Chapter 377

Cassidy hadn’t told Dayana much of anything. On the one hand, I was almost a little relieved - my friend and coworker wasn’t operating on any dubious knowledge or judgments based on what Cassidy had said versus how I might have told her things. I’d given Cass permission to say what she felt she wanted to over the last day, but I hadn’t told her to say anything specific.

The logical answer, at least in my mind, was that the only thing Cass had done ‘wrong’ here was that she’d teased she’d said anything at all and made a game out of something that very much wasn’t a game. And I knew that would be her leaning towards teasing and comedy because she would be feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing.

But fuck did it also piss me off a bit that she’d done that.

“So that’s basically it,” Dayana said, still frowning. She’d run through the events of last week pretty well - it had just lacked a lot of the important details. Cass and I driving out, the people we’d met and friends we’d made, several of the events like the party at the Strip Club and the almost-fight at the Gas Bar. The devil, of course, was in the details. “And Cattie seemed great when I met her. Cass has been mentioning her for years now so I felt like I kind of already knew her a bit, and hearing about everything that happened with her ex was wild. And I’m not really shocked at all that you two would have her come stay a few days to take care of her because that’s so you. None of that sounds ... Look, I’m not trying to judge or anything, but you’ve handled harder shit here at work; none of it sounds like it would shake you, let alone lead to panic attacks.”

“Right,” I sighed, leaning forward and burying my face in my hands, trying not to think about how close I was to Dayana’s sleek, thin legs. God, I needed to double-check with Cass that there wasn’t anything in the App that was making me think more sexually about people.

“So she didn’t tell me everything,” Dayana said, her voice a little more flat as she put together some pieces.

“No, she didn’t,” I mumbled into my hands.

“And you expected that she was,” Dayana guessed, and I nodded. “Cass-i-dy,” she sighed and hissed scornfully.

I let out my breath and leaned back in the seat, shaking my head. “Miscommunication,” I said, downplaying it. Not wanting to build up even more animosity between them because, while I had a chance to maybe bury the whole thing for a bit longer, doing that would just lead to more problems down the road and I needed to start fixing shit not just pushing it along to be handled later.

“So what did happen?” Dayana asked me quietly. “Or ... what did she do?”

I grimaced, giving her enough of an answer that she grimaced back, confirming her guess. “At the start of the week Cass admitted that- actually, I didn’t tell you this before because it wasn’t- Well, I didn’t tell you this before. You know how Cass could get a little bad at communicating for a few days, and not want to go out for like a week every few months?”

“I always assumed it was just a particularly bad period or something,” Dayana said, narrowing her eyes.

“Well, it was her dealing with mental health stuff,” I said. “Every four or five months it would start to hit her, since we were both in college, but it wouldn’t last for more than a week and usually only a few days, so I kind of let it slide that she didn’t want to go to a doctor or psychologist or anything. It was just sort of part of who she was, and I loved her through it. Well, on our way to the lake, Cassidy admitted to me that it wasn’t just a depression cycle, it had a lot to do with shame and guilt over things she’d done back when we first got together.”