The End for Now

Now You Know

Note: This story is set in the fall of Cassie and Trevor's senior year, ten months before THE END OF NOW.

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Trevor reached for her hand but missed. Maybe she'd pulled away; she'd been doing that since last week—since it'd happened. Or maybe it was just one of those random misses that happened because the world wasn't engineered to bring people together. Maybe you really had to work for it, maybe that was the point.

"He sounded good today," Trevor said.

Cassie pushed the elevator button three times. "Yeah."

"Ate most of his lunch. And some of mine."

"Uh huh."

The elevator opened and they stepped in. Trevor looked for her hand, but she'd tucked both inside her jacket. Secure. So no one could get to her.

"He likes seeing you," Trevor said.

"He doesn't even know who I am."

"But he's happy when you're here—you saw him today. His eyes lit up when you showed him those pictures from Thanksgiving."

"And then he asked who I was—me."

"He has dementia, Cass. "

She tucked her chin into her coat. "I'm not sure what the point of all this is if we just get old and slowly lose our minds."

"That's pretty deep."

Cassie flicked her eyes at him. He wondered why she didn't say it. She'd been dying to say it since last week—biting her tongue and saying almost nothing instead. Trevor got the feeling she was about to break the silence.

They walked to his car and sat until the heat kicked in. The lot was filled because it was Saturday, something Cassie loved to hate. Weekend pity visitors, she called them. Here out of guilt instead of love.

"If I get dementia, don't put me in a place like this to wilt," she said. "Just take me to the top of a tall mountain and leave me."

"I'm gonna need that in writing."

Trevor drove to the grocery store down the street because Cassie liked to eat a pint of ice cream when crappy stuff was going on and this place had them on sale basically every day. She went straight for the cookie dough, like usual. Trevor stared at the flavors. Like usual.

"You really need to figure out a way to make up your mind," she told him.

"But they're all so good."

"You either want it with peanut butter or you don't."

"The question is: do I feel like peanut butter right now?"

"This is a metaphor of your life."

She was nearly ready to say it. He wished she would just get it over with—he wasn't afraid to have the conversation. They'd been dancing around it for a week, pretending it wasn't a big deal but knowing that it was a gigantic deal and not sure what to do about it. Trevor didn't know what he would say exactly, but he wasn't worried. He just wanted it resolved so they could move on. So they could leave this valley and move back to higher, more familiar ground. Where she felt safe again. 

They wandered to the store's cafe and fell into fake whicker chairs in front of a fake fireplace, digging into their pints with plastic spoons. Cassie broke hers and took his. She broke that too.

"You realize this isn't funny, right?" she said. "You left me on this limb and it feels like it's going to snap."

"I didn't mean to."