EIGHTEEN
Cassie
Present
Smoothing down the light-green sundress, I peer around the other patrons of the restaurant I was at to meet Mick and Victoria for lunch. From what I can see, neither has arrived yet.
I stare at my phone awkwardly, my sunglasses covering my eyes to hide myself just a little more.
It was a beautiful summer day, and I was excited to spend some time with the girls. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to meet, and I may or may not have been avoiding having any one-on-one time with them.
I was a terrible liar.
Hiding Lincoln hadn’t been easy these past few months, and the only person who knew everything was my mom because I knew she would keep that to herself.
“Cass!”
I turn my head just as Mick reaches me, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. I return the gesture with a smile on my face, happy to be with my best friends again. Vic is right behind her and gives me just as tight of a hug.
“Aren’t you hot?” I ask as we slowly follow Mick into the restaurant, heading to the back patio to eat outside.
Vic looks down at her outfit that I just pointed at and shrugs. “No.” She’s wearing black-on-black everything, her long-sleeve fitted shirt slightly sheer but looks compressing anyway.
“You could pull anything off, I’m convinced,” I tell her, and she chuckles, running a hand through her short brown hair.
“I don’t know about that.”
We settle into the table, the summer breeze sweeping over the table as we sit. Immediately a waiter arrives, and we order our drinks before I feel Mick drilling holes into my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She shrugs, her eyes moving to Vic and back to me. “We just haven’t seen you a lot since graduation.”
“I’ve been busy working,” I say, picking up the menu and pretending to look.
“Sure, diners are demanding,” Vic says in her normal sarcastic drawl. “Gotta pick up the burgers, deliver the burgers, pick up the plates, wash the plates.” She tilts her head side to side lazily as she speaks, and I sigh, slumping back in my chair. “So much work.”
“All right,” I say, folding my fingers in my lap. “Working at the diner is honest work, and it does keep me busy.”
“Ignore her.” Mick waves a hand at Victoria. “She’s just pissy.”
“Why are you pissy?”
She narrows her eyes like she’s thinking hard. “Do I have to have one reason? Why can’t it be everything?”
I roll my eyes and chuckle. Then I think about my last shift, when Lincoln took the time to see I was struggling with meeting George, when we sat back in that booth, and he took care of me.
When he told me he wasn’t done with me…
I cross my legs and sigh. “I have something I need to tell you.”
The girls stop what they’re doing and look at me, Mick concerned and Victoria likely waiting for juicy gossip.
She’s about to get what she wished for.
“What’s going on?” Mick asks, and I wish I wasn’t about to potentially ruin our friendship, but there was no sugarcoating it.
“I dated your brother,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“Ha!”
I narrow my eyes at the bark of laughter and look back at Mick.
“I dated Lincoln.”
Mick blinks and slumps back in her chair for a moment, and I wait with my breath caught in my lungs over what she was going to say. I could feel my heart rate tick up and a rush of adrenaline rising.
I hate confrontation, and I was terrified I was about to get just that.
Just when I’m about to launch from my seat and bolt, Mick slowly smiles and nods her head. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
I blink, and Victoria is still chuckling in her seat, her eyes trained on me as if she’s studying me. Like she knew.
But it wouldn’t be shocking if she did know and just never said anything.
“What?” I slump, the air rushing from my lungs, and I’m suddenly lightheaded. “How does that make sense?”
“Well, I don’t want to say it was obvious, but the way you two seem to irritate each other, it makes sense that there was something underneath all of that.”
The waiter interrupts, taking our order. After Vic orders, I tell him I want the same even though I have no idea what she even ordered.
I can’t focus on that.
“But…you’re not mad?” I ask after he’s left and pick at my napkin.
Mick frowns. “No, I’m not mad. If you two are happy, who am I to stand in your way? I fell in love with my brother’s hockey coach for crying out loud.”
“Yeah.” Vic rubs her lower lip thoughtfully. “You really don’t have room to talk, do you?”
Mick nudges her. “But seriously.” Her eyes come back to me. “You should be with whoever makes you happy, and treats you right,” she tacks on. “If he doesn’t, I’ll kick his ass.”
“Well.” I clear my throat and take a sip of the iced tea in front of me. “We’re not dating now .”
“Oh shit, what did he do?” Victoria asks, and for the first time since we sat down, she seems to be taking the conversation seriously.
I launch into the whole story, starting with the first time I met Lincoln, to Tanner asking me to tutor him to hanging out with Lincoln nearly every day in that last semester, to him reading my book, to us falling for each other hard, to him…well, to us breaking up.
“That little shitfucker,” Victoria spits out, then turns and looks at Mick. “What a douche your little brother can be.”
“He’s been apologizing nonstop since it happened,” I cut in, not needing or wanting my best friends to fight because of what I or Lincoln did.
Mick turns sad eyes on me. “Cass.” She swallows and shakes her head. “I’m so sorry I put you in that position. I never meant for that lie to build the way it did.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say quickly, wondering how to navigate this whole situation. It wasn’t really her fault, per se. She didn’t specifically ask me to lie to Lincoln. She didn’t even know we were growing closer.
I could have told him.
I probably should have told him.
“It is, though.” She rubs her forehead. “If I’d known you two were together…I…”
“We weren’t even close to together when you told me about you and Tanner, Mickey. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “I could have told him. But he also didn’t have to react the way he did.”
“Well, now what?” Vic asks, twisting her straw wrapper around her finger. “Are you guys speaking again?”
I shake my head. “Here and there. He’s…wanting to reconcile.” I think about how bummed he sounded when I texted him that Saturday dinner was canceled, George having caught the flu. I also shoved aside my disappointment and told myself that I was happy that I didn’t have to sit through it. “He’s apologizing. But I’m just not sure what to do.”
Mick stares at me for a minute, and as much as it unnerves me, I let her gather her thoughts. “You love him.”
Tears well in my eyes, and I keep my gaze down on my lap, but I nod my head slightly, wiping away a tear. “Yeah.”
“Oh, babe,” Vic says, reaching across the table for my hand, and I let her take it. “You can love him.”
I glance up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Guys fuck up. It’s in their nature to do so, but it’s the way they act after that matters,” she states, sounding way too wise for, well, Vic’s normal. “He’s been trying to clean up his act, to show Mick that he’s supportive of her and Tanner, to show you he’s not fucking around with anyone, and he’s focused on his future. He’s trying, and because he’s not being a little bitch about it, it shows that he loves you, too.”
I laugh lightly at her words. Leave it to Victoria to say something so profound in just her way.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Mick smiles slightly at me. “Well, give it time. There’s no reason to rush things, but can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Well.” She clears her throat. “Lincoln plans to have a future in hockey, that means wherever he gets picked up, he’ll have to move there. He won’t have choices, if he gets moved around, that’ll be where he goes. Is that something you can handle?”
I see that this is more Mick, Lincoln’s big sister, asking, not Mick, my best friend. I swallow hard and think about how I’ve always wanted to leave Rose Hill, not because I hate it but because it’s all I’ve ever known, and I look back at her. “Yes. I’m a writer. I can go anywhere.”
Mick smiles and nods her head. “I was hoping you would say that, because it would be so fucking cool to have you be my sister.”
After lunch, I head home feeling lighter than I have in a while. It shows me that I should have talked everything through with my friends a lot sooner, drama or not.
The conversation about me loving Lincoln lingers with me, and I feel myself fighting the urge to pick up the phone and call him. I want to, badly. He was one of the only people I’ve ever felt myself around.
However, another piece of lunch, where I declared to my friends I was a writer and finally told them all about my book—to which they both demanded copies—I finally feel like it’s time to take the next step in my journey as an author.
I’ve stared and stared at my submission letter, hesitating in sending it so that I didn’t have to feel the sting of rejection that was sure to come from starting this process.
Then, I let myself imagine holding a copy of my book, of signing it for someone someday, of writing another and another, and I press send, finding all the emails of the agents I’ve researched and keep sending until I’ve made it through all of them.
This was it.
The next step.
I was finally doing something for myself, and even though I know deep down I should have started a lot sooner, I was glad it was now. I was glad I had something to focus on other than my love life being in complete shambles.
My eyes drift to my phone, and I grab for it, finding his name and letting my thumb hesitate over it before I lock my phone and put it down again.
I run a hand over my hair in frustration.
Why was this so damn hard?