Paper Airplanes

by Monica Alexander

  I wasn’t a student a Coleman, but my older brother Evan was. I’d gone up to visit him, and we’d been getting dinner when a guy had stood up and opened-fire. I’d been hit in the side, just as I was setting my tray down on the table, by one of the first shots the guy had fired and was on the ground before I could process what was happening. Thankfully Evan had gone outside to meet his girlfriend who was going to eat with us, so he hadn’t been in the dining hall during the shooting, but I had. I’d been there for all of it as I’d bled onto the floor and wondered if I was going to die while all around me shots were being fired and bodies were hitting the floor. It was the stuff of nightmares, and even after four months and countless hours of therapy later, it still rocked me from time to time.

  Yeah, I could cut Cassie some slack. Definitely.

  Besides, I couldn’t waste my time hating someone when I had enough shit going on in my life. I’d just train her, be polite to her and be done with it. Then I’d get back to focusing on the real stuff I was dealing with – namely working full time, going to school and raising my younger brother.

  I’d been doing it officially for the past three years, but unofficially for the past five, since the day my mother left after deciding she couldn’t live in a middle-of-nowhere town in the Midwest any longer – or with my dad, for that matter – and things had started to spiral at home. She’d left before, taking extended vacations and blaming the stress of motherhood on her need for weeks at rejuvenation spas in Europe, but she’d always come back. That time she left for good. And even though she had a pattern of being the flakiest wife and mother on the planet, my dad had still been devastated when she announced that she was moving to Paris to be with Jean Luc, a guy she’d apparently been having an affair with for some time.

  From there things just got worse until the summer before my senior year of high school when my younger brother Austin was just fourteen. My dad had been offered a transfer with work and he’d decided to take it, which meant moving to Cleveland. I was pissed that I was going to be forced to move with just a year of school left, and not because I was so endeared to my high school – in truth I hated that place and the people in it with a passion – but I didn’t want to leave Scott. He was the only reason I got through high school in one piece. Going at it alone seemed like the worst thing ever.

  But what we found out was that my dad had no intentions of moving Austin and me with him. In fact, without talking to us, he’d gone to Scott’s parents to ask if we could move in with them. He said he’d send money, but he couldn’t be a father to us any longer. He needed to move alone and be on his own for a while.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Evan had always been his favorite. They’d connected because they were both stellar at math and science. I wasn’t. I was good at English, but that made me weak in my father’s eyes, a pussy as he’d called me more times than I could count while I’d been growing up. He hated that I spent my time writing and reading. He hated my hair and my clothes and my music. He hated that I was shy and quiet and soft-spoken. I summed that up to mean that he pretty much hated me.

  In truth, when I found out he was leaving without us, I was kind of relieved. He’d made my life a living hell since my mother had left, but I knew Austin would be devastated. To me he’d hardly been a father, choosing to either ignore me or bully me for most of my life, but Austin had always gotten along with him relatively well. And he needed a father. He was still a kid. So no matter how much I didn’t think my dad truly cared about me, I went to him. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say to get him to stay, and I probably handled it all wrong, because he still left. What I realized later on was that Austin reminded him too much of our mother, and it just got too hard for him to look at his youngest son and not be reminded of the woman who’d left him.

  Evan was pissed when he found out and even tried rationalizing with our dad. I have no idea what their conversation entailed, but even his favorite son couldn’t keep him from abandoning us. So Evan offered to move home. He was finishing his freshman year at Coleman, where he had a full ride, and we both knew if he moved home he’d not only have to pay for college – and money was tight since my mother had spent most of her life living like we were filthy rich and had left my dad with a mountain of debt – but aside from that, Evan would have to enroll at the local community college. I wouldn’t let him do that. He had plans to be a doctor, and a school like Coleman would put him on the right track to get into a great medical school. Leaving would only set him back.

  So I told him we’d be fine – okay, so in reality I badgered him for weeks before he finally relented and agreed to stay at school. Austin and I had moved in with Scott’s family that summer. And even though Evan came home once a month to check on us, and we had Chris and Diana, Scott’s parents, looking out for us as well, I sort of fell into the role of Austin’s surrogate father, even though I wasn’t even a legal adult. I felt like I owed him that much. He was a good kid, and he didn’t deserve to miss out on anything in life just because he had two parents who didn’t know the first thing about raising kids.

  Of course Chris and Diana did everything they could to make us feel like we were part of their family, but I still did what I could to take the burden off of them. I drove Austin where he needed to go, helped him with his homework, went to all of his football games and used the money I made from working at the movie theater to pay for whatever he needed. I was determined to be the parent he’d never had. And Evan did whatever he could to pitch in when he lived three hours away. Between all of us, we made sure Austin had the best life he could.

  And because I didn’t want to bail on him, I’d stayed in town after graduation. I could have gone away to school – God knows Chris and Diana had encouraged me to go to Columbia since I’d gotten accepted and it was sort of my dream school, but in the end, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave my brother. He was going into his sophomore year of high school and was at an age where he needed guidance. I was going to be there for him because neither of his parents wanted to be. And it still pissed me off. He was a good kid.

  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 Cas
sie, 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 servers’ 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 colleges, 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.

  * * *

  Instead 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 street, 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 as 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 in 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 an 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 have 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 the 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.