The shrill ring of my phone woke me from a dead sleep. I was dreaming about the hottie I’d seen at the bar, his hands wandering over me like they owned my body. I was wet, hot damn, was I wet. There was nothing I wanted more than to finish that dream, but unfortunately, duty called.
Literally.
I didn’t even have to look at the phone to know who was calling me. It was four o’clock in the morning, closing time. Which meant I had another pick up to make.
“Where are you?” I whispered into the phone, desperate not to wake Sam up. She was a light sleeper and usually rode with me, but I always felt bad. It wasn’t her responsibility.
“Addi! Can you come get me?” the whiny voice penetrated what was left of my sleepiness and I was suddenly wide awake. That tone catapulted me back to the first time she’d called, scared and alone and needing me. In high school it scared me more than I ever admitted to anyone. I thought for sure my parents would kill me for sneaking out of the house, but she was my sister, and I couldn’t leave her.
“Where are you, Cass?” I said as I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
Cassandra was four years younger than me and had always been a party girl. That first phone call came when I was only a junior in high school, just a few weeks after I’d gotten my license. Cassandra snuck out to a party and got so high she didn’t know which way was up. Yeah, she was thirteen. It was the most terrifying night of my life. I didn’t know if she was going to survive, but she begged me not to tell our parents.
I’d been covering for her ever since.
“At a party,” the slurred speech came back. “Edge of town. Cold Front Road. I’m cold. Hurry.”
The word hurry always got to me, something Cassandra figured out years before. If she told me to hurry, I got anxious that she was in danger and drove even faster to get to her. The sound of that one word falling from her lips always brought me back to the first phone call, and the urgency and panic I felt that night.
Now, twelve years later, I was still jumping at the sound of my sister’s scared voice.
I ducked out of my room, keys in hand, and headed to the front door. As I was slipping on my sneakers, I heard Sam’s door open. “Where to tonight?”
“Go back to bed, Sam. You don’t need to deal with this.”
She ignored me, like she always did, and slid her feet into her boots. Sam followed me out the door dutifully, like the best friend she was.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of a house that was clearly the party. People were passed out on the lawn, music poured from the open windows, and yelling could be heard even through the closed car doors. I saw Cassandra draped over a guy who was half dragging her toward his car. He stumbled as he walked, telling me he was almost as messed up as my sister.
Sam and I bolted out the door, barely slamming the car into park before we were gone. I reached Cassandra’s side just as he lowered her into his car.
“What the fuck?” the drunk shouted in my ear. He grabbed my shoulder and turned me roughly, my back slamming into the door frame of his car. Sam grabbed Cassandra’s arm and started tugging her out of the car.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” I growled at the man who hovered over me. His breath stunk of stale beer and cigarettes, and something else that I’d come to identify as angry male. He was a good eight inches taller than me and used his height to appear more menacing than he probably was. Being drunk helped him feel tougher too, I’d learned from these encounters.
“What do you two fat bitches think you’re gonna do about it?” he snarled at me, taking Sam in with his gaze.
Fat bitches. Wow, he was original. Not. In the twelve years I’d been rescuing Cassandra I’d been called everything under the sun, but insulting my weight was the favorite among the drunk or high assholes my sister was always attracted to. It made me wonder what she really thought, but I couldn’t go there while I was facing down the latest adversary.
“Well, first, my friend is going to remove my sister from the car. Second, we are going to carry her to my car. And third, we’re going to drive away. Through all this you’re going to stand aside quietly and let us go.”
He laughed loudly, throwing his head back and bellowing like I’d just told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Sam and I took advantage of it and had Cass out of the car and standing between us, her arms looped around our shoulders so we could drag her to the car together.
When he finally stopped laughing, he glared at us, his eyes struggling to focus as he looked from Sam to Cass to me. “That bitch promised me a good time. She’s not going anywhere until she does all the dirty shit she said she would.”
“She’s not even conscious,” Sam argued with him, further goading the smug piece of shit.
“A promise is a promise,” he gloated, running his tongue over his slightly yellowed teeth as he checked out my sister. “I don’t need her conscious to have fun. I just need a place to shove my dick. Better yet, maybe I should take you two with us.”
He stepped forward, menacing eyes scanning Sam and me from head to toe. We’d been through it before so neither of us was falling for his shit, but he was big. And scary.
My heart pounded as he took another step and I wound up and brought my knee up hard into his crotch. He stumbled backward, his knees giving out as his hands flew to his balls, checking to see if they were still attached. Sam and I quickly moved past him, stopping only when he screamed at our backs. “I’ll get you bitches!”
“If we ever see you again, or hear you’ve come near her again, your balls will be the least of your concerns. We’ve been recording this whole interaction, including your license plate number. We ever see you again and every word you just said, like how you don’t need a conscious woman to enjoy yourself, just a hole, will become public record. I’m pretty sure you’d find out what men in prison think about your... hole.”
Sam snickered at my words as we dragged Cassandra to the car. The asshole insulted us with very colorful language but didn’t get up from the ground. Once we had Cass laid out in the backseat, Sam and I got in the car and I started breathing again.
“Thanks,” I said to her as I pulled away from the curb.
“Any time. You know we really do need to start recording these assholes one of these days. At least snapping a pic of the license plate just in case.”
I laughed and shook my head. The men my sister picked up were always afraid to get reported. Once Sam and I figured out that threatening them with calling the cops made them back off, we did it every time. Of course my knee meeting their nuts helped, too.
The next morning I woke to the sound of Cassandra emptying her stomach in my bathroom. Sam helped me drag her to the couch, and we put a trash can under her nose before we both passed out again. In the not-so-bright light of the morning, I questioned, again, why I bothered helping Cassandra.
The sound of her wrenching filled my ears again, making sleep impossible. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen. By the time Cass stopped throwing up and I heard the sink running, Sam was in the kitchen, coffee was done, and two slices of toast popped up from the toaster.
“Remind me again why we spend all our weekends chasing your sister instead of being chased by some hot men,” Sam begged in a groggy morning voice.
“I was wondering the same thing. I wish I could let go like she does and not care about what sort of situation I ended up in,” I confessed.
Sam snorted. “Yeah, but who would drag your ass home? Cassandra? You couldn’t do what she does because you have a brain. And a decent amount of common sense.”
I nodded in agreement then froze when I heard Cassandra clear her throat behind us. Sam and I exchanged guilty looks, feeling bad for telling the truth about my disaster of a sister.
“Thanks,” Cass said, uncharacteristically. “One of these days I need to turn my life around. Be more like you, Addi. I’m sorry I keep dragging you into my messes. I won’t call you anymore.”
“Aw, Cass, don’t be like that. You know I’ll always be there to help you.”
“Yeah, because I have no brain and no common sense.” Cass took a deep, shuddering breath and continued, “I guess she’s right though. I’m a mess. If you weren’t always there to save me God only knows what sort of trouble I’d have gotten in. I’d probably be dead by now. I’d probably still be a virgin, too.”
“Cass, don’t get so upset. Sam just meant—”
“She meant I’m a complete fuck up and all I do is screw up your life. Hell, I’m probably the reason you don’t have a life!”
Damn, that one hurt.
My hand flew to my chest unconsciously. I sucked in a sharp breath as tears burned my eyes. “I have a life, Cass. I have a job I love, a great group of friends, and I’m happy.”
“Oh, please,” Cass said sharply, “you’re making me bored just talking about it. Where’s the fun, the adventure? Neither of us has figured it out yet. I’m a disaster, but at least I’m not hiding away, existing instead of living.”
A quick pain shot through my chest, Cassandra’s words hitting their mark. She knew exactly what to say to make me feel like shit for her being so screwed up. We’d had the same argument many times over the years, where she’d say she was going to change, then accuse me of being boring. No matter how many times she said it, it always hurt. I couldn’t let it go the way I did with the drunk assholes I rescued her from. Those were just faceless men, no one of significance. But Cassandra... I couldn’t push past the angry words my sister said to me.
Not when I knew they were true.
“I gotta go home. Mom wants me there early to help her with the sweet potato casserole. I’ll see you later,” Cass said, then left.
The silence that filled the kitchen echoed around in my head. Sam didn’t say anything, just let me process. I knew she was trying to help, but what I really wanted was to hear that Cassandra was wrong. I wasn’t boring, I wasn’t existing, I was living my life.
But Sam wouldn’t lie to me.
She’d been trying to get me to go out with her. Whenever she was dating someone new she offered to set me up with one of his friends. She pushed, gently, but it was still there. Sam agreed with Cassandra.
After all it’d only been a month since Lexi’s mom’s wedding when Sam tried to talk me into having some fun, changing things a bit.
“You don’t have to live your life like her. You know that right?” Sam said finally. Her voice was soft, something I never associated with my tough as nails best friend. Sam didn’t do soft unless she was trying to lessen the blow of what she was saying.
“She’s right and you know it. I haven’t had a real relationship since Steve, and that was more than five years ago. The most action I get is going to the gynecologist every year. I live in fear, playing it safe. You’ve been telling me the same thing for years, just not as directly.”
“Yeah, well, your sister is a bitch. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. She never should have said those things to you. There’s nothing wrong with how you live your life. I push because I want you to be happy. Once upon a time you talked about getting married, having a family. Hell, even getting a cat. Lately all you’ve done is work and hang out with everyone. And rescue Cass. If you’re happy, then good. But I see the way you look at Mandy and Xander, Claire and Aidan, and now Lexi and Mike. You want that. And it’s okay to want that, but you need to put yourself out there if you’re ever going to get it.”
Sam was right. As our friends found love I wanted it more and more. No matter what though, it always seemed like love was just out of reach.
Not that I’d been trying very hard. Putting myself out there, taking a chance... I had a hard time doing that. Maybe it was time to change that.
“It’s hard, Sam. I don’t know how you date so many guys and don’t think twice when a relationship implodes. I couldn’t handle it. Or how Lexi could have no strings attached sex with Mike.”
Sam shrugged and poured herself a cup of coffee. As she spread butter over the toast I made for Cassandra she said, “For one, Lexi wasn’t able to do it without strings. She and Mike fell for each other. As for me,” Sam shrugged. “You get used to it. I don’t go into a relationship waiting for it to fail. I go in looking to have fun. As long as I am having fun, it’s all good. If a relationship works out, then great. If not, I’ll find another one.”
It sounded so simple from Sam’s point of view. Have fun. If I stop having fun then it’s time for the relationship to be over.
I laughed to myself. Like I could ever sit back and just enjoy something. I’d always waited for relationships to blow up in my face. Granted I knew that was part of why they did. I brought it on myself. I wasn’t one of those nitpicky women who pointed out every little thing a guy did wrong, but I certainly didn’t avoid issues either.
Damn. I didn’t know if it was in me to just chill out and let it happen.
“It’s not you, Addi. You shouldn’t try to be me, or to be Cassandra. Just be you. If that’s not good enough for people then screw ‘em. You’ll find someone one day who’ll make you want to come out of your hole and try again. Until then, don’t worry about it.”
Sam breezed out of the kitchen like she’d just told me it was going to rain later. She had no idea how much her words stung. I wasn’t trying to hide, but I wasn’t going to go around screwing every guy out there either. But being Cassandra seemed so much easier at times.
