Paper Airplanes
By Monica Alexander
Copyright 2014 by Monica Alexander
ISBN: 978-1-3114-4574-2
Cover Image: (c) Fotosearch Gold / www.fotosearch.com Stock Photography
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or personals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
The information in this book is distributed as an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
About the Author
Playlist
Chapter One
Cassie
“Live for the moment, because everything else is uncertain.”
– Louis Tomlinson
“Come on, Cass,” my best friend Marley yelled back at me
I raced through the snow to catch up to her, practically falling over from the amount of Captain Morgan I’d consumed. It was Friday, I’d finished class earlier in the day, and Marley and I had been celebrating the start of the weekend for several hours. In front of me I heard Aiden, Marley’s boyfriend, laughing as he tripped over something in the street – possibly his own feet – and I watched his younger brother Reese elbow him, which only made him laugh harder.
I heard more laughter behind me as Will Stephens burst out of the fraternity house and yelled, “Kiss my ass, Maxwell!” to one of the brothers still inside.
He caught up to me quickly since my ballet flats were slipping and sliding over the snow covered ground that was only growing whiter from the falling flakes. Will’s arm looped around my waist, and I squealed as he lifted me off the ground and started to run with me like a football.
“Will, put me down!” I shrieked, which made Marley turn around and grin at me.
“How you ever landed the hottest guy in Alpha Phi Beta, I’ll never know,” she yelled at me, hands on her hips, a wide smile on her face.
I just laughed. It was all I could do. But I agreed with her. Will was the hottest guy in the best frat at Coleman College. I knew just how lucky I was every time I looked at him.
“Hey,” Aiden said, elbowing his girlfriend in the ribs. “I thought I was the hottest guy in APB. That’s what you told me.”
Marley laughed and turned to him. “Sorry, but Will’s hotter,” she said, as she planted her hands on her knees and gasped for breath.
“Dude, that burns,” Reese chimed in, and Aiden turned to him. Reese grinned, taunting him.
“Fuck you, pledge. Go get me another drink,” Aiden snapped playfully at him.
Reese laughed. “My pledge hazing ended last semester after initiation, fucker. Get your own drink.”
Will slowly skidded to a stop when we reached our friends, and he set me down, spun me around and smiled at me. “The hottest guy in the frat, huh?”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?” I said nonchalantly. It wasn’t like it was a surprise that I thought Will was hot. Everyone thought that. I wasn’t in the minority.
A smirk crept up on his face, the dimples on either side of his smile popping. “Good thing I’m with the hottest girl on campus then.”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Will Stephens had a way of getting under my skin in a really good way. He was hot and sexy with light brown hair that he wore on the long side. And he was tall and muscular with really sexy legs that mesmerized me when I watched him play indoor intramural soccer. I’d wanted him for a year and a half, ever since Bid Day when I’d been running across campus with Marley after we found out we’d gotten into Gamma Pi.
The frat guys had all lined up on the route that the sorority girls would take to their respective houses, and of course I’d looked over because when hundreds of hot guys are right there, you turn and look. I saw Will looking all tan and beautiful, and then I’d promptly tripped and ran into the poor girl in front of me who’d gone flying into the girl next to her, and we’d all landed in a heap on the ground. My face turned bright red. I’d literally never been so mortified in my life.
I could have slunk away in shame, but instead I looked up and made eye contact with Will who was smirking at me as if he found my gracelessness adorable. I smiled, and he winked at me, forever cementing the most adorable meet-cute I’d ever experienced.
Then, before I knew what was happening, Marley was yelling ‘Sorry!’ to the girls I’d taken out, yanking me to my feet, and we were running toward the Gamma Pi house once more, leaving behind just about the cutest guy I’d ever laid eyes on. But I felt him staring, his eyes burning into the back of my head as I raced away with my best friend’s hand in mine.
I thought about Will – before I’d even known that was his name – all night as I met my new sisters and celebrated my first day as a Gamma Pi. I was dying to know who he was and what house he was in. I’d never met a guy who took my breath away like he did, without even saying a word.
So of course I did what any girl would do. I dragged Marley around to every frat party on campus over the next few weekends until we ended up at APB. I experienced a joyfully giddy feeling of relief when I spotted Will across the room, drinking a beer and laughing with a brunette who was coyly leaning into him. I was so excited that I’d finally found him, knowing we were destined to be together. But as fate would have it, I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him that night, since he disappeared upstairs with the girl before I could work up the nerve to introduce myself.
Fate was a bitch, but I wasn’t going to let her take me down. I vowed the next time I saw Will – which was going to be the next weekend since Marley and I were definitely going back to APB – I was going to talk to him. I wasn’t going to let my fear of embarrassing myself further, or getting spectacularly tongue-tied, get in my way. I was going to be cool and confident and flirt with him.
I’d never been afraid of guys. I’d grown up being friends with the jocks at my high school, so hot, arrogant, beautiful boys had never rattled me. But for some reason, Will Stephens made my mouth dry and my hands sweaty and my brain empty of witty things to say. In my eyes he was perfect. And because of this, my vow ran empty, and I completely chickened out time and again when the opportunity to introduce myself came up.
Weekend after weekend I’d watch him flirt with girl after girl until
he started to only flirt with one. Isabella Thomas was beautiful in such an effortless way. She was a volleyball player, so she was tall and lean and strong. She wore hardly any make-up, because she didn’t need it. And I couldn’t even hate her, because she was funny and nice and so incredibly genuine that everyone loved her.
I wanted to hate her, because she’d stolen the guy I’d been crushing on for months, but I couldn’t do it. You couldn’t hate Isabella Thomas. And I really couldn’t hate her after one night in March when she’d held my hair back for me when I’d been puking in the bushes outside the APB house. In truth I sort of owed her a debt of gratitude.
Marley and I had started hanging out there regularly since she had started dating Aiden Keller. I found the fact that she was dating a brother a great excuse for me to not look like a stalker. I was there because of Marley – or at least that’s what everyone thought. Secretly I was keeping a watchful eye on Will, waiting for the day he’d be single again. But it didn’t seem like that was going to happen anytime soon, and since there was always beer flowing at those parties, and I liked to drink, I imbibed – a lot.
Hence the reason I got sick. I’d gone a little nuts celebrating the start of Spring Break, and Isabella just happened to be there. She couldn’t have been nicer to me, holding my hair back, and then giving me a piece of gum and a bottle of water as I sat on the porch and waited for the world to stop violently spinning long enough for me to walk back to my dorm. Since Marley was lost somewhere with Aiden, I was just going to walk home alone before Isabella asked her hot boyfriend, Will Stephens, to drive me home.
Awesome.
After seven months of crushing on the hottest guy I’d ever seen, I finally met him after I’d vomited in his bushes, was drunk as shit and had raccoon eyes from my make-up running. It was not a shining moment for me.
After Will drove me home, Isabella walked me to my dorm and made sure I got up to my room safely. I really couldn’t hate her after that. I wanted to crawl in a hole and stay there, but that wasn’t really an option either.
A few weeks later I was brave enough to show my face at APB again, hoping no one would remember that I was the girl who couldn’t hold her liquor. And thankfully, because a lot of girls had puked before and after me in those same bushes, no one really remembered – except for Will. It would be fitting that he would be the only person to remember my least triumphant moment ever.
In fact the next time I saw him, he sauntered up to me – because once someone drives your drunk ass home, you’re obviously now friends – and he took my beer right out of my hands before he gave me one of his heartbreaker, panty-dropping smiles.
“Are you planning to repeat what happened a few weeks ago?” he asked me.
My face turned bright red. I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried. “I sincerely hope not,” I said honestly.
He nodded. “How much have you had?”
“That’s my second.”
He handed my beer back to me. “Okay, I think you’re alright, but if you find your vision getting blurred or if there are suddenly two of me, it’s time to stop.”
I wished there were two of him. Then I could have one and Isabella could keep the other.
“You can rest assured that I’m not doing that again,” I told him honestly, because spending a full Sunday in bed with the worst hangover in the history of the world hadn’t been fun. I was proceeding with caution from there on out.
Will shrugged. “It’s college. It happens.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so we just stood there and stared at each other for a few moments as the awkward silence started to swirl around us.
“Thank you for driving me home,” I finally said, for lack of anything more insightful. “I really appreciated it.”
He smiled. “I’ve been there. I figured it was the least I could do.” Then he clinked his red Solo cup against mine. “And no one’s going to fault you for living it up. Like I said, this is college. You’re supposed to have fun,” he said. Then he winked at me and walked away.
Will was one of the most laid back people I’d ever met in my life. Not that he was lazy, but he had this way of looking at life differently. He never let things get too heavy. I saw this over and over again as we became friends. Nothing fazed him – or that’s at least what he wanted people to think. If you didn’t know Will, you’d think he never let anything get to him, but I knew him well enough to know when he was putting up a major façade.
It happened from time to time when shit hit the proverbial fan, but no time was more memorable than the day after Isabella had broken up with him. I could tell he was torn up about it, but he’d never have admitted it outright.
It was November, and after Aiden told me what had happened, I went searching for Will to make sure he was okay. Aiden told me he was fine, that Will wasn’t upset, but I knew better. We were good friends by that point, so I knew how he felt about Isabella. For some reason, I was the only person who Will ever opened up to. We’d had long talks about Isabella. I knew he loved her, so I knew how he must have been feeling. She’d broken his heart.
I found him on the rooftop deck in the thirty degree weather drinking a SoCo and Seven, his drink of choice. When I walked outside, he turned to me with a glazed look in his eyes.
“Hey Witter,” he said nonchalantly, calling me by my last name like he always had.
“Hey Will,” I said, pulling my coat around me as I sat in the rocking chair next to his. Why the guys had dragged rocking chairs up on the roof was beyond me, but they’d been there since I’d started hanging out at APB. “How are you?”
He shrugged as if he was fine. “I’m single.”
“That’s not an emotion,” I told him, and he just grinned at me before taking a long sip of his drink.
“Tis how I feel in this moment in time,” he said with just a touch of moroseness in his voice, but his statement was more factual. “Single. I was single for a long time, and then I met her, and I didn’t want to be single anymore. I still don’t want to be single.”
That was sad. I felt bad for him.
“What happened?”
I was curious to know because I’d just seen the two of them the weekend before, and they’d seemed happy. Had she cheated on him?
He shrugged. “She’s graduating in December and moving to Texas. She doesn’t want to do long distance.”
“Long distance is hard,” I agreed, not sure if I could do it.
“I love her,” he said, showing me just how vulnerable he really was in the moment.
“I know you do.”
He turned to look at me then. “Do you think she loves me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Will. I think she does.”
I knew she did.
“But she doesn’t want to be with me. She wants to grow up, work a fancy job and be an adult,” he said as if it was the worst idea in the world.
“We all have to grow up sometime,” I told him, and he just shrugged.
“I’d rather stay young and immature. It suits me better,” he said honestly, and I laughed around a shiver as my body convulsed from the cold.
“There will be other girls,” I told him, as I nudged his shoulder, knowing it was true. A thousand girls would have given their right arm to be with Will Stephens, including me.
“That is true,” he said, angling his drink toward me in acknowledgement. “You’re so right.”
“I know I am,” I said, hugging myself tighter.
The wind was whipping around the roof making it almost unbearable to sit up there. I was afraid Will was going to get hypothermia if he stayed up there much longer without a jacket on.
“Why don’t we go inside?” I suggested.
“Nah. I’m good,” he said, rocking back and forth slowly, his gaze fixed on a middle-distance in the dark night.
“Okay, well, I think I’m going to head in.”
He nodded. “You do that.”
“Do you want me to bring you your coat?�
�� I asked him as I got up from the rocking chair.
“No thanks.”
“Okay, well, come find me when you come back in. We’ll do shots or something.”
He nodded but didn’t look back at me. “It’s a plan.”
As I headed back inside, he called out to me.
“Hey Witter?”
I turned to look at him. “Yeah?”
“Thanks,” he said and shot me a small smile.
“You’re welcome,” I said, nodding in acknowledgement.
I could have said a million other things in that moment. I could have told him that he could come to me if he needed to talk, if he needed a friend. I could have told him that Isabella was an idiot and he deserved better. I could have told him that break-ups suck and it would get better, but I knew I couldn’t do that with Will. He didn’t want to talk about dark things. He wanted to pretend that everything was fine and his heartbreak could be cured by turning the other cheek and drinking a strong drink. I had to admit, it was a pretty awesome outlook to have. Why waste time on things that made you sad when you could push them down and away? Why dwell?
If only it were that easy.
And after that night, Will seemed to be in a better place. I knew he was still hurting because I’d catch glimpses of the darkness that would flash across his face at odd moments, but he never wanted to talk about how he was feeling. He just acted like everything was great, and because I knew that’s what he needed, I did the same.
Right before we all left to go to our respective hometowns for Christmas break, Marley and I went over to the APB house so she could see Aiden. I ran into Will who convinced me to come up to his room to hang out while Marley and Aiden had ‘quality time’ together. We both knew what that meant and how long they’d take. It wasn’t the first time I’d hung out with Will while I waited for Marley.
But instead of the platonic TV watching we usually engaged in, Will kissed me that night as we watched Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and drank Coors Light. It was the last thing I’d expected since I’d hung out with him too many times to count without him ever making a move. We kissed for a long time, and for as experienced as I knew him to be, I expected him to urge me to take things further, but he didn’t. He just kissed me, seemingly content to do that all night.
Paper Airplanes Page 1
