Forever with you | ashtray

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

bold is messages
Italics is narrated
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cassie's preview;

Cassie's dad was really handsome. the kind of handsome that made people treat him differently.

her mom used to get really upset at him for flirting.

which wasn't fair. it wasn't his fault.

he really loved her. he really loved them all.

her dad always wanted her to become a professional ice skater.

and for a while she thought she might. she was a natural.

but her dad couldn't afford lessons. so he stopped encouraging her.

when she hit puberty her mother and her became best friends.

and it wasn't just her body that changed. but the rest of the world too.

their family wasn't perfect.

her mom had, you know, some issues.

and he dad struggled to keep a steady income.

and they fought.

in the way all parents kind of fight.

except for the night before she started ninth grade.

her mom told her that he dad was just being irrational.

but cassie had heard differently.

at first she was really angry at her mom, she resented her for being such a hypocrite.

but then she realized that her dad wasn't perfect. and her mom wasn't either, and maybe they just weren't right for each other.

he used to visit them on weekends.

but eventually it became once every couple of weeks. and then sometimes more than a month would go by.

then one night, he was driving home from work, and he crashed.

he was in the ICU for 23 days.

the doctors were afraid he'd never walk again.

but cassie knew he was strong and that he'd get better.

he was prescribed fentanyl for pain. promethazine to offset the nausea. liquid lorazepam to sleep, and imitrex injections for migraines.

cassie would text him and talk to him. but as more time went by, the less responsive he became. and eventually months went by and she didn't hear from him at all.

until one night, a week after her 15th birthday. she got a text from a random number at about 1 in the morning.

it was him. asking her to open the garage door for him, and telling her not to wake her mom.

and even though she was excited to see him.

and wanted to hug him.

there was something about the whole thing that scared her.

'i want you to know there's never a day goes by that i don't think about you' is what he told her.

but she just focused on the way his arm looked, it looked like he was injecting himself.

he said he needed a few things and made her promise she wouldn't tell a soul.

cassie kept her promise and never told anyone about that night.