Free Zero Visibility by Georgia Beers Page B

She wanted so badly to know, to ask. Instead, she remained silent.
    “Excuse me.” A woman of about fifty approached Cassie with a question, and Vanessa bowed out politely to let Cassie work, simultaneously annoyed with the woman for interrupting and relieved to be released from the painful awkwardness.
    Now if she could only ditch her kids so she could go out to the car and sob her eyes out, her day would be complete. As it was, she’d managed to completely avoid seeing Cassie for nearly three weeks, yet she’d still cried at least once every single day. And then she’d seen her at the rink Tuesday. Her and the Rosberg woman, smiling, their heads close together. It had been inevitable that she’d run into Cassie eventually. It was a small town. But seeing her with somebody else…
    Her stomach churned.
    Vanessa wandered to the shoe section where Jeremy was absorbed in texting on his phone rather than looking at sneakers, and she just did not have the energy to fight him. She felt like a deflated balloon, and she was on the verge of tears. Detouring away from Jeremy, she wandered toward the women’s clothing and tried to focus on the racks for a few moments hoping to collect herself.
    Brian was worried about her. They’d been married for fourteen years; he knew her, and he knew when something was wrong. She’d lost weight. She wasn’t eating. Her sleep was restless. She seemed far away and sad all the time. These were things he’d noticed, things he’d brought up. He wondered what he could do to help. Worse, he worried that he had done something, that she was upset with him, that he had somehow caused this depression she seemed to be in, this funk. He brought her flowers. He made dinner for her and the kids when he was home before her. He’d made a conscious effort to pick his dirty laundry up off the floor around the hamper and actually put it in the hamper. He was trying so hard.
    He had no idea.
    The guilt was crushing her.
    It was a good thing, then, that Cassie had ended things with her. She’d had to, she said. She didn’t want to. She’d had to. There was no choice any more. She said she couldn’t go on sneaking around, pretending not to be who she really was. She wanted Vanessa to leave Brian so they could be together, and there were times Vanessa thought it might be the path to take. Cassie had left Mike. More than two years ago. It hadn’t been easy. She’d been the talk of the town for a while, though nobody really knew the details. Mike was a great guy. He’d understood. He’d known Cassie since they were kids, they’d been married for four years, and he understood. She was gay. Simple. It wasn’t about him. It was about her. He’d gotten through it. He’d remarried recently. He and Cassie were still good friends.
    Cassie had been so patient. She’d waited. And waited. And waited. But there was a difference she couldn’t seem to accept no matter how many times Vanessa tried to explain it.
    Vanessa loved Brian.
    She loved Cassie, and she loved Brian, too. The same way. And she didn’t want to leave him.
    So Cassie had left her.
    Exactly three weeks and two days ago, Cassie had put an end to their relationship, said she was tired of waiting, that she wanted to be with Vanessa, and if that wasn’t going to happen, she needed to move on. Vanessa felt like a piece of her had been ripped away.
    The tears were not going to be held back any longer. Vanessa grabbed two shirts off the rack without even looking at them and hurried into an empty fitting room where she clamped one hand over her mouth and used the other to brace herself against the wall. She’d become alarmingly skilled at silent crying, and she did that now, letting out as much of the hurt as she could. There was no way she wanted Cassie to see her like this. Cassie did what she had to do for herself. Vanessa knew this. She even understood it. That wasn’t to say it didn’t gut her completely.
    It took her a few moments to pull