Days Like This by Danielle Ellison Read Free Book Online Page A

He didn’t want that, or he’d be doing it now. He was over me, and that
was what I told him to do. I couldn’t touch him, even if I wanted to. He
deserved more than that. More than a half-life with me, and a happiness I’d
never give him, even if I wanted to.
    “It’s not
something I like to advertise, Cassie,” Graham said. “I told her you moved on
without me and that was the end.”
    I shifted my
gaze to my feet. That was what I told him, almost exactly that way. I said I wasn’t
good for him and he should move on. “Let’s both just move on.” But
I didn’t think I ever knew how. Not really.
    “You coming
over, then?” he asked.
    “You still
live in the back?”
    He nodded. “I
won’t even see you. I go to work in a couple hours anyway.”
    I inhaled when
he said that. He definitely didn’t want me around. It felt like he poured cold
water down my back. Reality sucked.
    “Sure,” I
said. I’d stay there. If he didn’t care then I shouldn’t either. He turned back
toward the front door and I took one last look around the living room. The
music stopped around me, the floor creaked in that one spot between the dining
room and the foyer.
    “Don’t worry—I
put it back in the sleeve and in the right order. I know how it works,” he
said, opening the door.
    “You
remembered,” I said. If he remembered that, maybe he remembered us. The good
us. Before. Memories were frozen and all I had to do to repair us was unfreeze
them.
    “I was never
the one who forgot,” he said. I stepped aside in the doorway to let him exit
first.
     

9.
Graham
    I KNEW CASS WAS coming. Hell,
I was the one who called her, but until she was standing there refusing to make
eye contact—it was hard to believe it was true. We’d barely said two words to
each other since we left her house. I didn’t really know what to say to her.
Well, I knew what to say to her, but I also knew I couldn’t. It wasn’t the time,
and I wasn’t an ass. She made herself pretty clear last time I saw her. God, I
wished she didn’t look so damn good. If she looked bad all this would be
easier.
    And maybe I
wouldn’t want to kiss her so much.
    God, I wanted
to kiss her.
    I had to shake
that off. I had a girlfriend, and Cassie was here, but it didn’t change
anything. I opened the door to the guest room, and turned the light on for her.
In the light of the room, she was radiant. She’d always been beautiful, but today,
there was something else, a sadness that rarely defined her, but now it seemed
so engrained.
    I knew right then
what I really wanted for her: I hoped that when she left she found the thing
that made her happy. That the sadness in her eyes was only the situation, and
not what she had become. I cared too much about her to see her swallowed in
sadness.
    “This looks
nice,” Cassie said. “Very different.”
    When I met her
gaze, I recognized a glimmer of the girl I used to love. What did she see in
this room? The brown and blue paint that used to cover it? The pictures of her
and me that used to plaster the walls? The Clash poster that hung on the closet
door? The basketball trophies? The first time we fumbled our way through sex
when we were sixteen on that very bed? We’d improved a lot since that first
time. The last time I made her yell my name over and over, and it always felt
awesome to be the one to make her come. I had everything I could ever want, and
all of it was her, especially in that last moment we had together. I felt like
a king as she called my name as I moved inside her, and I caught a glint of my
diamond on her finger. I’d thought in that moment that she’d be mine forever in
every way possible. That’d we have this for the rest of our lives. The memory
was as vivid as if it had been yesterday, even though it’d been months.
    I cleared my
throat. Stop thinking about that. “A lot has changed.”
    Cassie nodded,
and bit down on the side of her cheek. That used to bug me so much, because it
always meant