“To Pete,” Mark said, raising his cup.
“To Pete!” the roomful of people repeated. Red cups rose towards the ceiling. Cassidy lifted hers, but her arm felt like lead and some of the beer spilled onto the floor.
When she drank the toast, the warmed beer wet her parched throat but tasted like metal. She put it down on the coffee table and curled into Emily.
The people in the room milled about. Someone turned the music back on. Emily and Tara both got up to use the bathroom. Cassidy watched the people swirl about the room. Some people were leaving. Some cast furtive glances her way but didn’t approach, as if her grief was contagious. Wren swooped in and gushed her condolences again, hugging her too tightly and for too long. Cassidy did not see Analeise again. Finally, well after midnight, only a few guests remained. Cassidy realized that someone had cleaned the kitchen, even taken out the trash. When had that happened?
Fragments of conversation floated by her.
“ . . . so they didn’t find a cause?”
“ . . . signs of deer crossing the road.”
“It wasn’t the bike?”
“ . . . fully checked it but it was solid.”
“The report . . . ”
“Seventy? That seems reckless, even for Pete.”
After a while, Cassidy realized that she had been glued to the couch, spacing out. God, I’m a mess, she thought.
Then Mark and Emily were standing above her with tired faces. “She needs to go to bed,” Emily was saying.
“I got ’er,” Mark said, and bent down to scoop her up. With a whoosh, Cassidy was in the air and the room spun. “Whoaaa,” she said, gripping Mark’s neck.
“Easy,” Emily said. “She’s pretty toasted.”
Mark walked to Emily’s room, which was dark and cool. The window was open and Cassidy heard the tip-tapping drops of rain on the hydrangea leaves outside. Mark placed her on the bed; someone removed her shoes. She felt Mark’s hand brush the hairs from her forehead. Cassidy started to cry.
“Shit,” Emily said. “I was hoping she’d just conk out.”
“I’ll stay with her for a minute,” Mark said. Cassidy felt his weight on the bed.
“You sure?” Emily replied, and even through her fog Cassidy could read the concern in her voice.
“Yeah,” Mark’s voice sounded unnaturally high and whispery.
Emily’s shadow moved to the doorway, and then Cassidy heard the door softly close.
Twenty-Two
Casa de Rocas, Seattle, Washington
November 25, 2016
Mark stroked her forehead for a long time. Then the bed shifted with his rising to leave.
“Don’t go,” Cassidy said, reaching for him.
Mark lowered back onto the bed and wrapped his arms around her. Cassidy began to cry harder, and felt Mark’s tears drop to her cheek. His warm, strong body cradled hers, and a pulse of heat warmed her insides. Cassidy’s heart cracked wide open. She wanted Pete, but Pete was gone. Holding Mark was wrong, but why did it feel good?
Mark sniffed. “He loved you so much,” he said. “He’d get this look in his eye sometimes when he talked about you,” Mark said softly.
Cassidy tried to imagine Pete’s grey-blue eyes, but it was hard through her haze and the dull headache blooming in the back of her brain.
“He loved that you could kick his ass on the slopes,” Mark said. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest against hers. “And that you surfed those giant waves.”
“I don’t surf giant waves,” Cassidy complained, her stuffy nose warping her words.
“They seemed like giants to him, a farm kid from Hicksville.”
“I got to see his room at his parent’s house,” Cassidy said, remembering the soccer trophies and race ribbons, the shelves of books, the stuffed animals on his bed, as if a ten-year old boy would come bouncing in at any moment.
“How’d that feel?” Mark asked. Though she couldn’t see his face, she could picture his grimace.
“Weird. He was there, though,” she said, then had to stop because of a new wave of tears crowded into her throat. “I feel for his parents. He’s their only child . . . ” The thought overwhelmed her and the tears started up again.
Mark pulled her tighter and she cried for a while.
Waves of pain like giant boulders rolled over her. “There’s so many things I never got to tell him,” she said. She reached up to wipe her face but found her nose running and her sleeve already wet.
Mark noticed. “Here,” he said, offering the cuff of his Henley. “There’s a bare spot right there,” he added, pointing to it.
An unexpected bubble of laughter escaped her lips. Their eyes met in the darkness.
“Go on,” he said with a small grin. “Your snot can mix with mine. We’ll be like snot brothers,” he added. “Or snot brother-sisters, or something.”
Cassidy laughed again, and wiped her nose hard against his sleeve. Their eyes met again, and her blood raced with a swirl of emotions.
Mark leaned down to kiss her, and she realized that this was what she wanted, to feel something good, something besides the hurt and the sorrow pulling at her like an undertow day after day. His kiss touched her lips, and a tingling warmth spread over her skin. She hugged his body closer as her pulse thumped in her ears.
Mark pulled back and kissed her forehead, squeezing her tight. She felt his body shudder with sobs. The tingling feeling ebbed and disappeared, and she felt herself fading into darkness. Mark’s sobs quieted and after a while, his breathing slowed. His arms relaxed around her. Finally, the heavy curtain of sleep took her away.
Cassidy woke just after nine o’clock the next morning to the sound of rain and Mark’s breathing.
She took stock of her surroundings: the gooseneck lamp on the bedside table, a book called Time Travel for Dummies, Emily’s closet doors, one half-open, the other closed, her desk a mess of papers
