Paper Airplanes (21 page)

“Try not to gawk at my ass too much,” she shot over her shoulder, grinning at me as she started to climb.

I shook my head, knowing I wouldn’t be able to look anywhere but her ass after that.

When I reached the top, Cassie was looking out over the edge where you could see the whole town. Farmland extended beyond the buildings for miles.

“It’s so beautiful,” she gushed.

I walked to the other side to take in the view across town.

“You should check out things on Jared’s side,” Scott suggested.

I turned around to look at him, wondering why he’d said that, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was messing with something on his laptop. Then before I knew what was happening, Cassie had squeezed in next to me, her tight little body pressed against mine as her arm slid around my waist. I froze, not sure what to do.

“Wow, I love this view.”

I love having you this close to me.

No, this was bad. At any second Scott was going to look up and see her hugging all over me, and he was going to be pissed.

“I’m going to get a drink,” I said, pulling away from Cassie. I turned to Scott, relieved he wasn’t paying any attention to us. “You want anything, bro?”

He shook his head, but he didn’t look up. “Nah, I’m good.”

Then he slid his headphones on, so he could listen to the music he had lined up to make sure it played back okay
and was in sync with the lights. I knew he’d be in a zone until the show started so there was no use hanging around. Maybe I’d get a hot dog and play some of the carnival games they had set up around town.

The year before I’d been dead-set on winning Brooke a stuffed monkey from the dart game. It was pretty much the only thing I was good at. It had cost me about thirty dollars, but I
’d finally won the monkey for her. She’d kissed me for the first time later that night.

“I’ll come with you,” Cassie offered as I headed toward the ladder.

I glanced over at Scott, but he was bobbing his head in time with the music only he could hear. He didn’t even see her leaving.

When we reached the
ground, I walked toward one of the food trucks nearby. I ordered a hot dog and a Coke and then turned to Cassie. “Do you want anything?”

She squinted at the menu on the side of the truck. “I’ll take a cotton candy, and then can I share your soda?”

The thought of her lips wrapped around the same straw I’d had in my mouth gave me chills. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that. Oh, who was I kidding? Of course I wanted to see that.

“Sure, you can share with me.”

She smiled and linked her arm through mine. “Thanks.”

I tried to pretend her proximity wasn’t driving me nuts.

After we got our snacks, we walked around for an hour, and I tried to ignore how sexy Cassie looked as she nibbled on her pink cotton candy and sucked on the end of my straw. I wasn’t sure if she knew what she was doing to me, but I couldn’t stop looking at her mouth. I was practically salivating with the need to kiss her by the time the show started, but I held back, knowing Scott had a bird’s eye view from his platform and would definitely see us.

Cassie and I
stood together on the grass across from the town hall as the lights in the town went dark. Then the pulse of the beat took over as the first song started. It was timed perfectly with the lights reflecting off the building in flawless synchronicity. I had to say, Scott had outdone himself, and the crowd loved it. They were enthralled.

Halfway through the show I watched Cassie’s face as an image appeared on the screen. Scott had filmed my hands making a paper airplane. He’d sped up the film, and it was projected onto the bottom right corner of the building. He’d instructed me to hold it in my hand once the airplane was completed, and then throw it. Then with CGI imaging he’d replicated it a thousand times so the image showed one airplane morphing into hundreds and flying across a bright blue sky. It was a cool affect, and I watched the blue reflected onto Cassie’s smiling face as she watched the airplanes fly and then morph into blackbirds and swoop back across the screen.

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 conversa
tion, 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.

“J
ared,” 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 fi
fteen 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.

“No
t 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.”