Chapter 17 #2
Like last time, the room is a disaster zone, but Cass doesn’t apologize for it as she slams the door behind me and crosses to her desk, grabbing a half-empty vodka bottle and a chipped coffee mug.
She pours—an amount way past what anyone would call reasonable—then tilts the bottle to her own lips and drinks.
Not a sip. A swig.
Long, punishing, like she’s trying to drown something that refuses to die.
When she lowers the bottle, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and starts pacing, pausing only to hand me the mug with vodka. “Drink,” she says.
I comply, sitting on the bed and taking a sip, because I don’t know what else to do.
There’s no schematic for a broken heart, and all I have to offer is my full, quiet attention as she stalks a frantic path between desk and door, her combat boots hitting the worn carpet in an agitated rhythm—thud-thud, thud-thud.
I just watch.
And wait.
Because sometimes the best thing you can offer is silence.
“You know what the pattern is?” she finally asks, still pacing like a caged animal that’s forgotten how to be still. “Guys see me on stage and they want that. The performance. The girl who looks fearless. But the second they get close enough to see the real person?”
Her laugh is bitter, broken.
“They run. They recoil. Every single one.” She hisses the words. “That’s when I stop being exciting and start being repulsive—a problem they don’t want.”
The word—repulsive—lands like a fist to my sternum, because I know the weight of it. The way it sits in your stomach and tells you the problem isn’t what you did, it’s what you are. The fundamental flaw you can’t fix because it’s not a component you can swap out or a connection you can re-solder.
It’s just… you.
“And the worst part?” Her voice cracks entirely. “They’re right. The real me is a mess.”
Her voice finally breaks entirely, dissolving into something that’s half laugh, half sob, and it’s the most devastating sound I’ve ever heard. It’s the sound of someone who’s fought so hard for so long and has finally, completely, run out of fight.
She sinks onto the floor in the middle of the room, her back sliding down against the side of her bed. The bottle slips from her fingers and hits the carpet with a dull thud. Vodka splashes, a dark stain spreading like an inkblot test revealing nothing but damage.
She doesn’t notice.
Doesn’t care.
Just… done.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her—this small, fierce girl crumpled on the floor, mascara running down her face in dark rivulets, her shoulders hunched forward like she’s trying to fold in on herself and disappear. She puts her head in her hands, forlorn and despondent.
I recognize this moment.
Rock bottom.
Because I’ve been there myself.
I should say something comforting. Something that makes this better.
But I don’t have anything like that.
All I have is the truth.
“You’re not the only one who’s broken, Cass.”
The words are out before I can stop them, low and rough. Her head lifts slowly, like it weighs a thousand pounds. Her eyes—hazed with alcohol but still sharp with pain, still her underneath all of it—lock onto mine, and she’s clearly assessing whether I’m feeding her a line or not.
“I don’t understand, Ben,” she scoffs. “You’re a hockey star. Tall. Good-looking. Not an asshole. So why are you so goddamn scared all the time?”
The question slices through the room.
Direct.
Unsparing.
Not mocking. Not cruel. A genuine question from a place of shared brokenness.
So I decide to tell her.
“There was this girl, Mia, my girlfriend in my senior year of high school.” I start, my voice barely a whisper.
Already, I can feel my face burning, shame creeping up my neck.
“I’d just had my growth spurt and got recruited for hockey, and suddenly I was part of this world I’d always watched from the outside. ”
“OK…” Her voice trails off.
I swallow. “These guys who were confident and loud and knew exactly who they were. And I wanted to belong so badly it made me stupid.”
I can see it so clearly, even now. The locker room. The way they’d slung their arms around my shoulders like I was finally one of them. The way I’d grinned like an idiot, desperate and grateful and so fucking hungry for that acceptance I would have done anything to keep it.
Even betray the one person who actually gave a shit about me.
Cass doesn’t say anything. She just watches me with those blue eyes, waiting.
“There was a party,” I continue. “My teammates started making fun of Mia. Calling her boring, saying she dressed like a librarian, asking why I was wasting my time with someone so ‘basic.’ And, through it all, I just… stood there… frozen, like I was watching a movie.”
The word tastes like poison.
The silence in Cass’s room is suffocating.
“I stood there grinning like an idiot while they destroyed her. Letting them say whatever they wanted, laughing at their jokes, nodding along.” I sigh. “I was terrified that if I defended her, they’d turn on me and I’d be the joke again, the weird kid who didn’t belong.”
The memory is so vivid it makes my stomach clench. Her standing in her driveway, arms crossed over her chest like armor, her eyes red but dry. The way she’d looked at me, not angry, not even hurt, just done. Like she’d finally seen the truth of who I was, and the truth was that I was a coward.
“She broke up with me the next day.” The words feel like broken glass. “Didn’t yell. Didn’t cry. Just looked at me with this quiet disappointment.”
I force myself to keep going. To pull the rest of the poison out.
“So I thought, OK, I fucked up. I’ll be better. I’ll be myself next time.” A bitter laugh escapes. “I tried dating this other girl a few months later. I told her I’d do it right, be the real me—the one who actually gives a shit about things beyond hockey.”
My chest aches with the memory.
“I told her I’d spent my whole weekend working on electronics, and she laughed and asked if I was seriously into ‘garbage picking’ as a hobby.”
“Ben…” Cass’s voice is a whisper. “I’m sorry…”
I finally look up at Cass. “So that’s the lesson, Cass.
Acting like a jock makes me a moral coward who betrays people.
But being my real self just makes me pathetic and not worth the effort.
And that’s why I freeze up when talking to girls and make myself small in front of the guys, because I don’t know who to be. ”
“And yourself isn’t good enough…” Cass finishes for me.
I nod. “And where the hell does that leave me?”
The question hangs in the air, naked and desperate.
The silence that follows is suffocating.
I sit there, hollowed out, utterly exposed. Every ugly, broken part I’ve spent years hiding is now laid bare in front of this girl I’m pretty sure I’m falling for. I’ve just handed her a loaded weapon and pointed it directly at my own heart, and I wait for the inevitable verdict.
The pity.
The disgust.
The gentle but firm retreat.
I force myself to look up, bracing for the killing blow.
But she doesn’t run.
Doesn’t pull back.
Doesn’t give me the pitying look or the awkward silence.
Instead, she stands and sinks down onto the bed next to me, close enough that our knees are touching. “Yeah. I fucking hate that feeling. Showing people the real you and having them... not get it. Having them laugh, or having them look at you like you just became worthless.”
The recognition hits immediately.
She’s not just sympathizing.
She’s lived this.
Different wounds, but the same crushing fear at the core.
That your authentic self is the part that drives people away.
“So you hide it,” I say quietly.
It’s not a question.
She nods. “You make yourself small, but I make myself so big it creates a mirage… an illusion.” Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “But I don’t let them close enough to see what’s underneath, because every time I let anyone see the real person…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
She doesn’t have to.
“Until tonight,” I say softly. “We both showed our hands…”
“Until tonight,” she confirms, her voice barely audible. “You stayed.”
The words are small, broken, and fragile.
But they’re also full of wonder.