Always Cas | ✔

CHAPTER FIFTEEN; part two

     I hold out the thick envelope to him.

     He stares at it in my hands. "You...wrote me letters?"

     "Yes," I say, my voice just a murmur.

     His gaze meets mine. "Right, so you just wrote to me and decided it wasn't worth sending, then?"

     Exhausted, I say, "They're yours, Cas. You can read them or burn them, it's up to you."

     He purses his lips, glances back down at the envelope then back up at me. His face is open, for once, pain evident among other things. He licks his lips and says, "You got anything harder than peach juice?"

     I sigh. "Yeah, yeah I've got something."

     I walk over to my liquor cabinet, wondering what's Cas's drink of choice. I remember him saying he drank vodka a lot in college. Well, not a lot. But whenever he mentioned drinking it was usually vodka. I don't keep many light liquors, or any, really. I stare into the cabinet. I've got a rum he'll like, I think.

     "Anything's fine," Cas says and his voice is strained. I glance back at him and he's holding the envelope like it's toxic. I grab the rum, walk over to the counter and pull down two shallow glasses. I pour his glass and bring it over to him.

     "Thanks," he says avoiding my gaze. "I'm just gonna..." He nods over to the living room, walking over to the window seat where he curls up and dumps the contents of the envelope. I can't watch him read the letters. I'm actually starting to regret my decision to give it to him now. Maybe I should've waited till the state of emergency was over and given it to him when he was leaving.

     I'm at risk for watching him the whole time and its doing nothing to help my sudden onset chest pain, so I start stress cooking, instead. I had made my own dough yesterday that I was planning to do some personal pizzas with, so I pull that out now and then start prepping the sauce for the Margherita pie. The other will be a garlicky white pie with ricotta and squash.

     Even though I'm immersed in the cooking, I'm still watching Cas, watching the way he cradles the glass to his chest as he reads, leaning against the window. The snow hasn't stopped, coming down thick. You can't really see what's beyond the sidewalk.

     Every so often Cas will laugh, this soft sound that feels like it's traveling through time to me. It's a distant thing. Once both pizzas are in the oven, I have nothing to do so I start cleaning. I move the laundry to the dryer and then grab a bottle of bleach, wiping down all the countertops and the island. I try to limit my glances at Cas to one every twenty minutes but it doesn't quite work. He goes through the phases of emotions, from pensive to anger to sad to laughing and back again. I've forgotten nearly everything I've written in these letters.

     I had poured myself a glass of the rum, too, but hadn't really touched it. Day drinking is not really my thing. Drinking is not really my thing. Cas comes over to fill his glass twice. I'm disinclined to fill it up again, because the last thing I want is him stuck in the house with me drunk. Feels like a recipe for disaster.

     The pizzas are done. I remove them and leave them on the stove top cooling. With my back to Cas, I don't see what happens so much as hear it, hear him hop down from the window seat and storm up the stairs.

     I hesitate before walking over to the window where the discarded letter lays on the floor. I'm nervous, unsure what I could have said that would cause this reaction.

     Cas,

     I have spent a lot of time with myself now. So much time with the things that I've done. That I wonder if I was right — I could not have been right, but was I close to it? Had I been within a margin of error? There are nights now where I lie awake and think about you, about us. And then I wonder if I ever really loved you. Please don't read that the wrong way. Don't take that the wrong way. Because I think this, it's a thought that hits me always suddenly, always without provocation. And then I think, instantly, yes. Yes, I really truly did. Do. Did? Do?