Page 19 of Because of Her

She draws her arm back from around my body to rest on my side. “Do you think you can stand?”

“I can try.”

Cassidy wraps her arm around my back to help me up. Balancing more of my weight on her petite frame than I should, we stand. She guides me to my apartment, fumbling around my pockets for the key.

“Up,” I groan, reaching my hand above my head to grab the spare key I keep ‘hidden’ on the door frame.

Grabbing it from my hand, Cassidy laughs.

“Very safe,” she says with an eye roll as the door swings open.

Inside, she guides me to the couch. I fight the urge to crawl into a ball.

“Drink,” she demands, placing a glass of water on the coffee table in front of me, adding “slowly,” when I lean forward and take a gulp.

When she sits next to me, a wave of her lavender scent wafts my way. I choke on the water.

“That’s why I said slowly.” She nudges my side softly, not realising it’s her that made me splutter.

The sun has started to set, the sky outside the big window a dull grey. As we sit, the only sounds are Cassidy’s slow, counted breaths, and my shaky, too quick ones.

My pulse returns to its normal rhythm and my lungs start to work again, but my mind still swirls with the unwelcome storm of leftover emotions. The panic attack hit me hard and fast, and left me more worried than I was before. It’s been years since my anxiety made an appearance, but since the divorce, I’ve felt it creeping back. Frankly, anxiety is a distraction I don’t need; a weapon I’m sure Audrey will use against me if she finds out about it.

“Is everything okay?”

I don’t know how to tell her that nothing is okay. That my life started crumbling a little over a year ago, and I don’t even think I’ve reached the bottom. I don’t know how to tell her that her reappearance in my life has only added to the boulders I carry. And I certainly don’t know how to tell her I miss my daughter. Every. Single. Day.

Because I realise, not for the first time, I haven’t even told Cassidy about Maisie. I glance over Cassidy’s shoulder to Maisie’s room. It’s open, and I can see her childish bedspread and the giant doll house, but Cassidy hasn’t noticed it. Or she noticed it, but hasn’t said anything. I’ve never been more glad of my reputation as the tidy one. I always make Maisie help me pack things away before she goes, so at least there are no Barbies spread across the floor or art supplies on the table.

I should tell Cassidy about Maisie, but now is a terrible time to open the can of worms I’m sure will follow. Cassidy is like a reminder of my old life, of the old me. And I’m not ready to bring her into my present reality. Not just yet.

So instead, I close my eyes and shrug. As I lean back on the couch, I feel Cassidy move closer. Her touch is slow, almost trembling, as she rests her head on my shoulder and lays her hand above my heart. It’s warm, and comforting, and it feels safe. So, I wrap my arm around her, somehow finding comfort in the closeness.

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she whispers. “I’m here for you either way.”

“Like old times?”

“Yeah,” she whispers.

While we rest, my mind wanders through the many what-ifs of my life.

I’ll never take back the choices I made. Without meeting Audrey, I wouldn’t have had Maisie, and she is far too special to wish away. But I can’t help wondering where my life would be if things had taken a different path.

None of my old friends have kids. Most of them joke about never feeling like enough of an adult to contemplate having a child, but most of them are also single. I can’t remember the last time I went on a big night out with them. After meeting Audrey, and especially after Maisie came into our lives, I never felt like joining guy’s night.

As the course of my life changed, so did my friendships. And when I’m honest with myself, I don’t know if I’d even call most of those guys my close friends anymore. It really, truly, painfully, sucks. My life veered off the main path and away from them. Or they veered off the main path away from me.

Either way, it still hits like a brick when I think about how all my friends are just the dads of Maisie’s friends. And all of Maisie’s friends are the children of Audrey’s friends. Which means, as Audrey and I started to drift apart, and when we finally, officially, called the divorce what it was, those so-called friends had drifted, too.

I turn my head towards Cassidy’s to rest my cheek on her head. Her hair tangles in the coarse stubble of my beard—the perfectly maintained short style I keep tidy enough not to push the limits of my corporate job. As I rasp in unsteady breaths, I realise Cassidy’s hair is giving off the sweet aspect of her scent. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Something tropicaland fruity that on paper shouldn’t blend well with the lavender of her perfume, but somehow it does.

My eyes are still closed when my stomach grumbles and I realise the last thing I ate was lunch; Maisie’s crusts, and the apple half she decided she didn’t want.

“Hey, Cass,” I mumble into her hair.

“Hey, Cal,” she whispers against my shoulder. Her head bobs with a giggle. “I thought you hated that name, but that’s what Amira called you.”

“I don’t hate it so much coming from you.”

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