Catching Cassidy

by Melissa Foster

“Bullshit, Dee. They never knew about…all that.”

  All that. I have no idea if that’s an okay way to refer to his sister’s sexuality, and I guess it isn’t, because tears tumble down Delilah’s cheeks.

  “Yes, they did.” She holds Wyatt’s stare as his jaw drops open.

  I know mine’s doing the same, and I make an effort to close my mouth.

  “You told them?” he finally asks.

  “Before the graduation ceremony,” Delilah says softly.

  Wyatt reaches for her hand, and his eyes soften again. “Dee. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugs. “I was going to, but everything happened so fast. Right after I told Mom, they called us to line up.” Her lower lip trembles as she continues. “Mom didn’t say anything. I watched her as I walked away and could see her telling Dad.”

  “And?” Wyatt urges.

  She shrugs again. “He held her hand and looked at me with that disappointed look. You know that one that makes your stomach fall to your feet?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt says as he folds her into his arms again. “I know that fucking look.”

  He rubs her back and looks at me over her shoulder. I know my eyes are damp, but I keep the tears from falling.

  “They didn’t expect it, Dee, but it didn’t change their love for you.” Wyatt says this like it’s a fact, and I don’t know how he can be sure. If I were Delilah, I think I’d call him on it, but I hear her sniffling and I know she’s crying again.

  “I know they loved me,” Delilah finally says. “But you know…loving and accepting are two different things. I wanted them to accept me, and I knew from the look in their eyes that there was no way that was going to happen.”

  Chapter Six

  ~Wyatt~

  AFTER DELILAH DROPPED her bomb, she clammed up. Cassidy and I tried to talk to her more about what happened, but she eventually got up and walked away. I didn’t follow her. I know Delilah, and when she needs time alone, she needs time alone. Cassidy and I talked by the creek for a long time about what we could say to help Delilah, but no matter how many things we came up with, I knew they were all just words and that nothing would take away the sting of the look my parents gave her. That stupid look that cut my sister to her core and had done the same to me more times than I care to remember.

  Delilah comes back about an hour later and apologizes for walking off, but she doesn’t need to. I get it, and I know Cass does, too. Her eyes are clearer, and she seems to be in a better mood. I’m not about to try to talk to her about our parents again, but I will when I think she’s ready. I could really use a How to Help Your Sister Come Out of the Closet and Get over the Death of Your Parents guide.

  I thought Cassidy’s life was going to be so messed up after we caught Kyle cheating on her, but the death of our parents made me realize that breakups aren’t the end of the world. And now I realize that even our parents dying isn’t the end of the world. But the mess of emotions that Delilah is left dealing with? That’s pretty damn bad. She’s going to be dealing with that for a long time. I just hope it doesn’t mess her up forever. I mean, I know our parents loved her, but I also know they were too conservative to probably ever have accepted the lifestyle she wants and needs. It’s who she is, and they would have tried to change that. I’m sure of it. I have no idea how such smart businesspeople could be clueless when it came to their own daughter. Right now I kind of hate my parents, and I’m not going to feel guilty for that. If they were alive I’d call my father and give him hell. I wish I’d been there when she told them. I wish she hadn’t tried to handle it on her own, but I know Dee, and she probably had about thirty seconds of courage and thought she’d blast through it. She doesn’t always need me by her side, but this time I wish I’d been there. I wouldn’t have cared about lining up for graduation. I would have confronted my parents and tried to make them see that Delilah’s an amazing person and her sexuality doesn’t change a thing.

  Who am I kidding? There would have been no changing their minds. They were stubborn pricks when they wanted to be.

  After a while we go into town and buy groceries. Then we drive around talking about what we want to do this week and wondering what our friends are up to. Basically, we avoid talking about anything relating to our parents. As we pass the pier, I know we have to face the bar at some point. Maybe tomorrow. Delilah doesn’t need to deal with this stuff, and I have no idea what this stuff might be. I don’t even know what it means that we own the bar. I mean, my parents ran it during the summers and Jesse takes care of it the rest of the time, or at least he did until he bought his restaurant. I doubt he’ll want to take over this fall. I guess I’ll figure it out at some point. The staff has to know what to do, right? I imagine there isn’t much to owning it, but then again, what do I know?

  I hear Cassidy power up her phone as we pull down the street toward our house, and my mind careens to a halt, revisiting the reason she’d turned it off in the first place. I hear ping after ping of text messages coming through and glance in my rearview, fighting the urge to ask about them. She’s staring at her phone with an angry look in her eyes, so I know Kyle has texted, and I tighten my hands on the steering wheel. I don’t say anything as I drive down our street. Our beach house is built at the end of a private road, so we don’t have neighbors on either side of us. The neighbors pretty much keep to themselves, even Mr. Mahoney. He’s a curmudgeonly old man whose house is closest to ours. He’s practically deaf, and a glance in our direction is all he ever offers.

  There are only five other houses on the street, and they’re all a good distance from ours. Three of them have been flipped in recent years and renovated, with second stories added to the ones that were only one story. Most of the houses, like ours, have cedar shingles that have aged to varying shades of gray. Two of the recently renovated homes have a different type of siding that’s beige, and I think they look out of place. All of the houses have gardens that look like someone dumped a bucket of mixed-up seeds in the dirt and then forgot about them. Colorful flowers and tall grasses billow out over the garden edging.

  “I always forget how much I love the gardens here. They’re so different from back home,” Delilah says as she tucks her hair behind her ear.

  I park in front of our house and watch Delilah for signs of sadness, even though she sounds fine at the moment. I’m also waiting for my own discomfort to set in. We sit out front for a few minutes, staring at the two-story, seven-bedroom house. It was a bed-and-breakfast before my parents bought it, and they never changed the setup, so each bedroom has a full bath with a shower, which is pretty cool. The house has an open floor plan, with a great room, a large, open kitchen, and three bedrooms on the first floor. There’s a loft with a pool table, as well as four more bedrooms upstairs. It’s way more than we ever needed, and I remember telling my father that when I was finally old enough to see that it was. As a kid you never think of those things. It’s just a house. But by the time I was in high school, it struck me how enormous the house was compared to our friends’ houses. My father had said, If you work hard and get good grades, you’ll be able to afford homes this big, too. He had a way of skirting my questions and needling me at the same time.

  Even though I’d take a little needling over my parents being gone, I’m astonished when I get out of the car and don’t feel anything weird. I thought I’d feel a punch to the gut, but there’s nothing strange going on inside me.

  The girls get out of the car, and we grab our stuff from the trunk and head inside.

  “You okay, Dee?” I ask, eyeing Cassidy as she sends a text. I’ve never cared who she texted before, but now I want to ask. I try to push the thought away. But the annoyance doesn’t disappear. It just sort of festers, burning a hole in my gut.

  Maybe there’s no room for a gut punch about my parents because the idea of Kyle and Cassidy talking is taking up all the space.

  “Surprisingly, yeah. I am okay.” Delilah manages a smile as we walk up the slate path toward
the front door.

  The front of the house has a large deck that wraps around the side. There’s a slate patio out front with deck furniture, and we have the same type of overgrown garden as everyone else does, only ours has mostly yellow flowers because our mom was a freak for yellow. We have yellow towels, yellow blankets in the guest bedrooms, and back in Connecticut we had so many yellow knickknacks they probably could have lit up the house enough that we wouldn’t have needed lightbulbs. Strange how I didn’t even think about that when we were home.

  The flowers are knee high and brush against my legs as I walk down the stone path toward the deck. I fish for the right key and unlock the door, then push the door open. We all stand there, staring inside. The afternoon sunlight floods the first floor. That was one of the things my mother liked most about being in Harborside. She used to sit on the deck and drink coffee, listening to the ocean and smiling. I often wonder about my parents’ decision to buy the bar. They weren’t drinkers, and even now I can’t really put the pieces of that purchase together with them in my mind, but there’s no doubt they loved owning it and they loved Harborside.

  My dad was a keen businessman, though. Throughout the years he’d bought and sold many businesses. I don’t know why the Taproom is the one he chose not to sell, but he’d guided me and Delilah toward taking it over for the last four years, so I know his plans were to keep it.

  I push thoughts of my parents to the side and take in the rest of the room. There are no curtains on the two sets of French doors on either side of the open kitchen. The enormous bay window behind the kitchen table is also void of any curtains, as is the window over the sink. We have a clear view of our private beach. I drop my duffel bags in the center of the room.

  “Looks like home.” Feels like it, too, familiar and comfortable. I don’t have the feeling that my parents are going to come through the door like I did back in Connecticut, where I felt like the walls were confining and my lungs were constricted. I inhale deeply, relieved that I can. My parents were with us every time we stayed here, but unlike home, there were no grades to ask after, no pushing us toward our future. Even though they owned the bar, it was like this was where they could let their hair down, kick their feet up, and be a little less controlling.

  Cassidy closes the screen door behind her, leaving the front door open. I cross the well-worn path in the hardwood to the back doors and pull them open. Salty sea air mixes with the scents of sand and seaweed and wafts through the screens. I love everything about being here, from the smells to the sights, but there are two things that make Harborside my favorite place on earth. There’s nothing better than hanging out with good friends and falling asleep to the sound of the waves breaking. Even though we see our friends here for only a few weeks out of the year, we talk about deeper stuff, and I trust them more than any friends I met at college.

  I shrug off the dissection of our friendship and point up at the ceiling. “I’m taking my stuff up.” I shrug the straps of my duffel over my shoulder, then reach for Delilah’s. “You taking your regular bedroom, or staying downstairs?”

  “Regular bedroom,” she says, and hands me her bag.

  “Cass? Pick a room.” I reach for her bag, and she rolls her eyes.

  “I always stay down the hall from your room. Why would I change?” She shoves her phone in her pocket.

  I slide the strap of Cassidy’s bags over my other shoulder and carry all of our bags upstairs. Mine and Delilah’s bedrooms are in the back of the house, overlooking the water. I toss my stuff on my bed and pull open the doors to the second-story deck, drop the girls’ bags by their beds, and walk out onto the deck. The deck wraps around the second floor. Each of the bedrooms has access to it, and as I look out over the water, I think about how many times Delilah, Cassidy, and I snuck out over the summers when we were growing up. Our parents were more relaxed here than at home, and their rules were somewhat less stringent. With no grades to ask after, they were happy to let us wander the boardwalk with our friends during the day as long as we checked in with them often. Once the sun went down, however, strict rules came back into play. We had earlier curfews than our friends, and sneaking out was the only way we ever saw any nightlife. Every single time we snuck out, Cassidy would cling to my arm like she was afraid of the dark.

  My thoughts linger on Cassidy for a minute, and I realize there’s another reason it feels so right being here. She’s here with me.

  “Wyatt?”

  Speak of the devil. “Out here!” I holler.

  “Hey.” She’s got her camera strap around her neck when she joins me and leans on the railing. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for coming with us.” I purposely lean over the deck beside her so my eyes don’t betray me and look at her sweet ass again.

  “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.”

  What are her alternatives? Cassidy has a strange family life, which is why she stays with us a lot. Her parents are always going somewhere and leaving her behind. My parents might have been conservative and strict, but our vacations were always taken as a family. I’ve always felt like Cassidy’s parents’ loss was our gain. I love having Cassidy around, and I can’t imagine my life without her in it.

  “Delilah and I were thinking that a bonfire might be fun tonight. Are you up for it?” She shields her eyes from the sun and looks up at me.

  “Always. Does she want to invite everyone?”

  Cassidy shakes her head. “She didn’t say so. She just said she wants to eat hot dogs over the fire for dinner.”

  I groan and Cassidy laughs. Hot dogs are about the grossest food on the planet, but they’re Delilah’s go-to meal when she’s coming out of anything distressing.

  “I know.” She smiles. “But that’s a good sign, right?”

  “Grossly, yes. It’s a good sign. Did she ever contact Frank about our parents?” I’m even worried about Delilah’s fake boyfriend? I roll my eyes at myself.

  “Yeah, she called him. He was really sweet to her. I feel bad for him. He really likes her.” Cassidy turns around and leans her back against the railing. She aims her camera at me, and I turn away.

  “Please, Wy?”

  Why does she have this hold over me? I’ve never been able to turn her away. When I turn and look out over the water, I hear her take a picture. “One,” I say.

  “Two?”

  I hear the shutter clicking and turn to face her, and she takes another of me looking directly at her. As she puts the lens cap back on, she smiles up at me again. I love her smile way too much.

  She hooks her finger in my pocket and her eyes turn solemn. “I know you don’t want me to ask how you’re doing, so I won’t. Just know that I’m here if you want to talk, okay?”

  When I don’t answer, she hooks another finger in my other pocket. She’s done that a million times and never once have I ever felt anything sexual, but she’s looking up at me with her lips slightly parted, a sweet smile on her face, and her eyes dark and warm, and hell, I feel myself getting hard. This is becoming a problem, and I don’t like it one bit. I like being comfortable with Cass. This is totally messed up.

  “Thanks, Cass.” I try to turn away, but she hooks her fingers deeper into my pockets and uses them for leverage to pull her body against mine. I stifle a groan.

  “Look at me, Army.”

  She narrows her eyes, and I laugh, because she looks adorable, which I know is not at all how she wants to look. She calls me by my nickname only when she’s trying to get my attention about something important, but her lips are pursed and she looks like she’s ready to kiss me. Epic fail on her part. She looks sexy as hell.

  “Don’t laugh. I’m being serious.” She tugs on my pockets like that’s going to help.

  I wonder what she’d do if she knew that the friction was making me harder. I draw my brows together and press my lips into a firm line, trying to concentrate. “Sorry. Go ahead. What did you want to say?”

  “Just that, you k
now, your parents dying is a huge deal. Huge. It’s not like they’re away for a while and they’re coming back.”

  I grit my teeth against the truth.

  “And I know you’re tough and all, but I also know you loved them very much, and at some point you might want to talk about it.”

  Her fingers are still in my pockets, but she is no longer holding me against her. She’s looking at me like she always does, like she cares. Like she’s my best friend. And I think I have a new companion, called Guilt, for being aroused when she’s only trying to be sweet.

  “I’m fine.” I’m pretty far from fine, but that’s not something I want to lay on Cassidy, especially since my body is throwing me off-balance and reacting to her as if she were some random hot girl. I feel like a jealous boyfriend about Kyle texting her, and I’ve got no business feeling that way. All of it makes it difficult for me to act normal around her.

  “Yeah, I know you are.” She rolls her eyes and moves away. “Just like I’m fine about Kyle.”

  Chapter Seven

  ~Cassidy~

  AFTER GRILLING HOT dogs and burgers we go to the liquor store and pick up just about everything under the sun. I think Wyatt’s planning on drinking himself into oblivion, and I guess I don’t blame him. At least Delilah is talking more now. I’m not used to her being this silent, but I can understand that, too.

  The three of us sit on the deck drinking. Delilah and I are sharing a bottle of wine, and Wyatt’s drinking beer. The sky is eerily dark, without a star in sight, and the moon has a fuzzy bluish glow around it, the kind you see in werewolf movies. It’s kind of fitting, given the darkness of what’s happened lately. I pick up my camera and take a few pictures, then set it back on the table.

  I watch Wyatt finish his beer and open another. He’s not a mean drunk, like some guys. He gets more introspective when he drinks, but before he gets to that point, he gets really fun. I’m waiting for the fun Wyatt to kick in, which is probably selfish, but I think he needs the distraction as much as I do. I left my phone inside because I know the constant texts bug Wyatt as much as they bug me. I’m still trying to decide how to handle Kyle. I don’t know why he keeps texting me and I don’t care. I’m never going back to him. I deserve a guy who at the very least likes me enough not to cheat on me. Every time I think of him and that girl, it makes me wonder how many others I didn’t know about. That just sends my mind spiraling into a really dark place, where I blame myself for not noticing. I know it’s crazy, but it’s hard to remember that when my head feels like it’s going to explode.