Chapter 1
I’d met Bruce when we’d moved to Evergreen, a suburb of Seattle.
We stayed in the back house—the ADU—while Oscar and Angelo did a gut renovation of the main house.
Bruce lived next door with his family; we’d met the very first night we arrived.
We’d ordered a pizza, and I’d come out to see Bruce arguing with the delivery girl.
He was convinced it was a prank, since he hadn’t realized anyone was living in the house.
He hadn’t been expecting me—and I hadn’t been expecting him.
We became fast friends—our bedroom windows faced each other, like something out of a Taylor Swift music video.
I quickly developed a crush on him, and while I sometimes got that vibe from him, too, nothing had ever happened between us.
We’d agreed to go to the prom together but just as friends.
Which made sense, since by that point, I knew that we were moving on again.
But when prom night rolled around, I hadn’t felt well enough to go.
I’d texted him and then had turned my phone off.
We’d left the next day, but the feeling that I hadn’t handled things well had followed me to San Luis Obispo.
And it hadn’t ended there. A week later, a letter had shown up in our mailbox, forwarded by the house’s owners.
I’d only read it through once—Bruce was upset, asking me what had happened, what he’d done.
I had immediately stuffed it back in the envelope.
And though I’d thought about it, I hadn’t been able to throw it away.
But I’d never responded—and I had never seen Bruce again.
Until this moment.
Right here, at Grad Nite.
“Hi,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “I…Wow. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”
Bruce just looked at me for a moment. He looked pretty much the same—tall, with light brown hair and dark green eyes.
His hair was a little longer now, and it curled up slightly at the nape of his neck.
There was something else that was different about him, but it took me a moment longer to figure out what it was—it was that he wasn’t smiling.
In fact, he did not look happy to see me.
“That makes two of us,” he said.
Bryony cleared her throat loudly, and I looked over to see her staring at Bruce. She’d started fussing with her bangs, which she only did when she was around a guy she thought was cute.
“Um, what are you doing here?” I asked, my heart beating hard.
Between the way he was looking at me and the tone of his voice, it suddenly felt like I’d been caught, like I was in trouble.
Which, I told myself very firmly, was ridiculous.
If he was still upset I’d gotten sick on prom night a year ago, that was a him issue.
“Grad Nite,” he said, as though it was obvious, slight edge to his voice I’d never heard before.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, shaking my head, trying to get my thoughts together.
“I just—It seems like a long way to come. From Washington.” I was speaking these words and trying to stay calm, even as everything in me wanted to scream What is happening?
! Between Bruce, Greta and Nora, and Reagan, it was like I’d been dropped into some kind of alternate universe where my past was going to keep confronting me.
Like this was my version of A Christmas Carol, but in June.
Bruce shrugged. “We won this national academic award, so they let us vote on what we wanted to do to celebrate. And this won out.”
“Oh, gotcha. That’s—that’s cool.” I looked up at him, and then immediately had to look away again. Seeing him now was having to actually face how things had ended with us—like the letter he’d sent I hadn’t responded to—and I didn’t much like it.
“Hi, I’m Bryony,” Bryony said, stepping forward and widening her eyes at me. She was giving me very clear introduce-me-to-this-guy signs. And while normally I wouldn’t have hesitated, the fact was, I wanted this interaction to end as soon as possible.
“Hi,” he said. And I noticed he blinked as he looked down at her, like he was trying to get his bearings. “I’m Bruce.”
“Bruce!” Bryony looked at me, then back at him, her eyes narrowing. “You’re the one who dumped Cass on prom night?”
Bruce just stared at me for a moment, his face falling. “Is that what you’ve told people, Cass? Really?”
My heart was starting to beat hard. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I was pretty sure this was what one felt like. “It’s…” I started. I looked at the stage, thinking that any time now would be a great moment for the band to start playing.
“Is that not…what happened?” Bryony asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
“Hi, I’m Emma,” Emma R. jumped in, not reading the room at all.
Bruce just gave a short laugh, the kind without any humor in it. “No, it’s not what happened. The opposite, in fact. The last time I heard from Cass was when she stood me up on prom night.”
Bryony stared at me. “You what?”
“I didn’t stand you up,” I said, even though I knew I kind of did. “I texted—”
“And then the next day, she was just gone, no goodbye, nothing.”
Bryony turned to me, frowning, like she was putting something together. “You did that?” she asked slowly. “Cass?”
“Wait.” One of the girls in Bruce’s group looked up from her phone. She raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re Cass?”
“Uh,” I said, frowning. I didn’t recognize her from my time at Evergreen. “Yes. Do we know each other?”
She shook her head and widened her eyes at Bruce. “I’ve just heard stories.”
What was with everyone tonight? Had there been some sort of announcement about me? “Uh, okay.”
“Why did you do that?” Bryony asked. She was looking at me like she had no idea who I was.
I swallowed hard, looking between Bryony and Bruce. It felt like I was on trial for some terrible crime, when I actually hadn’t done anything wrong. Was I not allowed to get sick, or something? “It was…” I started, then took a shaky breath. “There were extenuating circumstances—”
“Did you even say goodbye?” Bryony asked. Hurt was lacing her words.
I felt my heart pound, well aware that my former prom date and his friends—and the Emmas, I could see now—were all listening to this conversation and not even trying to hide it. “Look,” I started. “It’s—I move a lot, okay? And it was just the best way.”
“I would disagree with that,” Bruce said, folding his arms across his chest. “You disappear an hour before we were supposed to go to the prom…”
“As friends,” I said weakly.
“And then you’re just gone. And I never heard from you again? You never responded to my letter. It was like I didn’t matter. Like what we had didn’t matter.”
I blinked hard, trying to get my bearings, but it was a challenge.
It felt like the ground had been yanked out from underneath my feet, and I couldn’t find stability anywhere.
And this—seeing Bruce, having him look at me this way—was almost more than I could take.
Especially after Greta and Nora and Reagan. “I…”
“You know, I spent a really long time trying to figure out what I’d done wrong,” Bruce went on. “If I’d hurt you in some way. But I couldn’t think of anything, which meant I couldn’t understand why you would just ghost like that.”
I opened my mouth to reply—but before I could, Bruce turned and walked away.
I took a shaky breath, trying to pull myself together.
Between all the people I’d run into tonight, that had been the worst. I glanced at my friends—Bryony and the Emmas were all staring at me like they’d just witnessed a car crash.
I swallowed hard, and forced out a laugh. “So, that was weird, huh?”
“It’s not the word I’d use,” Bryony said. She shook her head, and when she spoke it was like she was putting something together. “It seems like you do this a lot, Cass? Right? You just…disappear.”
Emma R. looked from me to Bryony and then, maybe finally picking up on the vibes, turned away and pretended to be absorbed in her phone.
I knew I was on unsteady ground—a foreign land I wasn’t entirely sure how I ended up in but was very certain I didn’t much like. “It’s simpler,” I finally said. “Otherwise friendships just fall apart slowly and you lose touch and become strangers….” My voice started to wobble.
A group of happy, loud seniors, all wearing different college sweatshirts—probably indicating where they were going next year—ran past us, yelling and laughing. When they’d passed out of sight, I took a breath and made myself finish. “It’s just better this way, okay?”
“Better for who?” Bryony asked, then paused. “Whom?”
“Probably? But it sounds pretentious.”
She laughed, then caught herself. “No,” she said, her voice firm. “Maybe it’s better for you. But based on the people we ran into tonight, they were pretty upset. They didn’t just get over it.”
I shook my head, but even as I did, I was flashing back to Reagan’s expression, and the truth that I hadn’t wanted to process—that they weren’t really mad about the churros.
The betrayal on Greta and Nora’s faces—their shock and hurt when they saw me.
It was all piercing through the protective layers I’d had built up around me for so long, letting in light I’d fought to keep out. “But…”
“Before, you said you couldn’t go to the concert,” Bryony said slowly.
“And you haven’t committed to any of our summer travel plans…
.” It was like I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head, and I started to get a very bad feeling.
“Are you leaving, Cass? Are you going to ditch me the way you’ve ditched everyone else? ”
I opened my mouth to reply, my heart beating hard. All I had wanted was for us to have one fun last night together! Why was this happening? “I…No,” I said, but even I could hear it sounded unconvincing.
“Did you even apply to the Mermaid Café?” Bryony asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Or did you lie about that?”
“It’s…I…”