You and Everything After

“I didn’t realize I was getting a grade for my workouts with you,” I say, holding a slice to my mouth and blowing on it to cool.

“Baby, I’m always evaluating. Always,” he says, winking. Cocky son-of-a-bitch. I love that about him.

“Oh yeah, me too,” I say, handing him a napkin. He has a giant splotch of sauce on his chin. “That’s going to put you at a C, maybe even a C minus.”

“What, a little sauce? Damn, you grade hard,” he says, wiping his chin. “That’s fine though. I like extra credit.”

“I bet you do,” I tease.

Things quickly slid back to natural with Ty. He told me about his visit with Kelly, and I feel terrible about what she found out. I can’t imagine being a young mother, newly married, and having a husband cheat. I think if Ty could find a way to take out both Paul Cotterman and Jared with one shot, and make it look like an accident, he would.

The threat of the lawsuit is wearing on me. It’s there when I wake up in the morning, dangling above my head, threatening to ruin my reputation, yet again. I call my dad every afternoon for an update, and it’s always the same. We’re still talking with his lawyers, trying to find out what leverage he has.

Leverage.

I’ll tell you what kind of leverage he has. He’s a young faculty member, decent looking, and charming with his female students. And if he smells weakness in any form, he goes in after it, for his own pleasure. He uses leverage for evil. And I’d bust his nose again if given the chance.

The latest worry was that he was thinking of pressing charges against me. He has doctor’s reports on his fractured nose. Suing me for breaking his nose. What an ass!

When my phone rings, I hold it and consider putting my dad off. I doubt he has anything new, and I don’t like having these conversations with him in front of Ty. But there’s also a part of me that’s holding on to hope that one of these times, one phone call, my dad will say it’s all over, that the case was dropped. That Paul is gone. That I get to play soccer without worry. That I get to be young, be in love, and just be me—just Cass. That was the plan all along.

I slide to answer, and hold my breath, ready to be debriefed on the Cotterman issue.

“Hey dad,” I say, through a full mouth.

“Ah sorry, pumpkin. Did I call during dinner?” He’s been calling me pet names lately, trying to soften our relationship. My blowup at dinner the night before Thanksgiving did a real number on my parents. My mom must have cried apologies to me a dozen times. My dad deals with things differently, just changing his behavior. What it’s really going to take is time…and lots of it.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just pizza,” I say, taking a big gulp from the soda bottle to clear my mouth. “So, where are we at today?”

“Things are looking good,” he says. I almost spit out the sip I just took, shocked. Things haven’t looked good in a while, since I gave Cotterman a bloody nose, to be honest. Good was not what I was expecting.

“Good. Wow. Really?” I say, turning to Ty and smiling. He gives me a thumbs up.

“We made an amendment to the original settlement, and Paul accepted,” my dad says. His legalese is a little vague.

“An amendment…and he…accepted?” I ask, still not sure what this means.

“Yeah, we changed the terms of the settlement. Really, there was no way he could not accept, Cass. He would have been a fool not to,” my dad says. Something about the way he says it, his phrasing, makes me itchy. So I push for more.

“Did we…pay him? Is that how we’re making this all go away?” I ask, and the silence on the other end confirms it. “Dad…did you give him more money? The man who tried to…ohhhh…oh my god.”

The thought of it all makes me sick, and I feel dirtier than I ever have before.

“You hit him, Cass,” my dad says, like that’s the only fact on the table.

“Yes, because he wanted to sexually assault me!” I bite back, tossing the rest of my uneaten pizza in the trash.

My dad’s sigh comes through loud and clear, and it makes my head hurt. “Cass, the law isn’t black and white like that,” he says.

“Like what, like, you can’t hit someone in the temple and kick them in the face so they don’t violate you? Black and white like that?” I’m pacing in a circle, walking my pattern in front of Ty until he holds my waist to stop me. My eyes burn, my head hurts, my world is spinning. I don’t understand any of this.