Runaway Bride, chapter 13

"Are you sure you want to do this, honey?" Lola asked me.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure." There was a note of uncertainty in my voice, but I hoped she hadn't noticed.
"Well, you know we're always here, if you need us." She hugged me one last time. I could tell she was holding in tears.
"It's been fun. Hope you can come back and visit us." Dave shook my hand and smiled ruefully.
"Thanks. I'll come back." I smiled at them, walked out the door and stepped outside. I'd told them I wanted to wait for the taxi outside, just so I could think for a while.

Tre had called and dumped me that morning. I knew, after that, that I couldn't stay at Dave and Lola's any longer. I had no real reason to, other than I liked Lola more than any other friend I'd ever had. I pressed my lips together in a thin line, remembering the phone call from Tre.
"Cassandra?" he'd said.
"Yeah."
"How are you?" He seemed to be forcing the words out quickly, as if he had somewhere he had to be.
"Fine. What's wrong?" I definitely noted something weird in his voice.
"Oh, well, I called to tell you... " He stopped.
"What?" I had asked impatiently.
"After yesterday, and everything... I don't think we should be together anymore. I think things have changed, and..." He'd waited.
"Yeah. Okay."
"So you're okay?"
"Sure, yeah. I'm fine."
Tre had sighed with relief. "Good. Yeah, okay. I have to go now. I'll talk to you... .I don't know when, but maybe sometime, okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay. Bye, Cassandra." He'd hung up.

So I'd decided to go back to my husband. I knew that I'd promised myself that I never would, that I couldn't see him ever again. But I'd also promised myself I would be with Tre forever, and as that wasn't happening... .I had nowhere else to go. The taxi arrived within minutes. I opened the door and slid into the backseat. I handed the driver Caleb's address back in Colorado, and he sped off. Now I had nothing else to do except stare out the window and think. I sighed irritably. I was so sick of thinking. I tried to do anything to distract myself, including count trees. Finally I just shut my eyes, thinking I would sleep; this proved to be easier than I had first thought. I fell into a light, dreamless sleep until we pulled up in front of a big, light blue, Victorian-style building six hours later. I wasn't sure what had made the drive pass so quickly, but I had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that I was in no hurry to get there.

I thanked the driver, handed him the money, and climbed out of the car. I stood there for a minute, watching the bright yellow taxi fade into the distance and breathing the familiar Colorado air. Finally something told me to just go, so I walked slowly up the front walk. I wished I had a suitcase or something to carry around, somehow that would have made me more comfortable, but the only things I had were some black jeans and a purple T-shirt Lola had given me to wear before I'd left. I reached the huge white front door sooner than I'd have liked, took a deep breath, and punched the doorbell, which echoed eerily throughout the house.
"Coming!" called a familiar male voice. Oh God, I thought. What was I doing? I sighed, determined. There was no going back now. The door opened, and Caleb stood there, smiling. His smile faded as he saw me.
"Cassandra?" he asked, his forehead wrinkled in disbelief, as if it couldn't possibly be me.
"Hi, Caleb."
"Oh my God... " He sighed and leaned on the doorframe, as if he would fall over otherwise. "What are you doing here?"
I didn't say anything. I didn't have an answer for him. Instead, I just stood there and stared at my feet.
He shook his head, as if still trying to convince himself I was there. "Well... .come in!" he said, his voice full of fake cheeriness. I swept past him into the front hall. "I'll uh... .call your parents?" he said, a questioning look on his face. I shrugged.
"They've been so worried about you, you know. Ever since you... .." He gestured nonsensically, as if he still couldn't believe that I had done it.
"Okay," was all I could say.
He nodded and left the room. I looked around his house and passed into the living room. Everything was the same as it had been the last time I'd been here, only a couple months ago. I felt like I had gone through a million changes since then, a million things had happened to me that I couldn't undo.

Caleb returned a few minutes later. "They'll be here as soon as they can. Your mom sounded really... excited to know that you're home."
I nodded but didn't answer. I sank down onto the purple velvet couch, hoping to avoid as much conversation with Caleb as I could. But I felt there were a few things we had to talk about.
"We're still married, you know," I informed him quietly.
"Yeah, I know," he said slowly. "Uh... and?"
I shrugged, staring at a painting of a vase of flowers on the wall. "I don't know."
"Cassandra." Caleb sat in a beige overstuffed armchair across from me. He peered at me intently. "What... why did you do it?"
I stared at my knees and didn't answer. I couldn't tell him why. What was I supposed to say, "I loved Tre, a thousand times more than I ever loved you, and I was so sick of following orders my entire life?" I doubted he would understand.
"Okay." Caleb laughed humorlessly and sat up straighter. "That's fine."
"Why do you want to know?" I hissed.
"Why?! Why?!" He laughed that creepy, dry laugh again. "Oh, I don't know. I just thought that the woman who destroyed my life could offer me some explanation about why it was, exactly, she'd done it."
I looked at him in confusion. "How did I destroy YOUR life?"
He crossed his arms and smiled. "Oh, Cassandra." He shook his head. "You don't know. I LOVED you. Now, looking at you... " he gestured at me. "I can't help it, I still do." I couldn't stop myself from sitting back on the couch a little, away from him. This was not what I'd expected at all.
"And I thought... " he continued, "I thought that you loved me too, and I was the luckiest man alive. And you went, and you shoved it back in my face, and showed me that happiness, true happiness, does not exist in this world. And that you never really cared about me at all."
I shook my head. "I did though, Caleb. I loved you... "
"No." He held up a hand. "Don't do that. I don't want to hear it. There's nothing you can do now, nothing that can change what you did."
I nodded. I knew that this was supposed to make me feel bad, this was supposed to make me regret it. And I did, but not because of that.

The ensuing silence was broken by the hum of the doorbell.
"That'll be your parents," Caleb said, getting up. I made no motion to follow him, so he went to open the door alone. Before I knew what was happening, my mother rushed into the room and smothered me in a hug.
"Oh God, Cassandra, you're okay, you're here, you're all right... ." Tears leaked from her eyes as she sobbed and talked. "Your father and I were so worried, we knew what happened, but we didn't know, and then, on TV, we saw... .Oh. Well." She waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter now, now does it? You're here. Anthony! Come see your daughter!"
As we waited for my father, who was talking with Caleb quietly in the hall, I surveyed my mother out of the corner of my eye. She looked awful. There were bags under her blue eyes, there were more wrinkles around her mouth than I had ever seen there before, and her mousy brown hair was streaked with white. I couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt, knowing that I had been the one that had caused this. My father finally strode into the room and collected me into his arms. He didn't say a word; he didn't have to. This was something I had always liked about my father, that he didn't like to fill up space with useless words, the way my mother did. I observed that his appearance had changed, just like my mother's had, and he looked older than his years.
"Hi, Dad," I whispered.
"Hello there, dear," he replied, his eyes shining with unshed tears. The next hour or so passed awkwardly. The silence was mostly filled with my mother chattering on about what had been happening since I'd been gone, stuff around the neighborhood and with different relatives, but nothing I was the least bit interested in. Most of her chatter, I knew, was to avoid talking about the fact that I had run away with the drummer of the band at my wedding. My father kept smiling at me, and I could tell by his smile that he didn't care what I'd done, he was just glad I was back. Caleb avoided my eyes, and I knew that he was still angry at me. My mother held my hand, tried not to cry, and kept talking.

Finally, my father said gently, "Jennifer, I think we'd better go."
"But!" My mother shot me a worried look. "Cassandra! She... ."
"She'll be fine here," my father finished. "Is that all right with you, Caleb?"
I knew that this was the last thing Caleb wanted, but he had always been the first one to kiss my father's ass. "Of course, Anthony. Whatever you think is best."
My father nodded, hugged me, then departed. My mother clasped my hands, sighed, then fled from the room in tears.
"You can stay in the guest bedroom," Caleb said to me stiffly after he had said goodbye to my parents.
I nodded. I didn't care. This whole visit had been the only thing to distract me from thoughts of Tre, and now that these thoughts were back, I didn't feel like talking much. I walked to the guest bedroom and shut the door without saying anything to Caleb. I slid into bed, still in Lola's clothes, since I didn't have anything else to wear. But a lack of pajamas were the least of my worries. I wondered how I was supposed to live the rest of my life, a stranger to the people that had once been the dearest things in the world to me. The last thought I had before I fell asleep was maybe I didn't have to.