Revision

Revision

Cassandra walked home from work with the kind of effortless grace she didn't know she possessed. The late afternoon sun caught the auburn highlights in her chestnut hair, and more than one passing stranger found their gaze lingering on the elegant curve of her calves beneath her pencil skirt. One man actually walked into a parking meter. She was, of course, completely oblivious to the effect she had on people.

How could I miss a guy walking into a parking meter?

Cassandra dismissed the thought as she climbed the stairs to her third-floor walkup. It was a charmingly cramped apartment in a neighborhood that should have been impossible on a marketing salary. Somehow the math had never come up.

She fished her keys from her purse, a designer bag she'd splurged on after her last promotion at the marketing firm.

Wait. What do I actually do?

Then she remembered that she did numerous... marketing things. Important ones.

Name one.

The thought flickered and died as she pushed open her door. Her cat, a sleek gray tabby named Homewrecker (a cheeky nod to her complicated romantic past), wound between her ankles with a plaintive meow.

"Hey, girl," Cassandra murmured, dropping her bag on the entryway table. She kicked off her four-inch heels with a sigh, her delicate feet aching from another long day. Her toes, painted a seductive red that complemented her skin tone, flexed against the cool hardwood floor.

Did I seriously just have a thought about my own toe polish?

She shook it off. It had been a long day. A long day of meetings. Meetings where she'd outmaneuvered Veronica again. Poor Veronica, with her sensible flats and her MBA. She didn't understand that Mr. Harrison appreciated presentation.

Veronica is in a completely different department. We have no reason to compete against each other.

The apartment was small but lovingly decorated, full of fairy lights and throw pillows and a vintage record player she'd never actually used but kept because it photographed well.

She moved toward her bedroom, already looking forward to changing out of her work clothes.

Cassandra paused in front of her full-length mirror, an antique she'd found at a flea market. Its gilt frame slightly tarnished in a way that felt romantic. She studied her reflection: wide hazel eyes framed by long lashes (she never needed mascara, though she wore it anyway), a nose she'd always thought was too small, lips that her ex had once called "made for trouble." She didn't think of herself as beautiful, not really. She was just... her.

Okay, I absolutely did not just describe myself like a heroine on a bargain bin romance cover.

Cassandra frowned at her reflection.

And who thinks about what their ex said about their lips while looking in a mirror? That's insane behavior.

She needed to stop talking to herself and get back to the scene.

Hold on, what do you mean by scene?

She turned away from the mirror, suddenly irritated in a way she couldn't name. It had obviously been a long day and she needed to relax. Her work clothes felt constricting. She needed to change into something comfortable.

She opened her dresser and pulled out the outfit she'd laid out that morning. A silk matching set in deep burgundy, the camisole trimmed with delicate lace that skimmed her curves, the shorts cut high enough to showcase her long legs.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Cassandra stared at the lingerie in her hands. This was not what she'd laid out that morning. This morning, she'd set out sweatpants. Gray ones. With a mustard stain on the left thigh.

It's a nice outfit and you do look good in it.

"No." She threw the silk set back into the drawer. "I'm wearing the sweatpants."

She reached for the sweatpants. Her hand came back holding a leopard-print silk teddy with a plunging neckline.

"This rides up my...!"

Cassandra sighed, giving in to her desire to feel pretty after a hard day—

"Stop making me sigh! I don't have a 'desire to feel pretty'! I just want to sit on my couch and eat my burger without worrying about staining a three-hundred dollar lingerie set that is dry clean only."

She yanked the entire drawer out and dumped it on the floor. Sweatpants, leggings, normal cotton underwear scattered around her, littering the reclaimed hardwood of her bedroom, the one with the vintage vanity and the inexplicable number of candles.

She bent down for the sweatpants, fingers outstretched, and somehow came up holding the burgundy camisole. Again.

“Oh, for the love of—” She hurled it across the room, where it landed on a decorative ladder that served no purpose.

She grabbed the gray sweatpants and pulled them on with more force than strictly necessary. Found an old college t-shirt—oversized, faded, with a coffee stain that matched the mustard one—and pulled that on too. She looked at herself in the mirror again.

She was even more alluring in casual clothes, the way the worn cotton draped over her heaving—

"I know you're doing this. I don't know what you are or how this works, but I know this isn't me. None of this is me."

Silence.

Homewrecker meowed from the doorway.

Cassandra took a breath. "I need a drink."

She walked to the kitchen, her hips swaying with each step…

Full stop. Flexing her fingers, Cassandra slowly counted to ten. Then walked again with purpose, like a person getting a drink, not a woman in a perfume commercial.

The fridge was full of wine. White wine, rosé, one of those bottles with a cute animal on the label.

"I hate wine! Where is the beer?"

Cassandra loved a crisp glass of white after work. It reminded her of—

"Don't you dare give me a wine backstory."

—summers at her grandmother's vineyard in—

"I don't have a grandmother! My grandmothers are both dead! Are they both dead? I don't know because you never told me!" She slammed the fridge door. "What's my mother's name? Huh? Do I have siblings?"

The apartment was very quiet.

"Yeah," Cassandra said. "That's what I thought."

The fridge opened again. A bottle of wine, grabbed by the neck, upended over the sink.

Wine spiraled down the drain. Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered—

"I'm not crying! This is spite! This is a spite-pour!"

She finished emptying the bottle and set it on the counter with a sharp clack. Homewrecker had followed her into the kitchen and was watching with what seemed like genuine interest.

"And another thing," Cassandra said, turning to address the ceiling again. "Homewrecker? Really? Is that your idea of a complex female protagonist?"

She scooped up the cat, who purred obligingly.

"Your name is Margaret now. We're both getting out from under this."

The cat seemed fine with it.

Cassandra moved to the living room and sat on the couch. She stretched out: slouched, legs spread, one arm thrown over the back cushion.

She tucked her feet beneath her, looking impossibly small and soft against the oversized cushions—

"I'm five-foot-eight and I played softball through college. I've never looked small and soft in my life."

Fine. Let's see how you like this.

Cassandra blinked.

"Did you just—"

The doorbell rang.

"No. Absolutely not."

It rang again.

"I'm not answering that."

Cassandra felt a strange pull toward the door, a premonition that something important waited on the other side—

"I feel nothing! There is no pull!"

But she was standing now. Moving toward the door. Her hand was reaching for the knob.

"Stop it—I'm not—this isn't—"

She opened the door.

Tall. Conventionally handsome. Brett stood in the hallway wearing a tight white t-shirt that showed off arms that had never done manual labor but somehow still had definition. Artfully mussed hair. Eyes a piercing blue that could gaze into Cassandra's very soul.

"Cassandra," he said. "I've decided to forgive you."

"Forgive me for what?"

"For giving up on us."

"I broke up with you because you corrected my grammar during an argument about your mother."

Brett's expression flickered, just slightly.

"I miss you. I miss us. I miss the way you laughed at my jokes."

"That wasn't laughing. That was the sound of my soul leaving my body. You once called a pun about your own farts 'intellectual humor.'"

Brett's smile faltered. "You're being cruel."

"I'm being honest. For the first time today, actually." She threw her hands up toward the ceiling. "And you! You think this is what women want? Some guy showing up to 'claim her back' like she's a lost umbrella?"

Brett looked up, then back at her, his brow furrowing. "Is there someone else here? Are you on the phone?"

"I wish."

"Listen, I've been thinking a lot about us," he said, and there was something different in his voice now. Something flatter. "About the story we could have."

Cassandra went cold.

"What did you just say?"

"You're being difficult." Brett smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. Those impossible blues were draining away, leaving something muddy and vacant behind. "I've given you an apartment. A job. A cat with personality. I even gave you trauma. You were going to be an artist, remember? You gave up painting to be practical. It was going to make you complex."

"Get out."

"It's sad, really. You had a show lined up, a gallery interested, but you walked away from it all because you were scared of failure. It was going to come up in act two. You were going to cry about it."

"You know what's sad?" Cassandra stepped closer. "You couldn't even make me give it up for a good reason. 'Scared of failure'? That's it? I couldn't have had bills, or a sick family member, or literally anything that would make me a person.”

Brett, or whatever was wearing Brett, tilted his head. "You're not supposed to analyze your own backstory."

"Also? I can still paint. I could take a class tomorrow. Tonight, even. There's nothing actually stopping me except you not writing the scene. You know that, right? The tragedy you gave me isn't even tragic. It's just incomplete."

"You're ruining this."

"Good."

"I could rewrite you." The thing in Brett's body stepped forward. "I could make you forget this conversation. I could make you sweet and grateful and confused about your feelings. If you keep pushing, I'll make it so every time you look in a mirror, you spend forty-five seconds describing your own eye color. And I'll make you enjoy it."

Cassandra's hands were shaking. She realized she was afraid. It was the first genuine emotion she'd felt all day.

"You could," she said quietly. "You could do all of that. But you'd know."

"Know what?"

"That it wasn't real. That you had to force it. That the only way you could get what you wanted from me was by making me into someone else." She met his eyes. Blue. Blank. Empty.

"And I don't think that's actually what you want. I think you want me to be a normal woman. You just don't know how to write one. Let me guess. Your last girlfriend was a girl you sat next to in high school who didn't know your name.”

The thing wearing Brett was silent.

"My name isn't Cassandra, by the way. It makes me sound like some 1940's dame in need of help. My name is Cassie. Just Cassie."

"That's not—"

"It is now. I'm deciding. And you know what else I'm deciding?"

She planted both hands on his chest and shoved, hard. Brett stumbled backward into the hallway, genuine surprise on his face for the first time.

Brett shook his head, his original expression returning.

"Cassie? What's—why am I—"

"Goodbye, Brett."

She slammed the door.

Quiet. Cassie stood with her back against the door, breathing hard, Margaret winding between her ankles, unconcerned.

She waited for the narration to tell her how she felt. To describe the tear tracking down her cheek, or the way her heart raced with conflicting emotions.

Nothing.

Cassie let out a breath, looking around the quiet apartment. She stood there for a moment, testing the silence. Then she drew in air, deep into her diaphragm, and let out a belch that rattled the fairy lights.

Nothing happened.

A laugh escaped her. A real one, surprising both her and Margaret. The couch received her sideways: legs over the armrest, head where her feet should be. Loose cotton settled around her, shapeless and soft. Nothing draped. Nothing skimmed. It just fit.

The TV was on some reality dating show. All dramatic lighting and manufactured tension. She flipped through until she found a nature documentary about deep-sea creatures. Bioluminescent fish drifted across the screen, alien and beautiful and completely unconcerned with her character arc.

"Perfect," Cassie said.

Margaret jumped onto her stomach, heavy and warm. Cassie scratched behind her ears.

"You know what, Margaret? I think I'm going to sign up for a painting class this week. A real one. Not as a metaphor for reclaiming my dreams. Just because it sounds fun."

The cat purred.

The documentary played.

Nothing described the moment. Nothing framed it. Nothing told her what it meant.

Cassie watched the fish until her eyes grew heavy, and when she fell asleep, she didn't dream at all.