Paper Airplanes (15 page)

“Here you go,” she said, her hand grazing mine as she handed the card back to me. “Have a good workout.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and then I grabbed my brother to drag him away from the desk. He could seriously flirt with Carolyn for hours, and the last thing I wanted her to do was hit on him. He was too young for that shit.

“So what’s going on with you and Saylor,” I asked him when we were in the middle of doing leg presses an hour into our workout.

Austin
extended the weight out, held it for three counts and lowered it back down. “What do you mean?”

“Is she your girlfriend?” I asked bluntly, because there really was no other way to ask my brother anything. He was the king of dodging questions, so spelling things out gave him less of an opportunity to do that.

“No.”

“Are you sleeping with her?”

“Not yet,” he grunted out as he pressed the weight up, his face turning red on his last rep.

I saw him grit his teeth as he held the weight, counted to three and lowered it back down. He let out a breath of air once the weight was settled back into place and slid out of the machine so I could switch places with him and do my last set.

“She’s into you?” I asked as I started my first rep.

Austin
just shrugged. Jesus, it was like I had to play twenty questions just to get one answer out of him.

When I set the weight back in place, I looked up at him. “Will you just tell me what’s going on with you guys?” I asked him and then started my next rep.

“I will when you tell me what’s going on with you and Cassie Witter.”

I almost dropped the weight, my legs faltering when they were fully extended, my thighs burning. Thankfully I held it together and straightened out my concentration.

“Nothing’s going on with Cassie and me. We’re friends.”

“She wasn’t looking at you
the other night like she wanted to be your friend.”

“Oh yeah?
” I said, not looking at him as I did my best to mask how hearing that made me feel – elated, yet conflicted was a good way to describe it. “How was she looking at me?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him give me a pointed look. “You really that dense
, bro? She was looking at you like she wanted to fuck you.”

“Don’t curse,” I told him, even though I didn’t have much room to talk.

I just figured I should correct him on things like that so he knew they weren’t always appropriate to say. It’s what our mom would have done had she been there. And he’d have listened to her. He was always a mama’s boy. I also was fairly certain that was why he’d started cursing in the first place. It was an act of defiance on his part that had started right after she’d moved out. Now I was stepping in as a parental figure since she no longer wanted to do it. I knew she would have talked to Austin about sex and relationships, so I had those uncomfortable conversations whenever I needed to, as well.

“Fine, she looked like she wanted to get in your pants. She kept watching you when she thought you weren’t looking.”

“Really?” I questioned, looking up at him as I finished my last rep.

He nodded. “Yeah, she wants you.”

I felt my face get hot.

A wide smile broke out across my brother’s face as we moved over to do squats. I let him load the weights and get set up under the bar as I took a long drink of water. We’d upped our reps that week, and I’d gotten winded from that last set.

“You want her too, don’t you,” Austin deciphered from the goofy-ass look on my face as I thought about Cassie hugging me when we’d parted ways earlier in the day.

She’d felt perfect in my arms, all soft and feminine and warm, and that
vanilla scent that was so distinctly hers had lingered in my nostrils all through calculus, making it the most enjoyable hour I’d spent doing math in years.

“I don’t want to talk about her,” I said as I spotted my brother.

He shook his head as he rose up from his squat, paused for a few seconds and then dipped back down again.

“How about I make you a deal,” he offered.

“Oh yeah?”

I had no idea what he was offering, but I was somewhat intrigued.

“Yeah. You tell me about Cassie, and I’ll tell you what’s going on with Saylor and me.”

Well that was a no-brainer. I needed him to be honest with me about Saylor, because I couldn’t turn a blind eye to what was going on with them, so I figured it was a fair trade. And
Austin would be discreet if I asked him to. I didn’t have to worry about him telling Scott.

“Deal,” I said, and he smiled at me in the mirror in front of him.

I was surprised at how we’d started to look more alike as he got older. I’d always felt like the oddball in my family, like I didn’t look like anyone else, but as Austin grew up, I’d started to notice that I shared some features with him. You could definitely tell we were related. We had the same mouth and nose for sure. But he had the good looks and the height I’d never had when I was his age.

“Fine,” he said, finishing his last rep. “Tell me what’s going on with Cassie.”

I stepped back, so he could come under the bar and switch places with me.

“We’re friends,” I told him as I started my first rep, putting all my strength into my legs and keeping my back straight as I bent my knees and kept the bar balanced on my shoulders.

“Come on, you need to give me more than that,” Austin complained.

“Fine. She started working at Dawson’s, and I trained her. I honestly thought she was a huge bitch, but she’s actually pretty cool. And she’s
really hot.”

“You like her, don’t you.”

“Yeah, I guess so, but it’s never going to happen. She’d never go for a guy like me.”

“Please,”
Austin said, practically rolling his eyes at me in the mirror. “She never would have gone for the you from two years ago, but this guy, he could definitely tap that.” He poked me between the shoulder blades.

“I’m the same guy I used to be,” I grunted out, feeling the burn in my thighs on my last few reps.

“No you’re not. You always say that, but it’s not true. You know you’re way better looking, you have more confidence, and you talk more. You’re completely different.”

He
was right, but I still had a hard time wrapping my head around it. I always was my biggest critic. Well, aside from my dad. He’d never thought I was worth much because I didn’t do the things he thought I should do in life. But considering he’d pretty much failed at his marriage and being a father, I figured he didn’t know shit and had stopped worrying about what he thought. I hadn’t talked to him in a year and a half, and I figured I might not ever talk to him again. If he didn’t even have the decency to visit me in the hospital after I’d been shot and had almost died, I figured he didn’t care and neither should I.

“I guess,” I said
to Austin, wondering what Cassie would do if I asked her out.

I figured she’d probably say no.
She’d told me she wasn’t interested in dating anyone, so why do it and risk rejection?

“You should go for i
t,” Austin insisted as I switched places with him. “Make a move. Just kiss her and see what happens.”

“I’m not going to just kiss her and see what happens. Besides, Scott would kill me. You know he’s in love with her.”

“Yes, everyone knows he’s in love with her, but she’d never go for
him.
You and I both know that. She’d go for you though. Trust me. I saw the way she was looking at you. It’s the same way Saylor looks at me,” he said, grinning.

I raised an eyebrow at his reflection, wondering when he’d become so good at reading people. That was usually my forte, but with Cassie I sucked at it. And besides, I didn’t care what he said,
I still wasn’t making a move on her. Cassie and I were still getting to know each other, and we were lab partners and we worked together. If she rejected me it would be a long summer of seeing her daily and feeling like a jackass. No, I had to wait until I was certain she wouldn’t push me away. And then I had to talk to Scott, because if he wasn’t cool with me dating her, I wasn’t doing it. No sense ruining a lifelong friendship for a girl who may or may not be worth it – although I was starting to think she just might be.

“
I don’t know. Well see,” I told my brother. “Now what’s up with you and Saylor?”

I figured it was time we go
t to the question I’d initially wanted answered.

He grinned at me as he finished his last rep. “I think I love her, dude,” he said, and I laughed.

My brother was an idiot, but I loved him for it.

Chapter Eleven

Cassie

“Oh my God! We did it!” I shrieked, causing people all over the room to look in our direction.

Jared laughed and shushed me, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. The mixture in the beaker had turned blue – like it was supposed to. I couldn’t believe it. I watched it in amazement, marveling that I was actually good at chemistry.

“Uh oh,” Jared said then, and
my smile started to fade.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said as we both stared with wide eyes at the liquid that was starting to fizz and bubble. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“No, Mr. Lansing, it’s not,” Mr. Graves said
to Jared as he made his way over to our table.

Just as he said that, the liquid bubbled over the side, and Jared threw his hands up
in defeat. “We were so close,” he muttered.

“Ah yes, here in lies the problem,” Mr. Graves said, picking up an empty test tube. “This is the tube that contained the
sodium bicarbonate, am I right?”

I had a feeling his question was rhetorical, but I answered anyway.

“Yes, we put it all in like we were supposed to.”

“How much is all, Miss Witter?” he asked me, and I bit my lip and looked over at Jared who shrugged.

“Did you measure it out correctly?” I hissed at him.

“Yes,” he insisted.
“I think so.”

“
My guess is that you were off in your measurements,” Mr. Graves said. “The only reason for the liquid to bubble over like it has is because too much of this was added. Do be more careful next time?”

“Yes, sir,” Jared and I mumbled at the same time.

Mr. Graves opened his mouth to say something, but he was cut off by an explosion from across the classroom. I looked up to see smoke and flames coming from a table up front. One of our classmates was trying to work the fire extinguisher. Mr. Graves sighed, muttered something about that happening every semester and walked up front to make sure the classroom didn’t burn down.

I couldn’t help but giggle. “At least that wasn’t us,” I said, leaning into Jared as I covered my mouth with my hand
. I could tell he was trying not to laugh, but he lost that battle fairly quickly and was chuckling along with me.

“So glad that wasn’t us,” he said as he laughed.

He had a really great laugh. I loved hearing it.

As we started to clean up our mess so we could get out of the lab without having to face Mr. Graves again, I turned to Jared. “Do you think we’re going to fail?”

He shook his head. “Nah. We won’t get an ‘A’, but he won’t fail us. We didn’t blow up the lab.” He whispered that last part as the two people who’d blown up their experiment walked past us with dejected looks on their faces.

I giggled again as I put away the last beaker and washed my hands.

As Jared and I left the classroom, I turned to him. “Can I buy you lunch to make up for the disaster I created back there?”

He looked at me in surprise but quickly masked it. “You mean the disaster
I
created. I was in charge of measuring.”

“Yeah, but I should have realized it was way too much.”

“No way. This one’s on me, and because of that lunch is on me too.”

“Deal,” I said as we made our way out to the parking lot.

Chemistry was the only class we both had on Fridays, and our lab ended at noon, so we were free the rest of the afternoon until work at four o’clock.

“What
are you hungry for?” he asked me as he unlocked the doors to his truck. He’d given me a ride that morning since it just made sense. We were neighbors after all.

“Anything but Dawson’s. I tell you, I used to love their food, but after serving it for two weeks, I’m kind of over it.”

He laughed. “I’ve worked there for two
years.
I’ll tell you about being over the food.”

There was a Jimmy John’s near campus, so he drove us there. It was quick, and since I was starving, quick was good.

We settled into a table near the door once we had our sandwiches.

“It’s going to be busy tonight, isn’t it,” I said, simply because I hated to sit in silence and Jared didn’t.

I knew if he didn’t have anything to say, he wouldn’t speak up and we’d have the most boring lunch ever. Only made less boring by the fact that I could stare into his beautiful blue eyes all I wanted without the fear of him thinking I was weird. But that was all I was letting myself do. It was the right thing to do for lots of reasons. I could look. I just wouldn’t let myself touch.

“Yeah,
it’ll probably be busy, but you’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t so sure.
I was still working out my rhythm of how to juggle my section efficiently on a busy night. Jared did it effortlessly, but I hadn’t quite worked out the kinks just yet.

“I suppose. At least I’ll have you to bail me out if I get in the weeds again, but I’m tipping you out this time if that happens.”

His eyes crinkled up as he smiled. The previous Friday we’d been slammed, and Jared had come through for me, helping deliver food to my tables and refill drinks. I owed him big time for it.

“I’m always happy to help,” he said as he took a long pull of his soda. “You d
on’t need to tip me out. But I won’t be there tonight.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You won’t? What do you mean?”

This was news to me. From my knowledge, Jared worked on Fridays – during the day when we’d first met, but he’d switched to nights because of the time of our chem lab once classes started. We usually spent the afternoon writing up our lab report after getting lunch, and then we’d go into work.

“Scott has this light show he’s doing
that’s an hour away, so I’m going with him to help out.”

“Light show?” I questioned.

“Yeah, it’s this thing with lights and music and effects. It’s pretty cool. He does it for weddings and birthdays and town events. He’s always been into pyrotechnics, but this is something new he’s evolved into in the past six months. It’s cool.”

I nodded. “Sounds like it. I wish I could go.”

“Ah, but then who will hold down the fort while Scott and I are gone?”

I rolled my eyes. “You should be more concerned with who will protect me from Brooke
while you’re gone. She’s going to have her claws out, no doubt, especially because you’re not around. You know she plays nice when you’re there, but when you’re not, it’s bad news for me.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry about that. I know it’s my fault.”

“Jared!” I said, kicking him under the table. “I was kidding. It’s not your fault that she’s crazy. Just because you broke up with her and she wants you back doesn’t mean she has the right to be mean to me because we’re friends.”

“Act
ually,” he interjected, “I didn’t break up with her. She broke up with me.”

My jaw dropped open as he said that. “Seriously?”

The way Brooke acted around him, all wounded and sad, watching him from across the restaurant, I’d been sure he’d ended things with her. She flirted with him constantly, and she always put her hands on him when they were talking. He usually removed them, but she never ceased to try to create contact. I just assumed it was because she hadn’t wanted the relationship to end but he had. Apparently I was wrong.

Jared
nodded in affirmation and took a big bite of his sandwich.

“What happened?”

Brooke was seriously crazy, and all this time I thought it was because she was still in love with him because he’d broken her heart. And come to find out that she was the dumper in their relationship. That was some bullshit.

He shrugged and set his sandwich down. “We dated last summer, we did long distance for a few months when she went back to school,
but then she decided she didn’t want to date me anymore, so she started sleeping with someone else and broke up with me. It’s not that big of a deal.”

He was such a liar. I could see in his eyes that he’d given me the abridged version of that story when there was so much more to it.

“What a bitch.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought too,” he said nonchalantly. “She was my first girlfriend, and she treated me like crap most of the time. I kind of decided after we were over that I might not want to entertain the girlfriend thing again
, since it wasn’t too fun the first time around.”

A
lump formed in my throat as he said that. Not that I was lining up to be his girlfriend – well, not yet anyway – but it would suck to know the option was off the table if I wanted to choose it in the future.

“Do you still feel that way?”

He ran his hand back through his hair, but it just stuck up at odd angles that managed to look sexy and disheveled in a really good way. “I don’t know. I’m not completely closed off to the idea, but it would have to be with the right girl. I have a lot going on right now, and she’d have to be cool with all that.”

I nodded. “Are you talking about
Austin?”

“Yeah, I am. Not many people my age are raising a teenage boy. Not to mention balancing school and work and writing.”

“Yeah, but you have Scott’s parents. I mean, they take care of Austin, right?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m his legal guardian. We just live with them
, since we can’t afford to live on our own, and they’re nice enough to help us out. I think they’d like to take on responsibility for him completely, but I don’t feel right about it. He’s my brother, and I can do it. Austin is mostly grown up, but when he needs something, I’d rather take care of it myself.”

“And they’re okay with that?”

“No, but we had a long talk about it when I turned eighteen. I’ve known Chris and Diana most of my life, and they understand why I needed to be the one taking care of him.”

“And your parents just let you be his guardian?” I asked, not sure if I was crossing a line. He’d never talked to me about his parents before.

“Yeah, they were fine with it,” he said tightly, a shadow crossing his face.

I
knew then that I shouldn’t probe even though I wanted to. I could just tell this was something he didn’t want to talk about. His parents had given up their rights to their son who was a minor to their other son who was barely an adult. That wasn’t normal.

“That’s why you stayed here isn’t it?”
I said, somewhat changing the subject.

“What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “I could never figure it out. Scott told me that you’d gotten into Columbia but that you’d turned down your admission. He said you had one of the highest GPAs in our graduating class. When I heard that I couldn’t understand why you were going to a community college when you could have been at an Ivy League.”

“Family comes first,” he said
simply, “at least for me. I can’t say the same about my parents, but I didn’t want Austin to feel abandoned. What else did Scott tell you?”

Uh o
h. He sounded annoyed, and I wondered if this wasn’t the first time Scott had shared something that Jared had wanted kept private. And I should have figured, since Jared hadn’t exactly been forthright with information about his family, that he might not have wanted me to know. But it was odd – he and Austin had been living with Scott’s family for the past three years, their parents were still alive and not involved with their kids’ lives. I hadn’t understood the situation until Scott had explained it to me.

“He
, um, he told me a little about your parents,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, not wanting Jared to think it was a big deal, even though I couldn’t fathom what it would be like to be abandoned by the people who raised you.

Jared nodded. “Figures,” he said, looking away from me to the cars passing by the window outside.

“It’s not a big deal,” I assured him. “I don’t think any less of you.”

His eyes snapped back to me. “Well I should hope not. I didn’t do anything.”

Whoa, I’d never seen him upset, but anger was flashing in his eyes. I didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the only thing I could
think of. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Before Jared
could respond we were ironically interrupted by Scott.

“Hey guys!” he said cheerfully as he approached our table.

I looked up at him in surprise, not expecting to see him there.

“Hey man,” Jared said tightly.

“Hi Scott,” I said quietly, shifting my gaze from him back to Jared. He was crushing the chips spread out on his sandwich wrapper one by one with his index finger.

“What’s going on?” Scott asked. “Are you on a date?”

I thought that was kind of a weird question to ask since Jared and I ate lunch together a lot, but maybe Scott didn’t know that. And I could hear how upset the idea of Jared and me being on a date made him. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Scott. He was a good friend.