The List
1206 Words
Cass arrived the way she always did, unannounced, too loud, and already talking before I had fully opened the door.
“I brought wine because your brother called my brother, who called my mother, who called me, and I have been sitting on this information for forty-five minutes, which is honestly the longest I have ever kept a secret in my entire life, so you need to let me in right now.”
I stepped aside.
She swept past me in a cloud of expensive perfume, a bottle of red in each hand, her dark hair piled on top of her head in the particular messy way that somehow always looked intentional on her. She was wearing what she called her emergency outfit. An oversized blazer, tiny shorts, heels that had no business being worn to a friend’s house on a Tuesday evening.
Cass dropped onto my studio couch, crossed her legs, and looked at me with the expression of someone who had been waiting a very long time to have a conversation.
“Talk.”
I closed the door. Stood there for a moment with my back against it, looking at her.
Then I crossed the room, picked up the notebook from my table, and held it out.
She took it. Opened it. Read.
Things to do before I become his wife.
1. Lose my virginity to a stranger who will never know my last name
2. Go to a strip club and dance with the strippers
3. Bet money at an illegal card game
4. Skinny dip
5. Get a tattoo
6. Get drunk: properly, embarrassingly drunk
7. Dance on a table
8. Spend a whole night in a stranger’s bed and leave before he wakes up
9. Ride a motorcycle: fast, in the middle of the night
10. Go to an underground fight night
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
“ISLA ELENA VOSS.”
I winced. “Keep your voice,”
“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”
“She’s right here, and she’s regretting showing you that.”
“Number one.” Cass pointed at me. Her finger was very serious. “Number one on the list. Losing your virginity to a stranger who will never know your last name.” She tilted her head. “How long did it take you to write this?”
“That’s not the point.”
“How long, Isla?”
I sat on the edge of my table. “Most of the night.”
She looked at me for a long moment. The excitement didn’t leave her face, but something else settled underneath it. Something quieter, more serious. The version of Cass that only I ever really got to see.
“He actually did it,” she said quietly. “Your father actually,”
“Signed the contract.” I looked at the window. “Yes. Three months, Cass.”
“Matteo Creed.”
The name sat in the room like something with weight.
“Yes,” I said.
She was quiet for exactly three seconds. The longest she ever stayed quiet when she had something to say. Then she set the notebook down carefully, uncorked one of the bottles of wine without asking where the glasses were because she had known this studio for years, poured two generous amounts into the mugs I kept on the shelf, and handed one over.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Okay. We’re doing the list.”
I wrapped both hands around the mug. “I don’t know if I can actually,”
“We are doing the list.”
“Some of these things I’ve never,”
“Isla.” She sat down next to me. Close. Shoulder to shoulder, no space between us, the way it had always been since we were seven years old. “You have spent your entire life being exactly what everyone in that house needed you to be. You have never once, not once, done something just for yourself.”
She picked up the notebook and put it back in my hands.
“You have three months. Three months that belong to nobody else. Not your father. Not the Creeds. Not whoever El Diablo thinks he is.” Her voice softened. “They’re yours. So we are going to use every single one of them.”
I looked down at the list.
My own handwriting. My small and careful hand.
Things to do before I become his wife.
I thought about the dining room. The roses. My mother looking away. Luca’s jaw tightening. Dante’s eyes full of something I still didn’t want to name.
I thought about the canvas in the corner, the woman at the edge of something, back turned, about to step somewhere the painting didn’t show.
“I don’t even know how to get into a strip club,” I said.
Cass’s face split into the widest grin I had ever seen on another human being.
“Good thing you know me then.”
“Cass…”
She was already reaching for her phone. “We need to get ready.”
My stomach dropped. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.” She didn’t look up. “You have three months, not three years. We are not going to sit around and make spreadsheets and talk ourselves out of it. We are going tonight, and we are going to cross number six off that list and maybe number seven if the DJ is good enough.”
“I can’t just,”
“You can.” She looked up. Held my gaze. Steady and certain in the way that only Cass ever was with me. “You can, and you’re going to, and I’m going to be right there the whole time.”
She raised her mug.
“To Isla Voss. Before she becomes anyone’s wife.”
I looked at her. At the girl who had shown up with two bottles of wine and no warning because she had known, without being told, that tonight was not a night to be alone.
I raised my mug.
“To Isla Voss,” I said quietly.
We drank.
“Right.” She was already on her feet, already moving toward the wardrobe in the corner where I kept a spare set of clothes. “What do you have that isn’t beige?”
“Most of my things are,”
“Beige. I know.” She pulled things out one by one, held them up, dismissed them without mercy. Then she held up a cream blouse and looked at it with what I could only describe as personal pain.
“Isla.” Her voice was solemn. “My love. My best friend. The sister of my soul.” She put the blouse back. “We need to talk about your wardrobe.”
I laughed.
It surprised me, the way it came out, sudden and real, loosening something in my chest that had been tight since the dining room. Since the roses and the silence and my father’s voice saying three months like it was nothing.
“We’re really doing this,” I said.
Cass turned around. Grinned.
“We’re really doing this.”
- Writer
