Adam
“Please say something.”
Cassie’s voice is weak, hoarse, pained as if she’s being tortured and I’m the one holding the whip.
All I can do is stare at the string of Christmas lights hanging above me in the Alpha Sigma courtyard, somehow immune to how freezing it is, and unable to hear the party raging inside.
With finals next week, the brothers are letting loose and trying to have a little fun before they’re chained to their textbooks.
I imagined this call so differently.
I’ve been anxious to talk to Cassie since Thanksgiving, since I hit it out of the park meeting Chandler’s grandparents.
Mr. Simmons was in a fraternity, too, when he was younger, and we bonded over our love of brotherhood.
He had also been raised by his grandfather, so sharing stories about the lessons we learned and how we grew up only strengthened our easy friendship.
Pair that with the fact that his wife, Mrs. Simmons, thought I was absolutely adorable and nearly fainted when I helped her clean up the kitchen and washed every dish instead of joining the other guys in the living room watching football?
It was a smash hit, a home run, an all-around win.
I had a job offer by the time we got on the plane to head home Sunday night.
I’d tried to call Cassie then, eager to share the news, but her service had been shoddy at the resort and I wasn’t surprised when the call didn’t go through.
She was exhausted after her flight home yesterday, so our call had been short and sweet, and I told her I got the job with all the intention of filling her in on every single detail today.
This call was supposed to be excitement and celebration.
It was supposed to be let’s shop for an apartment and oh, my God, we’re going to live together.
It was supposed to be our Thanksgiving sacrifice paying off, and a new date marked on the calendar for when we’d be together again, and a moving truck rental and…
It was just supposed to be so happy.
Instead, it’s a heavy, hard fist to the gut.
“Adam, please,” she begs again when I don’t answer.
My heart is in my throat, chest so tight there’s little room for the breaths I’m trying to force. “I don’t know what to say.”
She whimpers, and we don’t have to be on video chat for me to know how she looks right now, to know that beautiful face is blotchy and red and tear-stained.
It’s sick that I want to hold her, to comfort her, when she’s the one breaking me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again, a broken record at this point. “I… I was drunk, and upset, and stupid and I—”
“Didn’t listen to me,” I finish for her.
“What?”
“You didn’t listen to me. Or, at least, if you did, you clearly didn’t hear me when I said I was doing this for us. I gave up seeing you for the holiday so that I could find a way for us to be in the same city. Together. For us to move in together. For us to…”
I can’t finish the sentence, tears stinging my eyes, nose flaring as I shake them off.
“But you didn’t call me,” she says through her tears. “We barely texted. This whole semester has felt like… like… like we aren’t even a couple.”
“We’ve had dates almost every weekend,” I argue. “We talk all the time.”
“It’s not the same. It’s not enough.”
“I know!” I scream. “Which is exactly why I flew to fucking Baltimore to get a job near your future school. So we could be together. So we wouldn’t have to do this anymore. And you…”
Again, my words are cut short, throat constricting with the effort to say them. I’m so sick I have to stand and pace for fear of actually vomiting.
Cassie is silent.
The longer she is, the more my mind races, the more I think about how many times I had the opportunity to do the same to her, but never would have even considered it.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of kissing another woman.
And the thought of her kissing another man…
I close my eyes, jaw popping, chest tight with a mixture of rage and the fiercest despair I’ve ever known.
“How could you do this, Cassie?” I ask, voice just above a whisper. “How could you so much as look at another man that way, let alone act on it?”
“It meant nothing. I was drunk, I don’t even remember what he looks like, I—”
“Well, that makes it better, doesn’t it? That just makes it all forgivable. I guess if I get rip-roaring drunk tonight, I can kiss whoever I want and it’s fine, right?”
Her silence is answer enough for me.
“Tell me what you would do, if it were you,” I say. “If you were on this end of the call, and I told you I got drunk and kissed another woman. What would you feel?”
She sniffs. “You can’t possibly hate me as much as I hate myself right now.”
I let out a long exhale.
“Adam, I love you,” Cassie whispers. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. I swear, it will never happen again. It was a mistake. A stupid mistake. Please,” she begs. “Please forgive me.”
My chest is on fire as I pinch the bridge of my nose and fight back the emotion threatening to strangle me.
“I have to go.”
“No,” she cries. “Please, Adam. Please.”
“I can’t talk to you right now, Cassie. You have to respect that. Just… I need some time.”
“Adam—”
But I hang up before she can say another word.
My fist curls around my phone, desire to crush it surging through me.
I shove through the back door and inside, instantly feeling suffocated by the heat coming from the fireplace.
I jog upstairs before any of the guys can ask me what’s wrong, but I don’t miss the way they watch me, the concern in their eyes.
When I make it to my room, I slam the door shut, finally letting myself heave my phone across the room.
It hits the wall and bounces off, the screen cracking when it hits the hardwood floor.
And with the music loud enough to drown it out, I let out an animalistic scream, one loud and long enough to make my throat hurt when I finish.
I stand in the middle of the room, panting, and then the anger starts to fade, and my imagination turns even more cruel in its absence.
I can see it, another man’s hand sliding in to caress her face, her neck, tilting her chin up, finding those big, innocent green eyes staring up at him, those light pink lips parted and waiting, those soft hands twisting in his shirt…
I barely make it to the trash can by my desk before I vomit, mostly stomach acid burning my throat and my nose as I release.
I stay there for a while, waiting, expecting more before I finally kick back and lean against my bed. I can’t stop shaking my head, can’t stop closing my eyes tight and opening them again only to discover I’m not stuck in a nightmare the way I wish I was.
I just want to wake up and this all be gone.
I want to wake up and laugh at the audacity, at the outrageousness of even thinking Cassie could hurt me like this.
Barbed wire shreds my guts as I crawl over to my desk, pulling the top drawer open and reaching my hand inside. I feel around until I find what I’m looking for, and then I sit back on my heels, staring at the box in my hand as the hardwood digs into my knees.
I pop it open, and the diamond ring glistens in the Christmas lights, sending another pang of torture through my chest.
I fall back against the bed again so hard it moves, banging into the wall a bit and scraping against the floor.
Then I clutch the ring to my chest.
And I break.