Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Cassi
Istare at my phone for longer than I’d care to. Longer than I realize. I don’t know how to do anything else, though. I’m numb, confused and fucking pissed.
You are cordially invited to the celebration of Carly Fischer and Nicholas Sanders’ engagement.
Below is an address and a date as well as a gift registry link.
Engagement? They are engaged? Since when?
It feels like my heart has plummeted to the ground, like my stomach has been twisted into a thousand knots and the only thing I can do is…stare.
“Hello? Earth to Cassi?” Arianna says, waving a hand in front of my face.
I look up from my phone as my eyes meet hers across the table. She must see the shock on my face because her teasing smile vanishes as she slowly lowers her pizza.
“What is it, Cass?”
I try to speak, but my throat is too tight. That feeling that you get right before you’re about to burst into tears? Yeah, amplify that tenfold at least.
“I…I…” Shaking my head, I slide the phone over to Arianna.
She takes it curiously, looking around the school’s cafeteria as if someone was going to read over her shoulder before her eyes move across the screen. Her face morphs from curiosity to shock to anger as she looks up at me.
Yeah, my sentiments exactly.
“What the actual FUCK is this all about?” she practically snarls.
“What is what about?” Naomi asks as she comes to sit down beside Arianna.
“This,” she snaps as she slides my phone over for Naomi to read.
I wait for the snide comment. The I told you so or…something. I practically wince in preparation for it but when her eyes meet mine, they shimmer with heartbreak and empathy.
“Babe,” she whispers with a shake of her head as she reaches out and touches my arm.
I don’t pull away, but I don’t say anything either.
“Did he tell you?” Naomi asks.
“No,” I finally rasp. “He…we had plans for…”
Shaking my head, I let out a shuttering breath.
“He’s a fucking asshole who deserves his dick chopped off. I’ll do it, too,” Arianna practically seethes.
Naomi shakes her head in disappointment as she squeezes my arm.
“He is a son of a bitch, and you deserve so much better. You get that, right? You understand that his shitty behavior is not a reflection on you or your worth?”
I’d love to agree, but unfortunately I fear I have turned into that woman that is so dependent on the man I thought I loved affection and actions, I don’t know what to think.
It’s cliché to think that I’m the problem, that I must have done something.
That I wasn’t enough in some aspects. I just…
I can’t believe he’d do this. He didn’t even have the decency to end things with me before the goddamn engagement party invitations were being sent out?
“Guess you were, right, Nay. We should have never gone there in the first place,” I say with a bitter scoff.
“No,” Naomi says urgently before muttering under her breath.
“I’m sorry, Cass. I was out of line. Our phone call and every moment after.
I…I’ve been struggling and that’s not on you, nor was it fair for me to put it onto you.
I’m so sorry. If I could take it all back I would in a heartbeat. I didn’t mean any of it. Truly.”
Her blue eyes are watering like she’s about to burst into tears.
She’s such a goddamn empath, always has been.
When someone is hurting, she just about keels over in pain at just the sight of it.
It’s one of the many things I love about her.
Even if her words and, honestly, actions leading after hurt, I don’t have it in me to hate my best friend.
Especially not when everything else is fucking crumbling around me.
“You were trying to look out for me, Nay. I get it. We’re okay,” I say before pausing. “And I’m sorry for blowing up on you. I never should have thrown your virginity in your face like that. I was out of line.”
As if we’ve summoned him, my phone rings, buzzing against the table as all of our eyes swing to his contact name. His picture is one I took of him when we were in bed together a few days ago.
A few days ago.
How can we go from that moment, wrapped up in the sheets, him promising me forever, that he loved me, that he wanted me…to this? In just a few days?
Naomi reaches for the phone, declining the call. I nod in thanks before the phone starts up again. This time I decline the call and we all sit in anticipation. Within seconds, the phone rings again and again. No matter how many times I decline the call, he calls right back.
He’s no doubt calling to cover his ass. Make up some bullshit excuse. It doesn’t matter, though. I don’t want to hear from him. I don’t want anything to fucking do with him.
“Are you okay?” Naomi asks softly.
“No,” I answer quickly.
The girls nod before Arianna pipes in.
“Want me to cut his dick off? Would that make you feel better?”
I look to my friend before shrugging.
“Couldn’t hurt.”
I picked up a shift after my classes were done for the day. Really, it’s just to help out with the after school rush because oddly enough that is a thing. Parents don’t want to take the time off work or pull their kids out of school so our office stays open until eight at night on the weekdays.
After we get the lobby cleared, it’s looking like we will be able to actually leave early.
Glancing to my side, I see Rebecca, the full time receptionist playing a game on her phone when the door opens.
She sinks a little lower, as if to say ‘this one is all you’ and I do my best to hide my sigh of irritation.
“Hi, how can I help yo—”
My words stop immediately as I stare at the man in the doorway. Nico looks to me with frantic eyes as he quickly crosses the room.
“Cassi, I need to talk to you,” he says breathlessly, as if he ran all the way here from Boston.
“I’m working,” I practically spit.
He winces at the ferocity in my tone, but I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want him near me. I don’t want anything to do with the lying fucker before me.
“Please, Cass. I need to explain. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“You need to leave. Now,” I say stoically, earning the attention of Rebecca who puts her phone down to watch us curiously.
Nico sighs in frustration as he shakes his head.
“No! I’m not going anywhere. Please, just give me five minutes,” he says, his voice rising as Maddie walks in from the back.
“What is going on in here?” she asks before her eyes land on Nico, her gaze turning poisonous.
She found me crying in the bathroom before I started work and I spilled everything to her in one embarrassing run on sentence.
“What the hell do you want?” she asks as her eyes look him up and down.
Nico sighs as he looks to her.
“I just wanted to talk to Cassi.”
“Well, she’s working, and she has asked you to leave. So unless you want a cleaning, I suggest you turn around and march your ass out of here,” she says.
Nico frowns for a moment before nodding.
“I would.”
“Would?” Maddie asks.
“Like a cleaning, please. If Cassi can hear me out while I do it.”
I narrow my eyes at him as I shake my head because, is he dumb?
“You won’t be able to talk while you’re getting your teeth cleaned,” I say flatly.
“Let me try, and if you still don’t want to talk to me after, I’ll leave.”
Sighing, I run a hand through my hair, knowing this will probably be his one and only offer to leave me the hell alone.
“Fine, whatever.”
Maddie looks to me as if making sure I mean it before she shrugs.
“Alright, second door on your left, don’t worry, Cass. I’ll make it hurt.”
Nico gives her a look as he walks past her.
“You know I can hear you, right?”
“I’m aware,” she says simply before she follows him down the hall.
I turn to face Rebecca as I shake my head.
“You good to cover the desk for a bit?”
She shoos me away.
“I’m fine, and if I had a man that looked like that begging for my attention, I definitely wouldn’t be frowning like you are.”
I don’t hold back my scoff as I stand to my feet. If you only knew.
When I come back to the room Nico is in, he’s already laying on the chair and Maddie is getting him ready. She begins scaling his teeth, scraping and stabbing his gums more than a few times, causing him to yelp in pain.
“Ow!”
Maddie rolls her eyes. “Don’t be such a bitch. You’re fine.”
Nico grumbles, or at least tries to with his mouth open as I stand there with my arms crossed.
“Talk,” I say.
“Cassi,” he says. “It not what you fink,” he says, Maddie’s entire fist pushing into his mouth, I honestly think just to fuck with him.
“I nin’t ruhose,” he continues.
“What?” I ask.
“I didn’t ruhose,” he continues.
Poke. Another stab from Maddie has him squirming in the chair.
“She shet it uh,” Nico says slowly, trying to emphasize each word, but I have no idea what he’s saying.
I am enjoying watching him squirm, though.
Maddie looks to me and I wave her off.
“Looks like you got lucky today. I was just getting started,” she says as she offers him the bowl to spit in.
He spits a large amount of blood as he scowls at her before looking to me.
“Cass, Carly set it all up. I broke up with her last night, she was really calm, like I told you. Then I came into the office and she was in there with one of my biggest clients. She told him we got engaged and photoshopped a picture and everything! Got it printed in a magazine and blasted online.”
“She also sent out invitations for your engagement party,” I fill in flatly.
Nico shakes his head in frustration as he stands from the chair. He tries to reach for me but I pull away. Hurt splashes across his face but he quickly buries it as he speaks.
“I promise, Cassi. I would never. I broke up with her, we were done and she just…didn’t accept it?” he laughs bitterly.
My arms are still folded over my chest as I shrug my shoulders.
“How am I supposed to believe you, I mean, that’s a pretty unbelievable perspective, Nico. And what’s the outcome? She forced you into an engagement so you’re gonna go through with it orrrr?”
“No, fuck no!” he practically snarls. “Of course not. She’s already invited all of my major clients. Half the fucking city. I can’t cancel it.”
“Why not? Just tell them she’s fucking crazy, which she is, and that you don’t want to marry her.”
“It’s not that simple, Cassi. Most of my clients care about reputation, about who they are associated with. If this isn’t handled right, my entire company could fold. Hundreds of people out of work. I have to play this carefully.”
I just stare at him for several seconds before I shake my head.
“Well, good luck with that.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, that sounds like a whole lot of nothing. If your business means more to you than being with me, that’s fine. If you think I’m going to sit back while you play fiancé to my sister, though, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”
Nico shakes his head as he reaches for me once more. This time, I allow him as his eyes are pleading with me.
“I’d never. She’s just…cunning. She knew this would tie my hands which is why she’s lining everything up like this. I promise, this will end soon. It just can’t end in a scandal.”
“Like the entire city of Boston finding out that you’re not actually engaged to your long term girlfriend, but fucking her younger sister instead?” I offer.
Nico grimaces but nods. My irritation tempers slightly because saying it out loud, I hear it.
Sort of. I mean, it doesn’t paint either of us in a good light.
I understand his industry has a great deal to do with reputation, image.
I mean, if I was going to invest millions of dollars with a company, it probably wouldn’t be with the one whose owner’s sexual exploits are on the front page of the news.
Which is what would happen, Carly would make sure of it.
“Just give me a little time to fix this mess. I’ll negotiate with Carly. Give her some kind of offering so she drops this ruse. I don’t know, but I’ll fix it. Please, believe me.”
I’m hesitant to. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I see no good coming from this. No good coming from playing into her hand. It’s what she wants. To buy some time, to convince him to fall for her once more. Does it make me horribly insecure if I’m fearful that she may convince him?
“Nico, I don’t have time for this kind of drama. I shouldn’t have to put up with it. This…us…we were never supposed to be together. For reasons just like this.”
“Don’t say that, don’t diminish what we have, Cassi. Please. I know it’s fucked, but I promise, it will be fixed and we will get our chance, babygirl.”
I hate myself for weakening for him. I’m probably stupid as hell for it too.
I can physically feel the ice that has been layering around my heart all day cracking, though.
It’s thawing from his pretty promises and sweet declarations.
I believe he wants to be with me and I know, he will do anything in his power to achieve that.
I just…maybe I’m a pessimist but I do not see a way out of this mess without one or both of us getting hurt.