Page 20 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

XIX

When I wake up in the morning, my parents are already home. I can smell coffee brewing in the kitchen and hear my dad bustling around, conferring with my mom about various pieces of mail that arrived while they were away.

I give myself five minutes to stare at the ceiling, unmoving. Seeing my parents—especially at home—always feels like a head-on collision with the ghost of Before Cassidy. They loved her better than anyone. But what’s really crazy is that they love After Cassidy too.

At first, when the scandal was still fresh, I almost wanted them to be mad at me. To be as furious with me as I was with myself. Now I just feel guilty about everything I’ve put them through—and how much I pushed them away in the process. I guess that’s an improvement, but not by much.

I make myself get up and brush my teeth.

I put on clothes and head downstairs where my parents are sitting at the kitchen table.

They look way better than they should for a pair of jet-lagged sixty-somethings.

Probably better than I do. My dad’s “There she is!!” is so loud and joyful, I wince.

“We slept on the plane!” my mom announces as she hugs me. “Ambien is a wonder drug.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be so chipper this afternoon,” my dad assures me. “Do you want breakfast? We were thinking about making eggs.”

My mom again: “They cook them in so much butter in France.”

I take a second to appreciate their easy back-and-forth. Whatever my romantic fuckups and hang-ups are, they sure aren’t my parents’ fault.

“I’ll take some buttery eggs. Can I help?”

“I need to stretch my legs,” my dad says. “You take a seat. Tell us how everything went while we were gone.”

I give them an edited version: working at Willa’s. Taking some time to think about my “career goals” and realizing that I might need to “reassess my priorities,” which is the code I’ve settled on for easing them into Surprise! I hate my job, and I need to leave it.

I feel weird about not bringing Leon up at all.

But they read me too well, and his is a name they’d recognize.

I’m terrified that as soon as I say it, they’ll ask the right questions, and I’ll give myself away.

I’ll reveal, at least on my face, that there are feelings there—and that I don’t know what to do with them.

Of course, they’re not combing my stories for holes. They’re mostly excited to tell me about their two weeks in Paris. They hit the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and Père Lachaise and ate just about every pastry they came across.

My dad is telling me a story about a museum full of taxidermy when I realize I have to go if I don’t want to be late. “Sorry,” I say, grabbing my bag.

“I’ll be here all week!” he jokes. “And so will you!”

I have no idea how I feel about that—add it to the list—and I give them both a kiss before I head out.

I want to check in with Leon—make sure the cloud that passed over his face last night has dissipated.

But when I arrive at the store, there’s no time.

The drain issue seems solvable, but for the time being, we don’t have an operational bathroom, and the plumbers have rearranged everything in the back room, so we also can’t find anything we need.

The only good news is that they assure us that we should be in shape for our Wednesday opening. Two days from now. I throw myself into the work so hard that eventually it’s 3p.m. and I haven’t eaten lunch.

I grab a sandwich Willa ordered earlier out of the fridge and go to the parking lot in back. It isn’t remotely scenic, but I need a break from the bustle and noise inside the store.

I’m playing a dumb game on my phone when I see a call from a number I don’t recognize. Normally I wouldn’t pick up, but Willa has been trying to arrange a drop-off with a florist, and since she’s out running another errand, she gave them my number instead.

“Hi,” a voice on the other end of the line says when I answer. “Is this Cassidy Weaver?”

Did Willa give them my name? My full name? Alarm bells start to go off, but I’m still too distracted—too deep into my current world and reality—to identify their origin.

“Yes.”

“This is Mark Treinen calling with Us Weekly . We’re running a story about Cooper Abbot getting remarried, and I was hoping to get your comment on—”

“Fuck off .” I end the call, but my hands are already shaking.

I crouch down and press my back against the metal door.

I drop my head between my knees. Sometimes, no matter what I do or how far I pull myself away, it all comes flooding back.

The chased-animal feeling of being cornered and terrified.

My brain repeating on a loop, This is bad, this is bad, this is so bad.

How it felt to see my own flirty texts in black-and-white newsprint.

Leggy, pouty-lipped pictures of me pulled off Instagram and shoved onto tabloids’ bright pages.

The mix of fear and guilt and heartbreak—because I was, briefly, stupid enough to believe that Cooper Abbott loved me.

How I spent the whole first day waiting for him to call and say, Don’t worry, babe. We’ll get through this together.

I fucked up so badly once. I cannot fuck up like that again.

I block the number that called and tap through to find an old familiar setting on my phone: Silence Unknown Callers. I’d switched it off just six months ago, thinking I was finally in the clear. Oh, sweet, naive Cassidy. The public’s attention span is short, but its memory is long.

I’m still out there when Willa’s car pulls up. It’s probably only been ten minutes, but it feels like hours.

“Hey,” she says. “I ended up stopping by the florist to grab the—” She gives me a look that lets me know that whatever I’m feeling, it’s showing on my face. “Are you okay?”

I nod like a puppet on a string. I’m not, but she has enough on her plate right now. I force a smile and hope it looks at least mildly convincing. “Totally,” I say. “Just tired. Are the vases in the truck? I’ll grab them?”

I spend that evening, and the next, at Leon’s house. When we have sex, I focus on how it feels in my body and experience the pleasure there. And for brief stretches of time, I get to ignore everything happening in my brain.

But I don’t stay the night. Every time I try to imagine telling my parents that I’m seeing someone—let alone Leon—an icy panic starts to wrap around my chest. I get the same sensation when I think about telling Leon about the phone call.

Part of me really wants to. I’m sure he would be good about it, the way he was at the bar.

Let me say whatever I needed to say. Feel what I needed to feel.

But really opening up to him about how complicated this part of my life still is would also mean broaching another layer of intimacy, one that feels like a burden.

Sometimes I get so sick of having to manage my mental health and deal with my trauma .

I have enough regular problems without diving into all of my special ones.

I’m aware that I’m not making the best decisions. I let myself make them anyway.