SUNSHINE

twenty eight

Casey arrived back at home in physically in one piece, but mentally she was all over the place and did not know what to do. She parked her Jeep and went inside, and luckily she was fresh out of tears, but she knew her nose was red and her eyes were red and puffy and she was not going to be able to hide the fact she had been crying. It was not late enough for Alex to be in bed already, but it was late enough for Casey to try and slip in without talking to her. If she started talking about what happened, she knew she would not be able to stop crying once more, and for now, she had stopped and she wanted to keep it that way.

She unlocked the door and went inside, being greeted by the dogs. There goes trying to slip by. She hung her lanyard on the hook and pet the dogs so they would leave her alone, but Alex had come to greet her as she walked from the kitchen to the living room, Casey seeing she was watching a movie but she could not tell which one.

"Hey Casey." She greeted, whistling for Blue to follow her as she went into the living room, setting her smoothie bowl down on the coffee table.

"Uh hey." She said back, a little crack in her voice getting her attention. This time Alex came back and actually took a good look at her.

"Casey, you've been crying. What happened?" She asked in a soft, soothing voice. That was when Casey broke down again, the tears that she wished had not come came spewing out, her body shaking in Alex's arms. She did not ask anything else and waited for Casey to tell her what happened, but that time never came as they stood in the doorway.

"I don't want to talk about it right now, I'm still kinda processing everything." She said after her tears had calmed.

"Could you at least tell me what's going on? You don't have to talk about it, I just need to know what happened." Alex explained trying to break through to her, and after getting a few minutes of silence, Casey pushed away from her grasp and wiped under her eyes to rid of the tears.

"I uh, I lost both my best friend and my boyfriend today." She said with a sniffle, looking down at her hands instead of the eyes of Alex.

"Casey..." Alex's voice trailed as she reached to embrace her again, but Casey stepped away.

"I... I just need to be alone right now." She said as she brushed past Alex to go to her room, Atlas following her. Alex let her go, knowing she would not be able to do much. Did they cut her off? Did they have some sort of accident? What happened?

Casey had laid up all night trying to wrap her head around what was going on. She never thought that her best friend, the one person she told every little thing to, would go behind her back and sleep around with the love of her life. She could not fathom what was going through either of their minds during the ordeal. How long had they been sneaking around, because that did not seem like the first time this had happened. Riley was so calm and nonchalant about it all, and that was what got her. The fact that this seemed normal to the both of them made her sick to her stomach. All the 'I love you's meant nothing now. All of the late night FaceTime calls, the roadtrip to Michigan, the forts and movie nights in her bedroom at her home in Tampa. They all were now broken memories that she never wanted to have to think about again. By now, the tears had resurfaced and she was crying again, trying to keep herself quiet as it went on midnight. She had made sure to lock her door so Alex would not come in to try and console her, for it would have been useless and she would have cried harder. She had not even told her parents about what was going on, but she was sure by now that Trevor, Jenna, and Daniel knew what had happened, for she kept getting calls from the three of them. There were calls from Jackson and Riley as well, but she ignored all of them. She wanted to curl up in a ball in the corner and stay there for the rest of her life. Right now she felt more useless than ever. Where had she gone wrong? What was it about Riley that Casey did not have? What was it about her that made her better that Casey? She knew she needed to sleep, but she could not stop crying and thinking about what had happened. Her mind was going a million miles an hour as she cried and thought about everything, but eventually she was able to fall asleep out of exhaustion from her tears.