Kassie slept alone that night. Mel went home after two nights in her bed. She flipped through her apps to kill time. She stopped on the messenger app every few minutes, hoping to see a new message from Aaron. She was balancing on the thin line between anticipation and desperation. She wondered how she had gotten to the point where some guy consumed her thoughts. How do people live like this? Constantly filled with yearning, actively dissecting every conversation for clues and following lines of thought into brick walls. Wasting all their time on someone and getting nothing. 

Kassie was all too familiar with her tendency to fixate all her energy on something. It was a tendency that walked hand in hand with her anxiety. She poured that obsessive energy into Mel, who bore the curse well. She fixated on every aspect of B’s to ensure its success. She scoured for every scrap of information on things that interested her so that there was nothing left to the unknown. But this was the first time that her energy and effort had been focused on a boy. 

Kassie fell asleep, second-guessing everything she had typed to Aaron in the entirety of their conversation history.  

***

Kassie and Mel were dragging as they went through the motions of opening the bakery. The routine was familiar after a year. Lately, it has become even easier. Meg and Tina did most of the prep work the night before closing. Soon, they would be able to open in the morning. Kassie was looking forward to the days when she didn't have to wake up before dawn to help Mel bake, and she was praying the whole time she didn't ruin a batch of something. 

Most mornings, the kitchen was filled with noise. The girls would sing loudly along to the music or thoroughly discuss whatever topic came to mind. But every so often, the kitchen was quiet. The music was down low enough that the words were only an indistinguishable mutter. They moved through the kitchen without talking, knowing each other well enough to navigate around each other. 

Each of the girls had their reasons for the silence. Mel was silenced by anger. There were days when Mel was so filled with wrath and spite that she didn’t speak because she knew her words were armed to kill. Kassie was familiar with fury. She could see it tightly coiled around Mel when she got into the car. She could see the sharpness in Mel’s eyes, the set of her face. She knew when to give her space. Not space away from Kassie, just space to be angry. Space where her anger was valid, where she could work through it and not push it under a rug and ignore it.

Mel bore scars from her childhood, but the most damning was not being allowed to feel. Her dad would push and push Mel to the point of breaking and then mock her for it. He would dig his heels in and spit passive-aggressive comments at her until she screamed or cried, and then punish her for it. 

Even Mel’s mother left scars. Mel loved her mother. She watched her father tear apart his wife, each year chipping off another piece. Mel would rage, begging her mom to leave or to hate her husband the way Mel hated her dad. Instead, her mom would stay and ask Mel not to be so angry and to understand her father's point of view. To give him another chance. They left no room for Mel’s anger. 

Mel needed space to feel and process her anger. She had told Kassie that sometimes she is so filled with fury that she wouldn’t even know why. She needed time to process it. Kassie knew from experience that if she pushed Mel at this stage, Mel would strike with incredible accuracy. Her words would be laced with venom, and they would hit every weak spot Kassie had. So instead, she let Mel be angry. She gave her the space to sort through her feelings and be a sounding board if she needed to talk. 

Kassie was not filled with rage that forced her mute. She was filled with overwhelming despair. When she was in a depressive episode, she stopped caring about everything. She wouldn't eat or drink. She stopped taking care of herself or her relationships. She got out of bed to work, and if she stopped doing that, then Clarke or Mel would know it had reached a critical level. Kassie was silent because she was overcome with such terrible self-loathing, so thick she could feel it setting in her bones and dragging her down. She didn’t speak because she didn’t feel like her words had any merit. That if she said, whoever heard would agree that she was pitiful and useless. 

Mel understood the best she could. Their rage and depression existed separately from each other, but the toll they took was comparable, so each girl made room for the other.  

Luckily for everyone involved, both girls were not in the middle of an episode. Kassie was feeling her baseline for depression, nothing more. Mel was stewing in anger. Kassie could see it in the tight grip she had on the pan as she walked it to the oven. The obsessive need to clean and to keep everything in its place. The perfectionist tendencies reached a new level when Mel was on the warpath. 

It was going to be a long day.