Expelled

by Claire Adams

  We kissed one last time before I walked off the unit with Officer Pinter. I didn’t look back at Erik’s room, but I felt like he watched me as I left the unit. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me, but I could only guess that I was being fired.

  Officer Pinter walked me to the front of the building and held his hand out for my badge.

  “I don’t have it,” I said.

  But then I thought they would get angry with Kaitlin so I had to make up a story. There was no way I was going to let Kaitlin get in trouble for letting me onto the unit.

  “I lost it last week. If I find it, I’ll mail it back to you guys.”

  “Fine, but if you don’t find it, make sure and call me so I can get the codes changed. I don’t want some random stranger having access to our units.”

  “Because people are trying to break into our treatment center all the time?” I laughed.

  “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “So, I’m fired?” I questioned, just to make sure I knew what was happening.

  “Technically, I can’t fire you. But Mr. March will call you in the morning and do it or he might ask you to come in. You know if you fight it and say you two were just talking, he’ll take your word and let you off with a warning.”

  Officer Pinter was a nice guy, and I appreciated him giving me an out if I wanted to keep my job. But there was no way I was going to stay if I had to lie and there was no way Mr. March could keep me on staff if he knew what I had done with Erik. This was my final moment in the treatment center. There was no way around it.

  “Thanks, and I’m sorry for giving you so much trouble tonight.”

  “It’s okay. Take care of yourself, Cassidy. Let us know where you land when the dust settles.”

  “Will do,” I said as I turned to leave.

  I had no idea what I was going to do or how I would explain things to my family, but I didn’t feel all that badly about losing my job. Maybe this was exactly what I needed to push myself into finally going to college.

  Life happened in mysterious ways, and I was just going with the flow until I could figure out what was next for me.

  After I walked into my house, I went straight to bed. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. But I felt a little relief that I was going to get to sleep in for once in my life. My parents weren’t going to be happy about it, but I was pretty damn excited about not having to run off to work in the morning.

  I had planned to sleep all morning long, but my mother woke me up when she realized I had missed the start of my shift.

  “I don’t work there anymore,” I said through a yawn.

  “Why not?”

  “I got fired for sleeping with Erik,” I said without hesitation.

  I was over lying to people and trying to trick people. The truth was the truth, and I’m sure my parents weren’t going to like it, but at least they could respect me and the fact that I wasn’t going to lie right to their faces.

  “What?” she yelled.

  Her loud scream brought my father to the doorway of my room, and they both stood there staring at me.

  “I slept with Erik at work. He’s leaving today for California. It was my decision and my mistake. I know it’s not anything you two would approve of, and I’m sorry. Now can we please talk about this later? Because I want to sleep all day long.”

  “We will talk about this later,” my father promised me as he stormed off down the hallway.

  He was a man of his word, and later that evening, we spent a good hour discussing my poor decisions. I understood where he was coming from. If I looked at the situation from his point of view, I had made a really bad decision. But I could only look at things from my point of view, and it was done with and over. I actually didn’t care all that much that I got fired.

  Luckily, I lived at home with my family and knew I wouldn’t starve to death. Plus, leaving my job really did force me to move on. I might never have actually gone to college and now I really had a reason.

  The days and weeks traipsed by and I expected Erik to call at least once to check in with me. But then again, I had told him to take six months to get his recovery going. I thought about picking up the phone to call him but didn’t want to be one of those girls who latched onto a guy after a fun fling.

  If all we had was a fling, I was all right with that. It didn’t cheapen the events of those weeks for me, at all. I still thought Erik was great and I still thought that someday we would connect again and reminisce about how we met.

  My life went back to normal, although I felt there was a bit of a hole in is as I moved on. I started to work out regularly at the gym – it was a great way to blow off steam and the empowerment I felt was hard not to love. First, I could run for five minutes at a time and then ten. Soon, I was on the treadmill running for up to an hour at a time, with an incline.

  I started making plans to try my hand at a half marathon in the summer. Aspen was a great outdoor recreation location during the spring and summer, and a local running group had a pretty popular race that happened in June. With the race on my mind, I put together a training program and stuck with it.

  Eating healthy, exercising every day, and working at my parents’ ski resort filled the remained of the winter months and well into spring.

  I hadn’t forgotten about Erik. I still thought about him often and even picked up the phone to call him every now and then. But I couldn’t do it. The farther away his days at Paradise Peak got, the more I started to convince myself that I just wanted to be the type of girl a man like him wanted.

  Then one evening my parents and I were sitting around the television and turned on the entertainment news shows. They were talking about a new movie studio that was growing quickly, and my ears instantly perked up. Erik was attending a movie premiere to bolster his new studio. They had partnered with a veteran studio and it was all over the news.

  I leaned forward and watched their coverage in hopes of seeing Erik somewhere. I just wanted to see if he was doing well. To see how he was handling things once he got home. If I could see him on the television, it would relieve a lot of worry I had running through my head.

  “There he is!” my father pointed to the screen.

  “Wow, he looks really handsome all dressed up,” my mother added.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Erik was walking the red carpet with a man who I had to assume was his friend Spencer. Both men were dressed in tuxedos with clean-shaven faces and lips pressed widely into a smile. He looked so damn happy I felt like I was going to explode.

  Even if nothing ever came of us, I was happy for him. I wanted all the best for him and he really looked like life was going so great. I didn’t need to call and bother him. I didn’t need to know anything else. I felt better and even had a little closure to our situation.

  “Have you talked to him lately?” my father asked me.

  His question surprised me. He hadn’t been all that happy with me when he heard what I had done. I really didn’t think he liked Erik, but by the way he was watching the television, maybe I had been wrong.

  “No, I haven’t talked to him.”

  “Why not? Didn’t he give you his number?”

  “Yes, Dad.” I laughed. “But it’s not that simple. I’m not just going to call him and be some silly girl. He also has my number, and he never called me.”

  “Well, look at him, he’s really busy. You should just call him,” my father urged.

  I laughed at how eager he was for me to connect with Erik. I certainly hadn’t expected that.

  “It’s been months, Dad. I can’t just call him up now.”

  “Why not?” my mother added.

  “Because it’s been months. Don’t you think it would be a little weird if I suddenly called him out of the blue now?”

  My parents were old – they didn’t understand the rules of dating now and how weird it would be if I called him after months of not calling him.

  It would have been diffe
rent if I had called right away after he left. Even if I had called a month later. But now we were going on six months since he had left Aspen. He hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called him. There was no way I could be the person to break down and call the guy now.

  “I still think it would be nice of you to call and congratulate him on his success. You two are friends now, right?” my mother said.

  “Sure, we are friends. But I wouldn’t know what to say. I can’t call.”

  “Where’s his number? I’ll call,” my father offered.

  “Dad! You can’t call him; that would be even weirder than me calling.”

  My father seemed to think it was funny how I was so worried about him calling. He jumped up from the couch and went to my room. He quickly found the number I had pinned on the bulletin board and started to dial it.

  “I’m just going to give him a quick call and tell him he’s invited over for the Fourth of July picnic,” my dad teased me.

  “Dad, he’s not going to come help with your ski resort summer picnic. Put the phone down.”

  I knew he was bluffing. Ever since I had first started to date in high school, my father had always made sure to try and embarrass me as much as humanly possible with the boys I dated. He did it out of love, and I knew it. I was lucky to have a father who cared so much about me and took an interest in the boys I had in my life. But he certainly wasn’t going to call Erik and invite him to our resort Fourth of July event. That would be totally crazy.

  “Hello,” my father said into the phone as someone appeared to answer.

  “Hang up!” I yelled at him.

  “This is Bob Conrad, you spent Christmas at my house,” my father said into the phone.

  I was mortified. Did my father really just call Erik? Did Erik answered? Oh, how I wanted to just shrivel up and hide in the corner somewhere. There was no getting out of this if Erik was on the phone.

  “Yeah, yeah,” my father replied to whoever he was on the phone with. “I wanted to invite you to our big Aspen Fourth of July picnic. There’s going to be fireworks and music… Oh, yeah, I understand. I just wanted to make sure you got invited.”

  There was another pause, and I fell onto my bed and pulled the covers up over my head. Erik must have been talking to my father as my father was quiet and listening on the phone. I opened my eyes to see what was going on.

  “Sure, here she is,” my father said as he handed me the phone.

  “No,” I whispered and refused to take it.

  “Well, he knows you’re here now. You can’t say no.”

  My father put the phone into my hand and then walked out of the room. I held it up to my ear but didn’t say anything at first. I desperately hoped my father had been playing some sort of cruel joke on me.

  “Cassidy?” the voice said.

  Damn it! It is Erik; what the hell am I going to do now? I couldn’t exactly just sit there and not talk. I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I wanted to say.

  “Hi,” was all that came out.

  “How have you been?”

  “Good.”

  Words weren’t forming. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even make a full sentence. I felt like a schoolgirl who had her crush dial her number by accident. I had thought about this moment for months, but in my head I hadn’t been nearly as nervous as I was at that moment.

  “Did you find a new job?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m working with my parents for now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “How are you?” I ventured to ask him, although by the looks of the television clip he was doing very well.

  “I’m getting along. It’s tough, but things are good. I told your Dad I wouldn’t be able to come to his party. I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I know you’re busy with your life out there in the movie biz.”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. It felt so weird to finally have him on the phone, but I didn’t want to let him go yet. I wanted the conversation to feel like it did when we had been together. I desperately wanted him to just burst out and say how much he missed me or that he wanted me to come see him. It felt like torture to try and have a conversation with him, though, and nothing seemed to be going the way it should have been.

  “Actually, I had already promised my father and brother I was going home to visit them again for the holiday weekend. It should be good.”

  “So, you guys have officially made up?” I asked as I tried to find more to talk about.

  “Yep, things are good between us. I think we might turn out all right after all. I also moved down to Los Angeles; it was necessary for the movie studio thing. So, that’s good.”

  Silence filled our conversation. We felt more like strangers than two people who had once had feelings for each other. I blamed myself for the distance. I should have just called him after he left. It had been too long and there was no bringing back the spark that had been between us. And, we certainly couldn’t bring it back if we were on a telephone and not in person.

  “Well, I better go. Thanks for talking to my dad,” I said.

  “Sure, let’s talk again soon.”

  “Sounds good. Later, Erik. Keep taking it day by day.”

  And just like that, the phone call was over and I felt even worse than I had felt before. He didn’t even apologize for not calling me the entire time. For all I knew, he had totally forgotten about me and was just happy to be so far away and not have to deal with me.

  Tears started to fall down my cheek. I didn’t know why. Erik had been away for a long time already; I had moved past the emotions of him – or at least I thought I had. But the emptiness and awkwardness of our conversation was too raw for me. Whatever it was that we had was definitely not there anymore.

  The problem was I felt so much for Erik. I had only sat and waited for his call because I didn’t want to ruin things between us. I had hoped he was working on his treatment program and his new business and was just busy, but clearly he hadn’t thought of me. He probably even thought I was crazy for calling him – or rather my father was crazy.

  It was officially over. I was going to have to move on whether I wanted to or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Erik

  She called me. I hadn’t expected her to call. Well, actually, it was her father who had called. But either way, I was excited to hear from her. Her voice had been so sweet on the phone that it instantly sent me back to when I was with her in Paradise Peak. I even visualized what she looked like and felt how badly I missed her.

  After leaving the treatment facility, I had told Spencer what happened between Cassidy and I. I talked about all the plans I had been making in my mind and even about how Cassidy said I should spend six months or so alone and working on my own treatment.

  “That’s a smart girl,” he had said. “You need to work on you right now. Don’t call her; don’t deal with all of that. You’ve got to keep yourself on track.”

  “Maybe I’ll just call and check in with her,” I had told him.

  “No. Call in six months when you’ve got your life together and then see how things are. You’re always rushing things in your life and not everything should be rushed.”

  It seemed logical when Spencer and I had talked, but as I talked with Cassidy, I felt more and more like an asshole for not calling. The connection between us was still strong; I felt the physical chemistry even through the phone. But she didn’t sound like herself. She sounded sad, and I absolutely hated that. I was angry that I might have had any part of making her feel like that.

  Life was going well for me. I had taken the last six months to work on myself and my business. I was going to AA meetings and participating in programming. I had a personal trainer and was eating healthier than I had been before…although I did eat meat again.

  Spencer and I had made our deal to produce movies, and it was exhilarating to be part of it all. Movies were such a great way to transform people. In one movie,
you could make people feel happy, sad, and excited.

  Nothing in my life had ever come without hard work, though, and the movie studio was no different. But this time instead of letting myself get lost in the high level of work, I made it a point to schedule time for myself.

  I had a new personal assistant who was fabulous at getting me out of my office everyday by a quarter to six so I could make my AA meeting on time. I was open and honest with the people in my life, and that seemed to be working really well for me.

  Even my family and I were getting along better than I could ever remember. They had finally gotten over the shock of me paying off their debts and were finally able to relax and hire a full-time funeral home director to take some of the pressure off of them.

  My brother even had a girlfriend now who I was beyond excited to meet when I flew back for the Fourth of July. Heath sounded pretty excited about this girl, and she sounded like a really nice woman.

  When I had answered the phone call from Cassidy’s phone, I really thought it was her. I had put her phone number into my phone the day I left the treatment facility. I had pulled her number up a couple of times, but then hung up when I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say to her.

  If I hadn’t already made plans to go to my family’s house for the holiday, I would have definitely have gone to Bob’s event. I hoped that he didn’t think I had just denied it because I was too busy working. I wanted to see Cassidy. I needed to see her.

  From the time I talked with Cassidy on the phone until the moment my plane landed at home and I greeted my brother, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had consumed my mind. Not just because we had finally got to talk, but also because I felt like I had done her wrong. She had to know I still cared about her. Even though I was busy with my life, I thought about her all the time.

  My thoughts must have shown through as my brother picked me up from the executive airport and drove me back to his house.

  “Well, you are either in love or you’ve got pneumonia,” he joked. “You look like shit.”