Chapter 32

Cas took only one part of Aisha's advice seriously at first—she wallowed.

She didn't watch Hot Summer, didn't go online, barely even looked outside. She put her phone, her whole life, in metaphorical rice. If she didn't turn it on or look at it or even think about it, then maybe all the poison would get sucked out.

It was wishful thinking, and she knew it, but she'd rather engage in a bit of delusion than face up to the reality of her situation. Especially in those first few days.

Eventually, she mustered up the courage to drag her laptop off her desk and, after wiping the dust off it, switched it on. She was tempted to check her social media, but she forced herself, instead, to just log on to her work email.

Only to find twelve hundred emails sitting in her inbox.

"Jesus fucking Christ." Cas scrolled through her emails, glancing at the subject lines, deleting any that looked suspiciously hateful without even bothering to read them. Far fewer people than she expected had found her work email—a relief, to be sure, but it also made her nervous for the state of her DMs.

She'd just finished scrolling through her email when her inbox pinged with a notification and Cas swiftly jumped back to the top.

From: Robert Doding

Subject: Meeting—Wednesday, 7 August, 11 a.m.

Cas sighed. "Great."

Just what she needed. Another meeting with Robert.

Dear Cas,

I sent you a message via WhatsApp, but it doesn't appear to have delivered. Assuming you still have your phone off, so thought I'd try here. Please come in on Wednesday the 7th at 11 a.m.—I'd like to have a quick chat with you about next steps.

Hope you enjoyed your time off in Cyprus.

See you then,

Robert

Her time off?

Cas took a screenshot of the email and pasted it into her group chat with Aisha and Skye:

Cas:HE HOPES I ENJOYED MY TIME OFF!!!!!

Cas:TIME!!!! OFF!!!!!!!!!!!

Skye:... you're kidding

Aisha:be SO ffr

It was the first time since she'd come home that Cas was frustrated about something other than her collapsing personal life.

When she exclaimed as much in the group chat, Skye sent a stream of leaf and sparkle emojis.

Skye:Nature is healing

Cas felt like she blinked and found herself at Wednesday morning, staring at herself in the mirror as she put the last few touches on her eyeliner. She probably didn't need to get all dressed up, probably could have just rolled in, dead eyed and sallow skinned and made Robert confront the reality of her time off, but Cas needed to feel like she had something under her control.

Again, delusion. But for a good cause.

She hadn't missed the Northern line—the smell, the sound, the crowd of people who didn't have the slightest idea how to queue for the train—but she felt herself settle into her routine more or less automatically as she made her way through the station. It was a little scary how quickly her body remembered, how, even after nearly two months away, she was able to fall back into her routine like it was the most natural thing in the world. And, because the number one rule of London commuting was to avoid making eye contact at all costs, she made it through without a single person recognizing her.

Jana was sitting behind the desk as always when the lift opened at the office, and she smiled as Cas walked into the lobby.

"Good morning, Cas. You're looking tan."

"Ha. Thanks." Cas unearthed her badge from her crossbody and tapped it on the card reader. "It's the best thing I got this summer."

It wasn't true, she knew it as soon as she said it, but it was too late to take the words back now. Too hurtful to acknowledge what her real favorite part of the summer was.

Jana laughed and shook her head, her fingers clicking away on her keyboard. "You never change."

Robert was sitting behind his desk when Cas walked into his office, fingers hunting and pecking across the keyboard. Cas scanned the view of the city over his shoulder, the sun shining off the buildings in the distance, the glitter of the Thames. It was beautiful here, the exact kind of view she'd been hoping for in an office of her own.

Robert hit enter and looked up, his face immediately blossoming into a smile. "Cas. Welcome back. I hope you had a nice summer."

It took a lot of energy not to laugh directly in his face. She sat down, gripped the arms of the chair instead.

"Well, it was nice up until the end, obviously."

"I can imagine," Robert said. "That's part of why I wanted to talk to you today."

This could go one of several ways—he could surprise her and, for once, be genuinely helpful. He could give her some useless advice. He could encourage her to go on Instagram Live or something and "set the record straight." Anything, realistically, could come out of Robert's mouth.

"I got an email from Chloe. They're not happy with how the partnership turned out this year."

"Well, yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled with them, either." Cas should have tried for a more genuine tone, but her ability to contain herself had gone completely out the window. "They pinned this entire situation on me. They still haven't taken responsibility for it."

"You can't have expected them to publicly acknowledge the contract," Robert said. "There's a lot riding on this for them—they don't want people questioning the legitimacy of the show they're running."

"But we're okay with people questioning my legitimacy? My intentions?"

"From their perspective," Robert said, "it's better if the damage is contained to one person rather than across the brand as a whole. And, I have to say, it makes sense."

"I—I wasn't even the one who said anything. I understand damage control, but this wasn't on me."

"Regardless of who's at fault, someone has to take the fall. And, unfortunately, you're the person closest to the situation."

Cas couldn't keep the disdain out of her voice. "This is unbelievable. I was only there because you asked me to be."

After all the years she'd given this place—all the late nights and long hours and last-minute event plans that got dumped on her head—they weren't willing to fight for her. To take responsibility for the situation that they put her in.

"I mean, ultimately, you did agree. And, I think, given the state of your relationship with Hot Summer and your public position at the minute, it would be best if we held off on installing you in your new role for a few months."

Cas felt like an anvil had been dropped on her head. "What?"

"A large part of the position is the ability to make connections with these brands," Robert said, and from his tone of voice, you might have thought he was talking to a child. "Someone smack in the middle of a public scandal like this isn't going to be able to do that effectively, and we need to get this office off the ground. We're going to set George in charge in the interim, but you should be okay to take over by the beginning of next year, as long as everything has passed."

Cas really didn't like how many conditionals there were in that sentence.

And to be replaced by George of all people? He was one of the least organized, most annoying people in events.

"So I should be able to take over if everything has been sorted?" She was livid and didn't bother hiding it. "And how's everything supposed to get sorted if you all aren't addressing it publicly?"

"That seems to be the best way to navigate these kinds of situations," Robert said. He wasn't making eye contact now, instead staring at something on his computer screen. "If you don't address it publicly, either, it should just go away."

"So then the entire public will just forever think I tried to game the system to trick people into sponsoring me or whatever the hell they're saying about me."

"Does it really matter if they don't know the truth?" Robert asked. "As long as the people in your real life know your intentions?"

He probably hadn't meant to, but his words were eerily reminiscent of the things Ada used to tell her in the early rankings. That they knew her, they loved her. That she didn't need to take public opinion into account because the people who really mattered understood.

But in this case, the people who really mattered didn't understand. She couldn't leave this unaddressed. Couldn't move forward until she fixed things.

Robert seemed to take her silence as assent, because he just carried on talking. "Like I said, we'll circle back on this in a few months' time. You should be more than able to go back into events in the meantime."

Events. Fucking events.

"Well, if we're not going to take this seriously..." Cas unclipped her badge from her jeans loop and tossed it onto Robert's desk. "I quit."

Cas was almost giddy as she walked out of the building. Giddy in that uncontrollable kind of way, like she was so overwhelmed by her feelings that she couldn't sit still. She didn't have anywhere to go, didn't have anything to do, but she needed to walk. Get this energy out of her system.

One of the best parts of having an events job was that she didn't have a desk to clean out. She could just throw her badge on the desk and walk out, as if she were in some kind of film and this was the dramatic moment. But it felt strange, too, that she could leave this place she'd worked at for half a decade without having to pack a box or even so much as pick up her mug from the staff kitchen.

Even when she'd had no plans to leave Friday, she'd clearly been careful to avoid making any actual connections to the place. Setting down any roots.

A theme in her life up until recently, apparently.

She'd just got to the nearest corner when her phone started vibrating in her pocket. Robert. Cas ignored it, ignored it again when he called three seconds later, and finally just switched it off vibrate altogether.

Robert could keep calling her. She wasn't going to answer. She didn't owe him anything anymore.

It was an exhilarating thought, but also a really fucking terrifying one.

As the adrenaline started to wear off, the terror began to take over and Cas needed to go somewhere, anywhere, to just sit down. Get her head together. There was a park not too far away from her office building—her old office building—and she found her way back there easily enough.

It wasn't a large park; it was little more than a few basketball courts, a fairly large bit of grass, and some benches, but it would do. One of the great benefits of city living: She could sit on any bench and freak out about the state of her life without causing a scene.

She chose one of the benches at the far end of the park under the shade of one of the large trees, and pulled her phone out of her pocket as she sat down. There were a few people playing basketball on the courts at the end of the square, and Cas listened to the squeak of their trainers on the pavement, their shouts of laughter as one of them missed a shot.

She had seven missed call notifications from Robert. Cas didn't even consider them for half a second before she swiped and erased them from her home screen.

Cas's phone lit up again, this time, thankfully, with a message from Aisha.

Aisha:I know you're still in a place about this and I cannot vouch for the source because I don't think anyone should be spending this kind of time editing you BUT

Aisha had attached a link below and, though the preview hadn't loaded, Aisha's description of it was enough for Cas to worry. What could Aisha possibly have sent that involved some sort of viewer edit?

Her browser took a few seconds to load the link, and when it did, she felt her heart start hammering in her chest again.

@toffeetay:Cas and Ada are the Cutest Couple in #HotSummer History, You Guys are Just Haters: A Thread

There were more than a dozen posts in the thread, and each and every one was a picture or a GIF of Cas and Ada. Cas looking at Ada as they got out of their Jeeps on the first day. Cas getting a smudge of ice cream off the corner of Ada's lip. Ada diving into Cas's bed in one of the early weeks, Cas and Ada laughing on the striped pool float, Ada throwing a pair of socks at Cas's head when she was complaining way too loudly about being cold. Ada kissing Cas in the orchard.

It had been easy to convince herself in the days since she left Cyprus that everything with Ada had been her invention. That her experience of their relationship didn't match up with reality. But seeing it now playing out again in front of her, even in these highlights, it was impossible to ignore the real chemistry between them.

Impossible not to see the real love in Cas's eyes as she looked at Ada.

Cas watched the last GIF—Ada kissing her good night on their last night together in the villa—before she clicked back into WhatsApp.

Cas:Is that what you guys were all seeing???

Aisha:YES

Aisha:do you see what we were saying now?

Cas:Yeah, actually, I do

Aisha:so... what are you going to do about it?

There was really only one thing she could do now, wasn't there?

Cas:I'm going to stop running away

@topsyturvey:this reunion better be good or i stg

@sprinkleofsparkles:don't know why you have hope they've been terrible for the last 3yrs

@topsyturvey: then why tf do we keep watching

@sprinkleofsparkles:we hate ourselves.

@zoeybug:ok but they have to bring Cas back for the reunion

@pixelpenguin:honestly they probably won't

@SaraSays:yeah they literally dropped her as quickly as humanly possible

@infinitescroll:@HotSummer bring Cas back—we need to hear her side

@taliatells: you actually think that's going to work

@averyart:no but seriously they just sent Cas off, we DO need to hear from her

@hypernautical:bring Cas back for the Hot Summer reunion!!! #HotSummer @HotSummer

@farahfinesse:there's literally no point in watching if they don't bring Cas back

@retroretorgrade:should we boycott???

@HotSummer : Ready for the reunion, lovers? We have a few special surprises lined up...