Chapter 19
nineteen
CASS
The first thing I register is pain.
It’s not the kind that has a specific point, like a stubbed toe, but instead it’s everywhere. It starts at my temples and radiates outward until my skull feels like it’s trying to crack itself open from the inside and the rest of my body feels like it’s gone ten rounds with a mountain lion.
But worse than that is the taste in my mouth, which is like something died in a dive bar bathroom and I decided to give it a lick, and combined with the weak morning light stabbing through my window and assaulting my eyes, it’s taking all my self-control not to puke right here in my bed.
I squeeze my eyes shut and turn over, seeking the cool comfort of my pillow, and my bare leg brushes against the cold, empty expanse of rumpled sheets. And that’s when the real pain hits. The memory crashes down, and suddenly the hangover is a fucking mercy compared to this.
Every mortifying detail floods back in high definition: our mutual confession, my own nakedness, the heat of his mouth on me, his cock in my hand and then my mouth—thick and hard and wanting—and the blunt pressure of him against my entrance, and then…
Nothing.
The shocking collapse.
The way he’d softened like someone cut the power.
His face, horrified.
His choked lie as he fled, like I was toxic and he needed to escape.
My phone buzzes. Chancing one eye open, I reach blindly for it on the nightstand. The movement punches nausea straight through my gut, but I need to see the damage. The screen lights up, and I squint against the brightness even on the lowest setting.
There are multiple messages.
Joel:
What the FUCK was that last night?
I don’t reply.
Fuck him.
Milo:
You OK?
That’s Milo. Doesn’t pry, doesn’t demand, just offers the opening.
But I can’t answer, because I’m not OK, and Milo can see through bullshit.
Then I see the rest.
Multiple messages from Ben. 2:47 AM. 3:15 AM. 4:02 AM.
My stomach drops.
I don’t open them, because I already know what the messages will say.
He’ll feel bad and want to make sure I’m okay. His messages will be some version of It’s not you, it’s me, delivered with his characteristic earnestness. But the result will be the same: I offered everything to him, his body rejected me, and then he ran.
The Revolving Door has a script, and I’ve heard every variation.
I lock the phone and let it fall to the floor, because I can’t handle seeing the words that will validate every terrible thing I believe about myself—that I’m too much, too messy, too broken to be loved by anyone who sees past the performance.
I snooze for a while, feeling sorry for myself, then an hour later I force myself out of bed. The room tilts, a sickening lurch to the left, and I have to brace myself against the desk. My body feels wrong, my skin is clammy, my mouth desert-dry and I need to pee like nothing else.
After visiting the bathroom, I stumble toward the main room, one hand trailing the wall for balance, and catch my reflection in the microwave’s dark screen. It’s not good. A pale, hungover ghost stares back, complete with mascara smudges and hair sticking up in jagged chunks.
This is the real you, my mind mocks me. This is the mess he ran from. How could you possibly think he’d want that?
I turn away from my reflection, the sight too painful, and sink back onto the edge of my bed. My legs are too shaky to hold me. But even as the wave of self-loathing crests, a small, insistent memory pushes back. A contradictory piece of data that doesn’t fit the narrative.
His confession. The wounds he’d laid bare. The shame in his voice when he told me about his past, about standing silent while his teammates tore his girlfriend apart. About the girl who laughed at his hobby and ghosted him. The way he’d looked at me when he said it, bracing for mockery.
The visible relief when I didn’t laugh, when I told him I know that feeling.
That wasn’t a lie. That wasn’t a performance to get in my pants.
He was terrified, a quieter voice whispers.
Bullshit, the cynic sneers back immediately. Guys say whatever they think you want to hear. He saw a broken girl and played the part of the broken boy. It’s a move. And when it came time to actually fuck you, he couldn’t even manage it. That’s how repulsive you are underneath it all.
The thought is so vicious it makes me nauseous all over again. I curl forward, wrapping my arms around my stomach, because it feels true. It fits the pattern. I stripped naked, offered myself, and he fled. The data is damning.
But then, another memory. The desperate want in his eyes. The way his gaze had traced my body with raw hunger. The groan when I’d taken him in my mouth. The way his hands had tangled in my hair. He’d been hard. Fully present, fully aroused, on the edge of coming.
None of that had been a lie.
None of that had been rejection.
And then I’d climbed on top of him, and everything collapsed.
I stand and pace to the desk, then back. The movement helps me think. As I walk, I replay that moment. His face at the moment of failure. Not disgust. Not the cooling I’ve seen in men’s eyes a hundred times when they realize the persona isn’t the person.
It was different.
It was self-directed horror.
Like his body had betrayed him, not me.
Like the failure was about him, not a reaction to me.
The thought cuts through the fog like a signal breaking through static.
But why? the cynical voice demands. He wanted you. He was hard. Then suddenly, it was gone. What flipped the switch if not you?
I stop pacing, staring at the empty vodka bottle on the floor. I was drunk. I was crying. I was a complete fucking wreck. And then I was naked on his lap, inches from his dick, offering him everything and more while also being a total disaster.
What if he didn’t want to be like them? the quiet voice offers. The guys who hurt you.
What if his hesitation wasn’t rejection, but his engineering brain running a safety protocol? Step one: Is she drunk? Check. Step two: Did she just have a full-scale emotional meltdown? Check. Step three: Abort mission, you’re about to become one of the assholes.
What if he was trying to be “one of the good ones”?
Trying to earn redemption for the cowardice of his past. What if that split second of decency, of trying to do the right thing when faced with a vulnerable, drunk girl, killed his momentum? Triggered the performance anxiety that’s probably been lurking under the surface his entire life?
And his body, flooded with adrenaline and shame and fear… shut down.
Not from lack of desire. From an overload of conscience.
I press my palms against my eyes, the pressure grounding me.
He didn’t reject me.
He imploded.
And I wasn’t the bomb. I was just standing at ground zero.
And then he ran.
Maybe, the cynical voice concedes, its certainty wavering. Or maybe you’re just making excuses for another guy who bolted.
I pick up my phone from the floor and unlock it. Open his messages.
Ben (2:47 AM):
Cass, I am so, so sorry. Can we please talk?
Ben (3:15 AM):
Please, I need to explain.
Ben (4:02 AM):
Okay, well, I’m sorry again…
Three desperate attempts in the dark hours. While I was passed out drunk, choosing oblivion, he was awake. No doubt he was suffering, drowning in self-recrimination, reaching out and trying to fix things and getting nothing but silence in return.
The mutual retreat should make me angry. It just makes me sad.
Maybe we could have been something real, if we weren’t both so broken. If I’d been brave enough to name the kiss as real instead of running. If he’d been brave enough to stay when his body failed. If both of us hadn’t been so devastated by the past that we’re too afraid to live the present.
I push him away when I’m scared. He runs when he’s terrified. And the result is the same: two people alone, convinced they’re unlovable, proving it to themselves over and over. But the only way to stop it is to break the loop—one of us has to make a move.
One of us has to choose to believe the other.
I could text him now, say I understand, and that I’m sorry too. But the hurt is still too raw, and the fear of real rejection—of him confirming that yes, my new hypothesis is bullshit and I’m too much of a mess—is too overwhelming.
I’m not ready for words.
But maybe I can show up, like he did.
In the mosh pit, when I was getting groped.
And last night, when I was spiraling.
The thought strikes me, complete and clear. The Devils have a home game tomorrow. Saturday. 7:00 p.m. If I go—if he sees me there after everything, sitting in the stands—maybe that’s enough to reset things, an olive branch neither of us is brave enough to extend with words.
It’s a test.
And it’s the best I can do.
The only hope I can muster.
I set the phone down and go back to sleep for an hour, my mind feeling a little more at peace.
I feel bad that Ben is probably still stewing, but I feel like in the cosmic balance of things, my decision to try again is enough for now.
In the meantime, after sleep, I’ve got some other things to take care of.
So when I wake, I shower and eat something, then get to work.
I text Milo.
Cass:
Sorry I went nuclear.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Milo:
Joel’ll survive. Talk?
Cass:
Not yet. But thanks for checking.
Milo:
Here when you’re ready.
I set the phone down, something loosening in my chest. I know the stuff with the band—and with Joel—isn’t fixed, but at least it’s acknowledged. I walk to the corner where the case for my spare guitar leans against the wall. Kneeling, I pop the latches and lift the Telecaster out.
The weight of it is familiar, the neck fitting my hand like it was made for me. I don’t plug it in. I just hold it, running my thumb along the frets. Like any time I feel out of control, the slight buzz of the strings against the metal grounds me, because this is real.
This is something I know.
A memory surfaces without being called. Me at fifteen in my childhood bedroom in Camden, holding this same guitar for the first time. My mom had saved for months to buy it, and when she’d handed it to me, wrapped in a trash bag because we didn’t have wrapping paper, I’d cried.
Not because it was perfect—it wasn’t, the action was shit—but because someone had seen what I wanted and decided I was worth the sacrifice. Someone who didn’t have much and who’d given what she had to me anyway.
You’re going to be something, she’d said. I know it.
And it feels fitting for the situation with Ben.
So I’ll show up.
Because maybe, just maybe, he thinks I’m worth the sacrifice, too.
And because I don’t have much, but what I do have to give is his.
Or so I hope.