“Yeah, I saw her.”
“Was she okay?”
“She seemed fine,” I lied. “We had lunch, and she was good.”
“Something’s wrong,” he said, his voice tight with emotion. “I have to pitch later, but all I can think about is the fact that my girl is ignoring me. It’s making me crazy because I know something’s wrong. I can fucking sense it.”
When I said nothing, he shouted, “I can’t pitch with my head all fucked up, Dean! Why won’t she talk to me? I told her I loved her and now she’s ignoring me? I feel like a damn lunatic right now, little brother. You gotta help me.”
“I’ll fix it,” I said quickly, and hung up.
I scrolled through my contacts for Melissa’s number. Calling Cassie would be pointless, but Melissa answered right away.
“I wondered when you’d call,” she answered without saying hello.
“Put her on the phone. I need to talk to her now.”
“Jack’s been calling and texting her, and she refuses to respond to him.”
“I’m more than aware. Put her on, Melis!” I shouted, my irritation reaching an all-time high.
“Hold on.” She pulled the phone away from her mouth and yelled, “Cassie, get out here!”
I waited on the other end of the line, my heart pounding in my chest when I heard Cassie ask, “Who is it?”
“It’s Dean. Get on the phone,” Melissa snapped at her.
I was proud of Melissa for standing up for my brother. I half wondered even if she realized that was exactly what she was doing. She’d never been Jack’s biggest fan, but she seemed to have warmed to him.
“Hello,” Cassie said, her tone bitchier than I’d ever heard it.
“Cassie, Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on? Jack’s calling me acting like a lunatic. He’s flipping out. Says you won’t answer any of his phone calls or texts.”
“So what.”
So what? I let out an irritated huff. This girl was going to be the death of me and my brother.
“You gotta talk to him, Cass. You can’t ignore him like this when he’s on a road trip. It’s not fair.”
“Yes, I can!” she shouted into the phone, and I pulled it away from my ear. “He’s the one who had a fucking girl up in his hotel room, not me. So don’t tell me I have to talk to him, Dean. And don’t talk to me about what’s fair.”
I blew out another exasperated breath. “You’re so damned stubborn! He’s going ape-shit, and you’re just going to let him?”
“I just can’t call him, okay? I can’t talk to him right now.”
Cassie sounded exhausted, and I felt bad for a second as I put myself in her shoes. But I hated how easily she believed what she saw, without even giving Jack a chance.
“Just tell him I’m busy with a project for school or something,” she went on. “He’ll believe that.”
I breathed heavily into the phone as my heart rate started to slow down. “Fine. I’ll tell him. But, Cassie, he’s not stupid. He’ll figure out something’s wrong, and then I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just means that I’ve never heard him sound as crazy as he was tonight. He was literally flipping out because he couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“I guess he should have thought about that before he invited some whore up to his hotel room,” she snapped.
“You’re completely unreasonable, you know that?” I asked.
“How am I unreasonable?” she shrieked.
“Because you’d rather ignore this entire situation instead of put an end to it,” I snapped.
It would be so easy for them to fix this with just a single conversation. At least, I hoped that would be the case. While I was 99.9% percent sure that Jack didn’t cheat on Cassie, I couldn’t put it past him entirely.
“I’m not ignoring it. I simply refuse to discuss it over the phone. So what?”
“See? Unreasonable and selfish.”
“Now I’m selfish too?” she shouted.
“Sort of. You’re only thinking about yourself and your feelings. You’re not thinking about Jack at all. This isn’t just a game to him. This is his future, his career. He can’t screw it up. Don’t you care about that?” I said, my heart hurting for my brother.
“None of that matters if he cheated on me,” she said matter-of-factly, and I felt like she’d slapped me across the face with her words.
“But you don’t even know what happened! You don’t know who that girl was. She could be an old friend of his, but you have no clue because you won’t ask.”
I dropped my head in my hand in frustration. Talking to Cassie was like talking to a brick wall.
“Nope, I won’t. Not until he gets home. And don’t you dare say a thing to him either, Dean. I don’t want you tipping him off so he has an entire weekend to think up the perfect response.”
Jesus, this girl was relentless.
“I’m not saying a word to him. But can you please at least send him a text?” I begged. “Just give him something so he can focus on the game. Please do that for him.”
The line fell silent between us, so silent that I pulled the phone away to glance at the screen to see if we were still connected. We were.
“Fine,” she finally blurted. “I’ll text him as soon as you let me get off the phone.”