And she would retort, "How can we have history together if you don't even know my name?" She would then chuckle; in a manner both self-conscious and flirty, a balance which she knew she struck well. And then she would smile, showing off her asymmetrical dimples; and she would extend her hand and say, "I'm Cassie, and you are?"
He would ask her out fourteen days later, and on their third date he would admit that he had spent nine of these days strategizing with Lin about the perfect method of asking Cassie out; only to settle on simply biking to her house with an extra helmet and inviting her for a waffles brunch at Eve's Diner.
They would date for two years before she would have to attend his funeral.
Before she would find herself wondering why her arm was around Lin's shoulder, why Lin's head was on hers, why they seemed to fit like puzzle pieces that way, and why it somehow made perfect sense that Lin had chosen Cassie's arms over her parents' restlessly inviting ones.
They spent senior year intertwined.
Lin, who had previously been fairly loved and popular became aloof after receiving that call at 2 in the afternoon that informed her that Marcus had passed away in an apparent suicide, and that he had left no note behind; but instead of withdrawing into herself, Lin withdrew into Cassie.
Lin would wait for the other girl outside of her classes after having memorized her schedule with no discernable effort. She would show up to school wearing some of Cassie's band shirts because she had spent the previous night curled up on Cassie's bed, who had graciously offered to sleep on the floor but still elevated her hand to be within Lin's reach. And the few lunches Lin did eat, she ate with Cassie, outside of the cafeteria, on that one abandoned bench that the graduating class of stoners used to reign over.
Everyone who cared enough to observe the two -after that customary two-week period of gossip and fixation on Marcus's death and those it affected had passed- would be completely perplexed by the nature of this sudden bond between Cassie and Lin.
Mostly because the two girls rarely talked to each other, despite spending so much time together, despite Cassie acting like her sole purpose on earth was to protect Lin at all costs, and despite Lin seeming to have molded herself so seamlessly into Cassie.
They didn't seem like friends and they definitely weren't lovers, if anything, they gave off the aura of two estranged siblings coming together at Thanksgiving just for everyone else's sake.
Lin chose to go to a university near home, she told everyone that it was because her father and mother didn't want to part with their only child just yet, but when Cassie prodded her about it, Lin said it was because she wasn't ready to leave Marcus behind yet. And after that, they again fell into their padded silence.
Cassie chose to take a gap year and work with her dad at his motorbike repair shop; and despite being in the prime location Lin wanted to be in -the very town in which Marcus breathed, walked, and bled- Cassie found ways of completely blotting out his memory from the various scenes around her.
She wouldn't think of him awkwardly reaching for her hand and her wiping hers off of the ketchup that stained it, before giving it to him to hold in Eve's Diner, instead she would urge herself to think only about that time she watched a nervous kid vomit her strawberry smoothie on the town mayor's shoes inside the retro-themed diner.
She wouldn't think about him kissing her for the first time at the drive-in theater and how that initial contact, tentative and sweet, had reaffirmed what she already knew, that she was already madly and irrevocably in love with him; instead, whenever Cassie would walk by that plot, she would opt to think about the jerk who had asked her out to watch Night of the Living Dead there in the 9th grade after stealing his cousin's car, just to try and feel her up on the cracked leather seats, four minutes into the movie.
She would remember kneeing him in the balls and she would, at least, feel a little jolt of pleasure at that.
Moreover, Cassie refused to think of Marcus in her room; with his head on top of her ribcage and his falling tears failing to puncture her skin but still leaving an imprint there, both over her heart and deep inside it.
