Vera smiled warmly at Casey. "I'm glad. It'll be nice having you around more often."
His heart skipped a beat. He couldn't read into that too much. She only meant it would be nice having someone to help with her workload. It had nothing to do with him specifically!
Everyone got sick of him eventually. He had to do whatever he could to prevent that from happening with her. He had to be as useful as possible!
But if anybody could be different…if anybody could manage not to leave…could she? He didn't even know what it was like not to be left behind.
Everyone in Casey's life had left him but Kane. Casey couldn't afford to hope someone could be different only to be let down again but that didn't stop him. Like Kane always said, Casey was an idiot.
Vera was so nice to him though. She treated him like a person rather than an annoyance. And she sought him out first. That had never happened before. She chose him as a project partner then chose to teach him her craft and offer him a potential job when she really didn't have to.
He would never be able to repay her for all her help. He didn't even know where he would start.
She had become his lifeline. The only thing keeping him sane as he took too many classes so he could still graduate on time. Her smiles. Her laugh. Her giving him treats she baked. All of her.
Casey would see Vera a lot less during his final semester since he would be so busy with his internship. Just on Saturdays since she and her aunt hung out on Sundays. He wasn't looking forward to that. He would miss her. He wasn't supposed to miss anyone anymore.
The end of the semester came far sooner than he would have liked. He had to deal with finals, knowing he wouldn't see her as much as he had gotten used to, and worrying about how his internship was going to go.
He did his best to prepare himself beforehand with the materials they sent over that involved a more in-depth description of his duties and was sure to have all his paperwork and such taken care of beforehand. He didn't want to make a bad impression before he even got there.
Unfortunately, there was nothing Casey could do about the impression he made in person. The best he could do was stay quiet and only answer direct questions using as few words as he could get away with.
That had been his survival method for as long as he could remember. It only worked some of the time because there were certain situations he couldn't avoid talking in.
Those usually happened at school. He was willing to bet his internship would be similar but you never know. He might get lucky.
Casey wasn't known to be lucky though. He had already stuttered or mixed up his words more times than he could count by the end of his first week. It was really stressing him out.
The work itself wasn't difficult. He was understanding what he was being taught perfectly fine. But if he had to try and speak a full sentence to someone or other, he always inevitably messed it up and looked stupid. Then he got more flustered, which made it even more difficult to speak.
It was always a downward spiral with him. There was no recovering from it once he reached a certain point.
Oh, why did he have to be like this? Why couldn't he ever say what he meant to say?!
Casey didn't socialize with the other interns because he was already so stressed about speaking wrong in front of his mentor and other authority figures here so they all thought he was a snob. That wasn't it at all. He didn't think he was better than them. Actually, he was so much worse.
He was stressed and tired and he missed Vera. She was as smiley as usual on Saturday after his first week until she realized how exhausted he looked.
"You okay, Casey?"
"Not really," he confessed. "This week has taken a lot out of me. I non't dow—don't know—if I can do this sort of thing full-time. I might be better off just as an antique restorer after all. You can keep me in the back away from other people, can't you?"
Vera laughed but her expression was sympathetic as she reached out to pat his shoulder. She did things like this fairly often so he had mostly stopped flinching when it happened. "Of course. I don't want you to be stressed out."
"You're an angel."
That came out far more fervently than Casey meant it to and he was sure his face was bright red but she just smiled and changed the subject to what she would be teaching him today. He wished he understood her. He didn't know why she was so nice to him. If he did, would he be able to stop stressing out about it so much?
He never did well with uncertainty. There was so much when it came to Vera. She was a mystery to him.
Her kindness was so strange but he craved it desperately. He didn't ever want it to stop.
Casey wanted to stay with her forever. To keep basking in her warmth and light, being as useful to her as possible so she wouldn't want to throw him away like Candy did.
No. He couldn't think about her! Not right now. Not when he was with Vera. They were completely different. The only thing they had in common at all was being female. Just focus on Vera. Candy was gone. She was gone and Vera was right here, however long it lasted.
He didn't expect to ever be more than her future employee. Someone as lovely as her could have anyone. Why would she settle for a wreck like him? She had seen a lot more of him than he was comfortable with but there were things even she wouldn't be able to handle. She had never seen him without long sleeves and that was how it had to stay.
Casey couldn't expose her to more of his darkness than he already had just by existing. He didn't want anything to taint her light.