My stomach plummeted. We've all had this excruciating conversation, but I don't know of a single man who thinks it serves any useful purpose, nor of a single occasion when it has had a positive result, and I had been hoping against hope that Cassie would turn out to be one of the rare women who can leave it alone. "Nothing's going on," I said.
"Why are you being weird at me?"
I shrugged. "I'm wrecked, the case is a mess, these last few weeks have done my head in. It's not personal."
"Come on, Rob. It is too. You've been acting like I have leprosy ever since…" I felt my whole body tighten. Cassie's voice trailed off.
"No, I haven't," I said. "I just need some space right now. OK?"
"I don't even know what that
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the determined set to her chin, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to dodge this one. "I'm not freaking out," I said, hideously uncomfortable. "I just don't want to make things any more complicated than they already are. I am very definitely not capable of starting a relationship right now, and I don't want to give the impression-"
I didn't believe her. It was a convincing performance-the quizzical look, the easy slouch of her shoulder against the wall; anyone else in the world would have been able to breathe a sigh of relief, give her an awkward hug and start back towards some variation of normal, arm in arm. But I knew Cassie's every tell and every quirk, as well as I knew my own hands. The quickening in her breath, that gymnast's brace of the shoulders, the infinitesimal tentative note in her voice: she was terrified, and this terrified me in turn.
"Yeah," I said. "Fair enough."
"You know that. Right, Rob?" That tiny shake again.
"In this situation," I said, "I'm not sure going back to normal is a possibility. Saturday night was a big mistake, and I wish it had never happened, but it did. And we're stuck with it."
Cassie flicked ash onto the cobbles, but I had seen the flash of hurt on her face, stark and shocked as if I had slapped her. After a moment she said, "Well. I'm not sure it needs to be a mistake."
"It shouldn't have happened," I said. My back was pressed against the wall so hard that I could feel its protrusions digging into me, straight through my suit. "It would never have happened if I hadn't been such a mess about other things. I'm sorry, but that's the reality of it."
"OK," she said, very carefully, "OK. But it doesn't have to be a huge big deal. We're friends, we're close, that's why this happened, it should just bring us a little closer; end of story."
What she said was eminently reasonable and sensible; I knew I was the one who sounded juvenile, melodramatic, and this just wound me even tighter. But her eyes: I had seen them look like that before, across a junkie's needle in a flat where no human being should live, and she had sounded very plausibly calm then, too. "Yeah," I said, looking away. "Maybe. I just need some time to sort out my head. What with everything else that's been going on."
Cassie spread her hands. "Rob," she said: this small clear puzzled voice, I'll never be able to forget it. "Rob, it's just
I couldn't hear her. I could barely see her; her face looked like a stranger's, unreadable and risky. I wanted to be almost anywhere else in the world. "I should get back inside," I said, throwing my cigarette away. "Can I have my lighter?"
I can't explain why I gave so little consideration to the possibility that Cassie might have told the simple, exact truth about what she wanted from me. After all, I had never known her to lie, to me or to anyone else, and I'm not sure why I assumed with such certainty that she had suddenly started doing it now. It never once occurred to me that her wretchedness might actually be the result not of unrequited passion but of losing her closest friend-which I think I can, without deceiving myself, say that I was.
