Cassandra

Many thanks to Jester-Jami, angelsrose, and ikkichi! :)



Enjoy this installment!



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I wasted Friday and Saturday and Sunday away doing nothing. I didn\'t go out to shop like I had the last time Dave paid me. In fact, I made my parents take 40 dollars of the 100 so we didn\'t fall behind on anything. Reluctantly, they took the money, and I even offered more, but Mom gave Dad this look and they declined the offer.



Anyway, if you didn\'t already figure it out, I spent a lot of that weekend thinking about the woman holding my heart. I wondered what would happen when I returned to the mansion. I wondered if Cassandra would tell the truth to Dave. She was going through so many obstacles it seemed, and I wasn\'t sure how she was going to deal with it all. It must have been horrible to go through it all alone, but that wasn\'t persuading her to tell Dave.



She told me her darkest secret and she didn\'t tell her own husband? My heart leapt into my throat. What did that mean?



Monday morning sprung up and kissed me on the cheek. I was so excited to go see Cassandra. I mean-- I really wanted to go to work so I could make more money. Fuck, who was I kissing? Kidding! I meant kidding.



I practically skipped up the pathway to the mansion and knocked on the door. When Dave opened the door, I smiled brightly and said, "Hello."



He gave me a curious yet thin smile. "Hello, Taylor. Come in."



Walking in, I kicked off my shoes and bit my lip, waiting for instruction. Well, I would listen for instruction but then I\'d probably go up to see if Cassandra was upstairs in her office or something.



"Cassandra told me she\'s not doing too well today," he informed me as he put his jacket on.



I frowned slightly at the news. Not doing too well?



"Please don\'t bother her unless necessary. Work on whatever you please today." With that, he grabbed his briefcase and exited.



Still frowning, I ran through the parlor and up the stairs. The master bedroom door was closed and I heard no noise from the inside. I walked down the stretch of hallway and leaned against the door of her office. Silence there, too. Then, at an angle to her office, the bathroom door was closed but I heard the distant running of a shower.



A blush and smirk crossed my face.



To make myself look busy when she finished, I went into one of the guest rooms and started to tidy up the bed and organize the desk. A shiver ran up my spine when I heard the water come to a halt. She was done.



I scurried to complete the dressings of the bed, fluffing the pillow even, and then I heard the pads of feet against the hallway floor. Cassandra peeked her head in and smiled immediately, pushing the upper fold of her robe into her skin to conceal any bare skin. "Hi, Taylor," she greeted, her damp hair draped over her head like a midnight waterfall. "How was your weekend?"



"Boring," I sighed but held a gentle smile. "How are you? Dave mentioned that you weren\'t doing well today?" From my perspective, she looked just as fantastic as she looked all the time -- pardon that one day with the injured lip.



She glanced away and let out a quiet laugh. "Oh, Dave is only worried, especially now. He\'s going to stress himself out..." Over nothing I was sure she was going to say, but she gulped it down, hiding more guilt. Apparently she hadn\'t revealed the news yet. "Did you eat breakfast yet?" she asked, rubbing the back of her head with her free hand.



I shook my head. I\'d been so excited about leaving that I\'d forgotten my stomach even existed. I guess that\'s why it grumbled at the gesture of getting food. I blushed again.



Her smile returned. "Go downstairs and go into the cupboard above the sink to get yourself a box of cereal. You know where the bowls are, right? I\'ll be down after I get changed."



She walked away to go to the master bedroom, and I shoved the corner of a sheet under the mattress of the guest bed and jogged down to the kitchen. I pulled open the cupboard and chose the box of Frosted Flakes. I sat down at the dining table and took a bite of my meal, chewing slowly as I waited for Cassandra to come down.



I could smell vanilla as she walked down the stairwell and into the room I was in. My eyes started rolling back at the scent; it was intoxicating. She began to pour her own cereal and glanced over at me. "Frosted Flakes, hm?" she asked, her smile teasing.



With pink cheeks, I nodded. "I need my sugar."



She sniffed a laugh. "Life is my choice," she said, holding up the box. "That\'s all I need."



I nearly choked on my food. Even though it\'d run through my brain so many times the last few days, it still sounded so bizarre to me that Cassandra had an illness that would kill her sooner than need be. I was starting to realize that life was definitely something that shouldn\'t be taken for granted. You never know when it\'ll end.



Cassandra sat down by me and took a bite of her cereal. I watched her cheekbones move and noticed that her almond eyes focused on the different squares of Life in her bowl as she ate. Her hair wasn\'t up today; it was still moist and fell down past her shoulders. Her face was without make-up, and she looked just as, if not more, beautiful than she always did. I marveled looking at her, at how gorgeous she was as naturally as ever. She didn\'t need something on her eyes or lips or cheeks, and she didn\'t need to wear elegant tops or bright sundresses. Clad in her long-sleeved forest-green shirt and black sweatpants that rolled up past her ankles, she was perfect. Absolutely perfect.



"What are you staring at, Miss Taylor?"



Fire burning my face, I looked into the tan lilypads in my bowl of milk and bit my lips. Damn, that was embarrassing.



I didn\'t have to look at Cassandra to know that she was smirking or grinning. It was just natural for her to be smug over calling out my ogling.



"Oh, by the way," Cassandra said, drawing me out of my cowardly escape to not look at her, "how have you handled your hormonal falling-in-love?"



More heat. It was impossible to talk to this woman at all anymore. She was just going to make this even more humiliating for me. Ugh, why\'d she have to be so damn gorgeous and caring and perfect?



"It\'s going alright," I mumbled. "I\'m sleeping better. Sort of."



"Have you let that person know yet?"



I swallowed uneasily, a flake lodging somewhere in my throat. "No," I choked out, my eyes watering.



"Oh, are you alright?" she asked, suddenly concerned by my appearance.



I coughed. "No, I just--" I coughed some more and lifted the bowl to my lips, downing milk to unlodge the morsel. "Sorry about that..."



She smiled slightly, showing her cute-as-ever dimples. "And why haven\'t you let them know?" she inquired, bringing that topic right back.



I swallowed again, but this time my mouth and esophagus had been empty. "I\'m afraid," I confessed, "that they won\'t feel the same way."



Cassandra took a bite and nodded, thinking again as she stared into her bowl. "Well, how will you know how they feel unless you tell them how you feel?"



"I..." God, the words were on the tip of my tongue. And, by the look in her brown eyes, I was almost certain that she was waiting for me to blurt them out. But, god, it would ruin everything. It would ruin our current friendship, at least that was what I thought it to be, and my job and her marriage. Then I look at her, and all I can see is her begging me to say it. She knows and she wants me to say it.



"Actually, I have the tendency to fall in love a lot."



"I, um..."



Please, just kiss me.



"I should get back to work."



I picked up my bowl and dumped out the remains, flushing them down the drain. I set the bowl into the sink and walked past her, silently sitting there and staring at my back, and I didn\'t look back at her. For the first time, I didn\'t wait for her to call me back to the room. I didn\'t want her to call me back in. I didn\'t want to ruin what was already there. I didn\'t want to have hope for something that could happen.



I was a coward, but that was better than being heartbroken.