26 Cassius
I Bleed Zae
It’s been two mornings of opening my eyes, still in a haze, still thinking she’s there, then remembering what I did. What I had to do, and it all comes crashing in. Hard and heavy, a direct hit to my heart.
I lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling, because getting up means starting the day and starting the day means thinking about her in motion instead of just in memory, and somehow that’s worse.
It means wondering if she slept. If she cried.
If she’s eaten anything. If she hates me. If she should.
I lose that argument with myself and get up anyway, because staying in bed too long makes me feel weak in a way I can’t stand.
I’ve asked Mom to check on her. Selfish of me, I know. The way I was chewed out by my mother was on another level, so I’ve been ignoring most of her calls now. I’ve been ignoring most of the world, honestly. So much so that I’ve missed class the last two days. I plan to catch up over the weekend.
Problem is I can’t get my head off Zae long enough to think right.
So today, I finally do something that isn’t sitting in my dorm and staring at a wall while pretending I made the right choice. The skatepark feels right. I mean, it’s where everything happens. Good. Bad. All of it.
Riot is the first to notice me. “Well, shit. He lives. About fucking time, man.” He clasps my hand and wraps his arm around my shoulder in a quick bro hug.
“Yeah. Been busy.” The words drag out, a total lie.
“Yeah?” He smirks like he knows something.
“Busy with Zae,” Ghost adds like he’s making commentary on a biography and not being playful. The guy doesn’t understand tone. Everything is flat with him. It’s hard to tell when he’s joking or not.
I shake my head, short and slow. “Nah.” My eyes wander to the ramp in the distance, watching some guy about to eat pavement because he’s grinding too far to the left. “We broke up.”
I can feel their eyes on me but it’s Maverick who speaks up first. “What do you mean you broke up?”
“Just that.” I finally gather the courage to turn and look at them. If I had the balls to face her, I can face them. “We broke up.”
“Woah,” Riot murmurs, one singular word to give him time to process to ask his rapid-fire questions the way he does when he gets curious. “But why? Is that why you haven’t been to class? Dude, what did you do?”
Yeah. It had to be me, right?
I’m the problem.
“I…” How the fuck do I say this? “I’m not safe for her.”
I say the words I told her, the ones that hit the hardest. Because it’s true.
I’m not safe.
“What the fuck?” Maverick stands, his brows furrowed and his eyes dead locked on mine. “You’re not safe?” He scoffs, closing the distance between us until he’s a foot away.
Personal space zero.
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit,” Maverick grits out, sounding almost angry.
“I almost hit her.”
They freeze at that, all three of them eyeing me as if I grew three heads.
“What do you mean?” Ghost watches me with those critical eyes, something sparking beneath them.
“You were there,” I remind them all. “I almost clipped her with my elbow.”
I watch as all three of them suddenly ease, like I just took ten thousand pounds off their shoulders.
“Fucking Christ, man. You about gave me a heart attack.” Riot slaps my shoulder with an easy smile, like it’s nothing at all.
“You didn’t hurt her,” Ghost states, like it’s a simple fact.
I guess not.
“No, but I almost did, and that’s enough.”
He nods, understanding, maybe even respecting the choice I made.
“It’s not like you’d ever actually hit her.” Maverick tries to ease my worries, to erase the doubt.
“I could. On accident. I could hurt her if I ever lose my shit.”
“But you’ve been going to group with Ghost, right?” Riot intervenes, squeezing my shoulder where he’s now permanently fixed his hand. “You’ve been keeping your shit together, right? Therapy and all that? I mean, that was the first time I’d ever seen you lose your cool.”
“Because of her.” It hits me all at once, a piece of the puzzle I didn’t notice I was missing. “Because of my need to protect her. To keep her safe. Anything ruins that and I snap.”
Riot seems to understand, his grip loosening a fraction as he thinks. “Yeah, but like,” he pauses, brows pinched in almost pity. “You love her.”
“I love her.” I nod, because I could never deny that.
“I love her so much that I need to let her go. I can’t have her like this.
Not when I’m still so—” My eyes lower to the ground, my voice edged with the sadness I’ve been swallowing down since the first of November.
“So messed up I don’t know where the safe parts end anymore. ”
It’s stupid, and probably more than anyone expects to see at the skatepark, but suddenly Ghost, Maverick, and Riot are around me. Hands on me, concern and love in their eyes.
“Dude,” Maverick holds my gaze, steady as a cloudless sky. “You’re not broken.”
“You just feel harder than the rest of us,” Riot adds, nudging me. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“Just keep working on yourself. The fact of the matter is, you recognized it. You’re working on it.
I know you, Cass.” Ghost speaks, the words hitting different coming from him.
From someone who truly understands what it's like living with a brain like mine. “You aren’t like that. You wouldn’t hurt anyone.
At least not anyone who didn’t deserve it. ”
We all laugh at that, something small that eases the tension.
“Either way, she deserves better.” I sigh, knowing it's true even if I wish it wasn't.
“I still think you’re stupid for letting her go when you just got her.” Maverick states his unwanted opinion like it matters.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Anytime.”
“Good,” a voice cuts in. “Because I think he’s stupid too.”
My body knows her voice before I see her, locking everything up inside me. The guys go quiet, and for once, none of them try to fill the silence. No joke, cough, or board scrape against concrete. Just the open air and my heart punching hard enough to bruise.
I turn slowly, too dramatic for what it is. Zae stands just inside the gate with her arms wrapped around herself, my hoodie swallowing her hands. She looks tired, like yesterday and today carved something out of her, and it’s entirely my fault.
Her eyes are puffy and her hair is half clipped up. She looks like she spent exactly seven seconds deciding if she cared about appearing human today and landed somewhere around ‘technically clothed.’
She’s beautiful.
She’s furious.
“Zae,” I breathe.
Her eyes flash. “No.”
I blink. “What?”
“No,” she repeats, stronger this time. “Just getting warmed up.”
Behind me, Riot shifts his weight, but I don’t look at him. I’m too busy staring at her.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens. “Wow. Great opening.”
“Zae.”
“No, don’t Zae me like I’m the one who showed up at your door, detonated your entire chest cavity, then walked out like some tragic little hero.”
My jaw clenches. The guys are still behind me. I can feel them there, awkward as hell, pretending they’re not listening while absolutely listening because their ears still work.
“Can we not do this here?” I gesture for us to move away from everyone.
“No.”
The word lands harder this time. She steps close enough that every part of me notices the space between us and hates it.
“I gave you yesterday,” she informs me. “I gave you one day to breathe because your mom is smarter than both of us and told me not to come here while I was still… emotionally not okay.”
My chest tightens at the mention of my mother.
Zae’s eyes shine, but she keeps going. “So I waited. I ate and stared at Calcifer like he burnt my bacon and cried enough to flood my dorm. But now I’m here.”
I try to swallow. It doesn’t work right. “You shouldn’t be.”
Her face changes, like I’ve said something so dumb she has to take a second before she decides whether to answer with words or violence.
“See, that’s the problem.” She points at me once, sharp and quick. “You keep saying things like that as if you get to decide where I should be.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I didn’t ask you to protect me.”
My hands curl at my sides as the words hit me right in the chest. “I’m not safe for you.”
Her laugh breaks in the middle. “I swear to God, Cass, if you say that one more time, I’m going to lose it on you, on myself, and the whole damn universe.”
“Zae.”
“No. You said it. I listened. I cried about it. I yelled at my wall about it. I had a whole mentally unwell floor era. And guess what? It still sounds like bullshit.”
I look away because if I keep staring at her, I’m going to fold, but she’s determined today and doesn’t let me, stepping into my field of vision again.
“You don’t get to tell me what you are to me.” Her voice is quieter now. “You don’t get to decide you’re unsafe and make that my truth.”
“You had to duck.”
“I know.”
“I almost hit you.”
“By accident.”
“That doesn’t make it fine.”
“I didn’t say it was fine.” Her voice cuts sharper, and my eyes snap back to hers.
She breathes hard, like she’s trying to keep herself from losing the point she came here to make.
“I’m not here to tell you it didn’t matter.
I’m not here to pat your head and act like you didn’t scare yourself half to death.
I saw your face, Cass. I know it mattered.
I know it scared you. I know Halloween scared you too. ”
The old, sick feeling rolls through me. “Then why are you here?”
“Because you’re using those things like it’s proof you’re a bad person when it’s not.”
I don’t answer, mainly because I don’t know how. Zae takes another step closer. The guys behind me go even stiller, but she doesn’t look at them. She looks at me like we’re the only two people standing on this cracked piece of concrete.
“You have been there for me through things I never wanted anybody to see,” she admits softly, almost too gentle for the tone she had seconds before. Her voice catches, and she presses her lips together hard. A shaky breath leaves her. “You make me feel like I’m not too much.”