Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
CASS
If she’d forgotten her phone again, she was sewing a new pocket into every pair of her pants so she’d have no excuse not to have it attached to her body.
Cass rooted in her bag, shoving gum wrappers and receipts to the side. She could almost visualize herself grabbing it before she had left the set that morning. Or was that yesterday? She dropped her eyes from the lights where she waited for the red to turn green and rooted deeper.
It’s not like she needed her phone at this exact moment. Brunch was always the same time, the same place, and up until the last couple of years, the same five people. She wasn’t expecting an urgent text, but still. It could happen. Her friends wouldn’t be wondering where she was yet. Fifteen minutes late was almost early.
But her sister might call. Or her brother. Or the head of costume on the tv show Cass was working on, wondering where the design portfolios were stashed. Which were probably on the floor of the wardrobe closet. With her phone on top of them.
Shoot, or maybe she left it at her sister’s place after babysitting last night?
She blew a loose curl out of her eye. Maybe there was a scrunchie in there, too. Her fingers closed around the case, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Now, where did that leave the design portfolios? It didn’t matter, she could head back after brunch and find it. Unless it was at home.
Double shoot.
A car horn blared behind her, and her eyes popped up to the now green light. It couldn’t have been more than a two second delay, but she still mouthed Sorry! into the rearview mirror as she lurched her truck forward. The finger in reply answered her.
“Dick!” Libby yelled out the truck’s passenger window. Her best friend sat back in her seat, unperturbed, wedging her toolbox more securely between her feet. “It’s barely noon. How hot can his date be?”
“It was my fault. What if he’s late to his daughter’s birthday party or something?”
“His inability to prepare does not make an emergency on your part.”
Cass passed her phone to Libby without taking her eyes from the road. “Did Terry say we need to come back to set later this afternoon?”
Libby tapped in Cass’s passcode from memory and scrolled. Her face scrunched. “Nope, but it looks like Raina can’t make it again.”
A familiar disappointment settled behind Cass’s breastbone. This was the third brunch in a row Raina had blown off. “Why?”
“Her husband is sick, and she needs to stay with the kids.”
Last time she bailed, she had needed to bring her daughter to a Mommy and Me ballet class. The time before that had been an emergency trip to the craft store to make party favours for her son’s birthday after her husband had done the unthinkable and bought Superman plates instead of Spiderman.
But kids ranked over friends. Every time.
“Of course. Understandable,” Cass said softly, and pulled up in front of the diner. At least now she wouldn’t have to sit through another of Raina’s monologues about Cass and Libby getting back into the dating pool. The shallow, toxic dating pool. At least she assumed it still was.
Chatter and the clinking of cutlery poured through the diner’s front door, and the familiar scent of sausages and hash browns wafted over her. While the staff had rotated through a hundred university students slinging greasy breakfasts between classes, the yellow paint and black-and-white tiled floors hadn’t changed since before she could tie her shoes.
Cass waved at the line chef through the pass-through window, who smiled back. They’d gone on a couple dates a few years ago, but Cass broke it off when he insisted he wasn’t looking for anything serious. The awkward introduction to his new girlfriend when they ran into each other at the grocery store a few months later proved he was fine with something serious. Just not with her.
He still slipped extra slices of bacon on her plate as a gesture of goodwill.
More bacon instead of lame dates watching him play acoustic guitar? A decent trade, honestly. Besides, it stopped being weird seeing him several situationships ago.
Jill sat solo at their usual booth and sprang up to greet her and Libby with a crushing hug. Cass slid across the red plastic bench, worn smooth by the butts of a thousand families before them, Libby crashing in after her in a storm of faded turquoise hair.
Cass picked strands of Libby’s hair out of her mouth and didn’t bother asking where the other girls were. They would all be variations of the same excuse. Kids, significant others, work.
At least ever since Jill joined their circle, the only brunch date she’d missed was when she’d been out of town. Even if it meant she came straight from the shelter with cat hair still on her clothes.
Cass would take a cat hair-covered friend over an absent friend any day .
Their server circled by their table seconds later for their orders, and Cass turned to her friend who was always pretty, but today glowed like she had swallowed the sun.
“So, is it just us today?” Jill was shredding her napkin into ribbons, and from the way she was jackhammering in her seat, Cass knew her friend’s foot was bobbing in triple time under the table.
“Yep!” Cass forced a cheerful smile. “We could probably start booking a smaller booth?—”
“Alex proposed yesterday!” Jill blurted out.
Cass let out a whoop and jumped around to the other side of the booth. “Congratulations!”
“Tell us all about it! Leave out no detail,” Libby said, sliding in from the other side and smooshed their beaming friend between them.
Jill described a day of coffee in bed that started hours earlier than Cass could fathom, a monster hike that made her tired just listening to it, and a blushing allusion to some frisky hands along the summit that … actually, that part sounded pretty good.
A couple of years with only her vibrator for company was getting stale.
“… and then I was screaming yes! at the top of my lungs before Alex could even get the words out,” Jill finished with a breathless laugh.
If there was any proposal more perfect for her friend, Cass couldn’t think of it.
“Lemme see the ring,” Cass said, making grabby motions with her hands.
Jill flushed but held out her left hand to show off a modest antique ring, and Cass swallowed a sudden wistfulness that threaded her stomach.
Another friend moving on to marriage, and likely motherhood, turning her attention to the new chapter in her life.
At least my first emotion was joy for her, and not sadness at losing another friend .
“I’m so happy for you,” Cass said, and any remaining heaviness faded with her friend’s shining eyes. “Any dates planned yet?”
“Alex would get married this afternoon if he had it his way, but we don’t know where we’re going to have it, let alone when.”
Libby took a swig of her coffee. “Just elope and skip all the annoying details. Family drama? Trying to decide on what colour of tablecloth? No, thanks.”
“As tempting as eloping sounds, we have people we want to be there with us.”
Already turning into we instead of me . Cass hitched her smile up her cheeks. “I’m sure you already have a wedding planning app downloaded.”
A blush crept up her friend’s neck. “Three of them. But if I have to delete another push notification threatening wedding annihilation if I don’t decide on save-the-date invitation fonts eighteen months in advance, I’ll just cave to Alex and use APA standard formatting.”
Libby snorted. “Ah, engineers are so romantic.”
“In his own way,” Jill said, grinning into her pancakes.
From her friend’s smile, it sounded like Jill’s boyfriend—wait, make that fiancé—was the right kind of romantic for her. No surprise, really. One crook of her finger and the man would break an ankle running to her. If Jill wanted a unicorn to officiate their ceremony, Alex would find a way.
Cass swallowed a bite of her French toast. “I’m just glad you still came to brunch today. You’ll probably be too busy soon, planning everything.”
“I wouldn’t miss spending time with you two,” Jill said, tsking.
Lots of friends had said that before. But then girlfriends stepped out of the single scene, trading weekend trips for wedding planning. Sunday mimosas for management positions. New jobs that meant longer hours. Kids at soccer practice instead of new art exhibits. That was how it went.
Cass gave a weak smile and hoped this time would be different. “Good,” she said.
“It’s been forty seconds of wedding planning talk and it’s already stressing me out,” Jill said, fanning her face. “New topic. You guys seem tired. Rough morning on set?”
Libby wobbled her head, and Cass shrugged. Yesterday had gone long. Again. Then Terry, the show’s production coordinator, had called her that morning to solve an emergency wardrobe issue on her day off. Granted, no one else could fix the ripped costumes with her speed or skill.
But it was the same the week before, and the one before that. Until there was a year and a half of back-to-back films and tv shows without a vacation under her belt.
Cass yawned just thinking about it.
“So, it wasn’t a date keeping you out last night?” Jill asked.
Dating in your thirties? That was the opposite of stress relief. Besides, she was busy. With work. And her friends.
It had nothing to do with a certain someone ghosting her and bruising every part of her already fragile ego. She was getting enough questions from her mom.
“That’s the last thing I need,” she said.
“But it would be nice to get laid again,” Libby said. Her dry spell was even longer than Cass’s.
“You have men falling all over you, Elizabeth. You can say yes every once in a while.”
“Or at least have some fun,” Jill replied, pulling back her ashy blonde hair into a low ponytail before diving into her pancakes. “You two have been going at a thousand miles an hour for as long as I’ve known you.”
Cass shrugged. “You met me at a busy point in my life.”
“A year and a half is longer than a bit. And not all dates end in flames.”
The last date she’d been on ended in a pathetic fizzle, complete with slinking away without saying goodbye.
But the night hadn’t been a total loss. The night Cass had finally declared she was swearing off Nick Martin for real, she met one of the best friends she’d made in her life. While Nick had collected numbers from various women that night, Cass had finagled a woman’s number, too, and Jill had been welcomed into the fold of friends like she had been there since elementary school.
Libby brushed off the hint. “Don’t talk about the Flames. They suck.”
“That may be, but you both still deserve a break,” Jill said.
Enter the champion of work-life balance. Cass jutted out her chin. “We do deserve some fun. I’m ordering extra whipped cream.”
“Whipped cream just leads to yeast infections,” Libby said.
“Ew! I had different plans for the whipped cream.”
“For once, whipped cream is not the answer. I know exactly how to fix this.” Jill sat straighter, her eyes sparkling. “We’ve been talking about going on a girls’ weekend forever. Just the three of us.”
It would have been the five of them. But Raina hadn’t left her kids for more than a couple hours, like her husband was a third child she needed to supervise, and Phoebe was on an open-ended honeymoon and had given no indication of when she was coming home. Cass sighed at the thought of two more friends, slipping into acquaintances.
“Vegas or Vancouver? I bet I can find cheap flights,” Jill continued, cutting into her thoughts. Her phone was already in her hands, scrolling deals.
A weekend getaway would be amazing. Candlelit bubble baths were all well and good, but this relaxation called for a bit more than that. Plus, even for an indoor cat like herself, it had been a long, snowy winter, and a change of scenery could be the ticket.
“Think Alex will let you out of his sight for three whole days?” Cass asked to gauge if Jill’s interest was sincere.
“Alex doesn’t let me do anything. Besides, I like it when he gets a chance to miss me.”
“Love it,” Libby said. “Next weekend?”
Jill looked horrified. “I was thinking later this summer would be a perfect amount of time to plan a spontaneous weekend.”
“It’s March. Six months from now is not spontaneous. Anyway, I hate Vegas. I vote for Vancouver,” Libby wheedled. “C’mon. We’ve been talking about having a girls’ weekend for a year.”
Cass lit up. “There’s a new indie film fest in the West End next month, and I bet there’s a fun run Sunday morning for Jill while Libs and I sleep in.”
“Next month?” Jill said and paused her scroll of the flight list.
“We can look for a race with a cute shirt,” Libby pressed, and Cass snickered.
Movies for them, and a race for Jill. Maybe a spa visit for the three of them? It sounded perfect.
Jill looked both nauseated and determined. “Okay, one month from now. Let’s do this,” she said, and tipped her head back down to her phone. “Ha, flight sale.” Jill flashed her screen with a triumphant grin.
A pleasant surge rolled through Cass. This trip had been hypothetical for almost a year. She didn’t think it would happen.
Cass beamed. “When are the flights?”
The weekend unfolded, exactly as Jill had planned. Spa treatments leached every ounce of tension out of them, even though Libby complained the seaweed wrap made her feel more like a sushi roll rather than detoxified. A tasting menu at dinner, that Cass thought was more of a social media influencer’s dream than a foodie’s dream. Then a 10k race in the morning for Jill, complete with a cute shirt.
Even though everything was perfect, Cass didn’t think Jill would talk to either her or Libby ever again.
The theatre had seen better days. Generations of feet had worn the lobby’s blue-and-green patterned carpets threadbare, and the scent of fake butter and stale popcorn suffused the poorly circulated air. The jacquard curtains that bordered the screen had faded splotches where the spotlights had shone for decades. Cass had to squint through most of the film, the projector’s bulb on its last legs, and had sunk deep into a seat that had lost its springs two prime ministers ago. But none of that mattered.
The film played out with a creeping dread that crawled up the back of her neck and down her throat, the negative space layering a cold eeriness over every minute, changing the meaning of the scene before. Her blood pressure had spiked a dozen times, and her fingers were still getting circulation back from Jill gripping them. Cass had gasped out loud at the end. Not from a jump scare, but from the lack of oxygen as she held her breath, waiting for the characters to break out of the futile prison of their own making. She’d been riveted from the opening credits to curtain close.
“That was brilliant. The use of shadow? Silence? The waiting?” Cass gushed to her friends as they spilled out of the theatre and into the lobby. She pressed the back of her freezing fingers to her flushed cheeks. “What did you think?”
“That was terrible,” Jill answered, still shaking and sounding queasy. “I hate you both. Forever.”
“You love us. And if you need an extra boost of energy at the race tomorrow, you can just think about the ending,” Libby said, grinning.
“That is not helpful!” Jill squeaked. “I have to pee.”
Cass gave Jill a reassuring squeeze, then pulled Libby into a triple hug. “I’ll wait here and find our next movie, and I promise nothing scary enough to give you nightmares.”
“Won’t be a problem. I don’t think I’m sleeping for the next six months, anyway.”
Libby supported Jill to the washrooms, where there was more light and therefore less terrifying, and Cass turned her attention back to the programme.
Oblivion was hands down the best indie film she’d seen in the last few years, even with its rough spots. If it had been playing again, she would have jumped into the next screening. It had already been asking a lot to get scaredy-cat Jill to see the horror film they’d just left, and Libby had put in a request to see a rom-com.
No romances to be had, comedic or otherwise, but if they left now, they could hit a dark comedy. The reviews were mixed, but she’d worked with the guy who had done the sound design.
Actually, the dark comedy wouldn’t be comforting enough, and Cass searched the list for the sci-fi she knew was playing in a couple hours.
“Not a bad line up this year.”
The voice of raw silk spoke from just above her shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered shut to let it sink in. She almost wanted to break into song, so sure that his smooth low tones would complement her clear soprano. When none came, she turned to follow the words, and her own stopped.
Eyes like green ice narrowed down at her through fine black lashes. His thick black hair shagged in unruly waves around his face, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut diamonds. An old long-sleeved concert tee clung to his crossed arms, and distressed jeans hugged his long legs, all faded, all black, and showing off his sinuous frame. A climber’s body. No, with how he moved with a casual grace, a dancer’s body. Panther-like, purposeful. Like he knew exactly how he took up space, with that half-scowl, half-smile looking nothing short of trouble. Or a good time.
Or both.
She blinked twice and cleared her throat. “It’s looking really good.”