A short story by Heidi Dischler.

Matt and Cassie were perpetually attached at the hip ever since the second grade when Matt transferred over from a school in California. It was the kind of friendship that didn’t start in the classroom, or at lunch, but at recess. Those were always the best kind of friends, though: recess friends. 

Matt was the new kid: scrawny, wearing denim overalls, and sporting a doe-eyed look that would get him into trouble. Plenty of boys his age had already started growing taller and filling out more than he did. This is why he became a target on his first day at his new school. He had come to the new school hoping for new friends and for the other kids to be nice to him. He was kind and wasn’t that what people were supposed to be? The older boys had pushed him down, though, teased him about his clothing, and all but crushed his hopes of making new friends. 

That, of course, is when Cassie had noticed the whole ordeal. She had been watching the new boy from afar, his quiet, humble mannerisms intriguing her seven-year-old heart. She had other friends that she could play with at recess, sure, but none of them were very nice. So, when the larger, meaner, older boys had started to drift towards him, Cassie wasted no time. She trailed behind them, feeling a strange sense of courage and a strong urge to protect this boy. 

“Hey!” she had shouted at the bullies. 

They laughed at her. Why wouldn’t they? She was small, fragile, and a girl, trying to stick up for a scrawny boy in overalls. She hadn’t backed down, though. When they wouldn’t relent, Cassie used one of the most valuable skills her dad had taught her: a punch. She had hit one of the bullies square in the nose. 

The bully that she had hit immediately whimpered and took two steps back before scrambling away. The other two boys had been close behind, not wanting to share the same fate as their friend. 

Cassie reached out her punching hand to the new boy and he smiled at her. It was the sort of adoring smile that never quite went away. Matt had found a new friend and Cassie had found an adversary, a companion, but most of all, she found a happiness that she had never known. 

From then on, they were both inseparable, finding solace only in each other, and never needing another soul to keep them company. Their friendship grew and ultimately turned into something bigger than they could have comprehended at their young age. All Cassie knew was that she was happy and that was enough for her. 

The two hadn’t started to date until they were both juniors in high school. It had been awkward at first for Cassie, kissing her best friend, even though she had been imagining it for as long as she could remember. They were each other’s firsts for everything. 

Matt was no longer the scrawny new boy and this fact had not been lost on Cassie. He had grown into himself, but never let it get to his head. He was still kind, still doe-eyed, and stil the most wonderful human being in the world to Cassie. 

High school did not last forever, though, and Cassie and Matt constantly argued about colleges, hopes, dreams, and futures. Neither could imagine a future without the other, but neither wanted to follow the same path. 

So, they fought and continued to fight about colleges and distance and all of the things that one fights about in a relationship. Cassie moved across the country, Matt stayed, but they never truly lost each other. It was a rare thing, Cassie knew, to be able to keep up with a long-distance relationship, but they had done it. Matt and Cassie, against all of the odds, stayed together. This is when they both knew that what they had was real. 

When college was over, they reunited for good. It was epic, as Cassie liked to describe it, and she knew that Matt would be the man she would marry. They had shared so many wonderful moments together. Matt still gave Cassie that same adoring smile that once began a friendship that was irreplaceable. 

It was that one night, though, that Matt had said things that he didn’t mean, and Cassie reciprocated. It was that one night that Cassie had stormed off alone, trying to find comfort in an instance that comfort seemed unattainable.

She hadn’t meant to do it. She did not mean anything that she said to him that night of their fight. She hadn’t meant to get drunk. She did not mean to sleep with a stranger. 

Cassie hadn’t meant to do any of these things, but they still happened. Her life had dissolved in an instant and fell on top of her, crushing her like a burly, 200-something pound man with bad beer breath and a tendency to vomit.

Cassie was mortified when she woke up next to the stranger, sticky with sweat and covered in vomit that wasn’t her own. The vomit and sweat, though, were the least of her problems. 

Matt was home, probably already regretting the trivial fight that they had the night before. Cassie knew this. That’s just how he was. He never stayed angry for long, especially when it came to her. 

Now, she had to explain to him how she was no longer a faithful woman. Now, she had to watch his face fill with pain and anguish at the thought of what she had done. 

Matt, of course, had hugged her when she walked into their shared apartment. He gave her his adoring smile that was loving, naïve, and completely frangible. He was worried. She was so utterly guilty. 

“Matt, please,” Cassie had cried when he stormed into their bedroom and threw a suitcase onto the bed to pack. “Just let me explain.”

He wouldn’t listen to her anymore. He had heard enough. His doe-eyed expression was destroyed, and his face had been dark and thunderous. 

Cassie reached up to grab her necklace as she so often did when she was nervous. Matt had tried to turn away from her to leave, but she reached out to grab his arm. He had spun around to face her, and her heart dropped from her chest and into her abdomen as she saw the tears in his down-trodden, tortured eyes. His eyes had stopped trying then: to hold back the tears, to not look into her eyes, to try and hide his pain. He took her face in both of his callused hands and held her still as he had leaned in to kiss her. That’s when she had thought everything would be okay. She thought Matt would come back to her. She thought he would love her again. But as he had leaned in, he moved to kiss the very edge of her lips at the crease of her mouth, long, unmoving, and so, so resigned that Cassie knew she would never get him back. It was a kiss that felt like an unspoken goodbye. 

That night, she had cried herself to sleep, curling into a ball on his side of the bed, and hoping to keep some part of him trapped within the sheets. Cassie longed for him and craved him so deeply that it physically hurt her. That’s when she had gone looking for something, anything to make her feel that he was still here. Maybe, that this day, in some perversion of reality, was all just a nightmare. Cassie wasn’t sure what she had hoped to find, but it was what she found, left behind in one of his drawers, that tore away the last shred of her composure. She had found a ring. 

It’s these memories that hit Cassie as she stands in an old-fashioned church in front of her family and friends. The memories knock the air out of her lungs, but she smiles. Matt always wanted to be married in a church. 

So, Cassie listens to the priest reciting the vows, the tears in her eyes not only for the man she will marry, but for the man she left behind. 

“Cassie Lane, do you take Daniel Johnson to be your husband? Do you promise to be faithful to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him all the days of your life?”

Cassie’s heart hurts as she hears these words. She knows without a shadow of a doubt that Matt was the one she was supposed to spend her whole life with. She knows that she messed up and that she can never redeem herself. She knows that she doesn’t deserve a happiness like that ever again. 

Closing her eyes, Cassie lets the tears fall. She looks up to her soon-to-be husband and smiles, knowing that, although she’ll never find the happiness she had before, she will be fine right where she is. She knows she has to let go of Matt, but she can’t get rid of the memories of him: his adoration, kindness, genteel. The memories sweeping through her mind can’t stop her forever even if she doesn’t want to let go of him. After all, letting go is the only way to finally move on and release the crushing guilt that she always feels in the pit of her stomach, bubbling and gurgling to the point of nausea when someone says his name.

Cassie knows in her heart that not all happy endings are truly happy. She knows that even though Matt was her person, he wasn’t hers to keep. That her friend no longer wore overalls and no longer needed, or wanted, her protection. This is why Cassie settles for mediocre instead of an epic love story about two second-grade recess friends. This is why she finally lets go. 

“I do.”