AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Excuse me,” I said to David in a watery voice, keeping my face turned away from him. “I... need to go check on something.”
Sniffling, I quickly made my way out of the room, heading straight for the bathroom.
I was on the cusp of a full-on pity party.
Nobody needed to see that.
I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long I’d decided to wear mascara, and I regretted that decision now. A raccoon’s face stared back at me from the mirror, eyes ringed with smears of black makeup and cheeks splotchy with tears.
It made me feel like an even bigger idiot than I had when I’d run in here to hide ten minutes earlier. Which was saying a lot.
A quiet knock on the bathroom door startled me out of my self-pity.
“Cassie? Are you in there?” Frederick’s voice. It was low and full of concern. A gentle, reassuring warmth flooded me at the sound of it.
“No.” Without thinking, I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand. It came away streaked with black.
“I just spoke with someone who said she saw you rush in here. I’m concerned. May I come in?”
“I said I’m not in here.”
A quiet huff of a laugh. “Clearly you are.”
I shut my eyes and leaned my forehead against the door separating us. The smooth wood felt refreshingly cool against my flushed skin. “I amsuchan idiot.”
“You are not.”
“You have to say that.” Fresh tears pricked behind my closed eyelids. “You don’t know how to ride the El by yourself and you’ll be stuck here at this party forever if you aren’t nice to me.”
Another quiet laugh, then more firmly, “Move away from the door, Cassie. I’m worried about you. I’d like to come in.”
His slightly authoritative tone flipped some sort of switch inside of me. “Okay,” I said, sniffling.
He stepped inside the small bathroom—all six feet two inches of him, broad-shouldered and beautiful—before quietly closing the door behind him. All of a sudden I was reminded of just how small this space really was.
He seemed to notice it the same instant I did, his eyes widening as they darted over the shower stall behind me, the toilet, the sink. But then he saw my face, and the mess I’d made of it—and then his attention was all on me.
“Who did this to you?” His voice was low, but urgent. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” I tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed hold of my arm, keeping me in place. I shivered, the chill from his touch burning its way through the fabric of my shirt and creating a stark contrast with the rush of warmth I suddenly felt everywhere else. “I’m a failure, is all.”
“You arenota failure,” he said firmly. “Anyone who made you feel like one will havemeto deal with.”
I smiled a little at the idea of Frederick threatening anyone at all. He might be an undead creature of the night—but as undead creatures of the night went, he was a marshmallow.
I sniffled. “That person, unfortunately, is me.”
“You?”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes. “I submitted a piece I’ve been working on for weeks to an art exhibition. I was really excited about it, but I just found out it’s been rejected.”
“Oh, Cassie,” Frederick said, his tone laced with sympathy. “I am so sorry.” His hand was still on my arm. His touch was grounding. I hoped he wouldn’t pull it back anytime soon. “Is that all?”
I sighed. “I’m such a fuckup, Frederick.”
“People are rejected from things all the time, Cassie.” He paused, thinking. “In a way, I was rejected from the entire past century.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not the same thing.”
