Chapter Text
if i can’t have you, no one should
Outside the school auditorium, Nate tells her it’s over and it feels like her world is imploding.
Lexi has ruined everything. Her stupid play and need for attention has destroyed the one thing that really mattered in Cassie’s life, the one thing she had left. Maybe this was Lexi’s plan all along — maybe she had become so jealous of her that she wanted to ruin the happiness Cassie had found with Nate.
Because she was happy. She really was.
Nate takes care of things, takes control. When she’s with him, she doesn’t have to worry or fret or really think about anything. She doesn’t need to worry about Maddy and her other friends not speaking to her, or the fact that her grades are abysmal because of the stress she’s experienced this year. She doesn’t even need to think about what she’s going to wear to school the next day. He’ll handle everything for her.
But now it’s over. A pile of her clothes and belongings on his front lawn when she walks to his house and a front door locked shut so she can’t get inside.
The look on her mother’s face when she returns home makes Cassie want to scream. There’s been a near-constant rage simmering inside of her since she left the play and it threatens to reach its boiling point when she witnesses the pitying, closed-lipped smile Suze gives her.
“I’m not staying in that room with her,” she spits as she tosses her duffel bag onto the hallway floor, clothes spilling out.
Her mother rolls her eyes. “Then you’re sleeping on the couch.”
It infuriates Cassie that despite everything Lexi has done — how much she has humiliated her — she’s the one sleeping on the couch. But Cassie can’t argue with her mother; she has nowhere else to go right now.
“Fine,” she snaps, and stomps upstairs to the bathroom to shower and scrub away the blood and tears that have dried on her face.
-
He reels her back in and it’s embarrassing, how easily she falls back into his orbit.
I miss you, his text reads. Meet me at the Motel 6 tonight at 7.
In the weeks following the play, she’s been sleeping in the den, holed up in the room and as far away from her sister as she can be. So it’s easy for her to sneak out to meet Nate without her mother noticing.
When she arrives, he’s waiting for her inside the room he’s rented, an entirely neutral expression on his face when he opens the door.
“I’m sorry,” she immediately blurts out. Tears fill her eyes as her bottom lip wobbles. “I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea she—”
“Shhh.” He shushes her softly, his large palms reaching up to cup her face. “We’re not talking about that right now.”
He kisses her, his tall frame dipping down to meet her lips with his. And then he’s dragging her inside and pulling her clothes off and pushing her down onto the bed, her face pressed into the scratchy motel sheets.
It feels like love, she thinks, as he fucks into her, his palm pressed to the back of her head. This is how he shows his love.
-
There’s a voice, in the back of Cassie’s head, that tells her that he’s using her. But there’s another voice, larger and louder, that tells her she’s wrong and that Nate doesn’t do anything he doesn’t really want to do. So he must want her.
He texts her almost every other day, asking to meet, and that counts for something.
They don’t talk at school. He passes her in the hall and it’s like she doesn’t exist, his eyes focused straight ahead as his body brushes past her. It feels like those early days, when they were sneaking around and Cassie was waking up at 5 a.m. to groom herself for him. She’s still waking up early, but now it’s because she can’t sleep, her anxiety never allowing her to get a good night’s rest.
School is lonely. She doesn’t have any friends, nobody to talk to. The cheerleading squad kicked her out on the Monday following the play. She goes to class and hardly pays attention, and spends lunch locked in a bathroom stall, scrolling through her phone.
But she doesn’t cry. She won’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She’s cried enough over the last few months.
Being at home is lonely too. Lexi and her mother are as thick as thieves, giggling in the kitchen as they make dinner and watching tv shows together in the living room. Cassie sits on the periphery, not getting involved. (Even though a tiny part of her wants to.)
There was a weird tension in the house, immediately following the play. A tension that wasn’t caused by their fractured relationship. Lexi seemed tense, worried, frantically checking her phone and borrowing their mother’s car to leave late at night. Now, she seems brighter, sadness only shadowing her face when they run into each other in the house and Cassie brushes her off before Lexi can attempt to speak to her.
Lexi is out a lot too. If Cassie cared, she’d question where Lexi’s newfound social life has emerged from and if she’s made amends with Rue. She sees them together at school sometimes. (But Cassie doesn’t care about Lexi anymore, so she doesn’t think about any of those things.)
Cassie’s loneliness only dissipates when she’s with him. Nate calls and she comes running, always meeting in the same motel room or, on occasion, his father’s abandoned construction site.
(He doesn’t talk about his father or his arrest. He doesn’t talk to her about anything, really.)
They fuck in the motel bed or over the cheap desk or up against an exposed beam, Nate’s hands firm on her body and always a little rough. Sometimes, more than a little.
“Such a good little slut for me,” he murmurs as she sucks his thumb into her mouth, down on her knees, looking up at his towering form.
He’s so big, so powerful above her. When they first began their affair, she loved that power and how, despite his physicality, sometimes when they fucked it felt like she could steal the power from him, if only for a moment. It still thrills her to be at his mercy, her belly flipping when she does what he asks and he quietly praises her. But there’s something else there now, another emotion, lingering at the back of her mind.
(If she had to name it, she’d call it fear.)
He doesn’t stay long after they’ve fucked. Some nights, she’s still in the bathroom, cleaning up between her legs, when she hears the motel door slam shut.
She misses his affection, his gentle touches. Before, he was surprisingly sweet when they were alone, tactile and gentle. His fingers would comb through her hair or stroke her face, and Cassie would remember why he was worth it. Betraying her best friend didn’t matter if she could have this.
He doesn’t do any of that now. No gentle caresses or kisses pressed to her temples and cheeks. Just rough hands and slaps to her ass that turn her skin pink and sting even when his palm leaves her flesh.
If that’s all he’ll give her, she’ll take what she can get.
-
Their clandestine motel room meetings have been happening for almost three weeks when she notices him staring at Maddy.
Senior year is almost over and graduation looms ahead. People are making plans for the summer, and prepping for college or whatever lies ahead following school. Cassie can’t participate in any of these activities. She didn’t apply to many colleges and hasn’t received any acceptance letters, and she doesn’t think her grades are good enough anyway.
Instead, she spends her time trawling job sites and watching Nate whenever he’s in her vicinity.
He’s not subtle, or maybe he just isn’t trying to be. Lexi’s play seems to have had little effect on his social standing. The football team still surrounds him and girls still frequently approach him to ask if he’ll be at the party that weekend. Nate looks disinterested in them all, as per usual, his social interactions always on his terms.
There’s only one person Nate seems to deem worthy of his attention. He doesn’t talk to Maddy, doesn’t ever approach her, but his eyes give him away. That dark gaze seeking her out in the hall and following her as she struts past him until she’s out of sight. (Cassie knows that Maddy’s aware of him, even if she appears aloof.)
The jealousy is so potent that Cassie feels like she could vomit.
When they meet, she wants to scream at him. What’s wrong with me? What does she have that I don’t?! But she worries that he’ll actually give her an answer.
Jealousy of another kind also eats at her.
She eventually discovers why Lexi is so happy all the time, always disappearing after school and returning home with a giddy smile on her face.
She’s in love, she tells their mother.
She forgets to mention that she’s in love with the local drug dealer.
When Cassie first overhears a guy in her English class talking about Lexi Howard and Fezco, she thinks it’s a joke. A bizarre rumor started by her bored classmates who had no drama to gossip about now that the fallout of the play had died down.
She doesn’t confront Lexi. Nothing will make her break her silence, not even the possibility of her little sister dating a violent criminal. But one night, as she leaves the bathroom and pads past the slightly ajar door of her former bedroom, she hears her sister on the phone.
“I miss you too but we’ll see each other tomorrow.” Silence, and then a scandalized giggle. “Fez! Stop!”
It’s sick. It’s wrong. It’s not fair that Lexi is this happy when she’s completely miserable, and she doesn’t know why she seems to be the only one who is baffled by their relationship. In no universe did they make sense.
Nothing makes sense to Cassie now. Not her sister or her mother. Not Nate and his ability to turn his back on what they had. She’s given up so much, sacrificed so much, and this is what she gets?
A week after they go public, Lexi and Fezco are already old news. Everyone is moving onto the next thing. But Cassie is stuck, bitter and twisted up inside, and as the end of Friday approaches, her breath is coming thick and fast as she locks herself inside a bathroom stall. She can’t steady her trembling hands or her pounding heart, or overcome the dizziness that has suddenly taken over.
Minutes pass before she calms again and Cassie has no idea what just happened to her.
After, she splashes her face with cold water and pulls her hood up over her head as she makes a swift exit from the building.
Outside, lingering by the edges of the parking lot, is Nate. He’s in the middle of a group, his teammates encircling him as he towers over them. The bright, afternoon sun shines behind him, a halo around his head, lighting him up and beckoning people to him.
Cassie slows slightly as she nears him, pulled into his thrall. She listens in on his conversation.
“But she was fun though, right? The crazy ones always are.”
“I guess,” Nate shrugs. “Maddy knew how to use the crazy. Blew my mind every time we fucked.”
Cassie sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, hard. But she doesn’t speed up, lingering back to hear the rest.
“And Cassie?”
“Wrong kind of crazy,” Nate laughs. “But she made up for it by being a little whore who came whenever I called.”
Cassie bursts into tears as the guys snicker and cackle, the cruel sounds following her as she hurries away from the school grounds.
-
Nate doesn’t text her that night. She doesn’t know what she would have said if he did.
(That’s a lie. She knows she would have gone to him… a little whore who comes whenever he calls.)
That evening, Lexi is out and her mother is asleep on the couch, a half-full bottle of wine abandoned on the coffee table. Cassie grabs it as she settles into the recliner in the living room. She drinks deeply from the bottle as she scrolls through Instagram, observing her classmate’s Friday night activities.
She has finished the bottle and is opening another when she spots Nate in the background of BB’s latest post.
He looks handsome, as always, in a gray sweater. He stands taller than everyone, his head visible over the crowd of people stuffed inside their classmate’s living room, a red solo cup held to his mouth as he stares ahead of him.
She glugs from the wine bottle as she reads through the comments and goes in search of other photos from the same party. Before, she would have always known who was throwing the next big party and would arrive at their house in a too-short dress with a wine cooler in hand. Now, she was no longer privy to that information and had to resort to stalking her classmates’ social media to gain clues.
Her life is so fucking depressing.
It doesn’t take long. By the time Cassie has finished the bottle of wine, she’s got her sneakers on and an Uber on the way. She doesn’t bother to change out of the baby pink sweats she’s worn every day this week. Nate doesn’t want her and there was no one else there for her to impress.
-
The house is packed full when she arrives, bass-heavy music spilling from the open door and people scattered everywhere as they drink from red cups.
She stumbles as she approaches the house and is too far gone to see the looks people throw her way or the things they mutter into their drinks. It doesn't matter. She already knows she isn’t welcome here.
(She’s not sure why she came. She just has to be here. She has to make them all — make Nate — see that she won’t be ignored.)
As she pushes her way through people and into the living room, she vaguely registers BB and Kat out of the corner of her eye.
“The fuck is she doing here?”
She vaguely registers a hand on her shoulder and then her bicep but she shrugs it off, moving deeper into the crowded house. In the dining room, she grabs a shot from the table and winces as the alcohol hits her tongue and burns on its way down her throat.
In the corner of the room, she spots Lexi and Rue, leaning up against a wall and murmuring between them, conspiratorial smiles on their faces. Then, Fezco appears from seemingly nowhere, one solo cup in his hand and another that he passes to her sister. Lexi’s smile grows wide and adoring as she takes it from him. Cassie turns away from the scene and stumbles out of the room as she tastes wine crawling back up her throat.
This house is unfamiliar to her, the home of a junior that she never got to know. She follows the hallway blindly, leaning against the beige walls for support. The lights are dim and her eyes are unfocused, and she’s only aware that she’s found a door when her hand bumps into a round handle. She jiggles it, hoping it’s a bathroom with a clean toilet that she can hunch over.
“Gimme a fucking second!” a voice shouts through the door and Cassie pauses. Nate.
She rattles it again.
“Fuck off!” he shouts this time, and then there’s another voice, muffled behind the wooden door.
Her already roiling stomach swoops low and she quickly rushes down the hallway, looking for a place to hide. If Nate’s in there with Maddy, she has to see, with her own eyes, but she doesn’t want him to know she’s here.
She finds another door, unlocked, and slips inside, half-hiding behind the door frame with the locked door still in her eyeline.
Minutes pass and then the door swings open, bright light flooding the hallway. Someone steps out, too tall and blonde to be Maddy, and slaps at Nate’s hand as he reaches for them.
“Why can’t you just fucking leave me alone?” Jules cries. She pushes Nate away forcefully and roughly scrubs her hand across her tear-stained cheek.
She stalks away before Cassie has time to comprehend what she’s seeing, disappearing down the hall and back into the throng of their classmates. Nate leaves seconds later, his posture tense and his hands clenched into fists. Cassie flattens herself against the doorframe, out of his sight, and listens carefully for the sounds of his footsteps dying as he walks away.
Her head spins, both from the alcohol and her confusion over what she just witnessed. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Jules and Nate interact before. What could he possibly have to say to her? Why were they alone together?
The base of her throat burns and then sourness rises up. Cassie covers her mouth and runs to the now vacant room, relieved when she discovers it is in fact a bathroom. She crashes to the floor, on her knees, and wretches into the toilet bowl.
She’s still there, a few minutes later — vomit now sticking to the ends of her hair and tears streaming down her face — when Rue finds her.
“Oh, shit,” she mutters. “Hey, Cass, you okay?”
Cassie groans pathetically, pressing her cheek to the cool toilet seat.
“Imma go get Lexi,” Rue declares and is rushing out of the room before she can protest.
The events following that are a blur, spotty in her drunken memories. Eventually her arm is thrown over someone’s shoulders as she leans heavily against them, and she’s pushed into the back of a car she doesn’t recognise. Her head is cradled in someone’s lap, a gentle hand stroking through her hair, and the perfume in the air is so familiar to her.
“She good?” she hears someone ask.
“She’ll be okay,” someone responds gently. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Course, baby. You don’t even gotta ask.”
-
Cassie can’t be so bitter towards Lexi after she took care of her at the party. She’s still mad at her but the rage is a light simmer now, no longer a boil.
The morning after the party, she thanks Lexi for taking her home and asks her to thank Fezco too. Lexi says she will. And that is that.
That same morning, Cassie vows to channel all of her anger towards Nate.
Her hangover has cleared by Sunday but her humiliation has not. She wants him to fucking know how he’s making her feel, how much it hurt when he cast her aside and started looking at Maddy again and acting like their relationship meant nothing. She wasn’t a whore, here for his entertainment. She was a fucking person, a human being with real feelings, and she would make him acknowledge that.
It shocks her how quickly he responds to her request to meet at the motel. He thinks she comes whenever he calls but this time he was going to come to her. This would be on her terms.
She dresses for the occasion, how she wants to — curls her hair, applies make-up and puts on her nicest floral dress. After their time together, she knows she isn’t dressed to his tastes, but he still looks her up and down hungrily when she opens the door to the motel room.
“I was kind of surprised when you texted me.”
She looks up at him, doe eyes and a soft smile. “You were?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “We haven’t really hung out lately. Kinda thought this was over.”
She hates the sting of rejection she feels at his words.
“Oh,” she murmurs. She swallows and rolls back her shoulders, pushing down the hurt. “So you don’t wanna do this?”
He smirks. “I didn’t say that.”
His hands grasp her waist, grip tight as he dips down to kiss her and she’s so, so tempted to lean in, to rise up on her toes and press her lips to his.
But she didn’t come here to be sucked back into the hold he has over her.
She presses her fingers to his lips before he can make contact and says softly, “You can kiss me after you tell me what’s going on between you and Maddy.”
His thick brows furrow and he draws back immediately, hands leaving her body. Standing over her at his full height, his jaw tightens, the muscles jumping beneath his skin.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You heard me,” she snaps, grateful that her voice doesn’t waver. “I’ve seen you looking at her. You can’t keep your fucking eyes off of her.”
“Are you for real?” He laughs, loud and short and condescending. “You sound so fucking stupid. And so what if I was looking at her?” He shrugs. “She’s hot.”
“Fuck you!” Cassie yells in his face, losing all composure.
He chuckles again, amused by her show of emotion.
“Do you realize how pathetic you look right now?” He leans in closer, an ugly little smile on his lips. “You’re not my girlfriend, Cassie. When will you get that into your dumb—” he taps his fingers against her temple, hard, and she flinches, “—fucking head?”
Tears well up in her eyes before she can hold them back and her nose burns with the effort of not outright crying.
“Fuck you,” she snaps again, meek and broken this time. Sadness quickly shifts into rage and she feels a surge of confidence. “You think I’m pathetic?” she cries. “You’re simping over a girl who doesn’t even want you! Or maybe it’s two girls?”
He narrows his eyes. “What?”
“I saw you with Jules on Friday,” she hisses. “You really love cornering girls in bathrooms, huh?”
He looks impossibly large and imposing as he leans into her space. She cowers, fearing the next words to come from his mouth.
“I don’t know what you think you fucking saw but you need to stay out of my fucking business and keep your mouth shut.” His lip curls. “God, you really are pathetic. Junkie dad, sister who got all the brains, no fucking friends. The only thing you’re good for is spreading your fucking legs.”
She stumbles backwards, taken aback by his harsh words and the venom in his voice. Tears blur her vision and she sees red as her biggest insecurities are thrown in her face.
“I’d rather my dad was a junkie than a pedophile!”
Nate’s grip on her is painfully tight as he grabs her shoulders and slams her up against the wall. She struggles against his hold as he pins her in place, his fingers digging into her skin.
Her tears finally spill over as she looks into his eyes, so dark they’re black, his pupils blown and his teeth gritted.
She wonders if this is the face Maddy saw when he put his hand around her throat.
“Don’t ever talk about my father!” he yells.
He jerks her hard against the wall, her head and shoulder blades colliding with the plasterboard, and she whimpers, more tears spilling down her face. She fears the worst — that he’ll choke her this time, that he won’t stop. But with a final shove, he releases her and she crumples to the ground, sobbing.
“You’re not pretty when you cry,” he spits at her, and she doesn’t look up to watch him leave, the door slamming behind him.
-
She doesn’t go to school for the next two days. Instead, she moves back into her room, if only to curl up in her bed and weep beneath the covers. Lexi and her mother try to coax her out, with promises of ice cream and shitty reality tv, but she ignores them.
Two days after she met him at the motel, Nate texts her.
Haven’t seen you at school
What happened on Sunday was fucked up
You hurt me Cass. But I miss you
She’s like a puppet on a string and he’s controlling her every movement.
After she replies, he calls her. She picks up.
He tells her again and again how much he misses her and that he hates how things went down in the motel, his low voice rumbling over the line. (It makes her stomach twist and turn, and she tells herself it’s a pleasant buzz in her stomach, the same kind of buzz that she got when she caught him watching her in his car on New Years Eve.) He assures her that there’s nothing happening between him and Maddy and the thing with Jules was just a misunderstanding.
“I literally don’t think about any girl but you, Cass.”
She has to believe him. If he’s lying then what has all of this been for? All of the pain and embarrassment and heartache.
“Are you going to meet Nate?” Lexi asks, watching Cassie slip into her sneakers.
She hesitates before answering, “Yes.”
Lexi sighs and drops her pen onto the textbook in her lap.
“Seriously?”
Cassie swallows. “What?”
“I don’t know what happened the last time you saw him but you’ve been a mess ever since. Seeing him isn’t good for you, Cassie.”
She resorts to old habits.
“Oh, really,” Cassie scoffs. “You’re in one serious relationship and suddenly you’re an expert?”
Lexi chews on the inside of her cheek and Casse thinks she may be holding herself back.
“I’m just looking out for you. I don’t want him to, like, lovebomb you and then break your heart again.”
“Lovebomb?” Cassie rolls her eyes. “You’re making shit up now.”
She borrows her mother’s car to drive to Nate’s house. (Thankfully his mother isn’t home — she wasn’t Cassie’s biggest fan following the play.) As she drives into his quiet, upper class neighborhood, she feels a little like she could throw up, and almost drives away before she musters up enough courage to knock on the door.
He answers with a soft smile on his face, his dark eyes intense as they look her over. He immediately dips down to kiss her, his mouth pushy and too dry.
“Missed you,” he murmurs against her lips, before dragging her inside, his fingers clenched tight around her wrist.
-
He doesn’t use a condom despite her asking him to — she didn’t want to deal with the messy clean up. When she emerges from his bathroom, he complains about how long she spent in there and shoulder checks her on his way inside.
An icy chill settles in, and the bad, bad feeling she’s been experiencing since she drove over to his house intensifies.
He had been so sweet and affectionate when she entered his house. He had undressed her slowly, kissed her neck and breasts and the ultra-sensitive skin of her inner thighs. He had made her come before he pushed inside and it made the lack of condom feel kind of okay.
Now his affection has gone, and with it, any glimmer of goodness that she felt.
The bathroom door closes behind him and Cassie’s eyes dart to his phone. There was one way that she could confirm if he was being honest with her. Nate wasn’t as sneaky as he thought and she had seen him type in his passcode more than once.
His phone unlocks after two attempts to remember the code and as soon as she has access, she navigates to his messages. She’s careful not to look at anything unread but the text thread she’s interested in has already been opened, the most recent message sent by Nate two days ago.
Thinking about you
Maddy hasn’t responded. She hasn’t responded to the last ten messages he has sent to her.
Cassie’s bottom lip wobbles and she bites down hard to hold back the sob that wants to burst out. Seeing the evidence that she’s right — that she isn’t paranoid or pathetic, and Nate is still pining after Maddy — hurts so much she loses her breath. She’s in this guy’s bed, his come seeping into her underwear and his handprint still stinging on her ass.
She feels like the biggest fucking idiot.
The masochist in her has her returning to his messages one more time. Her eyes flicker to the still-closed bathroom door and then back to his phone.
She scrolls through the list of individual contacts and group chats, searching for Jules’ name. It isn't there but she pauses when she sees a contact titled, J. A gut feeling, a sixth sense, whatever you want to call it, tells her that this is Jules.
The text thread is filled with messages from Nate, all vague and sometimes bordering on threatening. Jules responded once, months ago — to Nate’s request to meet him in his car — and never again.
He hasn’t only lied to her about Maddy, he has lied about Jules, too. She has no idea what the nature of their relationship is — if anything, their texts leave her more confused than ever — but it was a lot more than a misunderstanding.
Her gaze lingers on his last messages to Jules.
I don’t care that you hate me
You can’t deny me forever
We’re both meant for more than this town
I’ll see you in New York
The bathroom door handle squeaks and Cassie hastily closes the messages app and tosses Nate’s phone onto his nightstand.
As he re-enters the room, he stretches his arms over his head and yawns loudly.
“I’m gonna go to sleep. You can drive yourself home, right?”
Cassie swallows down the bitter taste in her mouth and gives him a wobbly smile.
“Sure.”
-
She feels like she’s losing it.
Nate asks her to meet up a few times but it’s not as often as he used to and he leaves the motel as soon as they’re done.
Cassie doesn’t even know why she goes to him. In the moment, he is only focused on himself and his own pleasure, and she feels cold as soon as leaves her body. She struggled to find a word to fully describe how she feels; all she could come up with was used.
Because he is using her, utterly and completely. He’s taking what he wants from her and brushing her aside as soon as it’s over, and she goes back again and again.
Any time she isn’t with him, she’s thinking about him. She spends her evenings scrolling through her classmate’s social media for any sign of him and looking back at posts he’s made. Her brain won’t shut off, analyzing and dissecting every moment they’ve ever spent together and trying to determine where exactly it all went wrong. When did he stop caring about her? Did he ever truly care for her?
She knows he’s going to a lot of parties. On Mondays, she listens to the incessant chatter about what transpired over the weekend, her ears perking up at any mention of him. He’s hooking up with other girls — that’s a detail she hears frequently — and she soon begins to realize that he’s only calling her when he can’t find anyone he likes at that weekend’s big party.
The skin around her nails is torn, ripped and broken, bleeding at the edges. She takes anti-nausea medication to deal with the frequent dizziness she experiences and becomes accustomed to steadying her breaths and counting down from ten when she feels overwhelmed. Her skin has broken out and she’s lost weight, and she only bothers to wear make-up on nights when she visits him.
She is definitely, undoubtedly, one hundred percent losing it. But she doesn’t know what to do about it.
The school year is almost over. She has just over a month left before her class graduates and Cassie hopes and prays she has done just enough to get her diploma. And then it will all be over — the hallways filled with people who hate her, the overworked school gossip mill, the frequent exposure to Nate.
She doesn’t know what he’s doing for college and she hates that she still aches at the thought of him leaving and being so far from her. It seems like the wanting him will never end, no matter what he does to her and how much she hates him.
Because she does hate him — he’s hurt her so many times, has made her feel so worthless and weak, and Cassie doesn’t recognize the person she’s become around him.
Her whole life has gone to shit since that fateful New Years Eve.
She still spends her lunch breaks locked inside the bathroom. She doesn’t eat, finds that she has no appetite, so spends her time scrolling through her phone.
The bathroom near the school entrance is her chosen spot. It’s far from the cafeteria which means she’s usually left alone. So she’s surprised when she hears the creak of the door swinging open and a cacophony of voices, a group of girls all talking over each other.
Cassie vaguely recognizes their voices — girls younger than her but still familiar. She can hear the clatter of backpacks and make-up being dropped onto the counter, and the distinct sound of someone vaping followed by a sickly-sweet scent.
She draws her knees up, feet balanced on the edge of the toilet seat, and stays quiet. Unnoticeable.
“Are you finally gonna tell us what happened with Nate?” one of the girls asks and they’ve got Cassie’s attention.
“It really wasn’t a big deal,” someone replies. “We made out in a guest room and talked for a while. He was so fucking drunk. He kept telling me how much he missed Maddy. I honestly just felt bad for him. Their break-up seriously fucked him up.”
Cassie bites at her bottom lip and breathes through her nose.
“She'll never take him back,” another girl interjects. “After everything that went down with Cassie he’s, like, dead to her. I mean, her best friend? That shit is low.” A snapping of a compact and another drag on a vape. “Besides, I heard she’s moving to LA after graduation so they won’t even see each other.”
“Love that for her.”
“Right? If I was betrayed by my boyfriend and my best friend, I’d lose my fucking shit. I know she went crazy at the play but I think she’s really held it together.”
“For real,” someone else agrees. Then, with a giggle, she asks, “Do you think she always knew Cassie was a crazy bitch? Was their friendship, like, a pity thing?”
Cassie’s eyes burn with tears and she squeezes her eyes shut.
“Probably,” another laughs. “Nate talked about her a little. He said she was still so desperate for his dick, even after everything that happened at the play. I mean, where is her fucking self-respect?”
“She doesn’t have any. We’ve all seen her nudes and the sex tapes. That girl will do anything for attention.”
“Desperate slut.”
Cassie snaps, her face heated with rage, cheeks burning and her lashes wet with the tears she won’t shed. She pulls the cubicle door open and it slams harshly against the wall.
All four girls turn to look at her, eyes wide and mouths parted in shock.
“Yo, what the fuck?”
“Yeah, I’m in here. I heard everything you fucking said,” Cassie hisses.
One of the girls takes a step back, as if backing away from a feral animal.
“You were listening that whole time? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know!” Cassie shouts. In that instant, she feels her grip on her sanity slip through her fingers. “Okay? I don’t fucking know! I’m a slut, I’m a whore, I’m a shitty friend, I’m pathetic!”
The girl with the vape snorts. “Uh, yeah. We know.”
A scream tears from Cassie’s throat and she runs at her, yanking the vape from her hands and launching it across the room. She lunges for her, ready to grasp her hair and pull, but she’s grabbed from behind before she can make contact.
“Psycho bitch!” one of the other girls yells, as they tug at Cassie’s hair and drag her away from their friend.
She struggles against her hold, shame flaring through her as the other girls watch and laugh, cackling at her embarrassing display.
“Stop! Stop!” she cries. “I’ll leave, just let me go!”
The grip on her hair is loosened and Cassie stumbles but finds her balance before she can fall to the floor. She grabs her backpack from the stall with shaking hands and flees from the bathroom, their laughter following her.
-
The sounds that leave her mouth are foreign and harsh. Dry, heaving sobs, her breath hitching with every inhale.
Her reflection in the mirror is the physical manifestation of the humiliation she feels. It’s reminiscent of her bedraggled appearance after Lexi’s play — no blood dripping from her nose, but her hair is a knotted mess atop her head and the shadows beneath her eyes are so dark she looks like she hasn’t slept in a year.
(Truthfully, she can’t remember the last time she slept peacefully. Before New Years Eve. Maybe even before the abortion.)
There’s an overwhelming feeling of self-loathing inside of her. No one has ever loved her, not really. She wasn’t enough for Nate, for McKay, for her father. Maddy and her friends may have loved her once but her actions had ensured that was no longer true. Lexi and her mother only tolerate her out of a sense of responsibility.
She picks up the bottle of vodka she placed on the counter. It was one of two in the kitchen but she knows her mother won’t notice. Wine was her poison of choice — she only resorted to the hard stuff when life really got to be too much.
(Like mother, like daughter.)
The vodka burns as she takes a huge gulp and she coughs and sputters before taking another smaller sip. Drinking straight liquor always looked so much easier in movies.
A few hours later, the bottle is half-empty. School was over by now — she heard Lexi come home and call out her name. Cassie didn’t reply. Her head feels heavy and lying on the couch in the den doesn’t require as much effort as speaking to her sister.
She’s seeing double when she picks up her phone and messages Nate. She needs to see him. Not to cry or beg him to take her back. Cassie has just spent too long being a pushover and letting him dominate her life. The only way she could ever get over him was if she confronted him.
Can we meet?
Can’t. Busy tonight
She chews at her lip, belly knitting up as she types out her response. It was a lie — a big one — but it would get his attention.
Please. I think I’m pregnant
Nothing for ten long minutes and then, finally, he responds.
Meet me at my dad’s old site
She throws a hoodie on and hides what’s left of the vodka in the back of the pantry.
As she waits for her Uber to arrive, her mind wanders back to the last time she tried to confront Nate. He had been terrifying as he shoved her up against the wall, so quick to turn violent when she upset him.
She takes a knife from the block beside the stove — one of the smaller knives but hopefully big enough to scare him off if he got physical with her. She slips it into the front pocket of her hoodie and heads outside to wait for her Uber on the sidewalk.
-
He’s already there when she arrives, hidden in the shadow of the frames of abandoned houses, his arms folded across his chest. His jaw is locked tight when he approaches her and Cassie feels instant regret.
She shouldn’t have drank so much. She shouldn’t have come here.
“Took you long enough.”
“I had to get an Uber,” she replies, and even she can hear how she’s slurring her words.
He narrows his eyes at her. “Are you fucking drunk?” He scoffs and shakes his head. “Pregnant for five minutes and you’re already ruining the kid’s life.”
“I’m not pregnant!” she snaps. “I just said that so you’d meet me.”
His irritated expression transforms into something awful, disgust and fury plain on his face.
“Are you fucking serious? I thought you had ruined my fucking life!” he screams at her. “Do you know what I’ve been going through since I got your text?”
“Do you know what I’ve been going through for months?!” she yells back. “You’ve ruined me, Nate. You’ve treated me like I’m nothing.”
“You are nothing,” he hisses and Cassie cowers away from him.
And there it was. Proof that she wasn’t good enough for him to love, barely good enough for him to fuck.
He storms off into the frame of the house, pacing across bare floorboards as he rakes his hands through his hair.
“Never should have fucking touched you,” he mutters to himself. “Fucking crazy bitch.”
She scrubs away the tears on her cheeks and storms off after him. He glares at her.
“Don’t come near me!” he shouts. “Stay the fuck away from me!” He bursts out a sad, humorless laugh. “What was your fucking plan here? Were you gonna cry in front of me until I took you back?”
“No,” she retorts, voice harsh but wet. “I don’t want you anymore.”
“Right,” he scoffs.
“I don’t,” she insists, feeling meek beneath his patronizing gaze. “I just wanted to tell you how much you’ve hurt me. I want you to apologize!”
“For what?!” he cries, arms stretched out either side of him. “I didn’t make you do any of this shit. You made bad decisions and now you’re blaming me?”
“You used me! You hurt me! You made me love you!” she accuses, stepping closer to him. Tears slide over her lips and into her mouth, hot and salty. Snot drips from her nose. “You said you loved me!”
“How could I love you? You’re a fucking mess.” He shoots her a look of pure revulsion. “You look disgusting right now.”
A harsh, ugly sob tears from her throat. She doesn’t know how much more of this she can take.
Her stomach roils, filled with alcohol and no food. She thinks she’s going to vomit and leans her body against a wooden beam for support.
“You’ve got nothing to say now?” He stalks towards her. “Huh? Brought me all the way out here and now you’ve got nothing to say?”
He grabs at her, taking advantage of her physical weakness, but Cassie isn’t going to let him do this again.
She quickly draws the knife from her pocket, brandishing it in the air.
“Don’t,” she hisses. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
He immediately backs away but then his eyes fall to the blade in her hand. He laughs.
“What the fuck are you gonna do with that thing, Cassie?”
The knife shakes in her hand. She wraps her free hand over her wrist, attempting to steady herself but she’s trembling too hard.
“Stop you from hurting me!”
“Hurting you?” He squints at her like he thinks she’s an idiot. “I’m not the one who brought a knife with me.”
She glares at him. “I fucking hate you.”
“Trust me, the feeling is mutual.”
He lunges for her, one hand gripping the base of her throat and the other wrapping around her forearm. She gasps against his tight hold on her neck, unable to catch her breath. He attempts to wrestle the knife from her but she fights back, struggling against him.
His build and weight are too much and he gains the upper hand, pushing her back into a wooden beam. There’s a horrible thud as her head makes contact with the wood and pain splits through her skull.
“Give me the fucking knife, Cassie!” he demands. His face is crimson and his eyes are hollow black pools of nothingness. Fear courses through Cassie’s body and she cannot fathom how it all came to this.
“Stop!” she chokes out, trying to kick at his legs.
“Give it to me!” he yells, twisting at her wrist, the point of the knife now aimed at her face.
“No!” she screams, adrenaline pumping through her as terror takes hold.
She twists her hand, attempting to release herself from his grip, and it isn’t until she sees the blank look of shock on his face that she registers what she has done.
Both of their gazes drop to Nate’s chest and the knife now plunged into it. Blood spreads around the knife, dark and fast, staining his gray sweater. Cassie immediately lets go of the handle, her mouth open in horrific surprise.
Nate’s grip on her neck loosens as he stumbles back, knife protruding from his chest. She greedily gasps for air, her throat painful and sore. She can only watch as Nate falls to the ground, his back hitting the floorboards with a sickening heaviness.
She rushes to his side, hovering over him on her hands and knees. His eyes are rolling back as color drains from his face. Tears drip from her face and onto his sweater. Cassie’s hands are still trembling as she reaches for the knife’s handle.
“No,” he gasps out, voice so weak it’s almost non-existent.
There’s a moment of hesitation. The knife was small but she had hit something so vital — his heart. There was little chance of him surviving this. In her mind, she reasons that removing the knife will end his suffering.
Her fingers fold around the handle and she watches, in a strange kind of trance, as the blade slides from his body, slick with vermillion blood.
A rattle leaves his chest, life slipping away from him.
He was always so handsome, in a cold, untouchable kind of way. She thinks he looks just as handsome like this, his skin white and stone-like, face too slack to hold any dour, serious expression.
She doesn’t know what comes over her. Something rotten and possessive.
On her knees, she plunges the knife into the other side of his chest, then his belly, and finally his neck. Blood spurts up, hitting her face, and she watches as it pools across his torso, seeping from all of the wounds she’s inflicted.
The knife falls from her hand with a clatter as she runs from the house frame, from Nate’s body. She hunches over in the dirt and throws up the contents of her stomach.
-
The phone rings three times before she answers. It shakes in Cassie’s blood-stained hands.
“Hey, Cass. Everything okay?”
“Lexi,” she sobs out. “I need your help.”