Paper Airplanes (7 page)

Things were going well for us two years later, even though we rarely heard from our parents. Our mom called
once a month, waxing on about how much she missed us, but it had been a year since we’d seen or heard from our father. The only reason I knew he was still alive was that Evan talked to him on a regular basis. He told me whenever he did, letting me know that Dad said to say hi, he was proud of us and that he missed us, but for all the things my brother was, a good liar wasn’t one of them. I knew it was all bullshit.

But I humored Evan nonetheless, because I knew
he
was proud of us. Austin was a star on the varsity football team, and he’d probably get a scholarship somewhere great based on his athletic abilities alone, and I had my own personal wins to hang my hat on. Thing were good for us. Austin was going into his senior year of high school, and I still had a year left before I got my AA, since I’d only been going part-time. In a year, I could be at Columbia or at least somewhere with a solid English department. I wanted to be a writer, and although a college degree wasn’t required, I wanted one. I figured I’d see where my brother got accepted before I decided where to do my last two years of school.

I’d spent my first year out of high school
taking classes and working on a novel that I’d ended up self-publishing. It had sold moderately well. I was proud of myself, and I wondered how much further I could go with my writing after some formal instruction. I’d taken a few creative writing classes at the community college, but to be in a program that was fully dedicated to writing and literature was my dream.

I turned back to Scott. “You don’t want to date
Cassie Witter,” I told him like I always did. I felt like a broken record.

“Ugh, yes I do. So bad! You don’t know the torture that girl has
put me through over the years – and the pleasure if we’re being perfectly honest,” he added, grinning at me.

I just shook my head. I was well aware that he beat off to images of
Cassie, along with Taylor Swift and Kate Hudson. He was never shy about sharing things like that.
Lucky me.
I got to hear all about them.

Thankfully Hale stuck his head through the double doors right at that moment
, so the Cassie talk could cease. “You just got sat, Jared,” he told me, and I nodded.

I was sure I’d be hearing more about Scott’s obsession with
Cassie when we got off work at seven. I had to drive him two towns over for a light show he was producing that night since his car was in the shop. Scott was a pyrotechnics genius, but he’d also dabbled in the tamer effects and had been mastering light show software as of late. Thankfully he’d be too busy during the show to talk about Cassie, but I’d be in the car with him for thirty minutes, and I guaranteed that every second would be spent dissecting how he could get her to talk to him.

Maybe I could put a moratorium on
the Cassie talk for the night. I could just pick up the argument we’d been having before we’d run into her, and he’d gotten all lovesick, because I knew I was right. That code for
Gods of War
didn’t do anything different with a star on the end. He was full of shit.

As I walked out to the server
s’ station and took a look at my section for the day, I chanced a look out into the dining room where I saw Brooke laughing with a group of guys she knew. I glared at her back for a second before pushing away from the counter, smacking a smile on my face and going to greet the family of four who’d been sat in my section. With any luck we’d be busy that afternoon, and I’d be able to avoid too much interaction with my ex.

Chapter Five

Cassie

“OMG!
Cassie Witter! No way!” Nicole Daniels screeched at me as she practically launched herself over the produce table to hug me. “Girl, it has been too long! How are you?”

She was grinning from ear-to-ear when she pulled back to appraise me. Nicole and I had been good friends in high school, but we’d gone to different co
lleges, so it had been a while since we’d seen each other.

“I’m good, Nicole,” I said, because what
else was I supposed to say.

“You look fab!” she gushed. “Are you home for the summer?”

I shook my head. “No, I actually moved back a few months ago.”

She looked confused for a few seconds, and then it dawned on her. “Oh. Right.
I heard about what happened. How
are
you?”

It was almost as if I could see the false remorse on her face. She didn’t want to talk about the shooting any more than I did.
Thank God.

I smiled. “I’m fine.
Really.”

It
was such an awkward subject. It was like, ‘Hi, how are you? Yeah, I got shot. It pretty much sucked. Yeah, and I lost almost a month of my life, and my boyfriend and good friend were killed. Total bummer.’ How did you even talk about something like that? I didn’t want to – especially not with Nicole. She was quite possibly the most shallow and self-centered person on the entire planet.

“
That’s
so
great,” she said with more false empathy, which was weird. Did she think I’d be suicidal or something? I wasn’t. “So, I’m having a party tonight. You should
totally
come.”

Ugh, a party. That was about the last thing I wanted to do. Nicole and I had partied together in high school all the time, so she readily expected me to pick back up where we’d left off, but
I didn’t think that was me anymore. And it was so weird to realize I felt that way. I’d always loved parties and socializing and drinking, but now I couldn’t picture myself in that setting – at all.

I smiled politely. “We’ll see,” I told her. “I actually might have plans tonight.”

I didn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Oh!
” she said brightly. “Do you have a date?”

“No, it’s not a date. Just plans with some friends.”

She looked at me with mild confusion, probably wondering who I was friends with that she didn’t know. Thankfully she didn’t pry.

“
Oh, well, no worries. Come if you can. It’s going to be so awesome.” Then she leaned closer, almost conspiratorially. “It’s so on the down-low, but I’ve kind of been doing this friends with benefits thing with Andre, so he’s totally coming, and he’s bringing Kyle and Brock.” She winked at me as she leaned back. “Kyle said I should invite you.”

I sighed.
I knew what she was insinuating. Kyle Fowler had tried to date me the summer after we’d graduated, after Dylan and I had broken up. We’d been friends for years, and I’d hooked up with him once, but it hadn’t gone anywhere – no sparks whatsoever. And we were both going away to school anyway, so there wasn’t a point in seeing him over the summer when it was just going to end. I hadn’t talked to him since then, and although he was fun and cute, I wasn’t sure I was ready to put myself back out there. I felt weird about dating when Will was still on my mind all the time.

“
Oh, okay, well tell Kyle I said hi, but I’m not sure I can make it,” I said, shrugging as I interjected my own false cheer into my voice since Nicole would expect it.

“OMG, you should totally try to stop by. It’s going to be so fun!”

I’d been to enough of Nicole’s parties in high school, so I knew without a doubt that it would be a rager, but I just couldn’t bring myself go. I knew going to a party would bring back memories of APB parties and then I’d be reminded of Will, and I’d probably lose my shit in front of all my old friends. No, I definitely wasn’t ready for that.

“I’ll try,” I said, simply because it would pacify her.

* * *

I
nstead of going to Nicole’s party, I ended up staying home and watching a movie with Chinese take-out and falling asleep on the couch. My mom woke me up when she and my dad got home around ten, and I shuffled upstairs, peeled off my clothes and fell back asleep again. And since I’d gone to bed so early the night before, I was up before the sun.

It was just starting to peek over the horizon, so I decided to go for a run. The weather was getting
warmer by the day, so being outside might be nice, and it was so peaceful when no one was out and about.

I just ran the loop that I knew was a mile and a half long that started and ended at my house. I couldn’t run much more than that anyway
, but it felt good to get out of the house and get some fresh air.

Just as I was jogging toward the corner that turned onto my s
treet, something – or rather someone – caught my eye. I jogged up to where he was standing at the end of a driveway and stopped, hoping to make peace before we had to work together later in the day. He was saying goodbye to someone he’d been talking to on his phone.

“Hi!” I said as cheerfully a
s I could when I was breathless, pulling an earbud out of one ear, the Avicii song I was listening to still playing in my other ear.

Jared looked up at me i
n surprise from where he’d been looking down at his phone to end his call and shoved the phone in his back pocket. As his gaze shifted up, his bright blue eyes caught the sun and looked so incredibly luminescent. His dark hair looked sexy in a messy way that made me want to run my hand back through it.

“Wow, you have really pretty eyes,” I blurted out, feeling like a
n idiot that I’d said that out loud when I’d only intended to think it.

“Okay,” he said, blinking a few times. “Thanks, I guess.”

I could tell he was still wary of me, so I smiled. “So, what are you doing in this neighborhood? Are you visiting your friend . . . um, what was his name?”

I should ha
ve remembered the kid with the blond hair’s name, but all I could think about from that encounter had been Jared. He’d stuck with me. The other guy, although he’d been nice, didn’t resonate in my brain like the one standing before me.

“Scott,” he said
tersely, and I knew I’d screwed up. His tone spoke of his irritation that I couldn’t remember his friend’s name.

“Yeah, Scott.
He was so nice. Are you visiting him?” I asked as cheerfully as possible.

Jared narrowed
his eyes at me. “No, I live here,” he said, as if it should have been obvious.

“You do? Oh, wow, sorry. Did you just move in?”

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief and shook his head, a surefire way to let me know I’d screwed up yet again. “Yeah, about three years ago,” he said sarcastically, and I felt like a complete jerk.

He lived in my neighborhood.
How the hell was I that obtuse? True, I didn’t really drive by this end of the street very often, and I didn’t really run all that much, contrary to what I was doing that morning, but still, how did I not know who he was? We’d moved in at practically the same time.

I started to open my mouth to say something, but he just mumbled, “Typical,” and
turned and walked away from me.

My mouth was left hanging open, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to close it.
I should have responded to him in kind, but I was too stunned. He was so rude. So I didn’t know him, and I felt bad that I didn’t, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where people brought over pies when new people moved in.

It was a neighborhood of well to-do people who worked a lot and played a lot, but mostly in their
landscaped backyards or out on their boats. And I didn’t exactly hang out in the street making friends when I was home. It was also quite possible that I might have lived most of my life with tunnel vision, but I was opening my eyes now, and I was trying to be friendly. But Jared wasn’t giving me an inch.

Well maybe later at work I’d give him a piece of my mind. He needed to know he couldn’t treat me like I had t
he plague. I wouldn’t allow it.

Chapter Six

Jared

I stood at
the servers’ station drumming my fingers on the stainless steel countertop. I’d gotten to work early so I could have a little peace and quiet before Cassie Witter showed up and I had to deal with her. I was still irritated about our interaction from earlier that morning. She was trying to be all friendly, but I didn’t trust her. Girls like her weren’t friendly to guys like me, and I wasn’t sure why she was all of a sudden paying attention.

I’d lived around the corner from her since I’d
moved into the neighborhood before our senior year of high school, but I remembered seeing her for the first time three years before that. She’d gone to a different elementary and middle school, so we didn’t go to the same school until ninth grade. It was one of the first days of high school, and Scott and I were leaving to walk back to his house since he lived less than a mile away. I remember walking past one of the picnic tables out front of school where Cassie sat with Nicole Daniels, a girl I’d known for years who I couldn’t stand.

I noticed
Cassie first because she was really hot, and she was sitting there wearing little red shorts and a tiny tank top, and my fourteen year-old hormonal brain shot into overdrive. I heard them talking about cheerleading tryouts as we walked past, and Scott babbled on about some superhero movie he wanted to see that weekend. I was looking at my shoes, paying more attention to the conversation I could hear than what Scott was saying. When I heard her laugh, I chanced a look at Cassie. I liked her laugh. She made eye contact with me for a few seconds, but then she sneered at me like she was offended that I was even looking in her direction.

Scott stopped short, and said, “Hey
Cassie!” and waved.

They had a class together, and he’d been talking about her at lunch and how hot she was. It wasn’t until he said her name that I realized
she was the girl he’d been talking about. He’d described their conversation in detail, and he didn’t even realize that she’d been a total bitch to him. Scott was so good natured that he never thought the worst of people until they hit him over the head with their unkindness. It was almost what made it so much worse when people were mean to him. It was like kicking a dog.

When Cassie’s gaze shifted to Scott who was smiling and waving, she l
ooked surprised and then slightly horrified that he knew her name. She opened her mouth to say something, and I braced myself for how harsh it would be when Nicole called out, “Keep walking, losers! There’s nothing for you here.” And then she and Cassie had burst into a fit of giggles.

Now granted, we were scrawny and short
and looked a few years younger than we actually were, I had braces and glasses, and Scott had a combination of acne and one of those wispy mustaches that made him look like he was trying too hard to show the world he could grow facial hair, but they didn’t have to make fun of us. We were just minding our own business, and Scott was just being nice, but whatever, we were apparently naïve to how things were going to be for us in high school. We were outcasts from day one, just like we’d always been.

That one statement
was basically all it took for Scott’s shoulders to sink and his gaze to drift to his shoes. The whole way home he’d kicked at the sidewalk and sulked. So I’d slung my arm around his shoulder and told him we could go see the new superhero movie he’d been talking about all day. He brightened up a little bit after that, but it was almost as if in two seconds Nicole Daniels and Cassie Witter had shattered any dreams of Scott changing who he’d been for so long.

He’d been so optimistic about high school and how much better it would be since two middle schools were feeding into the same school. He’d talked all summer about all the new people we’d get to meet and how old stereotypes would go away. He wanted to start fresh, but I knew that would never happen. We were at an age where if you weren’t beautiful or a jock, you were an outsider.
Scott and I were what his mother called late bloomers. We’d always be outsiders.

And it wa
s people like Cassie Witter who perpetuated those unspoken rules of who was someone in the walls of our high school. She had immediately fallen in with the popular kids, which was so far from the circle Scott and I ran in. I didn’t care about popularity. I was okay being an outsider. Being invisible allowed me the freedom to sit back and observe the world around me. It helped me watch the interactions that people had, the emotions they displayed and the things that affected them. I had a front row seat to the world around me, and as a writer, that was invaluable. 

But Scott didn’t want to hang
out on the edges and watch. He wanted in. And I hated that he tried so hard to impress people who treated him like shit, so I stuck by him fearlessly, even if it meant occasionally getting my ass kicked by guys twice my size. Our whole lives, it had been Scott and me against the world, and we’d attacked high school – all four torturous years of it – together.

But h
igh school was over – way over – and the cool thing about graduating and getting older was that you could leave the bullshit behind. Popularity didn’t matter in the real world, and I took pleasure in that. Cassie Witter and her friends no longer controlled any part of my life, and I wasn’t about to let her start now.

“Hey
Jare,” Brooke said, setting her arms on top of the wall that separated the servers’ station from the dining room.

Speaking of other people I wasn’t going to let control my life.

I looked up into her bright green eyes, and my heart started pounding. Dammit. I hated that she could still affect me. Brooke Stiller had practically destroyed me six months earlier, but I’d never let her know that.

“Hey Brooke,” I responded, keeping things as brief as I could.

I did not want to have the inevitable conversation I knew we would have since the last time I’d seen her in person it had been to kiss her goodbye at Thanksgiving. Then she’d broken up with me over the phone three days later. Heartless bitch.

“You avoided me
yesterday. Why did you do that?” she asked, practically pouting.

“I didn’t avoid you,” I answered passively,
as I lied my ass off. “I was working.”

In truth
I’d done everything I could to stay away from her. Aside from necessary conversations that related to work, I didn’t let her get much in conversation wise. I knew she wanted to talk. She’d hinted at it the night before, but talking to her was the last thing I wanted to do. I kind of just wished she’d leave me alone.

Brooke and I had dated for
almost five months. She’d been my first girlfriend, the first girl I’d slept with, and I’d loved her, but apparently she didn’t love me enough because she decided she didn’t want to continue to date me. She said she couldn’t do long distance any longer. She loved me, but she wasn’t in love with me, blah, blah, blah. Basically she’d met another guy and had started sleeping with him while she was still seeing me.

I knew it had been risky to date her over the summer and then suggest long distance when she went back to college at Michigan State in the fall, but at the time, I couldn’t stand the idea of breaking up. Dating her had been one of the most exciting things I’d ever done, and the last thing I wanted to do was go back to being the
shy guy who kept to himself and didn’t say much. Brooke had brought me out of my shell. Without her, I knew I would go back to being shy, quiet and alone.

I’d never had a girlfriend before, and I truly hadn’t known what I was missing.
Dating Brooke had been like a whirlwind of excitement wrapped in cotton candy and sex. It was the best summer of my life, and I couldn’t imagine letting her go. So I’d stupidly suggested long distance. Then Brooke had ripped my heart out and stomped on it with her red stiletto boot before walking away without a second glance. And now she wanted to talk? Screw that.

“
Jare, you totally avoided me yesterday,” she said, sounding on the verge of a tantrum.

She was good at tantrums. They were sort of her specialty. After we broke up, I thought back on just how many of her tantrums and pouting spells and bratty demands I’d put up with – most of them had occurred after she’d go
ne back to school and started to find fault in everything I did. I couldn’t believe I’d put up with her shit for so long, but I thought we were in love, and I had no other point of reference for what a healthy relationship should be like. But I’d learned, and I knew I’d never make the same mistake with another girl.

“
Are you still mad at me, Jare?” Brooke whined when I didn’t respond to her.

Yes.
And stop calling me Jare.

She’d started calling me
Jare when we were just friends and getting to know each other last summer. I’d loved it. It was our little thing since no one else called me that. Now I hated it. Hearing her shorten my name was like nails on a blackboard.

“No. Why would I be mad at you?”

She sighed loudly. “Because of the break-up. I told you I was sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

But you did.

“Okay,” I told her.

We’d had this conversation already. The night she dumped my ass she
’d said the same things, and even after all this time, hearing them again still stung.

She pouted at me.

“How’s your boyfriend?” I asked, trying to catch her off-guard.

She got a sad look on her face, but I didn’t really believe it was genuine. “We actually broke up.”

And there it was. I knew what she was doing, and even though it was tempting as hell to think about what it would be like to kiss her again, I wasn’t jumping back into anything with her. Brooke Stiller was like kryptonite to me, and I could get sucked in really easily, and then she’d break my heart all over again. No thanks.

“That’s too bad,” I told her passively. I knew it was killing her that I wasn’t showing any emotion, but it was one of the things I was best at, so I used it to my advantage.

Her eyes brightened hopefully. “Are you seeing anyone?”

I shook my head just enough. “Nope.”

“Oh,” she said, the hope evident in her tone. Then she smiled. “That’s good to know.”

Yeah, not
gonna happen.

“I guess,
” I responded aloofly.

Her face
fell. “Jare, don’t be like this,” she whined.

“Okay.”

She pouted again. She was so pissed that I wasn’t giving her anything. She desperately wanted a reaction, and I knew that, so I wasn’t going to give it to her. Even though the idea of telling her exactly what I thought of her contained a certain appeal, I held my tongue.

“I miss you, baby.”

“I’m not your baby,” I said firmly. “I haven’t been for months.”

“I know,” she said
sadly, her gaze dropping.

Then she looked up at
me through her lashes, a look she knew would get to me. It always had. I fought to not let her affect me, even though the reality of the situation was that I still found her to be incredibly hot. I knew I had to stay strong if I planned on resisting her all summer, because I also knew she’d be relentless. Brooke Stiller went after what she wanted – and she usually got it. I’d learned that in the five months that we’d dated.

But suddenly her gaze shifted, and I saw the genuine side of her that I’d fallen in love with.

“Are you doing okay?” she asked, the concern in her eyes apparent.

F
or the first time since she’d said hello to me, she was being sincere. She looked like she wanted to reach out and touch me, but she had the decency to keep her hands to herself.

I took a deep breath and nodded. I knew what she was asking about. After the shooting, when I’d been at home recovering from getting shot and having surgery to remove to the bullet
that had been lodged in my side, she’d called me a few times. We hadn’t spoken since the break-up, but she’d seen the news, so she knew I was involved, that I’d been injured.

I
’d listened to her messages, heard the emotion in her voice as she told me she couldn’t believe it and she was glad I was okay. I never called her back, though, because it was just too hard. I didn’t want to talk to her and know that she didn’t want me. But it was nice to know that she cared, that she was glad I hadn’t died. That meant something.

“I’m okay, Brooke.”

She nodded. “I’m glad. I was so worried about you,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe that insane guy actually shot you, that he shot someone I knew. So scary.”

Dammit.
She always found a way to make it all about her. Forget the fact that I went through something life-threatening and that people actually died, as long as she could tell people that she knew someone who was involved in the Coleman shooting, she felt important. It was times like this that I was glad we’d broken up. She really was shallow and self-centered.

I wished she could be the genuine person I’d seen glimpses of from time to time the summer before. That girl was awesome, but Brooke didn’t let her come out and play much. The messages she’d left me had been genuine. I heard in her words that it wasn’t about knowing someone who’d been shot. It was about me and her concern for me. She was truly rocked by what had happened. Now she was being shallow again. Why she switched back and forth so much, I’d never understand.