Losing Cassie Read online

  My limo turned up right on the strike of seven. My mom had hired it for me. She’d kept the details pretty quiet and I was surprised to find a candy pink stretch Hummer waiting for me. It was pretty cool. It would have been cooler if I’d had someone to show it off to, though.

  The driver was waiting to open the door for me. I walked over to him without dropping my eyes to the ground once. I wasn’t going to let anybody see that my pride had been stomped on. I wasn’t going to let anybody see that going to the prom without a date bothered me.

  “Excuse me, miss?” the driver said quietly, once I’d settled into my seat. “Am I waiting for anybody else or are we good to go?”

  Geez, it was going to be a lot harder acting like I didn’t care if people were just going to bring it up every five minutes. “It’s just me,” I said sharply, because I couldn’t help myself. The driver closed the door and got into the front seat.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said through the small partition. “It’s just that you got an awfully big car for just the one person.”

  “You didn’t upset me,” I lied quickly. “Why would I care about the mistakes a driver makes?”

  He looked disappointed and the conversation died. I turned my attention away from him. I didn’t have the energy or the desire to worry about his hurt feelings. I had enough going on in my own life. I was about to go to a prom where my ex-boyfriend and best friend would be together. The driver couldn’t compete with that.

  It didn’t take long for the limo to get to the school. I could hear music flooding out of the open doors and my stomach started to flip as I waited for the driver to open my door.

  “Thank you,” I said, giving a little nod, as I stepped out. I felt stupid. I suddenly wondered if I was supposed to tip him.

  “I’ll be waiting out here for when you’re finished,” he said stiffly.

  I walked away from him. I had to get into the building, before my nerves became too shaky. I followed the sound of the music until I reached the main hall.

  I could see hundreds of pure white fairy lights draped across the ceiling. They looked as though somebody had stolen the stars straight out of the sky. The slow, romantic music pulled through the air, so that the whole atmosphere was alive with the possibility of a thousand maybes.

  “I’m surprised you came,” a deeply sarcastic voice called out from behind me. I turned and found Sam, the yearbook guy, standing behind me. “You look surprised,” he said, when I didn’t move or say anything. “Didn’t you think I would be here either?”

  I laughed. “I can’t say that I’d thought about it.”

  “So do I take it you’ve taken your cheating bum of an ex back then?” Sam asked with a look of scorn that was really rattling my cage. “I know you’re not the smartest girl in the school,” he paused for effect. “But, I thought you had more sense than that.”

  “I haven’t got back with Eric,” I said flatly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  He looked at me curiously. It was a kind of curiosity that seemed overly familiar and I wasn’t sure whether or not I felt uncomfortable being the focus of his attention.

  “So, you’re here with someone else?”

  “What’s it to you?” my eyes narrowed as I took in the suit that he was wearing. It had been tailored. I could tell from the way that it highlighted his shoulders, but didn’t shout that he’d had it specially fitted.

  Sam cleaned up well, I had to admit. He looked better than I’d ever seen him look. He’d even pulled his messy brown hair into some kind of style that highlighted the way his cheekbones used the light to create highlights and shadows across his face.

  “I’m just making conversation,” he shrugged. “Who’s the guy then?”

  “Who’s what guy?”

  “Who is your date to the prom?”

  I sighed. He wasn’t going to let it go. “I’m not here with anyone,” I told him without meeting his eyes. It was bullshit that I’d been forced to say that twice already. “Are you happy now?”

  “Why would that make me happy?” he asked me with a confused look that had no purpose being on his face. I knew that he hated me. He’d made that clear when we’d met for the yearbook interview. He probably loved the fact that I was at the prom alone.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend to go to?” I scanned the crowd and tried to pick her out, even though I hadn’t the first clue about who she might be.

  “We broke up a couple of days ago,” Sam said.

  I turned in surprise. I hadn’t been updated on the fact that we now we now seemed to be on a sharing basis with each other. So much in common: we even got dumped in the very same month!

  “She said that she wanted to go to college without any baggage.”

  “That sucks.” I wasn’t really sure what I should say. I didn’t know him, not really, but what I did know of him I didn’t much like. I didn’t really feel comfortable trying to console him, even though I knew a good person would probably try to.

  “Yeah, we were together for like two years.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How don’t you know?” I asked with more intensity than I’d intended.

  “I guess I just always knew something like this would happen,” he admitted. “It’s like I was prepared for us breaking up since we first got together. You can’t really open yourself up properly to love when you know that it’s going to end.”

  “You spent your entire relationship waiting for it to end?”

  He shook his head. “Not waiting for it to end, just accepting the fact that it probably would.”

  “Why would you stay in a relationship that you thought would end? Wasn’t that just a big waste of your time?”

  “No, not really,” he said firmly. “I enjoyed the time that I had with her.”

  Without noticing or intending it, we had moved together to one side of the door so other people could come in or stagger out. We had moved into a sort of zone where we were two people together, rather than two people who happened to be in the same space by accident.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know this might seem weird, but do you want to dance?”

  We turned at the same time and looked at the dance floor, as if we were on a quest and a dragon that had to be slain might emerge from there. I wanted to tell that image to Sam, but I realized I didn’t even know him well enough to know if he would get it.

  He was avoiding looking at me now. “I always kind of thought that I’d have at least one dance at my prom, didn’t you?”

  “You want me to dance with you?” The idea seemed ridiculous. He was a loser. He’d always been a shadowy guy with odd interests, and I was meant to be one of the popular kids. I wasn’t meant to be dancing with nobodies. I was meant to be dancing with the captain of the football team.

  Of course, I’d had my chance at that and blown it.

  “Is the idea really that far-fetched?” he asked dryly, as he took in the expression on my face. “I mean, the prom is meant to be about dancing.”

  He had a point. I couldn’t go to prom without at least having one dance.

  “Okay,” I nodded my head.

  “There’s no need to make it sound like such a labour to you,” he said. “I can dance, you know.” He took my hand, so that he could lead me out onto the floor, but I pulled on his hand to keep him from moving. He turned to me with a question in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s just, please don’t take this wrong, you’re not the person I was hoping to be here with.”

  “And you think that out of all the girls at this school I would have picked you?” he raised his eyebrow. “Believe me, you may have sat on top of the ladder, but that doesn’t mean that everybody is looking up at you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I just think you’re going to be surprised by how far you have to fall,” Sam said lightly, as though my life crashing an
d burning was nothing but passing news to him. Which I suppose it was.

  The music changed and he pulled my body close to his. He was a bit taller than me, and the sudden feel of his abs pressing against my chest sent a new feeling flowing throughout my veins. It was a buzzing, excitement over someone new.

  “Will you be free to do the yearbook interview again tomorrow?” he asked me, as his lips brushed across the top of my head. Shivers raced down my spine and I found myself temporarily unable to talk.

  “Sure, I guess I could meet you tomorrow,” I said when my voice came back. “Do you want to come over to my place?”

  “Sure,” he spun me around and then pulled me quickly back to his body, as though I was the only thing in the world that he needed. I fell back against his body and ours eyes met for the briefest of moments, before we both quickly looked away.

  What was happening? How could meeting Sam’s eyes make me feel so uncomfortable? Where was the hatred that I’d been sure he had for me?

  CHAPTER 8

  “You’re going to need to give me a real answer this time,” Sam warned me, as he set up a small microphone which would record everything that I said.

  “I gave you a real answer last time,” I said. I was feeling blah and flabby. Most of that I put down to it being the day after the prom, but part of it was me being angry with me that I wasn’t presenting better for Sam. Presenting well was one of the things I was supposed to be able to do automatically.

  He smiled. It wasn’t a smile of scorn. For some reason he was finding my scowl amusing. He was taking pleasure from the fact that he was throwing me off my stride, or finding me already thrown.

  “We both know that ‘popular’ was not the right answer,” he said seriously. “Anyhow, do you know how many people blew their interviews this year?” he asked, as though that might be something that I paid any attention to.

  “I’m guessing a few?”

  “Oh, you could say that.” He pushed the microphone over to me. “You’re the only person who is getting a redo at it, so let’s make this count, all right?”

  “Why?” I found myself asking.

  “What do you mean ‘why’?”

  “Why am I am the only person getting a redo?”

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting his answer to be. There was a whisper though, in the back of my mind that told me it was perhaps because he’d wanted to spend more time with me.

  “Because you did so craptastically bad,” he said.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He pressed down on the ‘record’ button. “Now, let’s get started.”

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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  ISBN: 9781681851822