Chapter 17: Cass Cries

Cass found me at ten that night, alone in the ballroom, checking the pens.

She came in through the side door without her coat. Her mascara had run.

"Vic," she said. "Please. Five minutes."

I put down the pen box.

"You've got four," I said.

She sat on the edge of the riser and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

I had seen Cass cry on command for nine years.

This was different. Her shoulders shook and her nose ran, and she made no attempt to look pretty.

"I need you to know something before tomorrow," she said.

"What?"

"And I need you to not say anything until I'm done."

"I'm not promising that."

"Carson was mine first."

I waited.

"Freshman summer. Before you ever met him. We were at his family's lake house for three weeks."

She laughed, wet and awful.

"I thought, this is the one. He kissed me on the dock. Then he went back to school and didn't call me for a year."

"I didn't know that."

"Because I never told you."

"No," I said. "You didn't."

"I introduced you at that party."

She looked up at me.

"I wanted him to see me with my best friend and think, she's fun. Instead he looked at you. Everybody looked at you."

"Cass."

"You got the RA job. You got the hotel. You got the good boss and the nice mother and Carson."

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