She volunteers to help Hearst College upgrade their computer systems over summer vacation and in return is allowed to stay in her dorm room. That's where he finds her two weeks in to the break. She has absolutely no intentions on letting him inside but then he tilts his head up and his hair falls out of his eyes and she can see them brimming with tears, dark black circles marring his tan skin and angry, red lines cutting across his pupils. She steps back in surprise and he takes it as an invitation.
She doesn't know why she shuts the door behind him but she does and when she turns back around he collapses against her, face buried in the crook of her neck. His entire body shudders as he sobs against her skin.
They don't talk, not really. He mumbles something about being the only one who seems to miss Beaver against her shoulder and she tells him that he's wrong and that she misses Cassidy too. She thinks it might be true, that there might be some part of her that misses some part of him. She doesn't want to dwell on it too much though because she's been trying all year to put the nightmare behind her. It still haunts her every second of every day.
He leaves as strangely as he appeared no apology, no thank you, no fuck you, just asks here not to tell anyone about his breakdown and then disappears into the hallway. She figures that'll be the end of it that he just needed someone who might possibly understand, and tomorrow everything will go back to being normal. For awhile it does.
-0-0-
"You hate him, don't you?"
It turns into a thing, every few weeks he shows up and she lets him in, doesn't even pretend she doesn't want to anymore. They only ever really talk about one thing.
"I mean, it's cool if you do. Sometimes I think I hate him but mostly I just hate myself for the way I treated him."
"It-it's complicated," she says walking past him to perch on the edge of her bed. "I hate the person that killed all those people, that left me alone in a hotel room, and jumped-" She sees him stiffen and trails off. "But then there was this completely different side to him, the side I fell in love with and no matter how hard I try I just can't make myself hate that person."
He sits down next to her and she's surprised at how comfortable she's gotten at being so close to him. "That's the only side I knew," he says softly as he stares down at the floor. As an afterthought he adds, "The second one."
-0-0-
There's a span at the end of July/beginning of August where he doesn't show up for several weeks and she finds herself kind of missing him. It's strange really but talking to him has helped more than any of the shrinks her parents have tried sending her to.
When he does show back up he looks worse than he did on his first visit. "Will you go with me," he asks peeking at her through a curtain of curls that desperately need to be cut.
She instinctively knows what he's asking. It shouldn't be as hard to say yes as it is but she's not sure she's ready to take this step yet.
"Please," he adds, voice hitching pitifully and she can't bring herself to say no even though she wants too.
-0-0-
They stand in front of the granite stone and she shivers despite the August heat. He shifts closer, drapes an arm over her shoulder, and she turns into his chest, letting herself cry for the first time since that horrible night at the Neptune Grand.