Page 36 of Now & Forever
“You don’t understand, James. My life is… was… a wreck. I was in a really dark place for several years. We grew apart because of it.”
For most of his twenties, James assumed he grew apart from his childhood friend because they had become adults with their own lives and paths. They had gotten along as children, but did that mean they would get along as adults? Everyone expected them to get married. There were jokes about it when they were barely older than ten and playing pranks on maids. James hadn’t thought about it much back then. He wasn’t the kind of little boy that found girls gross or the thought of growing up to get married a terrifying thought. He often accredited his young friendship with Cassandra as helping him navigate those gendered waters. But he never once thought about marrying her. Let alone kissing her orexperimentingwith her. She was his friend. Like his sister. An untouchable bond that would only be perverted if they ever ended up in bed together.
Other childhood friends discovered different things. Not James. He only ever wanted Cassandra as his friend, even if he recognized how beautiful she was, inside and out. She was the woman he wanted in his wedding party, not in the wedding dress.
He never thought that they might have grown apart because of something going on with her mentally.It was a natural separation, wasn’t it?
“During that time… I searched for meaning. I’ve always been the family type, like you.” James didn’t correct her, because he wasn’t sure what he was correcting. “I thought that if I shopped around with boyfriends and fly-by-night lovers, I would fall into a family, you know? I was reckless. Both with my heart and my body.”
James needed that whisky now.How could we be so the same yet so different?James had been fast and loose with his heart and body in his early twenties, in the randy years before he met Gwen. But he had never seen it as self-destruction. He wanted to sleep with women, so he slept with the ones he found attractive and who would have him. College had been theworst.But that was the air in his fraternity. Even his best friend Ian had probably slept with half the women in his repertoire while at college. Once women heard that the handsome boys in Beta Kappa Phi were the sons of billionaires, they lined up to attend the frat parties and get into bed as soon as some nice young man noticed them.
“You mean you would fall into the family way,” James said.
“Yes.” Cassandra shuddered. “I was lucky my body survived that time. I’m not sure my mental health has, though. I go to a therapist twice a week and have been on a carousel of medications to give myself clarity. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I had post-partum depression after Patrick was born.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s much better now. The medication has helped immensely.” Cassandra’s face lit up. “Apparently, it’s very common. My mother says she had it with me as well.”
“That so?” Another thing that didn’t surprise James.
“I firmly believe that my life has changed for the better since having Patrick. But before that…” Cassandra lost the luster in her complexion. “I kept up my old ways even after discovering I was pregnant. It was like a fever dream. Even though I took myself to the doctor and had all these conversations about my health and future with yourfather…”
James sucked in a deep, angry breath.
“…It wasn’t real until I started showing. Next thing I knew, my mother took me into hiding, because she didn’t want a shitstorm starting because it got out that I was pregnant. She knew how promiscuous I had been. She didn’t want any sniff of a rumor coming near us.”
“She was afraid I would find out.”
“You, and others. Sometimes I’m not sure my mother knows you’re an actual person.”
“Of course she doesn’t. As soon as it was clear I had no intention of dating or marrying you, I ceased to exist as anything more than a sperm donor. Literally.”
“James!”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
Cassandra looked as if she couldn’t believe what he said. Yet how could she deny it? James caught onto those games long before Cassandra ever had the chance, and that’s probably what their parents counted on. It was a perfect storm, wasn’t it? Cassandra, depressed and vulnerable… and James, too involved in his own life to care what his father did with the old childhood friends. They had both been screwed over. The only difference between them was that Cassandra didn’t have a partner to worry about hurting.
“I worry about our son.” Cassandra’s chin was propped on her hand. Her drink remained untouched, and her barrette had made it halfway down her hair. “Growing up in a place like that. I don’t want to move, especially since he’s so young right now, but what can I do if…”
James didn’t meter the words forming in the back of his head. “That’s why it’s important I become a part of my son’s life. I’m not only talking about visiting once or twice a week, Cassie. I mean making him a part ofmylife. He’s going to need his dad to keep the crazies away.”
He had no idea how she would take that. Depending on the day and how she felt getting out of bed, Cassandra would either find that a beautiful sentiment or a pox upon her house. Luckily for James, she sighed in relief and said, “I was hoping you would say something like that. I would have completely understood if you wanted nothing to do with him…”
“How could you say something like that? He’s still my son.” Every time James visited the boy, Patrick looked more and more like his father. That hair. Those eyes. The little cheekbones. Even the cocky, devil-may-care way Patrick rolled onto his side when confronting a problem was unmistakablyMerange,like the family name his mother had given him. The biological impulse to protect his own bundle of genetics was strong within James’s heart. He could have crossed paths with Patrick on the street and known he wasa son. Not that it would have done either Patrick or James any good to discover each other that late in life. “If he’s going to bear my name,” James continued, “he better have some of my influence.”
“You know I won’t bar you from sharing custody if that’s what you want. Right now, I’m the only one with the legal right to say what happens to him. My own mother doesn’t have that much power.”
“We can cross that bridge if it becomes pertinent, or when he gets older.”
“I want you to know that I won’t keep you from being a father to our son.”
James finished his drink and checked the time.The gathering starts in an hour. Do I still want to go?After this, he would need the guy talk. “I’m sure Gwen will come around by then.”
Cassandra shared a pensive look. “I hope so, too. The more outside influence, the better.”
“You mean that?”
