I spent the next couple of days running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
Kim gave me a murder case, a stabbing in the bathroom of a country club. Somewhat high profile, a lot of interviewing and reading through police reports and research. The article I spit out needed to be perfect. My boss was finally trusting me with larger cases and if I didn't prove myself to be a valuable writer, I'd be relegated back to petty theft and hit and runs for the rest of my career.
Dealing with the Shiloh situation on top of that was making my brain overheat. She decided to send a lawyer to meet with Jay in an attempt to keep her identity hidden and to see what kind of offer he was willing to make. I played middle man between the lawyers, Jay, and Shiloh. Not to mention keeping Eleanor and Casey up to date on the situation as well.
And Casey... I hadn't seen him in person since our night in the tree house. Even though we texted every day and squeezed in a phone call every night (even though I fell asleep during most of them), I didn't like going five days without seeing him. It was making me even more irritable than I normally would have been with all of the work stress.
On Friday, I got the article on Kim's desk and managed to schedule the meeting between Jay and the lawyers to talk financial compensation.
"This is the country club piece?" Kim asked from her desk, eyeing the document that I'd just emailed to her. "It's not due until Monday."
"I know. I finished early," I said without explaining to her that I desperately wanted my weekend to be free of stressing about the Monday deadline.
Her narrow gaze swept quickly down the document. I had no idea how she skimmed through that quickly, but after thirty seconds of scrolling, she leaned back in her seat. I pinched my lips together, holding my breath as I waited for a verdict. "Looks good."
My entire body relaxed through a short sigh. I was happy with how the article turned out, but I was so frazzled by everything going on, I didn't fully trust my own judgment.
"I want you to write up an update to the Tanzing case," she added after a beat.
"Didn't Boris just publish the Tanzing article last week?"
Kim nodded, tapping her beautifully manicured nails against the wood of her desk. "Yes, he did, but I think there's more research to be done there. You're the best researcher on the team so if there is something more, I know you'll find it."
A compliment like that coming from my boss, even in her tight monotone voice, felt like an incredible gift. My chest welled with pride so heavily that I almost forgot that I had to respond to Kim. "I'll see what I can find."
Another nod, this one dismissing me from her office as she started typing away at her computer.
Boris, who must have already been notified about the Tanzing article, glared at me as I passed his desk. I offered him a smile in return, trying really hard not to make it look as braggy as I felt. I'd known for a long time that Boris had gotten lazy with his research skills. He was the senior writer for Kripke's crime section and it was giving him a complex of feeling like he didn't have to work as hard. I was ecstatic that Kim was finally seeing it too.
I was nearly bouncing with excitement at the end of the day when I got to drive immediately to Casey's apartment. Without an immediate deadline to worry about and with Shiloh's meeting scheduled, I had nothing else to focus on other than Casey and his lips and hearing his laugh against my ear. I was going to curl into him like an armadillo and recall the way Boris threw a whole tantrum in the break room because of the Tanzing article. It was demoralizing, he said, as if his article had been completely through when he didn't even read through the public witness statements or talk to the chief of police, who put out a statement about the incident.
On my way across town, I picked up a to-go order of pasta, garlic bread, and white wine. We had all weekend to spend together and I was intent on taking full advantage of that.
"Case, I'm here," I called through the apartment when I stepped into the foyer. "I brought dinner. I forgot if you liked shells or manicotti so I got-"
The rest of the sentence got caught in my throat when I rounded the corner into the dining room to see Rebecca's familiar straight dark hair sitting in a chair at the dining room table and no Casey anywhere to be seen.
She was already spinning around and despite my first instinct being to run and hide, I stood still in my place in the archway that connected the foyer and dining room. Her eyes narrowed so harshly at me that I nearly flinched.
"Hi, Rebecca," I finally sputtered something out in an attempt to not look terrified. Even when she stood from the chair, I didn't move. Was she going to try to murder me? I was only a couple of inches taller, but I was armed with the wine bottle and a bag of steaming pasta. All she had were her high heels and a fiery rage that boiled behind her eyes.
"What are you doing here?" she snapped at me, crossing her arms over her chest.
I held up the plastic bag full of takeout containers. "Just dropping off dinner. Is Casey here?"
"No, obviously he's not here. I came to drop off my key and get a few things and decided to wait for him to get home so that we could talk face to face," she explained, her voice still rock hard and angry. "You two didn't even have the dignity to wait a couple of weeks before you started... unless it's been going on for a while now?"
"No," I said quickly. "Nothing was going on when you two were together."
I immediately wished I hadn't said it like that because it practically confirmed that there was definitely something going on now. Although by the way she was glaring at me, it was obvious that she already suspected that to be the truth. Getting dumped out of a four year relationship and ending an engagement must be hard in any circumstance. But when that ex had another girl bringing him manicotti on a Friday night not so long after the breakup, that must sting even more. Even though I didn't like Rebecca and thought she was kind of a mean person, I still felt unbelievably guilty.
She rolled her eyes at me. "From the second Eleanor told him that you reached out, I knew it was over. He lit up like a kid about to see Santa. I should have ended things myself, saved my pride a little bit. I don't know, I guess I thought he'd see how stupid he'd be to leave me. Everything we have. And now we all look like morons."
"You don't look like a moron." It might not have been the right thing to say, but it was all I had.
"Spare me," Rebecca snapped.
"You can blame me if you want, I guess, if that helps. But I'm not the reason your relationship failed," I said with my shoulders straight as I put the wine down on the nearby counter. Rebecca was like Kim, I reminded myself. I couldn't let her terrify me or feed off of my guilt. It would make her too powerful. "You want status, you want to mingle with the upper crust crowd and go to galas and benefits and whatever else rich people do. Casey has spent his entire life hiding from that kind of life and he'd never be happy playing your arm puppet at fancy events or vacationing in Tuscany with your friends."
"He seemed pretty happy with it before you came along."
"You two were not a good match and you have to know that, right? I might have been a catalyst in helping Casey realize all of that, but it probably would have happened eventually, with or without me." I kept my gaze steady with hers, but probably not as steely. I didn't have a very intimidating glare, but it seemed to be enough to stop her from eating my head off.
"Like you're such an expert in who Casey is because you were friends in high school? You hardly know him anymore, you don't know what he wants," she snapped at me. "You're fooling yourselves into thinking that whatever happened when you were teenagers is still real and that's honestly the most pathetic thing. Seriously, Josie, grow up."
Thankfully, the front door clicked open before I had to think of a way to respond to that. I wasn't very good at this back and forth thing and I really didn't want to argue with the woman. I just wanted her to see that the breakup was probably for the best in everybody's interest. Why would she want to be with somebody who didn't want the same lifestyle as her? It sounded miserable.
"Josie?" Casey noticed me first when he rounded the corner. "Oh, and Rebecca. What's going on?"
"Your girlfriend brought you dinner," Rebecca answered, her tone snarky and low. "Oh and he likes the manicotti with alfredo instead of red sauce. Just for future reference."
"What?" he was clearly very confused, his face contorting as his eyes bounced back and forth between us.
"Nothing," she said with a long sigh. "I'm leaving."
She brushed hard against Casey's shoulder on her way through the archway down the foyer. Only when the door closed behind her did Casey look at me and ask, "What was all of that about?" as he lowered his work bag and keys onto the console table in the hall.
"Said she came to drop off her key and grab some things," I explained to him. "Understandably, she wasn't too happy seeing me come through the door. I feel awful."
"What did she say?" he asked me, looking concerned as I plopped myself down at the table.
"Nothing I didn't deserve."
He was quick to stand in front of me, crouching down so that our eyes were level with each other and his hands stabilized his weight by holding onto my thighs. "Hey, you didn't do anything wrong."
"Technically, I guess not, but it still feels shitty."
"She's really just angry at me, she shouldn't be taking it out on you. I'm sorry, I didn't know she was stopping by or I would have said something." Casey smelled like Clorox and dirt, his hair disheveled from working all day. "Do you regret moving too fast?"
"No," I said quickly, putting my hand over his on my leg. "I feel bad, but I don't regret it. She said that she knew it was over the second I reached out. I guess that's probably why she never liked me."
"You don't have anything to feel bad about," he promised me again. "I'm the one that fucked up. She probably does deserve an apology for me, not just for these passed couple of months, but for the entire relationship. I was in love with you the whole time. I never should have even asked her out to begin with. What's the wine for? Are we celebrating something?"
"I got assigned a new article at work today," I explained, trying to get my mind off of Rebecca and the nasty way she was glaring at me. I started to pull out the containers of pasta from the bag so that we could eat and get on with our evening instead of dwelling on the guilt for any longer. "Can we talk more about how in love with me you were in college? Was there any social media stalking? Shrines with locks of my hair?"
He kissed the stop of my head as he rose from his crouching position to sit in the opposite chair. He poured the wine and grabbed forks from the drawer by the sink. "No shrines, but I did create a fake account on Instagram to follow you. And of course I always had Google alerts set up to let me know whenever you posted a new article for the school paper."
"Those articles weren't very exciting."
"Of course they were," he argued. "Because I'd sit there, imagining your voice saying those words as you proof read to your roommate. And I imagined you sitting at your laptop somewhere, typing those words, and it made me feel closer to you. That's as exciting as things could get for me."
I pinched my lips together, hoping that I could just make it through dinner without swooning completely until I was a puddle at his feet. To battle the effects that his words had on me, I stabbed into my pasta and said, "You are such a nerd."