Cassandra's Dead Sister's Bucket List ✔

-15-

·Cassandra·

There were flowers in my hands—but they were not lavenders. They're some kind of wildflowers that are making my skin all itchy. Behind me, there's a massive green screen that hurts my eyes, even when I look away.

"I really should have brought my sister's dried lavender bundle," I tell Katie.

She slouches her shoulders. "I'm sorry I forgot too. Don't you want to put this off? Maybe we can do it some other time," she suggests, looking around her.

"No, no." I shake my head. "This is my chance. Of course, I wanted him to take me on a date, but this will suffice to at least cross things down from my sister's bucket list."

She flashes me a lop-sided smile, and then sadness washes over his face.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I ask.

"I just don't feel comfortable around Tobias, or his friends. Can we leave as soon as we're done?" she begs, her tone drenched with concern.

"Yeah, sure."

"Great." Katie smiles plainly and joins the crowd surrounding us.

My eyes glance at Tobias. He's sitting on a chair, and several guys are drinking and chattering loudly around him. Most of them are familiar to me because they're from school, I guess. Some girl is doing Tobias' make-up. I didn't know he took his Influencer career so seriously. But he's always pretty worried about his looks, so it makes sense.

"Hola, Cassandra," Quinn greets me. Her hands carry brushes and different beauty items.

"Hi." I smile politely. I hope she's over everything that happened between us. She's overreacting. It wasn't that big of a deal.

"It was nice to discover you speak English," she declares.

"I'm sorry about that." I chuckle lowly.

She steps closer to me. "And now you'll kiss my boyfriend in front of thousands of people."

"Well, per his request—actually," I state.

She glares at me. "Let's just get it done." She exhales, annoyed. Her brushes start applying different powders to my face.

"You've got a beautiful skin, I'm not gonna deny that," she confesses.

"Thank you, I guess?" I frown at her. "You're sort of beautiful on the outside."

She sighs, her eyes focusing on the action of her brush against my cheekbones. "I'll take that as a compliment."

A girl's sudden cry of stop catches my attention, and my head snaps to where Katie was before. She's still there, but Christian, the guy from the party is next to her, along with several other guys. They keep talking to her, accidentally nudging her shoulder, when she's clearly telling them to stop.

"Never mind that." She shakes her head. "It's always the same in every party and gathering we have. The boys just won't change. And it's been only worse after everything that happened with Katie."

"What do you mean?" I ask, worried. I know something happened, but I guess I thought it wasn't that serious because Katie never elaborated on the full account of the events.

"Nothing, just that there was once this party in which Christian kind of drugged her, and Ulysses found her half-naked in the backyard of Tobias' house. It was horrible," she explains to me and then slides the cherry lipstick on my lips.

"Where was Tobias when this happened?" I wonder. He stood up for me when someone tried to do something without my consent, so why didn't he do the same for Katie?