior year, Paige. And now you’re trying to ruin college for me, too,” I seethe.

There’s a long break in our words, and Paige keeps her eyes on me, her hands flat on the table between us. My mom is looking from her to me, then to my dad, begging him to step in. But there’s nothing anyone can say. My last year has been a series of unfortunate incidents, miscommunications, poor judgments by my sister—and I’m just done having others speak on my behalf.

“I never meant to ruin anything for you,” Paige says finally, her eyes bloated with water. I hate crying. And I hate that I’m making my sister cry. But I’m still angry. And none of this is okay.

“Why did you tell Chandra about Cotterman?” This is the wound that hurts the most.

“Paige! We can’t talk about Cotterman,” my dad says quickly, and I hold a hand up to stop him. This isn’t a legal issue for me. This is a trust issue—a sister-bond, broken.

“Paige, why?” I ask, and she collapses into her chair, her fight completely gone.

“I thought Chandra was your friend,” she says, her shoulders lifting faintly, a small signal to let me know she’s being honest. “I thought…I don’t know, that somehow...maybe she could help?”

“Paige,” I sigh, sitting back in my seat, “Chandra hates me. I’m her biggest threat on the team. Why would she help me?”

“Because…” she says, her eyes slowly moving from the tabletop directly in front of her, along the distance between us, until her gaze meets mine. “—because she dated him last year.”

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

My dad is already starting in with questioning. I know how his brain works. He wants to talk to Chandra, question her, see if she had a similar situation. Paige answers his barrage of questions with short one-word answers. They
dated.
He didn’t assault her. It’s different, though yes, inappropriate. But my dad wants to talk to her anyway…see if there’s a pattern of abuse, of anger, anything he can have in his hip pocket. It’s like I’m sitting in the middle of a pot of boiling water, bubbles bursting all around me, my skin on fire, everything poking and prodding to try to make me explode.

“I didn’t do anything to deserve this,” I say, standing up again and looking my dad in the eyes. I walk over to him and put my hand on his chest. “I love you, Daddy. I know you’re just trying to fix this. But I’m tired. I didn’t do anything wrong. Not once. And I’m just…I’m just done.”

Nobody stops me from leaving the table. Nobody follows me into my room. And nobody checks on me for the next hour. The space beyond my door is quiet, which means dinner is over and everyone either retreated to their spaces or went outside to talk about me more. I don’t care where they went or what they do, as long as I don’t have to be a part of it.

When my phone rings, my heart dances. Knowing
it’s
Ty makes my lips stretch into a smile for the first time in hours.

“Hey,” I answer, doing my best to sound less like a girl who just had her hope stolen from her chest and wrung out in front of her.

“Guess who got his Cookie back?” he asks, the giddiness in his voice making my smile stretch even larger.

“Thank the lord. Seriously, I don’t think I could endure another round of ransom embarrassment,” I say. “How’d you get him?”

“Rowe caved,” he says.

“Hmmmm, she…
caved?
That doesn’t sound very much like Rowe,” I say.

“What can I say, my charm won her over. She was no match,” he says. I close my eyes when he speaks, picturing him here, his voice deep, thick with Southern drawl. I imagine his face—I want to see his face. “Oh, she also told me I was an asshole for not inviting you to come home with me. So…”

I sit up when he says this. Seconds pass, and I start to worry over what to say in response when he finally fills the void for me.

“I really wish I did,” his voice no longer humorous. “I miss you like crazy.”

“God, I miss you too,” I say, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up to my face, breathing in deep and closing my eyes again. I can almost convince myself he’s here—his smell and his voice with me.

“You should know, I’m going to visit Kelly tomorrow,” he says, and just as fast he’s gone—a thousand miles away…with
her
.

“Oh,” I say. Small. Meek. Fragile.

“I don’t want you to…I don’t know…be jealous?” I’m embarrassed that he even says this. “I know it’s not easy to hear about her. I wouldn’t like you to have a Kelly.”

“Yeah, well, lucky for you, all I have is a
Cotterman issue
,” I say back, letting out a small, pathetic laugh.

“I don’t like that you have that, either,” he says, still serious.

“I know. Thank you,” I say.

“I’m going to show her your pictures. She wants to see what you look like. I’ve been talking about you—kind of a lot,” he says, and this time I blush in a good way.

“Saying good things, I hope?” I hold my breath.

“Well, I mean I did tell her that you don’t like Leo. She’s not too sure about that,” he says.

“Hey! I never said I don’t like Leo, I just haven’t been exposed enough,” I say, sitting up and gesturing like he’s really here. Ty has this effect; he brings my energy back, puts the life back in my veins.

“Okay, well…maybe you get a pass then. Kelly
will
agree with me on one thing, though,” he says.

“Yeah? What’s that?” I ask.

“That you’re beautiful,” he says, and I lie down on my pillow, the phone pressed tightly to my cheek and ear.

“Thank you for saying that,” I say.

“It’s only the truth,” he says, and somehow, my face turns even redder.

“Do you think, maybe…you can just stay on the phone? You know, while I fall asleep? It’s been kind of a shitty day. And…I don’t know. I just sort of need you tonight,” I say. I feel vulnerable and helpless and foolish at first, but Ty annihilates those fears in an instant.

“I’ll be right here,” he says, and my breathing eases.

He reads some sports scores to me from his phone, then I listen to him watch
Sports Center
and
oooh
and
ahhh
over top plays. My eyelids grow heavy, and I only perk up to react when he speaks more than a few words as the half-hour show closes. The last words I remember his tender
goodnight
and the way he calls me
baby.

Ty