Chapter Nineteen.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

↠ Cassie

"Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all."

― Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

I didn't particularly appreciate looking figures of authority in the eye. I felt as if they were always looking for an answer I did not want to reveal. I was full of incorrect responses and half-truths that were mine to keep. I liked to shield behind my lies, but unfortunately, the school counsellor knew this already, so she liked to look at me, really look.

Her name was Cynthia and she was sufficiently good at what she did but I never liked giving her the credit for it.

"So, about the future," she said as if the subject needed to be picked up when it had never been dropped in the first place.

I shrugged my shoulders. An impassive gesture that I'm sure irritated her a lot more than she was leading on. My eyes were still set on a pile of books in the left corner of the room. I tried to make it seem as if I'd found something of interest in them. "I don't know what you want me to tell you. My answer has not changed."

She shifted a little in her seat. Her expression was still tight with feigned cordiality. "Did you do that little quiz I told you about?"

"It said I should go for a major in either English Literature or History of Art. But I do not fancy working on a library or as a museum tour guide, so I ignored it."

"You could be a lot more than that. You could be an editor, a freelance writer, an art gallery manager, a conservator. There are several options that you're disregarding far too quickly." She took off her glasses and the facade came off with them. She wasn't angry at me as much as she was exasperated. Sometimes I had the feeling she wanted to grab me by the shoulders and give me a good shake. "Cassie, it is important for someone like you to have a plan."

I quirked an eyebrow. "Someone like me?"

"A former addict." She did not try to soften her words. And either way, I don't think there was a way to embellish my ugly truths. If anything, I appreciated the brutal honesty. "You were so young when you developed an addiction. I can't imagine how difficult this must have been for you. And yet you pulled through. You managed to achieve something that a lot of people cannot do in their lifetime. Have you been attending your support group meetings?"

"I have."

"I'm sure you must have talked about how important it is to plan ahead so that you're not overpowered by a feeling of hopelessness once you're faced with a particularly challenging situation?"

"We have."

"This is one of those instances, Cassie. Don't let the future catch you off guard. Be prepared." She leaned in slowly, demanding to take up space in the room and inside the chambers of my mind. "Your friends are leaving this summer. Etienne, James, and River, they're heading to London. You are aware of that, right?"

I closed off. My demeanour was hostile. My voice low and undeniably bitter. "Take a fucking guess."

She straightened up in her chair again, seemingly satisfied with how my body had reacted to her words. My right hand mindlessly scratched my left arm. A seed of doubt and uncertainty had been planted. The smile that stretched her lips had what I perceived to be a mild degree of smugness. "I just think that you should take that into consideration. Let it be an example. The boys have been preparing for this for some time now. They have a plan and they're setting it in motion. They know what university they're going to and what they'll be majoring in. James is sorting out their accommodation as we speak. The future does not have to be a scary place. It can seem intimidating at times, but it will be ten times easier to navigate if you have a plan."

I also did not like looking at my own reflection. It was always tricky business. I saw many things and many people when I looked at myself in the mirror. But, for what it's worth, I did think I looked pretty that night. It was the undeniable magic of the little black dress. Off-the-shoulder, long-sleeved, skin-tight. There was not a soul that would not look good in this sublime piece of clothing.

If I looked at myself in the mirror for too long the image would begin to distort and I would not recognise the person staring back at me. But my eyes found him before they began to scrutinise me too closely. They slid over the surface of the glass and located him standing behind me, with that toned shoulder of his pressing against the door frame as his eyes roamed up and down my body very freely. His black attire brought light to his golden skin, depth to the never-resting waves that swayed in his eyes, and a new dimension of sensuousness to his perfectly sculpted body.

"Look at you." His voice was low, husky. The corners of his lips lifted slowly into a coquettish smile that was impossibly provocative. "You look stunning."

My eyes returned to me. To the lines and the curves that made my figure. The dress was entirely too tight and there was nowhere for me to hide behind the fabric. My hands ran up and down my body as if trying to smooth down some parts. "This dress sits weird on my body. On my hips especially. Look at those dips."

His smile stretched even further. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes that shone along with something else. "I am looking."

"Are you drunk?" It shouldn't have been a question but rather an observation. The looseness in his body and the slight red tint that his eyes had acquired gave it away.

"I'm nervous." Our gazes met through our reflection. I raised an eyebrow and his smile was corrupted by childish mischief. "And tipsy, yeah. I've never done anything to celebrate Valentine's Day."

"What are you on about? We've celebrated it every year."

"As friends. I would bring you flowers and Chinese takeout and we would sit on your living room floor like we did every other day."

I turned around and he took this as an invitation to step in closer. I was trapped between the sink and his imposingly tall frame, and for a moment he was the only thing my senses knew, the only thing they could understand. The intoxicating scent of his rich cologne invaded my space and I let it because the world was a more beautiful place when it had him smeared all over. "And what's different this time around?" I asked.

"That I've put a lot more effort this time around, ma chérie." This feigned but incredibly convincing confidence that he usually carried himself with faltered for a moment, and in its absence, there was an uncharacteristic warmth on his face. It displayed a wide range of nerves and shyness. His legs were fidgety, the curve in his lips anxious, and his eyes pleaded for me not to be relentless in my teasing of him. "Since you did not feel like going out to eat at some overcrowded restaurant tonight, I decided to make something nice for us up on the rooftop terrace. Now, I know it's not much, but I tried, so please pretend to like it because I've never done anything like this before."

The rooftop should have been a difficult place for me to navigate. That was what reason suggested, at least. I know I probably should've refused to ever set foot in the place that saw my father's last moments. But it was never that to me, and I never held any sort of resentment towards that one spot in which my father had jumped to his death. Etienne and I had continued to come up here during the years that followed my father's most noteworthy tragedy. A lot of people found it bizarre that I wasn't experiencing the natural revulsion that the context called for, but I'd always liked to believe that, somewhere in his resignation to take his own life, my father had found peace. That those last seconds of his in which he'd overlooked the town before making the decision to sway forward had been beautiful ones.

My dad was not a sensitive subject anymore. He was a beautiful memory that I held onto with all of the love in the world. To imagine him standing there didn't make me particularly sentimental, but something curious happened to my heart when I caught sight of what Etienne had put together. It was simple, really. He had draped a white tablecloth over the one table that was up on the terrace and had decorated this small section of the rooftop to perfection. It covered all of the bases for a romantic evening. The candles, the flowers, the wine, the scattered red petals, and the hanging fairy lights.

A bizarre whirlwind of emotions came crashing down over me. I could feel it pressing down on my chest, not letting me breathe properly. Or at all. I couldn't really tell what I was thinking or feeling. I was just focusing on swallowing back this strange sound that wanted to climb up my throat and that felt strikingly like a sob only no tears were threatening to escape from my eyes.

No one had ever done something like that for me, and he'd never done something like that for anyone else. We met at a point of mutual discomfort. One that intertwined with feelings neither one of us was smart enough to dissect. I think that's what was so exciting about all of this. That we were both drowning, and we didn't know at which sea, or where to go, or how to save ourselves. We were left to die and all we could do was laugh about the absurdity of it all.

The anxious Etienne that I knew so very well reached the surface, and I knew it would take him a long time to collect himself enough to play the assertive young man he always pretended to be. This was new for him as well and he needed to be reassured that he had done a good job or else he would drown for good. He had run his hands up his face and now his fingers were in his hair, tangling the loose dirty blond waves that would go on to sit pretty on his head even though they'd been tousled because he was effortlessly beautiful like that.

"The sushi is from that fancy place that opened near James' house. He says it's really good. I ordered a bunch of stuff to see what you like best. And I got the wine from Charles. I haven't tried it myself but Charles say it's good so I guess we're gonna have to take his word for it." The words slipped from his lips rapidly and irrationally. He explained himself as if any of this needed justification. "Listen, I know it's not much. I tried to set up the whole thing to look nice but now that I look at it it does kind of look silly."

"Are you insane? This is perfect."

He threw his head back but I could still see the grimace that twisted his facial features. "It's not."

"It is," I insisted, this time with more conviction in my voice. "I love everything about this. I really do."

He interlaced his fingers behind his neck, and I must not lie and say I did not love the melodramatic nature of that man. "I overdid it. It's too cliche with the petals and the candles and all of that."

"Don't be silly," I chuckled as I snaked my hands up his chest and into his shoulder. "Etienne, I love it. You did a great job."

Life became laughable during instances such as these. When you feel something running through your veins, reverberating inside of your bones, and you think to yourself this is what happiness probably feels like. So you hold on to that feeling. You hold on with bloodied hands and a deathly grip. You know it will abandon you. You know it is fleeting. But you want it to leave a mark. You want to keep the scars in your hands as a reminder that it truly did happen. And you will look back and feel everything exactly the way you did at the moment because you knew how to hold on.

The currents of air were cold but the wine was strong enough to give our skin an electric feeling. The town looked pretty enough if you greeted it as an old friend rather than a love interest. We talked about life as if we had a genuine understanding of all the lessons we'd had to face and were not two drunken idiots who did not know how to carry the burdens they'd been given. Our past felt like a series of insignificant anecdotes told by a third party.

I became something lesser that night. I became a mere character in his story, and I found a particular liberation in that. I was his to break, to deplete, to bend to his liking. My life was in his hands. The decision was his. He would get to dictate what would be of me and of this convoluted mess of events that made up my existence. I let go of the reins and basked in a vulnerability that had always broken me but not this time.

It wasn't long before we were back in my apartment. I was dancing around the living room barefoot and holding a half-empty bottle of wine. He was storing our leftovers before he pulled a chair from the dining table and placed it near the record player to inspect the music selection. It was my father's collection—all classics from the sixties to the eighties. I got dizzy from spinning and broke into a fit of giggles before I swallowed back a mouthful of that sweet but not overly-so wine. Etienne looked up from the vinyl record cover of a Bob Dylan album with a slight quirk on the left side of his mouth and reached out a hand for me to pass him the wine.

I handed him the bottle and sat on my knees on the couch nearest to him. "Did James sort out the flat situation in London yet?" I asked, keeping a flatness in my tone that had me sounding unconcerned and detached. It was my level of inebriation that had helped me feign the perfect nonchalance. I acted as if the question was not lingering over us with a menacing presence. I could see it spelt out in the thin air along with all of the subliminal messages that hid behind it. Do you know where your new home will be once you move away and leave me here? Had the wine been stronger maybe my tongue would've been more courageous, but instead, I hid behind a sweet smile while something inside of me trembled.

He looked up from the vinyl cover once again only this time it was for only a couple of seconds before he dragged his inattentive gaze back to the black ink. "Oh, we're not talking about London."

His words had not curved with any particular sentiment. It wasn't a sensitive subject that he demanded I avoid. It didn't bring him any degree of merriment either. And this was concerning because I loved living inside of Etienne's head. It was my favourite place to explore, and so to be denied an entrance to his train of thoughts felt like torture. I wanted to know how he felt about his departure to London. I wanted to know whether he was excited about starting a new chapter in his life or whether the thought of it stirred something unpleasant in his gut. I wanted to see where he had placed me in this heap of concepts and assumptions.

I threw myself back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. I could not see him this way because the back of the couch was in between us. We were two voices and a back and forth over uncharted territory. "Why not?"

"We're pretending it's not happening."

"But it is."

"But we're pretending it's not. What is it that you said? Live in the moment and whatnot?"

"We can live in the moment and also casually discuss that you're moving to London this summer. Hell, we can pretend to be excited, just for the laughs."

"Well, if you want to casually discuss the future then I guess we should talk about your future as well."

I rolled my eyes and sat up again. "Oh, don't start," I huffed. I knew it was only fair for him to want to peek into my brain, but I could not envision my existence outside of whichever perimeter he was in. If Etienne was gone, I quite simply had no future. I wished people could understand that and take it for what it was instead of trying to force an image into our brains that would quite simply not materialise. I was fine with this, with what I had right now.

I was but would not be for much longer. It was that easy, that uncomplicated.

His eyes followed me as I stood up and went to pick on our leftovers. I could feel the kindness in them that attempted to soothe the discomfort of these conversations. He placed the record aside with a sigh and gifted me the entirety of his attention, although I wasn't sure I wanted it at the moment. "How did your meeting with Cynthia go?"

"Just like every other."

"Did you tell her you're considering looking into art schools?"

My brows twisted with a frown that came with comical ease. "No. Because I'm not."

He was vaguely disappointed by my response. Vaguely, because he had been expecting it. The pleadings that he voiced mirrored the ones that gave more depth to his features. "Come on, ma chérie. There's a ton of incredible schools around. You could go to Glasgow, to Edinburgh, to London."

I grabbed the wine bottle from him and walked towards the TV stand, where I knelt in search of absolutely nothing. To London. I could follow him. We could start again together. But the idea died as quickly as it had been born. I stomped all over the tiny spark of hope myself. "The only problem is that they would never accept me."

"Of course they would."

"I'm not an artist."

"Of course you are. You're an incredible artist. You're gifted."

"And you're biased. There's nothing groundbreaking about my art."

He stood and mindlessly fiddled with my father's records while my own fingers senselessly traced the small collection of DVDs on the far right corner of the stand. "Because you limit yourself too much. But the talent's there and you know it."

"It's a far too ambitious move."

"And you lose nothing by having some crazy wild confidence." Eventually, he switched the record on the turntable for one I did not recognise because I did not pay sufficient attention. His mindful silence told me that he was scrutinising his own thoughts with a severity that made me nervous. But when his thoughts finally converted into words that were for me to keep in my possession forever, I found myself staggered by the irrefutable sincerity with which he spoke them. "I believe in you, you know?"

He said it as if it were one of those constant and unequivocal things in life. There are sixty seconds to a minute and Jupiter is the fastest-spinning planet in our solar system, did you know that, ma chérie? Oh, and I believe in you even though you've done nothing in your life to prove that you're mature and trustworthy enough.

He came to sit on the couch nearest to me and I watched him with doe eyes that could not control the turmoil in them. I was still crouching down and felt my arms wrap around my legs in an instinctive attempt to self-soothe.

"I believe you'll become a renowned artist in the future. You'll have your own art galleries. Your paintings will be up in museums. People will line up to watch your art. And I'll be the first in line each and every time, talking everyone's ears off about how crazy talented you are. I believe it. Wholeheartedly."