When my dad had wrangled me a last minute transfer to Northwestern, I was faced with not getting a lot of the classes I wanted or needed, so I’d only taken three during the fall. Because of that, I’d decided to take six classes in the spring. In addition to my research work for Andrea, my life over the past few weeks had consisted of going to class, reading, studying, and Jared, when I could squeeze him in, which pretty much made me feel guilty most of the time. I’d gone from having too much time on my hands to not enough.
Of course Jared was incredibly understanding, as usual, since he was working and taking classes too, in addition to shuttling his brother places and finishing his second novel. Although he didn’t have to work and could have lived off of the money Chris and Diana had saved for him, he didn’t want to do that. I knew he still felt weird about taking their money and wanted to work to support anything he and Austin needed.
I also knew he was saving up to buy Austin a car for graduation, since he was most likely going away to school. So far he’d had interest from the University of Alabama, Oregon and Florida State, and we knew there were half a dozen more colleges that could be options for him. He’d worked his butt off during the fall and had impressed the scouts, beat school records and taken his team to the state championship.
Just seeing Jared’s face when they won, I knew making the decision to relocate to Chicago, leaving the Larsons and Scott behind and starting over at a new school and a new job had all been worth it. I’d never seen him happier.
We’d all gone home for Christmas break, but we’d been back in Chicago since the beginning of January, once again getting into the rhythm of classes and work and the day-to-day routines we’d established as a pseudo family in the four months that the three of us had been living together. At first it had been weird not only living with a high school senior, but also with the guy I was dating, a definite first for me. Jared and Austin were so comfortable around each other, that I was afraid I might feel like a third wheel, but I fell into the fold pretty quickly. It was relatively easy since Austin and I had always gotten along, and I’d been practically living with Jared before anyway. Now we were just sharing a room.
But we’d also added a fourth member to our little family. Scott had moved in a few weeks earlier, after starting classes at SAIC. And he’d moved in alone. He and Marley were still together, but they were doing semi-long distance. After an extended debate about what to do with her life, Marley had decided to apply to Ohio State since they had one of the best veterinary schools in the country. She wasn’t planning to go until the following fall, so until then she was living with my parents and working at a local animal hospital. I had a feeling she’d be visiting us most weekends, which was fine with me.
I liked having Scott at the condo since he brought a level of fun and energy we hadn’t had before, and having him there made me feel less guilty about holing up and doing schoolwork for hours on end. I didn’t feel like I was abandoning Jared as much. And I knew he was glad to having his best friend around full time.
So I was rushing to meet Jared, hoping to make up for being absent so often as of late and wishing the ‘L’ would go faster. I hadn’t felt like driving, since parking on campus was a nightmare, and the train was really convenient, but of course, when I was running late, I had to board a train packed with people, making every stop take twice as long. I’d texted Jared to let him know I was going to be late, but he hadn’t responded.
I burst through the doors of the restaurant, out of breath from running, and paused, scanning the room for a few seconds until I spotted Jared sitting across the room. He looked up and smiled at me as he talked to someone on his phone. As I got closer, I could see he was tapping his thumb against the tabletop, a nervous habit he had when he didn’t feel in control of a situation.
I leaned over and kissed his temple before I took the seat across from him and watched his face as he talked, wondering who was on the other end of the line.
“Okay, yeah. That, that sounds great,” he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “I’d like that . . . okay . . . okay, yeah, Austin and I will be there . . . I’ll tell him . . . okay great . . . me too. Bye.”
He ended the call and set his phone down, looking at me in bewilderment.
“Hi,” I said brightly. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay,” he said, sounding sort of disconnected.
I reached across the table to take his hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, but I wasn’t convinced. He seemed to be in a daze.
“Who was on the phone?”
“My dad,” he said, his mouth twisting around the word.
I screwed my face up. “Your dad? As in, Ross Lansing, resident asshole of Cleveland, Ohio?”
Why, after all these months, was his dad reaching out to him? They hadn’t talked since August when the man had so kindly and eloquently dropped the bomb on Jared that he and Austin were a product of an affair their mother had been having with her French boyfriend. I hated Jared’s dad, not only because he was a jerk the only time I’d met him, but because he’d tortured Jared for years. He was a hideous excuse for a man, and I never cared to see him again.
Jared shook his head, a distasteful look marring his features at the mention of the man who’d ‘raised’ him – and I use that very term loosely.
“No, it was my real dad, um, Jean Luc.”
My eyebrows rose as he said that. “Seriously?”
I wasn’t aware that Jean Luc even knew Jared existed, outside of being his girlfriend’s son that he’d never met. And as far as I knew, Jared had never talked to him. His mother had never told Jean Luc that he’d fathered two of her sons.
Jared nodded. “Yeah, he called me,” he said, his voice telling me he still couldn’t believe it.
“What did he say?” I asked, leaning forward, intrigued.
“Um, he said that he wants to get to know Austin and me.”
I cocked my head to the side. “He knows about you guys?”
Jared bit his lip. “Um, yeah, he does. I kind of told him.”
My eyes got wide. “What do you mean, you told him?”
Jared got a determined look on his face. It was one that I’d come to recognize over the past few months. Ever since the day he’d asked me to move in with him, he’d started taking more risks and pushing himself further out of his comfort zone. He told me he never wanted to look back in twenty years and regret not doing something because he was afraid, and ever since then, he’d been doing just that. In truth, it was kind of hot.
He took a deep breath. “So ever since I found out about him, I’ve sort of been intrigued by who he is.”
“Yeah?”
Jared hadn’t really mentioned his parental situation since the day of his older brother’s graduation. I’d asked him about it a few times in the weeks after, but each time he told me he was fine. He was relieved to not be related to someone who didn’t care about him, and he didn’t need to get to know someone who didn’t know he existed. I let it go after a while, figuring he really was fine, so to find out that he was intrigued by his biological father was news to me.
“Yeah, I didn’t really tell anyone, not even Austin, but it sort of bugged me that I didn’t know much about him. So at first I just tried to find him on the Internet. It was fairly easy. He’s a pretty big deal in France, but what I didn’t realize is that he also writes under the pseudonym, John L. Rousseau.”
Jared just let that hang out there for a few seconds as I processed it. I recognized that name, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it before.
“Why does that sound familiar?”
Jared looked at me intensely for a few seconds before he said, “Because I have about twenty of his books in the bookcase in our living room.”
My eyes got wide. “Seriously?”
He nodded.
“You’re telling me that one of your favorite authors is your biological father! And you never knew it was him?” I a
sked, trying to keep my voice down. I could imagine that wasn’t something Jared wanted me to announce to the whole restaurant.
“Crazy, right. It took me a long time to wrap my head around it. I just couldn’t believe he’d essentially been right there all along, and I never knew,” he said quietly. “I mean, I’ve read everything he’s written. He’s a brilliant author.”
“I’ll say. When did you figure this out?”
“A few months ago. I didn’t say anything, because I truthfully wasn’t sure how to process everything. It was kind of mind-blowing. But I found myself kind of obsessed with knowing as much as I could about him. I read and watched as many interviews he’d given that I could find, and the more I learned about him, the more I felt like I might want to get to know him, like he was the missing link to who I’d always been. We have a ridiculous amount of similarities, I look like him, and we have some of the same mannerisms. It’s crazy to think about, but not really since he’s my dad. But I don’t know him, we’ve never met, but we’re so much alike, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I think it’s cool that you’re so much like him.”
He smiled a small smile. “I do too, so I decided to reach out to him.”
My eyebrows rose again, but I didn’t say anything.
“I know, my mom didn’t want him to know about Austin and me, but I just decided that I didn’t care. She’s been selfish and self-centered her whole life, and I’ve given up so much over the years – for the right reasons, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve still given up a lot. And she never has. It was time for me to stop rolling over and giving her what she wanted, just because she told me to. I wanted to be selfish for once.”
“So you called him?” I deduced.
He shook his head. “No, I really had no idea what he would say if I reached out to him. Hell, he might not believe me, or he might ignore me, so I sent him a letter instead, explaining who I was and what my mom had told me. I also sent him a copy of my first novel. I figured he should know that I’m a writer too.” He shrugged. “I didn’t hear from him, so I figured that was that, but then, out of the blue, he called me this afternoon.”
I could see Jared was trying to hold back a smile, but it was hard for him.
“What was he like?”
“He’s French, and he has a thick accent, but I already knew that. And he’s quiet and reserved and a little sarcastic, kind of like me. And he’s really nice and smart, too. He’s cool.” His smile got wider. “But more than that, he liked my novel.”
“Are you serious?!” I asked, getting excited.
Jared blushed scarlet as he said, “Yeah, he, um, he said he was going to pass it on to his editor here in Chicago. He said they were always looking for new authors, and he thought I had some real talent.”
Jared was beaming by the time he finished telling me what Jean Luc had said.
“Oh, babe, that’s incredible.”
He blushed even deeper, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s more than incredible. It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted.”
“I know.”
Man, I was so happy for him.
He sighed. “Yeah, so we talked, and he told me he’s coming to Chicago to meet with his editor in a few weeks, and he wanted to have dinner with Austin and me.”
“Jared, that’s so cool.”
He grinned. “I know. It’s really cool. Will you come?”
“You want me there?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Then I’ll be there,” I said, hoping I’d make a good impression. The last thing I wanted was to screw up Jared’s budding relationship with his real dad.
He smiled at me.
“So, does your mom know?” I asked, wondering how she’d taken the news.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Probably. I haven’t talked to her since Christmas. She’s called a few times, but I haven’t called her back. I think I was afraid to know that Jean Luc didn’t want anything to do with Austin and me, and I didn’t want her throwing it in my face. Now that I know he wants to get to know us, I’ll probably call her. Jean Luc didn’t mention her when we talked, and it’s not really my business. If she’s mad at me, she’ll chew me out, and I’ll deal with it then. Like I said, I don’t really care. She should have told the truth years ago.”
I had to agree with him.
“What do you think Austin will say? Does he know about your letter?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t want him to feel rejected if Jean Luc never responded to me. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll want to meet him.”
I nodded. “Good for you, babe. I’m happy for you guys.”
He smiled and leaned across the table and kissed me. “It’s ironic that this day should have been forever marked in my mind as the worst day of my life, but that phone call – and the fact that I’m sitting here with you – kind of makes it not seem so bad.”
“What do you mean?” I questioned, unaware that he’d had a bad day.
He paused before he said, “Cass, it’s the anniversary of the shooting.”
“Oh,” I said, dropping his hand as I flopped against the back of the booth, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. I blinked a few times at the concerned look on his face. “I didn’t remember.”
Crap, I should have remembered. I felt like a jerk. It was one year ago that Will and Aiden had been taken from my life. How could I have overlooked the date?
In truth, I’d probably blocked it out.
Jared got up and came around to my side of the booth, so I scooted over and let him sit next to me as he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against him.
“I know it’s supposed to be a shitty day in our history, and it is, but we’re here because of it,” he said softly.
I nodded. He was so right. We were together because of the shooting, because of how it had affected us and how we were linked together by fate that night. I knew I’d fallen for him for completely different reasons than that, but at the core of it all, at the root of why we’d been drawn to each other, was that night and what we’d gone through together.
Stay with me.
Those three words had been cemented in my brain, subconsciously when I couldn’t remember Jared saying them to me and consciously once I’d remembered everything. And I’d done just that, through it all, I’d stayed with him, and he’d stayed with me.
“Is that why you wanted me to come to dinner tonight?” I asked him, and he smiled.
“Not really. I just missed you. Scott doesn’t cuddle with me when we watch movies like you do, and you’ve been so busy lately. I just wanted to have a night out with my girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, feeling guilty for being so obsessed with school lately. I might have taken on too much – maybe. Or I might have just needed to find my stride.
He shook his head. “Don’t apologize. I love that you’re so involved in school. It’s fine. I’ve been busy too. I just missed you. We’ll have to work on scheduling date nights when we can both get away.”
I looked up into his bright blue eyes and brought my lips to his. “You’re the sweetest boy I’ve ever known, Jared Lansing. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said against my lips.
When he pulled back he smiled and looked up, signaling for the waiter to come over. Then he got up and went back to the other side of the booth.
After I gave my drink order to the waiter and was perusing the menu, I felt Jared watching me.
“What?” I asked him, looking up to meet his gaze.
He smiled. “I was thinking that after dinner, we could take a walk over to the church on the corner. They have candles that you can light for people. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to, but I figured we could light a candle for the fourteen people who lost their lives at Coleman.”
As he said that, tears sprung to my eyes. I couldn’t help it. At the thought of Will and Aiden and the twelve other innocent people I hadn’
t known, I was overcome with emotion.
“I think that’s a really great idea.”
Jared smiled. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”
I watched him as he looked down at his menu again, wondering how I’d gotten so lucky. He was such an incredible, kind, good-hearted man, and he loved me. He was right, that day, one year ago had been the worst day of our lives, but because of it, we’d had some of the best days of our lives, together.
Jared made me happier than I’d ever been in my whole life. I loved him completely, and I knew sitting across from him, that he’d made my life amazing. In his own way, he’d built a paper airplane that could fly us away from the pain and heartbreak of our past. He’d held my hand the whole time, and I’d held his, knowing that as long as we were by each other’s side, the past couldn’t come back to haunt us. Because of him, I could face anything, knowing I’d get through it just fine. As long as I had Jared, everything would be okay.
About the Author
Thanks so much for reading Paper Airplanes, my twelfth full-length novel. I really hope you enjoyed it as much as I loved writing it and developing the characters that helped bring the story to life. If you are interested in reading my other novels, they are also available in e-book format online.
Books have always had a big part in my life, and I probably spend way more time reading than I should, engrossed in the stories that keep me captivated. I am a total sucker for romantic comedies in all forms, because at the end of the day I just want to laugh and see some really great people fall in love. When those stories are mixed with an awesome soundtrack, it just doesn’t get much better than that.
In addition to books, I have a serious love for the Florida Gators and the Boston Red Sox, I am addicted to fashion, and I never go anywhere without my iPod. Give me a grande non-fat vanilla latte from Starbucks and chips and queso from Tijuana Flats, and I am a happy girl.
You can read more about me online at: http://www.goodreads.com/monicaalexander
Follow me on Twitter: @MonMichelle6
or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/monicaalexanderauthor
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