Paper Airplanes

by Monica Alexander

  “I, uh, I stayed at Jared’s last night. It was late when I got off work, and we sort of fell asleep watching a movie.”

  “Right,” my dad said, the skepticism clear in his eyes.

  “Joel,” my mother hissed at him, and I felt my blush deepen. Next to me Jared was blushing just as hard.

  “What? I can’t be upset that she stayed out all night with a guy? I’m her father, Lynn.”

  My mother rolled her eyes at me, and I smiled. Then she turned to my father. “Remember that she’s been away at school for two years. Something tells me this isn’t the first time she’s stayed out all night with a boy.”

  “Mom!”

  I did not need Jared hearing that. Granted, he knew I’d dated other guys, but I wasn’t in the habit of sharing the intimate details of what I’d done with them with him. We’d only been together for eight hours.

  My mom turned back to me. “Well, it’s not the first time you stayed out all night, is it?”

  “No, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I said through gritted teeth, jerking my head subtly in Jared’s direction.

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” she said as if just realizing that she shouldn’t have said that in front of him.

  “Anyway, where are you two headed?” I asked brightly, changing the subject.

  “The farmers’ market,” my dad said. “And then we’re going to a movie. You kids want to come?”

  I could only imagine the look of horror in Jared’s eyes at that suggestion, so I didn’t even look over at him.

  “Aww, thanks for the invitation, but I think we’ll have to say no,” I told my dad. “You two have fun. We’re just going to go upstairs.”

  As I said that it looked like my father’s head might blow off of his body, but he didn’t say anything. I might have laughed if he told us to keep the door open.

  “Dad, calm down. We’re just going to go see Marley, and then we’ll probably get breakfast.”

  I didn’t want him to have a coronary.

  “I didn’t say a word,” he told me, trying to mask what he was really feeling. He was too overprotective for his own good sometimes.

  “Okay,” I said, giving my mother a knowing look.

  “Come on, Joel,” she said, taking his arm.

  Jared and I stepped to the side and let them pass out the front door.

  “Whose car is that?” my mother asked then.

  Oh crap.

  “That’s my friend Scott’s car,” I told her. “He and Marley went to a party together last night, and he gave her a ride home. He’s probably sleeping in the guest room.”

  My dad just shook his head as he turned to my mother. “My own daughter stays out all night with a boy, and my adopted daughter brings a guy home with her. What’s a heart attack feel like again?”

  My mom laughed and shook her head, turning around to wink at me. I smiled back at her.

  “Love you, Dad,” I called out to him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “And I love all this gray hair you’ve given me. Thanks so much.”

  “You’re welcome,” I told him playfully as I shut the front door and turned to Jared with a smile on my face.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, a painful expression on his face.

  “Well, I didn’t know they’d be here?! They usually work on Saturdays. It’s a rare day off for both of them, I’m sure.”

  “And now they know you spent the night with me. Fantastic.”

  I waved him off. “Oh, it’s fine. Like my mom said, it’s not the first time I’ve done that.”

  “Great, what I wanted to hear even more,” he said sarcastically.

  “Seriously? Like you thought I was a virgin or something?”

  “No,” he said softly, as he looped his arms around my waist and pulled me against him. “But I’d rather not think of anyone you’ve been with before me – especially since we’re not even sleeping together yet.”

  “Well that’s not my fault,” I said. “I’m not the one who gave all my condoms away.”

  He looked at me sheepishly. “Yeah, fine. I’ll take the blame for that one.”

  I leaned up and kissed him. “Good things come to those who wait.”

  He smiled. “I’m very good at waiting.”

  “Good to know. Now come on, let’s figure out what’s going on with Marley and Scott.”

  I took Jared’s hand and led him up the stairs. When we reached the second floor, I could see that the guest room door was open, and the bed hadn’t been slept in. Marley’s bedroom door was closed. I knocked softly on it and called out her name. She didn’t answer me, but I could hear rustling. Then I heard voices, but I couldn’t make them out. She was in there with a guy, but I didn’t think for a second that it was Scott. I was concerned all over again that he was missing.

  “I don’t think she’s alone,” Jared said to me when I put my hand on the doorknob.

  “I know she’s not,” I said as I pulled my hand back. I didn’t want to walk in on anything that would scar my vision.

  I truthfully didn’t care if she was with a guy. I needed to talk to her. If Scott was missing, and she knew anything about where he was, I needed to know. And in all honestly, I wanted to know who was in there with her. As far as I knew, this was the first guy she’d been with since Aiden. I wasn’t sure when she’d decided to start dating again, but apparently she’d dove back in headfirst.

  “Marley?” I called out to her.

  “I’m kind of busy,” she responded.

  “Yeah, I get that, but I need to talk to you. We can’t find Scott. He’s not answering his phone. His parents are worried.”

  “Shit,” I heard from the depths of her room, and weirdly enough it sounded like Scott.

  I glanced over at Jared who just raised his eyebrows at me. He’d heard the same thing.

  “He’s fine,” Marley finally called back to me.

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “Because he’s lying right next to me,” she said, the guilt and embarrassment apparent in her voice. “Didn’t you see his car in the driveway?”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure what to do with that information. “Yeah, I did, but I, um, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  I looked desperately at Jared who just shrugged. I couldn’t say out loud that the last thing I actually thought was that Marley had hooked up with Scott. That idea hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  “Um, Scott, you should call home,” I continued.

  “Yeah, I will,” he said, not sounding like his usual cheerful self at all.

  I looked over at Jared. “What the hell? Do you think they slept together?” I hissed at him, and he just shrugged.

  “How should I know?” he whispered back.

  “Um, okay, so, I guess we’ll be in my room if you guys need us?” I said, my statement totally coming out in the form of a question.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so awkward in my life. This even beat out the charming interaction we’d just had downstairs with my parents. I’d even heard Marley having sex and then come face-to-face with Aiden the next morning and not batted an eyelash, but this was different. I couldn’t wrap my head around her and Scott.

  But then again maybe he’d just crashed on her floor. Maybe they’d been drunk, and he hadn’t wanted to go home. That was much more plausible than imagining them together.

  With my hand still in Jared’s I pulled him into my room and closed the door. Before I could start to process what I’d just learned, he was kissing me and pushing me back on the bed. I fell, and he landed on top of me.

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this?” I asked in between his kisses.

  “No. What’s there to talk about?”

  “Scott and Marley! I want to know what happened,” I insisted.

  “I’d rather do this,” he said as he deepened the kiss.

  His tongue pressed into my mouth, so I gave in to the need to kiss him back and wrapped my arms around his back, hold
ing him against me. I loved kissing him.

  But, to go along with the apparent theme of our morning, we were interrupted before we could take things further when Marley flung my door open a few seconds later.

  “Oh! Sorry. I guess you two made up.”

  Jared rolled off of me then so he was lying in the middle of my bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Hi Marley,” he called out to her. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Aww, you’re sweet, Jared,” she said, not picking up on his sarcasm. “I actually need to talk to Cassie. Can you give us a few minutes?”

  Jared sat up and looked at her. “Sure. Should I just wait in the hall?” he asked, looking over at me.

  “You can hang out in my room,” Marley offered. “Scott’s still in there.”

  “Is he dressed?” Jared asked, which I thought was a completely valid question.

  “He is now,” she told him, giving me a visual I just didn’t want and confirming what I’d suspected.

  “Great. I’ll be in there if you need me,” Jared said, turning to me.

  He leaned over and kissed me, lingering much longer than was appropriate in polite company, but I honestly didn’t care.

  On the way out of my bedroom, Marley stopped him, putting her hand against his chest. He looked down at it and then at her with raised eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

  I stifled a laugh.

  “Yes, you can,” Marley said to him, removing her hand and crossing her arms over her chest. “You guys stayed out all night, didn’t you?”

  I watched Jared’s face color as she asked that. He was so cute when he was embarrassed.

  “You’re one to talk,” he said in response, making me giggle.

  Marley’s mouth dropped open and then closed a few seconds later. “Okay, fine I guess I deserved that. So am I to assume that everything is good? That you’re both finally on the same page?”

  I walked over to Jared and wrapped my arm around his waist. “Marley, this is Jared,” I said, playing her little game. “My boyfriend. And we’re great.”

  I expected him to stiffen when I said that, and I’d half-said it to see what he would do, but I should have known he wouldn’t react. Jared wasn’t like the other guys I’d dated. He didn’t play games. He was monogamous, and after what we’d said and done the night before, he’d probably been expecting me to call him my boyfriend. It was one of the nicest things about him.

  He pulled back to look at me, an adorable smirk on his face as I was pretty sure he momentarily forgot that Marley was standing in front of us. “Boyfriend, huh? I like the sound of that.”

  “Well, considering we said ‘I love you’, I’m assuming you’re okay with us being exclusive.”

  His smirk deepened. “Yeah, I’m good with it.”

  “Good. Me too,” I said as I leaned up to kiss him.

  “Can I tell everyone you’re my girlfriend?” he asked against my lips.

  I smiled when he pulled back from the kiss. “You’d better, but just so you know, Brooke’s probably going to take my knees out with a baseball bat or at the very least slash my tires, so you might not want to tell her.”

  “I don’t care if she knows, and she’s more bark than bite. You don’t have to worry about her.”

  I gave him a skeptical look. “Please, just two days ago, she was glaring at me from the bar and flirting shamelessly with you whenever you picked up drinks from her. She loved that we were fighting. She completely wants you back.”

  “Then maybe she shouldn’t have cheated on me,” he said. “Besides, she’s the last girl I want when I can have you.”

  “Aww, well said, boyfriend.”

  “Damn that sounds so hot when you say it.”

  “Ahem,” Marley said, forcing us both to look over at her. We’d been so lost in our little moment, that even I forgot she was standing there.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, my arms still wrapped around Jared. I looked up at him. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “Just a few,” he said before he kissed me.

  Once he left the room, Marley shut the door and turned to face me, a wide smile on her face.

  “Yay, I’m so happy for you, but I cannot wait to tell you what I did last night.”

  I was afraid she was going to tell me who she did last night, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Scott was my friend after all.

  “Please spare me the details,” I told her as I went to sit on my bed.

  She perched next to me and grinned. “Now I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I did that.”

  “Actually, you’d be an excellent friend, and in turn, I’ll reciprocate and not tell you what I did with Jared.”

  She pouted. “You’re no fun.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jared

  The door to Marley’s room was open, and Scott was lying shirtless in the middle of her bed, his hands behind his head and his eyes closed, so I knocked lightly on the door.

  His eyes popped open, and he grinned when he saw me. “Hey man! What’re you doing here? Did you and Cassie make up?” he asked, sitting up.

  It was then that I noticed the bruising under his right eye. “What happened?” I asked instead of answering his question.

  The smile slipped from his face as he reached up, touched his eye and winced. “Oh, this. Yeah, I sort of got into an altercation with Brock Thomas’s fist,” he said shrugging. “Just like old times.”

  “Why did he hit you?” I asked, the protective part of me having the sudden urge to storm over to Brock’s house and sucker-punch him in the nose for doing that to my best friend.

  Scott shrugged. “Some things never change, and apparently he wasn’t thrilled that I was at Nicole’s party with Marley. I guess he wanted to hook up with her or something. I don’t know. I think they have history. Something about her visiting Cassie a few years ago and hooking up with him while she was here. I don’t really know the specifics, but he cornered me and told me to get lost. He called me a loser and a freak, we had words, and then I hit him.”

  My eyebrows rose as he said that. “You hit him?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, he was being a dick, and he called Marley a whore. I wasn’t about to stand there and let him do that. She’s a really cool girl, so I punched him, and then he punched me back. Marley intervened before either of us could do any real damage, and then we left.”

  Damn, I was so proud of him. Neither Scott nor I had ever fought back in the past. We’d just let those guys take advantage of us however they could, figuring once they got it out of their system they’d leave us alone. And they always did . . . until the next time. The relentless torture hadn’t ended until we graduated and had been able to avoid them on a regular basis. But here Scott was taking a swing at the guy who’d been a dick to both of us for years. It was about time. I wished I could have been there.

  “It felt good, didn’t it?” I asked him, and he grinned.

  “Hell yeah, it did. I might have bruised my hand, but it was totally worth it – especially because Marley felt bad for me, and she was all happy that I’d defended her honor, so we went to Steak ‘n Shake, got milkshakes at three in the morning, and then we came back here.”

  I could figure out the underlying messages he was sending me from the shit-eating grin on his face, so I decided to cut him off before he could say anything else.

  “Your parents are worried. You’ve never stayed out all night before.”

  “They’re fine,” he assured me. “I called my mom a few minutes ago and told her I stayed the night with the girl I’m seeing. It’s cool.”

  “Dude! You did not tell her that. Tell me you didn’t tell your mom that you spent the night out with a girl.”

  He ran a hand back through his messy blond hair. “Of course I told her that. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

  I laughed. He was so innocent in so many ways.

  “Yes! Tell her you stayed with me. That’s not a
s graphic. You do realize the image you most likely conjured in her mind, right?”

  “Of me having sex?”

  Okay, so we were being blunt, apparently. “Yeah, I’m going to say that’s probably spot on.”

  He shrugged. “Dude, I’m twenty years old. I’d say it’s about time I started having sex. My mom should be glad she doesn’t have to worry about me being a virgin for the rest of my life. I know I was worried about that.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. That was so Scott, and as much as I didn’t want details about what he and Marley had done, I was sure I’d be hearing all about them. And truthfully, I’d let him tell me, because he was excited. And I was kind of proud of him. He’d had a big night.

  “I did sleep with her,” Scott confirmed.

  “Yes, I assumed that.”

  He grinned and lowered his voice. “Dude, it was so cool! I loved it.”

  I nodded. “Most people do.”

  “And she was so cool about the whole virgin thing. She said the first time would probably be fast, and it was, sort of embarrassingly fast, but doing that is so much more intense that jacking off. I didn’t realize.”

  “Yes, that’s typically the case.”

  Yeah, I really didn’t want to have this conversation.

  He shrugged. “Who knew?”

  Pretty much everyone. He was so clueless it was comical.

  “Anyway, once we got that out of the way, the second time was much better. Definitely longer.”

  “Good to know,” I told him, hoping my tone would be his cue to stop telling me details.

  Quite honestly, a part of me was a little jealous that he’d gotten to sleep with Marley, and I was still waiting to do that with Cassie. Not for lack of trying on both our parts – damn me for giving away all my condoms and not buying more. Of course I’d never imagined in a million years that Cassie would have come over the night before, not to mention tell me she loved me and call me her boyfriend. A lot had happened in eight hours, but it was exactly what I’d wanted all along. It was worth the agony and the wait, that was for sure. And I knew when we finally had sex, it would be worth the wait too.