Cassandra

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The rest of Wednesday afternoon went by slowly. I was more awake and alert now, and all I wanted was to talk to Cassandra again, though I had no idea of what I could possibly say to her that would even sound slightly coherent.



Finishing up the office was boring. Why didn\'t she come back down to check on me again? Maybe if I collapsed one more time... Sighing, I decided that talking to her would have to wait.



However, my mind was about to be changed.



A little after one in the afternoon, a knock came to the office door. Heart encased in my throat, I stood up and held onto the doorknob, licking my lips before I pulled the wooden structure back and smiled. Then the smile fell.



Dave was home.



"Hello, Taylor," he greeted, his face spotted with sweat from the summer air. He looked around the room, nodding at the new organization. "You worked well in here, I see."



I nodded once. "Yes, sir."



He gave me a tight smile that seemed to hurt his cheeks. "Did Cassandra come down today?"



My eyebrows came together at the inquisition. It was a tad random, wasn\'t it? "Yes, once she did," I replied softly.



He lifted his head slowly and let it fall at the same pace, his eyes leaving mine momentarily to glimpse at the beige wall. "How did she seem today?"



Another weird question. "Um... She was okay," I shrugged. "Nothing unusual." I tucked some hair behind my ear as the awkward tension pressed on my shoulders. I felt like I was being interrogated and I was giving out the wrong answers. His eyes, like always, were piercing straight through me.



In response to my reply, Dave only glanced away again and touched his prickled chin with his big hands, caressing it as though it was tense, like massaging out a kink in someone\'s neck. Perhaps he was stressed over something. Well, he was a lawyer, and I had a feeling that was a tense job anyway. However, he was asking about Cassandra. Unless his client was his own wife, there was something else going on.



So my curiosity got the best of me.



"Dave?" I asked, drawing his attention back to my small frame. "Is there a reason you\'re asking about Cassandra\'s well-being?"



He stared down at me for a moment, most likely considering if I was worthy enough to answer to. "Well"-- he sighed, raked his fingernails across his stubbled cheek, and cleared his throat --"Cassandra told me that she, uh--" He paused, his lips twitching as he thought over the confession again.



The suspense was actually starting to make me nauseous. Was something wrong with her? Was her "illness" from yesterday a real illness? But today she was as normal as I\'d seen her previously. What else could--



"She said she\'s pregnant."



Pre...



Pregnant.



Pregnant?



Hm. Pregnant.



Yeah, I did feel a bit queasy all of a sudden. With my insides turning to icky, sour slush, you know, it makes sense, right? But sometimes you have to bite your tongue and hold back the vomit to smile half-heartedly and whisper, "Oh. Congratulations." Unable to say much more than that, I put on my flip-flops and pulled my ring of keys out from my pocket, letting Dave know the best that I could that I was going home without saying anything more.



I had the slightest urge to cry when I was driving home. I guess it\'s like when you have a crush on someone, a girl preferably, and you find out she\'s pregnant by some guy because they had sex. Well, okay, that\'s literally what happened, but if I don\'t put Cassandra in the place as the-girl-that-I-have-a-crush-on and I don\'t put Dave in as the some-guy-she-screwed, then it doesn\'t hurt as much.



Wait, why should it hurt? I wasn\'t anything more to Cassandra than a maid at her home. I could maybe have passed as an acquaintance, but that was pushing the boundaries between us as it was. I should have been happy for her, right? She was having a baby. A cute little son or daughter with her eyes and dimples and soft skin and lips and dark hair and contagious laugh.



Oh, my heart hurt.



Thankfully I was exhausted when I got home from, obviously, the lack of sleep from the night prior, but also from that huge revelation Dave brought upon me. I know I actually brought it upon myself by asking him about his concerns for Cassandra. That made me feel a bit worse. If I kept my mouth shut and pushed my curiosity into oblivion for a moment, I probably could have had a little peace in mind. I was mad at myself for being so overemotional about this, but I felt torn.



I slept until dinner, and then I ate with my father at the table, both of us not much for talking about our days. He was always a quiet man that didn\'t ask too many questions or intrude on others\' private matters. I guess I inherited that trait from my mother. I liked eating with him because I knew if I did have something to bring up, he would listen and not overwhelm me with what-ifs and what-are-you-gonna-do-about-its. Just nods and mm-hmms and slight variations in facial expression.



I just knew that bringing up my teenage-, broken-heart-over-a-pregnant-woman was not a great topic of discussion for anyone at that moment. I didn\'t even want to think about it anymore.



After dinner, I went to my room and cried a little just to let some emotion out that I couldn\'t release at dinner, and then I went to sleep again.



The next morning, I showered and dressed myself for another humid day that I would, thankfully, keep away from by working inside the mansion. I ate a bowl of cereal and drank a glass of orange juice, praying that I would be able to keep it down if I ran into Cassandra and imagined her and Dave... Gagging once, I constricted my neck with my hand, fighting the images from my mind.



Of course, Dave met me at the door of the mansion, his face emotionless as ever. "I may be gone a bit later than usual today, I\'m not certain," he said, grabbing his regular items to leave with. "Try working upstairs today if you could. Oh, and don\'t mention to Cassandra about what I told you yesterday. She\'s not far along, so I don\'t think she\'d want the news to be spread just yet."



I flashed a fake smile that made my eyes water. "Sure," I said and watched him leave.



Upstairs, I took on the bathrooms first, moving slowly so it took up a lot of the time. Did I want to be there? No. Did I want to talk to Cassandra? Yes. Well, no. Mmph. Yes. But did I want to see her and know that Dave\'s baby was developing inside of her? No, not really.



I think a few hours went by and I was finished with one bathroom and halfway through the second. That\'s when I heard footfalls coming from down the hall. They were going to slow to meet the pace of the organ in my chest. Cassandra glanced into the bathroom, averted her attention back towards the hall, but stopped and trekked backward, smiling. "Hello, Taylor," she said. Her hair was down today and framed her heart-shaped face beautifully, like black velvet curtains. She had another black smudge like she had days before, but it was just above her lip. "I was going down to the kitchen to warm up some leftover-lasagna from last night. Care to join me?"



Swallowing, I looked down at her abdomen, covered by the gray fabric of her long-sleeved shirt. I couldn\'t picture a baby in there. I couldn\'t see her with a huge bump and leaning as her back hurt and waddling down the hallway. None of that made sense to me.



Anyway, I lifted my gaze to meet her eyes and nodded in reluctance to her offer. I followed her down the stairs, marveling at her slim figure. Her legs were hugged tight in her dark jeans, as well as her torso under her shirt. All of her seemed perfect as it was, and now this baby was going to blow her out of proportion and ruin her.



God, maybe I was being selfish and ridiculous but... maybe that\'s what love does to people.



Love. Right.



I sat down at the table and looked down at my hands, my chipped nails and stubby fingers. I could hear Cassandra let things clatter onto the stove and onto plates and shut the microwave. None of those noises drowned out the buh-bump in my ears, though. Even when she set my steaming meal down in front of me, the aroma didn\'t move me nor did her presence in the chair next to me that I could feel and see from the corner of my eye. I was frozen. I waited for her to bring it up.



"Is everything alright, Taylor?" Cassandra asked, ending her question by smacking her lips gently.



I swallowed and looked up at her. Those brown eyes and dimple-less cheeks. My voice was hoarse as I asked her, "Are you pregnant?"



She stared back at me, the rest of her face unmoving. She moved her lips for a brief second, drawing my eyes to them, and then she sighed. What kind of sigh it was, I wasn\'t sure. I just didn\'t like the sound of it. In response, I looked down at my plate, feeling the pit in my stomach spread like a disease. I sighed, too. And then I froze.



"No," Cassandra said. "I\'m not pregnant."