She closed her eyes for a second and shook her head in amusement before she looked over and gave me a knowing look. Every time I left a paper airplane for her, which I’d started doing on a regular basis since it made her smile, I wrote Hi on the bottom corner. I’d done the same thing on the airplane I’d made for Scott’s show, and I’d been wondering if she’d notice it.
I knew she had once I saw the smile fade from her face. The realization that I hadn’t left her an airplane in over a week when it used to be something I did daily had to have slammed home for her. I suddenly felt like a huge jerk for putting distance between us like I had. It wasn’t what I wanted at all.
In that moment, I wished I could take her hand in mine to show her how I felt. And I was so close to just doing it, but the knowledge that Scott could see us told me to hold back.
When the show was coming to an end, Cassie turned to me. “This is really cool,” she shouted above the Kings of Leon song pulsing through the warm night air.
I nodded. “Scott always does a kick-ass job. He’s really good at this stuff.”
“I’ll say,” she said, turning her head to look back at the building. She shook her head and turned back to me, looking at me like she had a question. “I wonder if he realizes how many sex songs he incorporated into this show. I counted four.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it, and the bad thing was that Scott had no clue. “He doesn’t get it,” I told her.
That question hadn’t been what I was expecting her to ask based on the hesitant look on her face. I could tell she was just making conversation, so I humored her. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was truly on her mind, even though I could guess.
She smiled. “I figured. Even Sex on Fire wouldn’t register with him as being inappropriate. He’s lovably clueless in that way.”
“So true.”
Her smile faded after a few seconds. “So what’s up with you?”
That was what I’d been waiting for her to ask.
“What do you mean?” I responded, buying time.
She gave me a knowing look. She knew what I was doing.
“You’ve been all distant since that night at my house. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, looking down at her.
The light from the Scott’s show was reflected behind her, haloing her head in red light from the light-effected roses covering the town hall.
“Jared,” she said, and I wished the way she said my name didn’t affect me like it did.
She shook her head, and I should have seen the look of determination on her face, but I missed it. And before I knew what was happening, she’d wrapped her arms around my neck and was kissing me. I started kissing her back before I remembered what a prime view Scott had and froze. After a few seconds of me not responding, Cassie pulled away, looking like at me I’d kicked her dog. She blinked a few times in confusion before she turned and took off into the crowd.
Shit.
“Cassie!” I called after her, but she didn’t turn around. I doubted she could even hear me.
She just kept pushing her way through the crowd, not getting very far. She was only about ten feet from me as the first firework exploded overhead, shuddering through me as it caught me off-guard and took me right back to that day in January where I’d heard bang after bang after bang of gunshots fired. The fireworks sounded so much like that. I hadn’t been prepared for that correlation of sound at all, and I knew Cassie hadn’t either. I watched her freeze. Then it was like she was folding in on herself.
Before she could collapse, I was behind her, my arms wrapped around her, pulling her back against my chest as I kept her upright. She turned and buried her head in my chest, her hands pressed against her ears to block out the sound. I desperately wanted to cover mine, but I had to keep my arms around her, so I stood there with my eyes closed, praying it would be over soon.
I’d always loved fireworks as a kid, but now I couldn’t stand them. For fifteen minutes, I stood there paralyzed by fear, holding onto Cassie who was clinging to me, reliving every minute of the day fourteen people had lost their lives all around us. It was like my worst nightmare coming true, and I couldn’t make it stop.
Thankfully the show came to an end after an earsplitting finale, and I knew I’d never go to another Fourth of July event ever again. I felt ready to throw up and cry and scream all at the same time, my body shaking uncontrollably. Once silence filled the air, I started to thankfully calm down. Cassie had gone limp against me when the show ended, and she was sobbing softly. I had no idea what was going through her mind, if she’d remembered everything, if the fireworks had triggered something that made her memories come back, but I could tell she was terrified.
I knew I had to get her out of there, so I started to walk us through the crowd, which was pretty much like swimming upstream. Twenty wordless minutes later, with her still holding onto me, we reached the outskirts of the town square where we’d parked. I opened the passenger door, knowing Scott had kept it unlocked, and Cassie sank down into the seat in a heap.
I knelt down in front of her. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I sighed as I pushed her hair back over her shoulder and let my hand rest there. “Me neither,” I said, feeling exhausted all of a sudden.
She looked up at me. “I don’t know what that was,” she said, shaking her head, “but I was so scared. It was like I could feel everything I’d felt that day. It was the most horrible feeling.”
I completely agreed.
“Did you remember what happened?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“Not completely. I just remembered the feeling of being afraid, and I remembered the sounds. It felt like I was back there, but I couldn’t see anything. I could just hear it all.”
What she was saying didn’t make sense, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. Trauma had a weird way of rearing its ugly head. So instead I made the call that I was going to take her home.
Cassie was leaning her head against the back of the seat, her eyes closed as she hugged herself with her arms.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her. “I just need to call Scott.”
She nodded, but she didn’t open her eyes.
I walked a few feet away, so I could talk to Scott without Cassie hearing. I wasn’t sure if she’d want him to know she’d had a meltdown, and Scott wouldn’t take my request for his keys at face-value. I’d have to explain the reason to him.
“Hey,” he said curtly, and I knew he’d seen Cassie kiss me. But I didn’t have time to deal with that right then. “Where are you?”
“I need your keys. I need to take Cassie home.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll come back for you,” I told him. “Just let me get her home.”
“Is she okay?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Dammit, Jared. What did you do?”
“Nothing! I didn’t do anything. It was the fireworks.”
Why did he think I’d made her upset?
“Dude, I saw you. She kissed you, and you practically pushed her away. What the hell was that all about?”
Shit. I knew he’d seen that.
“Scott, I’m sorry. I didn’t initiate that, I swear. I’m really sorry you had to see that.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
I looked back at Cassie to see her sitting in the front seat of the car, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms looped around them. She was staring at a fixed point in the distance that I couldn’t make out. I walked a few feet further away but kept one eye on her as I talked.
“Yes,” I said, not able to lie to my best friend. “I’m sorry, but I do.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You do?”
I was sort of caught off-guard that he’d said that. I’d expected him to go off on me about how he’d like her for years, and I was a shitty friend, and how could I do this to
him.
“Of course, I know,” he said, the ‘duh’ implied. “I’m not blind. Why didn’t you talk to me about how you felt about her?”
My heart sunk. I so hadn’t meant to hurt him over this. “I was going to, I just hadn’t yet. I know how you feel about her.”
“She doesn’t like me,” he said matter-of-factly. “She likes you.”
I sighed. “I know she does. I’ve known for about a week, and initially I was going to talk to you, I swear I was, but then she was talking about her ex-boyfriend, and I think she’s still hung up on him. I’m not going to pursue anything with her if she’s still in love with someone else, so I backed off. I figured until she was over him, there wasn’t any point in bringing it up to you. I didn’t know she was going to kiss me tonight. I never would have gone behind your back. I swear.”
God, I felt like such an asshole.
“She’s not hung up on her ex-boyfriend,” he said like he knew something I didn’t. “She wants to be with you.”
“How do you know?”
Had Cassie talked to Scott about her ex, the one that died in the shooting?
“She told me this afternoon.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, she did. She told me that she can’t stop thinking about you, and that she feels really rejected by how you’ve been treating her lately, which I think is totally shitty, by the way. So I told her to go for it with you. It’s why I invited her tonight. I figured you could work your Fourth of July magic like you did with Brooke. And, it totally worked! I saw her kiss you. You da man!”
“Scott,” I said, knowing he was playing it off like it wasn’t a big deal, but deep down he had to be hurting that she didn’t want him – and to make things worse, she wanted his best friend. “What about you?”
“Look, I can’t help that she doesn’t like me,” he said, sounding really honest and mature, “but if she has to date someone who’s not me, I’d rather it be you. At least I know you’re not a douche.”
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I am. Go for it. Tell her how you feel. She’s probably pissed that you pushed her away. Go make it right. I’m sending Tom over with my keys. He or one of the other guys can give me a ride after we break everything down. Just take Cassie home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am. I saw her freak out when the fireworks started. I wanted to stop them, but once they start, they go until the end.”
“I know,” I said softly. “Dude, she was terrified. She was shaking and crying, and she wouldn’t let go of me.”
“It makes sense. The sounds are similar. I should have thought about that before I invited her to come. I feel like an asshole.”
“It’s not your fault,” I assured him. “I wasn’t thinking about it either. I had no idea how she’d react.”
“Or how you’d react?”
I sometimes forgot how well he knew me. “Yeah, or how I’d react. It was pretty awful.”
“I can imagine. You okay?”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m fine now, but I’m not coming back next year.”
“I won’t hold that against you. Now, go. Get Cassie home, take care of her like I know you want to. You have my blessing.”
“Thanks, man. That means a lot to me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, steering us away from sappy. We didn’t do sappy. “Just promise you’ll give me details or at least hook me up with one of her hot friends.”
My mouth curved into a smile as I thought of the details he’d want. Even though we both knew I wasn’t going to hook up with Cassie that night, the prospect of it happening at some point made me all giddy. That night I’d make sure she felt safe and protected, but who knew what would happen in the future.
“I’m not telling you anything,” I said playfully, knowing I’d never tell Scott the details of what I eventually did with Cassie anyway.
He just laughed. “Bastard.”
I saw Tom coming toward me then with Scott’s keys, so I thanked Scott and told him I’d see him later. He was right. I needed to get Cassie home.
Chapter Sixteen
Cassie
Neither Jared nor I spoke the whole way home. I didn’t even think to ask how Scott was going to get back to his house. I just stared out the window, my thoughts running rampant as I tried to link together the emotions I’d felt for so long, to the tangible things that I now remembered so clearly.
For the longest time I could remember being confused and terrified and alone that night so many months ago, but I couldn’t piece together why that was. I couldn’t relate the terror or the confusion to a source. For months I’d felt like my memories of that night were right on the fringe, just waiting for me to uncover them, but no matter how hard I tried, I was left with a blank canvas.
But when the first firework had gone off, it had triggered something in me, and what I felt then was more than memories of emotions. It had been tangible. I remembered feeling hot and cold at the same time. I remembered a heavy weight on me that I knew was Will’s body. I remembered a wetness seeping into my clothes and down my face, the twin wounds that Will and I had suffered bleeding in time with each other, covering me in blood. I remembered my head hurting, feeling like it was going to split open, and I remembered the sounds. I remembered the shouting and the crying and the screaming and the gunshots.
The gunshots were the worst, because following them was the sound of another body falling. There had been so many. It felt never ending.
But that was it. I had no visual memories. And I couldn’t make out the actually words anyone had said. They were just sounds that I knew were words, but I couldn’t determine what they were. It was like someone had turned the lights out and covered my ears so I felt disconnected from what was going on around me.
With my head resting against the cool glass of the window, I watched the scenery pass by as Jared drove us home. Everything was a blur, just like my memories of that night. Blurry. Disconnected. But real.
For the first time, I remembered what it had been like to be in the dining hall, on the cold floor, just waiting for death and knowing it was eminent. There was no other way to describe the complete and total despair that had flowed through me as the realization of what was happening hit me full force. I never thought I’d make it out alive.
But I had.
I’d lived.
I’d survived.
I was okay.
Sort of.
I noticed when we pulled onto our street that instead of driving back to his house, Jared pulled into my driveway. My gaze shifted to the huge, empty house looming in front of me. I hadn’t even left a light on. The thought of facing that darkness alone was practically crippling me. I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wanted to stay there, with Jared, forever. I didn’t want to be alone.
Even after Jared had recoiled when I kissed him, essentially giving me the answer I’d been afraid to hear all week, I still wanted to stay with him. I was that scared of being by myself, and he was the only person who knew how I felt.
For months I’d been fine. I’d been able to exist and live my life – the sort of half-life it had become – but I’d been living. And I’d been feeling like I was starting to heal as I’d built a new life for myself with school and work and my new friends. I’d been alright, but now everything inside me felt like it could crack at any second, and I was barely holding on.
And because of that, I was willing to spend more time with a guy who wasn’t interested in me. He didn’t want to be with me. He’d made that abundantly clear. What had happened between us that night a week earlier had been incredible, but somewhere between him telling me he liked me, he’d changed his mind. I wasn’t sure if I’d done something or not, but I didn’t really think it mattered.
When he’d pulled away from my kiss, I’d felt the worst I had in a long time, but then seconds later, m
y world had crumbled, and he’d been there, holding me up, keeping me safe, giving me a thread to hold onto in a violent, swirling tornado.
Didn’t he know that would only make me want him more? The fact that he hadn’t let me fall, that he’d protected me, made me want to sink into his arms and stay there.
I closed my eyes, feeling his gaze on me, and shook my head. He was probably wondering why I wasn’t getting out of the car, most likely wanting me to just go already. He’d tried to get away from me earlier in the night. He’d gone to get a drink, and I’d insisted on following him, but then we’d walked around the town, playing silly games and sharing a soda. We’d been having fun.
Then we were laughing and joking about the songs Scott had picked for the light show, which really weren’t that bad, but it was a connection point, something Jared and I could share. It was why I’d kissed him. He’d been looking at me like he wanted to kiss me, his face bathed in red light from the roses covering the town hall that had morphed into lava before morphing into rushing water. The show had been incredible, but it had been more incredible to watch the reflection of the lights in Jared’s eyes. He was so beautiful, inside and out, and he made me feel special.
Slowly, I opened the door to the car and got out, not even bothering to say goodbye to him. I wasn’t sure what I’d say. Thank you for rescuing me? Sorry I kissed you? See you tomorrow at work? Ugh. I couldn’t even think about that.
But then I heard his car door open and shut and stopped in my tracks. I could hear him walking up behind me, could feel his presence for several moments before his hand came to rest on my lower back. I jumped, having not expected him to touch me. But instead of removing his hand, he slid it around my waist and pulled me against him, tucking my head under his chin.
Paper Airplanes Page 20
