Broken Juliet(19)

I throw my phone on the floor and try to sleep.

A tiny masochistic part of me keeps waking during the night to check if he’s texted.

When morning breaks, he still hasn’t.




“Cassie?”

Go away, Mom.

“Sweetheart, come on.”

“I’m sleeping.”

“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. You need to eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

The bed dips. A hand touches my head and strokes hair that hasn’t been washed in the five days I’ve been home.

“Honey, I wish you’d tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.”

You can’t.

“Does this have something to do with that boy you were seeing? Ethan?”

I don’t answer, but Mom knows. Only love gone wrong could make a woman behave like this. I’ve seen her after she and Dad have fought. Heartsick looks the same on everyone.

“Sweetheart,” she says as she strokes my back. “Surely no boy is worth this. If he didn’t want you, then he’s obviously defective.”

She’s right. He is.

That was one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place.

“He didn’t … hurt you, did he? Physically, I mean.”

I shake my head and block out images of how I gasped when he pushed inside me.

“So this is all just emotional?”

Just emotional? There’s no such thing. Emotions are nothing without a corresponding physical response. Adrenaline-fueled joy, heart-thumping fear, gut-churning loss.

Sure, Mom. It’s just emotional.

I nod, because I know it’ll make her feel better.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head again, really needing this conversation to be over.

She sighs and squeezes my shoulder.

I wait until she closes the door before I turn my face to the wall and go back to sleep.




“He’s a f*cking idiot.” I can almost see the look of disdain on Ruby’s face through the phone.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Yeah, well, I do. He hasn’t called you at all? Not even on Christmas Day?”

“No. I texted him.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I missed him, I guess.”

“Did he text back?”

“No.”

“Cock.”

“I don’t know what I expected,” I say, and lie back on my bed. “We broke up.”

“No, he broke you up. There was no ‘we’ in that scenario. And don’t make excuses for him. He doesn’t deserve them.”

I really wish she were here.

Mom and Dad don’t understand, but Ruby does.

“What are you going to do when you see him at school on Monday?”

“I have no idea. Drop out?”

“Cassie, don’t even joke about that. Don’t you dare let that douchenozzle ruin your college experience. Just block him out. Do your work and kick ass. Don’t give him power over you, and you’ll be fine.”

I sigh. It’s not like I want him to have power over me, but I can’t stop thinking about him.

“So, I’m coming back on the ninth,” I say.

“I’ll be back from my parents’ by then. I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

“Thanks, Ruby.”

I’m just about to hang up when she says, “Cassie?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to be okay.” Her voice is soft and sympathetic. “I know it probably doesn’t feel like it now, but you will be.”

I nod. “Yeah, I know.”

I hang up and rub my eyes. The truth is, I know no such thing.




I pretend to read even though I’ve been staring at the same page for over an hour. My headphones block out the sound of Mom and Dad bickering downstairs. I have Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” on repeat. I kind of hate the song, but the lyrics speak to me.

They talk about a rock not feeling pain and an island never crying. Sound good to me.

I’m sick of the pain, and if I never cry again, it will be too soon.

I just want to be over Ethan. Now. I don’t want to be wondering how his holidays were. If he fought with his dad. How drunk he got.

If he thought about me.

I don’t want any of it.

I want to be mine again and not his.

The way forward is to purge and cleanse. Push every positive thought about him out of my system. It’s the only way I’m going to survive seeing him again. I refuse to pine for Ethan Holt for the next two years. No freaking way.

I close my eyes and try to focus. I picture him as I listen to the song, over and over again, and I let the lyrics harden my paper-thin layers.

I’m going to become a rock.




Ruby drops me off at our place before heading to the store for supplies.

I look around my apartment. Everything’s the same yet seems totally different. That’s the door that opened to him, as he stood there wide-eyed with panic. That’s the wall I pressed him against as I told him I loved him. The same place where he said he wished he didn’t love me. Right over there is where he undressed me and kissed me until I was breathless. On the floor was where we …