26 Cassius #2
That one stops the world. Not slows it. Full on stops it. Her eyes fill, but she doesn’t wipe them this time.
“You make me feel like I’m worth loving, Cass. Do you understand how annoying that is?”
My throat burns as her name softly leaves my lips. “Zae.”
“No, listen.” Her voice breaks, then hardens again, like she’s forcing the pieces into place with both hands.
“I have spent so much of my life feeling like I’m something people survive.
Like I come with warning labels and extra work and fine print.
And then you came along with your stupid face and your stupid hands and your stupid way of looking at me like I’m not a burden. ”
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe without hurting.
“You silence the voices in my head,” she whispers.
“You make them quieter. When I think I’m too much, you look at me like I’m exactly enough.
When I think I’m hard to love, you make me feel easy.
And then you left me standing in my room and told me it was because you loved me. ” Her chin trembles. “That was cruel.”
I flinch like she hit me, and her face crumples for half a second, but she doesn’t take it back.
She shouldn’t.
“I didn’t mean to be cruel,” I manage.
“I know.” She sounds wrecked. “That’s the part that makes it suck worse.”
I drag a hand over the back of my neck and turn halfway away, because my chest is too tight and my jaw is starting to ache from holding everything in.
“Don’t,” she snaps, freezing me in place. “Don’t turn away from me while I’m saying this.”
My eyes cut back to hers. She’s shaking now. Her hands are hidden in my sleeves, but I can see it in her shoulders. In the way she’s standing too straight, like if she bends even a little she might fall apart right here in front of everyone.
“I’m not saying you don’t need help,” she continues. “I’m not saying love fixes anger or fear or whatever ugly little monster is scratching around in your chest. I’m not dumb.”
“I never said you were.”
“You kind of did when you decided my whole future for me.”
I shut my mouth.
Her nostrils flare. “Exactly.”
Behind me, someone shifts again—Maverick maybe—but no one speaks.
Thank God.
Zae swallows and looks down at the concrete for one second, then back at me. “I don’t want to handle you. I said that wrong before. I know I did. I was upset and I was trying to make you understand, and my brain grabbed the worst possible wording because apparently it hates me.”
Despite everything, my mouth almost twitches. She points at me immediately.
“Do not smile. I am emotionally armed.” The almost-smile dies, but something in my chest cracks open around it.
“I don’t want to handle you,” she repeats, quieter. “I want to love you. I want you to let me love you without turning it into some tragic job I’m too fragile to do.”
“I don’t want you carrying this.”
“Then don’t hand it to me like a backpack full of bricks. Talk to me. Tell me what’s happening before it gets bad. Go to therapy. Go to group. Punch a pillow. I don’t know, take up pottery and make the ugliest bowl alive. But don’t leave me and say it's for my protection.”
My breath shakes.
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Then say that.” Her eyes soften, and somehow that’s worse. “Say, ‘Zae, I’m scared.’ Say, ‘Zae, I don’t trust myself right now.’ Say, ‘Zae, I need space, but I’m not leaving.’ Do you know how different that would have felt?”
I close my eyes.
Yes.
I know.
That’s why it hurts.
“Leaving was the right thing,” I admit, voice rough.
Her face flickers, but she doesn’t step back. “Fine.”
That shocks me enough that I look at her fully. “What?”
“Fine,” she repeats. “You can think that. You can sit with it. You can spiral about it. You can stare at your ceiling and do whatever emotionally constipated boys do when they’re convinced suffering is what they deserve.”
A breath escapes behind me, like someone is trying to hold back a laugh.
Riot, probably.
Zae ignores it and continues on. “But you don’t get to do that forever. You have today and then seven days. To breathe, think, and panic. Dramatically look out a window. Whatever.” She lifts her chin, and there she is. Hurt, exhausted, furious, but still Zae. “Seven days, Cass.”
My pulse stumbles. “Seven days for what?”
“To come to terms with the fact that I’m not accepting this breakup.”
My heart hits hard enough to hurt, and all I can do is stare at her. She stares right back, eyes wet and stubborn.
“You don’t have to answer me today. You don’t have to fix it today. You don’t even have to believe me today. But I’m telling you now so you can’t pretend I disappeared quietly.”
“I never wanted you to disappear.”
“You just wanted me gone.”
“No.”
“Then stop asking for the same thing in different words.”
That shuts me up again. She takes a breath, slow and shaky.
“No to the breakup.” Her voice is firm now. “No to you being alone. No to you deciding what I can survive. No to you acting like my love is another thing you have to protect me from.”
The words scrape me raw, pulling at me. I want to go to her. I want to touch her face, pull her into me, tell her I’m sorry until my voice gives out. I want to kiss her until neither of us has to think for a minute. Instead, I dig my heels into my shoes and stay as still as possible.
She needs me to hear her more than she needs me to touch her. That might be the first right thing I’ve done in two days.
“And if I still think you’re wrong?” I ask.
Her face twists like the question hurts, but she answers anyway. “Then you can tell me in seven days.”
“That easy?”
“No.” Her laugh comes out small and bitter. “Nothing about this is easy. I’m being very brave and very annoying right now.”
“You are.”
Her mouth trembles. “Asshole.”
For half a second, we almost feel like us. Then the pain returns and fills the space again. She pulls the sleeves of my hoodie tighter around her hands.
“I’m going to walk away now,” she tells me, and her voice is softer than before. “Because if I stand here much longer, I’m going to cry in front of your friends, and I refuse to be that girl.”
I hear one of the guys inhale behind me, but no one laughs. I nod once, because if I say anything, I might beg. She turns, then stops after two steps. My heart catches as I watch her.
She doesn’t face me when she speaks. “Cass?”
“Yeah?”
“You help me more than you realize.” My chest caves in. She looks over her shoulder then, eyes shining. “So don’t act like losing you is safer for me.”
Then she walks away. No slammed door or final curse. Just Zae leaving the skatepark in my hoodie, shoulders straight even though I know she’s breaking while my friends stand behind me, silent for the first time in their lives.
I told myself leaving her was mercy. But Zae Hart has never once let me lie to myself without making it deeply inconvenient.
Seven days, huh?
We’ll see, Sunshine.