Chapter 11 #2
Twenty-five minutes after my mom’s call, I hear a key in the lock. Cassidy has her own key, has since college. I have a key to her place too. The door opens, and she appears, still in her pajamas. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun, and she’s not wearing make up.
She stops in the doorway to my bedroom, taking in my swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks, then down at the empty box and its contents.
Her expression shifts—concern, understanding, and a flash of anger that isn’t directed at me. She doesn’t say anything, turns away and heads into the kitchen.
The sound of her making coffee fills my apartment. The grind of beans, the hiss of the machine heating up. Sounds that mean comfort and tell me I’m not alone.
She returns a few minutes later with two mugs. She’s added cream to mine, no sugar, exactly how I like it.
“So.” She settles beside me on the bed, careful not to sit on any of the notes. Her shoulder bumps against mine. “What happened?”
I wrap my hands around the mug, letting the heat seep into my palms. “I ran into him on Main.”
“And?” Her voice is gentle, patient. She’ll wait as long as it takes for me to find the words.
“He’s different.” I take a sip, letting the coffee ground me. “Bigger than I remember. Broader. Tattoos everywhere I could see.” I sniff. “But his eyes are the same.”
She picks up ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ handling it carefully. Her fingers trace the worn spine, but she doesn’t open it.
“Did you talk?”
“Barely.” I take another sip of coffee. “I said ‘you’re back’ because apparently that’s all my brain could come up with. He said my name. I asked where he was staying.”
“Did he tell you?”
“Cedar Street.”
Her head snaps up, eyebrows shooting toward her hairline. “Cedar? As in the Cedar Street? Where the houses have three-car garages?”
“That’s the one.”
She sets the book down. “Lily. How on earth is he affording that? Those houses are—” She stops to do the math in her head. I watch her expression change as she works through it. “Even renting one would be thousands a month.”
“No idea.” My voice breaks on the last word. “Nothing about this makes sense, Cass. He shows up out of nowhere, living in the nicest part of town. He looks like he’s been eating regularly.”
The last part sticks in my throat. The Ronan I knew was all sharp angles and hunger.
“There has to be an explanation. Maybe he got a good job? Saved up?”
“After five years in prison?” I shake my head. “They don’t exactly pay well for labor in there. And even if he got a job after he got out, and saved every cent, it wouldn’t be enough. Those houses are half a million minimum.”
“Maybe he has family money we didn’t know about?”
“Yeah, he’s from money … that’s why he was sleeping in an abandoned factory, stealing food, and wearing the same three shirts for months.” My voice rises. “People don’t go from that to Cedar Street.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Maybe someone is helping him?”
“Who? He had no one. That was the problem. He was alone in this town, and everyone pretended he didn’t exist.”
“Maybe he won the lottery?” Her attempt at humor falls flat.
“The last time I saw him was in that courtroom. He sat there in that orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed, and he wouldn’t even look at me.”
The memory is so vivid it might as well be happening now. The lights making everything too bright and harsh. The smell of industrial cleaner and old wood. My mom’s hand, warm and grounding.
“Seven years. Seven years, and he never reached out. Not once. He didn’t write a letter, or send a message. And now he’s just … here. Walking down Main Street like it’s nothing. Like we were nothing.”
Cassidy lifts her mug to her lips, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. “Want me to do some digging? Rachel works at the courthouse now. She might know something. Property records are public, right? Or maybe Sarah at Mitchell’s will know what’s going on.”
The offer is tempting. So tempting my fingers itch to grab my phone and text Rachel myself, but I shake my head.
“No.”
“Lily—”
“I don’t want to be that person.” My voice is firm. “I don’t want to be someone who stalks her ex, who digs into his life when he clearly doesn’t want me in it. And I definitely don’t want Rachel getting into trouble by sharing information she shouldn’t.”
Cassidy is quiet for a moment, studying my face. “You know it wouldn’t be stalking him. You’re trying to understand.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Intent.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “One comes from a place of control. The other comes from hurt. You’re allowed to be hurt, Lily. It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to be shocked. No one thought he would ever come back here. You’re allowed to want answers.”
“I don’t want to be someone who can’t let go of the past.” A laughable statement when I’m sitting here surrounded by notes and his book and all the evidence of how thoroughly I’ve failed to let go.
Cassidy doesn’t call me on it. She just nods. “Okay. No digging. We’ll just … sit with it.” She’s quiet for a moment, staring at the steam rising from her coffee. When she speaks again, her voice is softer. “Do you know what I remember the most about him?”
“What?”
“The way he’d look at you.” She turns to face me again. “He’d give you his full attention while everyone else got ignored. But you? When you walked into a room, it was like everyone else disappeared.”
The lump in my throat gets larger. I remember that feeling. The intensity of his attention.
“In the library, when you’d go and sit with him, he always made space for you. Slide his books over, give you the side of the table near the radiator—"
“Cass ...” My voice breaks.
“I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m just saying that maybe you’re not the only one carrying pieces of the past around.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“I know. I’m not defending him. I’m just saying that maybe this is complicated for both of you.”
Complicated. That’s one word for it. Devastating would be more accurate.
World-tilting.
Heartbreaking, even.
But complicated works too.
We sit in silence, drinking coffee. Cassidy doesn’t try to fill the quiet, she just stays beside me, her shoulder close to mine, a reminder that I’m not alone. In a few hours, I’ll have to face my mom and pretend I’m not unraveling at the seams. But she’ll see right through me. She always does.
But right now, I let myself lean on my best friend. My head drops to her shoulder, and she shifts to accommodate me. She smells like lemon bodywash and coffee.
“I’ve built a whole life. I have a career I love. Students who depend on me. I have friends. I’m happy Cass … or I thought I was.”
“You are happy. This doesn’t erase that.”
“Doesn’t it?” I pull back to look at her. “Because right now I feel like everything I’ve built is just … set dressing. A stage I’ve been performing on … and the second he shows up, it all falls apart. What does that say about me?”
“Nothing has fallen apart, Lils. Everything is still there, waiting for you. All it means is that you loved him. It says that you’re human, and humans don’t just switch off their feelings because time passes.”
“I want to switch them off. I want to feel nothing. I want him to be a stranger, so I can walk past him without feeling like this.”
“But you can’t.”
“No.” The word comes out broken. “I can’t.”
“I should get this place cleaned up before I go to Mom’s.” I pull myself upright. My body protests, stiff from sitting in the same position for too long.
“Want me to come to your mom’s with you? I could use some of her lasagna. And moral support for you, of course. Mostly the lasagna, though.”
“No. But maybe after? Come over and we could have a movie night. We can watch something mindless, with explosions or talking animals … or both.”
“Deal!” She stands, stretching. “But I’m going to pick the movie. No sad indie films about lost love and redemption, or star-crossed lovers. In fact, nothing that even remotely involves someone pining.”
I laugh, and it almost sounds real. “Fine. You can pick.”
“I’m thinking superheroes. Something where the only drama is who looks better without a shirt.”
“Perfect.”