***
As much as James yearned to see his son, he was relieved that Cassandra didn’t have time to get Patrick ready for a brief excursion into the city. She arrived at the lounge five minutes later than James had asked to see her, apologies spilling from her lips.
“No need to apologize.” He remained seated while the lounge host pulled out a chair for Cassandra. When she sat, her bag strap slipped off her shoulder and plummeted into her lap. Her penchant for form-fitting yet conservative dresses reminded James of women like Monica Warren and Kathryn Alison, two very well-to-do ladies who exuded the type of class and sophistication the social elite commended. Too bad Cassandra had lost her chance at that level of notoriety. She was always the type to be more infamous than anything else.
Cassandra shook her head, the rose-shaped barrette in her black hair coming loose. She didn’t seem to notice it. “I swear I started getting ready the moment you asked me to meet you. But my mother caught me on the way out the door, and…” she stopped. “You don’t want to hear my excuses. I’m sure you’d much rather talk about Patrick.”
“He was on my mind, yes.” James fingered the top of his glass, in which his favorite brand of whisky – on the rocks, of course – settled. He had ordered it because he figured he might need a little liquid courage to get through this meeting, but found that he wasn’t that interested in imbibing so early in the day. I’ll have drinks with the guys later… is this really what I want to be doing right now? Yes. No. Maybe?
“You’ll be relieved to know that he’s back to his old self already. The doctor says he’s not contagious or anything.” Cassandra ordered a cosmopolitan from the waitress approaching their corner table. As soon as the soft words were off her lips, the waitress exited the small chamber, pulling back a curtain behind her. James had taken extra precautions to make sure nobody knew they were meeting. Not because he was ashamed of being seen with his old friend and the mother of his child, but because the rumor mill was always experiencing a high season. I don’t need the whole world gabbing that I’m leaving Gwen. Again.
“I am relieved to hear that he’s doing better.” James met her lingering gaze and looked away. “I was worried about him. So was Gwen.”
Cassandra’s shoulders stiffened at the sound of Gwen’s name. “How is she doing?”
Angry. Annoyed. Closed off and wanting nothing to do with me this week. Gwen had been worse than usual after the excursion to the hospital. James had no idea what happened, but he figured Sarah Welsh had something to do with it.
But that wasn’t why he had asked to see Cassandra that early afternoon.
“She’s doing well. I believe she’s at the gym right now.” Gwen lived at the gym three days a week. She claimed it was the best way to do something productive and healthy while hanging out with friends and having a social life. Most of her friendships in higher society had originated at the exclusive downtown gym. I can’t complain. She stays super fit, and I reap those benefits. “But, you know, she’s had a rougher year than most.”
Cassandra’s lips pursed. Did she know what James meant without needing him to explain it? “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?”
The sense of betrayal was instantaneous on Cassandra’s face. The waitress saved her any extra embarrassment by showing up with that cosmopolitan.
“Of course I’m saddened to hear that your partner is having such a hard time.” Cassandra lowered her voice. Rarely did she sound so… rigid. Not sure I’m a fan. Then again, I probably brought this out of her. “I never meant for Gwen to go through so much. I didn’t think…”
Yes, yes, she hadn’t thought. Somehow, that didn’t surprise James. Everything, from going behind James’s back to have his child, to magically deciding to include him in his son’s life, was devoid of any real thought process. James had made more thoughtful decisions when he was drunk off his ass in college. As far as he knew, though, none of his piss-poor decisions ruined anyone’s life.
There was a thought. Had Gwen’s life been ruined?
Only then did James realize that silence had come to their intimate table. This wasn’t what he had wanted. When he texted Cassandra half an hour ago, it was to clear the air and maybe get back on track as tentative friends instead of estranged co-parents.
“I’m sorry.” James didn’t know what he was apologizing for. Certainly not for thinking of Gwen during a meeting like this. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here.”
“Have we? All I did was ask about Gwen. Your partner. I would assume that was a safe if not polite thing to ask about.”
How many people did Cassandra act this way around? James would have found it delightful a few years ago. This was the woman he remembered from his adolescence. Cassandra’s sense of humor was usually much more restrained than James’s, but she wasn’t opposed to leaving a caustic remark here and there. James liked to think it was her uptight upbringing that made her more prone to calculated zingers instead of the slapstick jokes he loved the most.
“I suppose Gwen is a bit of a soft spot right now.”
“I’m sorry to heart that.” Cassandra cut him off before he could open his mouth again. “But if you asked me here solely to make me uncomfortable, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. I’ve run out of the ability to feel any level of discomfort.”
James cleared his throat. “I promise, that wasn’t my intention.”
Sighing, Cassandra said, “I don’t know how many times I can apologize, James. What’s done is done. Do I regret the birth of my child? Never. I could never regret the act of bringing him into this world. What I do regret, however, is how it came about. I’m not ashamed to have used the methods I did, but how it involved you? I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry about that.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
“I did, to an extent.” Cassandra shrugged. The barrette in her hair slid further down one of her long, curly locks. “My mother made the suggestion. I talked to your father about it. They assured me that you were on board.”
The corners of James’s mouth twitched. “You never once thought to ask me about it? You made me a father without my consent. It would’ve been one thing if we ever…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Mostly, he didn’t want to spur on any fantasies Cassandra may have still harbored. “There’s always a risk when you’re intimate with someone. But we had no risk, Cassie. We were never more than friends.”
Her crestfallen countenance was the type of look that had seduced half the men in the city. But not me. I was always in the other half. “I know that, thank you. I didn’t… deep down, I think I knew that you had no knowledge of what our families arranged. Besides, you had your life with Gwen, and I didn’t want to disturb that. I had the worst kind of tunnel vision.”
“Babies?”
“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 or experimenting with 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 the worst. 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 your father…”
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 of my life. 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 unmistakably Merange, 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 was a 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?”
“Of course I mean that. I want nothing but happiness for you and Gwen.”
Do you really mean that? Cassandra always had a mote of jealousy in her eye when she spoke of or heard Gwen’s name. James supposed that was to be expected, since Gwen was the woman he fell in love with and not Cassandra. That would either mean a tenuous respect between both women, or chaos. Look at my own parents. They say everything I need to know.
“Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.” James had been thinking it for a while, but didn’t dare bring it up with anyone but Cassandra. “A part of me has always wanted to be a father, but I know that Gwen isn’t on the same train as me. I had made peace with it if it meant being with her, but…”
Cassandra was rapt with attention.
“Things happen.” That’s all James would say on that matter for now.
He tried not to think about it, though. He worried that Cassandra may read the expressions on his face or see the scars on his heart. Being with Gwen meant giving up fatherhood, unless we took alternative measures. That meant Gwen had to be on board with it. Something she always flip-flopped on, stating that it didn’t matter if she couldn’t have kids.
Now James was a father. Gwen never had to worry about the pressure to give him children, whether she wanted them or not. How James’s son came to be wasn’t ideal, but like Cassandra said, he was here now. Time to man up and be a father, even if James wasn’t prepared.
But Gwen hasn’t taken to being a stepmother very well…
“Maybe this won’t be so bad.” That’s what James kept telling himself. Now he merely vocalized it to the mother of his only child, a woman he never thought about marrying in a million years, let alone dating on an intimate enough level to create a child. “Maybe there is a God, and He’s facilitating our fates because He’s got nothing better to do. Everything happens for a reason, right?”
James got up. Cassandra remained seated. The strange look she gave him suggested that she had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
“Your barrette is…” James hesitated before outstretching his hand and unclipping the barrette from Cassandra’s hair. She sat back in slight surprise as the rose dropped into her palm. James’s hand was slow in its return to his side. “Sorry. Watched it fall out of your hair ever since you sat down.”
Cassandra closed her hand over the barrette. “Thank you. Would’ve hated to lose it.”
“Well, I…” Something choke him. The truth. A bitter, strange truth he had yet to share with anyone outside of his relationship. His parents didn’t know. His best friend didn’t know. Hell, James only thought about it once or twice a year when it became legally pertinent to discuss with the accountant and his own partner. “Actually, there’s something you should know.”
Maybe telling Cassandra was the right step toward getting help with his relationship. James could take Gwen to a couple’s counselor five times a week and get nowhere. Or he could go to the woman he trusted with the upbringing of his son. All he needed was the reassurance that she wouldn’t tell a soul.
“Pinky swear, Cassie.” He held out his left pinky. “Like when we were kids. You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
She lifted her hand and hooked her finger around his. “Pinky promise.” A little grin crossed her face. “If I never told anyone about the time you urinated yourself when we were nine, I won’t tell anyone this.”
I had completely forgotten about that. Thanks, Cass. “It has to do with Gwen.” James sat back down. He would be late to his fraternity meetup, but this was more important. He could talk to his old frat brothers anytime. An opportunity to open himself up to someone only came once or twice a year. “It’s why I will do anything to stay with her and make her happy.”
Cassandra rubbed her finger against her lips, eyes narrowing in anticipation. “Go on.”
James ordered another drink and a snack to go with it before daring to dive into that deep and dark rabbit hole.