Paper Airplanes

by Monica Alexander

  “Fuck you, asshole. I’ve made more out of my life than you have in twice as many years. You just never took the time to see it. And I’m raising the son you decided you couldn’t take care of. Thanks so much for sending us money all these years.”

  He continued to glare at me. “The Larsons have more than enough money to take care of you guys. Quit complaining.”

  “That’s not their job!” I yelled, aware that people were starting to stare at us. “It was yours, and you failed – you and Mom both failed – and you need to accept the fact that I’ve done a better job of raising Austin than either of you ever did.”

  “This is true,” Austin mumbled, and my dad looked down at him.

  “What did you say?” he growled, glaring at Austin.

  “Nothing,” Austin said to him, sticking his chin out authoritatively.

  “You better watch your mouth, you ungrateful brat,” he spat at Austin, and my fist went up. I wasn’t letting that asshole touch my brother.

  Austin saw what I was about to do and pushed me away before I could take a swing. “He’s not worth your time, man. Let’s just go inside. We’re here for Evan, remember?”

  “Right,” I said, remembering myself. He was right. The last thing I needed to do was get into it with my dad.

  I turned to Cassie to see what she thought of everything she’d just witnessed, but she wasn’t there. I looked behind me, and then spun in a circle, wondering if she’d walked away when things got weird, but she wasn’t anywhere nearby.

  “Where’s Cassie?” I asked my brother.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking around for her. “She was right here a few minutes ago.”

  I spun around again, afraid I might have missed her blending in with the throngs of people mingling outside the auditorium.

  “Shit,” I hissed.

  I never should have dropped her hand. I knew she wasn’t in her right mind after everything that had happened that morning, and now she’d taken off. Fucking great.

  “Ha, she left your sorry ass,” my dad chimed in then, and I turned and glared at him. “She must not have been able to look at your ugly mug anymore.”

  “Funny thing coming from someone I share DNA with,” I snapped at him

  It was a good thing Austin was still standing between us since I probably would have swung at my dad in that moment had I not had a barrier holding me back. I glared at him.

  “Dad, don’t say stuff like that,” Austin pleaded with him, but I was done trying to reason with a man who couldn’t see reason.

  “Austin, leave it alone. He’s never going to give me a break. It’s been like this my whole life.”

  My dad just glared at me as I said that, probably realizing that he had very little hold over me anymore. His need to constantly put other people down so he could feel better about his sorry-ass life was getting a little pathetic.

  I returned his glare. “Yeah, I’m well aware that you can’t stand me Dad,” I growled at him. “That was made evident by the fact that you couldn’t be bothered to visit when I was in the hospital after being shot! Would you like me to show you the scar? It’s pretty nasty. Or maybe I can show you the spot where I was lying in a pool of my own blood for thirty minutes not sure if was going to live or die. Do you want to see that? Because that spot’s about five hundred feet from where we’re standing right fucking now!”

  I was out of breath from screaming, but the look on my dad’s face told me I’d finally gotten through to him.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted me here,” he spat. “You always thought you were better than me, that you could do things better. It’s why I left. You couldn’t stand me.”

  Oh, fuck that. I was not listening to his ‘poor me’ routine. It was bullshit, and we both knew it. He’d made fun of me and beat up on me since I was a kid. I didn’t believe for one second that he thought I was a better man than him. He was just weak and pathetic. And I was done. I needed to find Cassie.

  “Austin, I’ll meet you inside,” I told my brother, turning away as I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “You want to talk about time?” my dad growled then. “I’ll tell you about time, about how I spent too many years of my life wasting it on you. You little shits aren’t worth any of my time.”

  “Ross Lansing, everyone; Father of the Year,” I said to no one in particular.

  That only proceeded to make him angrier. Then he grumbled something about wasting too many years caring for kids that weren’t his responsibility.

  Yeah, he was drunk.

  “Dad, what the hell are you talking about?” Austin asked as I started to dial Cassie’s number. I was done.

  “I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell you,” my dad grumbled to Austin, and I looked over at him.

  He was mumbling to himself about promises she’d made that she didn’t keep and how he was done with her. I didn’t believe that for a second. He’d carry a torch for her until the day he died, regardless of how she’d treated him. She’d had an affair with Jean Luc, left my dad and moved halfway around the world. She wasn’t ever coming back for him.

  “Tell us what?” Austin asked, and my father glared at him.

  I wished he would have just ignored our dad. The worst thing to do was goad him.

  “That I’m not your father,” our dad spat out, the light in his eyes making me wonder if he was lying, just trying to rattle us, but that was a pretty odd thing to lie about.

  “What?!” Austin asked, his eyes wide and disturbed as he waited for our father to explain himself.

  He breathed out in a huff. “I found out twelve years ago that your bitch of a mother had been seeing Jean Luc off and on for years. Every time he’d come to Chicago, she’d sneak off with him. She thought I didn’t know, but I did – I figured it out. I followed her one day. When I confronted her about it, she tried to deny it, but then she broke down and told me the truth. Then she told me she was done with him, she loved me and our family, and I was dumb enough to believe her. But she never stopped seeing him. One weekend when she was off with him, giving me some bullshit excuse about needing a spa weekend, I started to think back on all the times she’d been with him. I realized how ironic it was that she wound up pregnant twice after disappearing with him on different occasions. At the time I was too blind to see it, and I chalked it up to coincidence, but when two of my kids didn’t grow up to look anything like me, well then I had my answer.”

  My jaw wanted to drop open. Was he being serious?

  “So, what? You’re saying that that French dude Mom left you for is our father? Bullshit,” Austin snapped, and our dad just shook his head. “You’re lying.”

  My dad – or the man I’d assumed was my dad my whole life – just laughed at him. “Ask your mother. She’ll tell you the truth. I’m done with you two. You caused me nothing but trouble your whole lives. I should have told you about this when your mother admitted it to me, but I promised I’d keep it a secret. She didn’t want to hurt you, but I’m done protecting her. That bitch ruined my life, and all you two do is remind me of her and her infidelities. I can’t stand to look at either of you. I’m going inside to see my real son graduate college.”

  He glared at us before he turned and walked away without a backwards glance.

  Austin turned to me. “Was he fucking serious?”

  “Dude, I have no idea. What the hell?”

  It might not have been the healthiest of reactions, but a huge part of me actually felt relief as he’d walked away. If he was telling the truth, and there was a fifty-fifty chance he was, that meant I wasn’t related to him. It meant I never had to see him again. It also meant that my life was even more fucked up than I’d ever thought. It meant that I had a father who I didn’t know, who may or may not even know that my brother and I were his kids, and it meant that Evan was only our half-brother. It certainly explained why Austin and I didn’t share many features with him.

  I was fairly s
ure I was in shock. This was nuts.

  “I’m calling Mom,” Austin said then, and he stalked away from me, already dialing her number in Paris.

  But for as rattled as I was in that moment, I figured everything else could wait until I found Cassie. I had to make sure she was okay. As I watched Austin pacing and talking on his phone, I dialed Cassie on mine.

  “Hello?” she said numbly after several rings, and I breathed a sigh of relief at hearing her voice on the other end of the line.

  “Where are you?” I asked, plugging my ear against the noise of people walking past me.

  “I couldn’t stay away. I had to see it,” she said, and as soon as she did, I started walking toward the dining hall.

  Fuck, I did not want to go there, but I wasn’t about to leave her there alone. “Stay there,” I commanded. “I’m on my way.”

  “Okay,” she said, never having sounded more disconnected in all the time I’d known her.

  She didn’t say anything else, and neither did I, as I walked across campus to her, but I kept my phone to my ear, not wanting to let her go. My heart skipped a few beats and my stomach turned over a few times, the contents in it threatening to come back up as the dining hall came into view. I swallowed back the bile in my throat and scanned the area for Cassie.

  “Where are you?” I demanded.

  “Inside,” she said, and I took a deep breath.

  Shit.

  As I got closer, I could see her standing in the middle of the mostly empty dining hall, so I took a deep breath, opened the door and walked inside. I expected to smell the smells I remembered from that day – dirt, blood and cleaning solution mixed with stale food, but instead I smelled paint and new construction. A few glances around told me there had been some serious remodeling that had taken place over the summer.

  There were no tables or chairs in the middle of the room, and the tiled floor was brand new. The posters that had been on the walls and the flier-covered bulletin boards advertising campus clubs and roommates needed and part-time jobs were gone. The line where hot food was served was still under construction. And Cassie was standing in the center of the room, her phone to her ear.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked, and she spun slowly and faced me.

  She had to have heard me walk in, but she didn’t turn around until I acknowledged her.

  “It was open. I just walked in.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I had to. I had to see it again. I had to know.”

  “Know what?” I asked, taking tentative steps toward her. I wasn’t sure how volatile she was, and I didn’t want her to run off again.

  “I’m sorry I left, but I just kept feeling this pull from the second we stepped on campus, and I needed to come. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t apologize. It’s fine.”

  She looked toward the entrance. “We walked in as a group. Reese went to get ice cream even though it was snowing outside, and Marley and Aiden went to get something hot – macaroni and cheese, I think. And Will and I walked in together. I was looking at him, and he was smiling, and then suddenly, I was on the ground, and he was on top of me. I had no idea what had happened, and he was so heavy, but then I looked over and saw these blue eyes and for the first time since everything got loud and confusing and terrifying, I had something to hold onto.”

  She looked up at me, and I met her gaze. “I remember the second you looked at me,” I told her. “I wanted to help you, to tell you it would be okay, but I couldn’t do that. I didn’t think it would be.”

  “I didn’t either,” she said, as she wrapped her arms around herself. “When I remembered everything, that was the one thing I remembered most. I felt helpless, so helpless, like I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

  I nodded. “I know. I felt the same way.”

  She nodded in understanding, in the way no one else in the world could. She was the only one who truly knew.

  “You told me to stay with you,” she said then.

  I sighed, remembering the empty request I’d made to someone I didn’t know, who couldn’t even follow through on what I was asking, but it didn’t matter. When she told me that night that she’d stay with me, I’d held onto those words. I’d let them follow me into unconsciousness, knowing that even if I died, I wouldn’t be alone.

  “I didn’t want to be alone,” I said, my throat getting thick at the end of the sentence.

  It was strange to be recounting everything that had happened that night in the exact spot it happened. A part of it felt like a lifetime ago, but another part felt like the floor was going to reach up and grab me and pull me back down, and I’d be right back in that moment in an instant, hearing the gunshots and feeling the warm pool of my blood beneath me.

  “Me neither,” she said softly, her gaze shifting to a spot on the floor.

  I wanted to reach out and hold her.

  “Cassie, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you when I realized it was you,” I blurted out, because I felt like shit for keeping it from her, and it was killing me that I didn’t know if it was okay to hold her when I knew she needed it. “I was just hoping to avoid you feeling the way you do now. I know it was stupid.”

  I shook my head. I was so pissed at myself.

  Cassie shook her head and then looked back up at me. “I know why you didn’t tell me. I get it. I’m not mad at you.”

  Sweet relief.

  “I still feel bad.”

  She took a step closer to me and wove her arms around my waist as she rested her head on my chest, engulfing me in her warmth and her familiar vanilla scent.

  “You saved my life, Jared,” she said softly.

  “You saved mine,” I told her, as I wrapped my arms around her back, holding her to me.

  And it was the truth. She had saved my life – that night and every night since the day she’d walked back into my life.

  We stood there for an infinite length of time, not moving, not speaking, just healing, because both of us had finally faced our biggest fears. We were back in the spot where the nightmare had occurred, and we were safe. We were together, and although neither of us was going to be one hundred percent okay for a long time, we both knew this was the first step in healing that we hadn’t known we needed to take.

  When Cassie finally pulled away, she took my hand in hers and we left the dining hall, neither of us looking back. We walked in silence to the auditorium, and a glance at my phone told me the ceremony was half over.

  I saw that I had a text from Austin. Talked to Mom. It’s true, but Jean Luc doesn’t know. This is completely fucked up.

  I sighed, but I didn’t say anything to Cassie. I was still processing it all.

  Fuck them all. I responded. You have Evan and me, you don’t need them.

  And that was the goddamned truth.

  When we walked inside, they were calling out the names of the graduates, so we stood in the back and watched. Evan’s name was called ten minutes later, and I clapped for him as he walked across the stage, proud of him at the same time I felt dazed as the reality of what I’d just learned about my family started to sink in.

  I didn’t think Evan had a clue, and I knew I’d have to tell him. ‘Happy Graduation – if you didn’t realize it already, our family is a fucking mess, and Austin and I are not only your half-brothers, but we’re also half-French. Oui oui.’

  I shook my head and made a face. That just sounded weird.

  I pulled Cassie tighter against me, needing her warmth and comfort more than ever. I was never so glad to have her in my life. She smiled at me after Evan crossed the stage, looking more like herself than she had in several hours.

  “You okay?” I asked her as we made our way back outside after the ceremony.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’m getting there. Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She shrugged. “Being you. Being wonderful. You’re dad’s a jackass by the way. If he can�
��t see what an amazing man you are, you don’t need him in your life.”

  I leaned over and kissed her temple. “Thank you, but he’s not my dad,” I said, testing how it sounded coming out of my mouth.

  It actually sounded sort of freeing.

  For the longest time, all I’d wanted was for him to acknowledge that I was smart and a good person. That was all I’d wanted, but he’d never given me that satisfaction. I wondered when he’d started to suspect that I wasn’t his son. It must have been early on. At least now I knew why he’d been a dick to me for most of my life. It didn’t make me feel any better about it, but knowing the truth helped in a small way.

  “What do you mean he’s not your dad?” Cassie asked, so I filled her in on everything that had happened after she’d disappeared as we waited for Austin to meet us outside after the ceremony. He’d been sitting in a different part of the auditorium and was still making his way through the dense crowd.

  Cassie stood there gaping at me, her eyes wide. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  I shook my head. “Nope, Austin confirmed it with our mom. My dad is some dude I’ve never met, who lives in Paris.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Quite honestly, it’s just par for the course with my life,” I said, shrugging. “It is what it is.”

  “Jared,” she said softly, and I shrugged again.

  “Cass, what do you want me to say? The guy who was an asshole to me for as far back as I can remember isn’t actually related to me. I can wrap my head around that. I had a hard time understanding how someone could be that mean to their own flesh and blood, and now I know why.”

  “Are you upset?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. No, I’m not – at least not right now. I think I’m still processing to tell you the truth, but I’ll be fine. Trust me. I have a family. I have Evan and Austin and the Larsons, and I have the most important person in my life. I have you.”

  Tears sprung to her eyes as I said that, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me tightly. “I love you,” she said. “So much.”