Paper Airplanes (41 page)

“I know,” he said, as if that wasn’t news for him. “When Coach Brewster asked me if it was an option
, I told him no.” He shrugged. “I figured that was the end of it, but last week this came to the house.”

He took a folded up piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me.
It looked worn, like it had been folded and unfolded over and over again. I unfolded it and read through it, my eyes getting wide. View Crest Academy was offering my brother a full ride.

“
Austin, this is great,” I said, wanting him to be as excited as I was. “Congratulations.”

Why was he still slumped over?

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Oh, right. If he went to View Crest, he’d have to leave Saylor. I sighed, wondering how I was going to get him to do this, because we both knew he had to take the scholarship. He’d regret it if he didn’t.

“You don’t want to leave, do you?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “Leave here? No, I don’t care about that. I mean, it’ll suck not to see Say every
day, but we’ll figure it out. She has a car. But it’s not like I can actually go there.”

“Why not?” I asked, looking over the letter again. They were offering him tuition and books. He just had to pay for his uniforms and housing.

Oh. Housing.

I looked back up at him.

“I figured I might be able to live with Evan,” he said, shrugging, “but you heard him on Saturday. He’s going to live with Tiff, and their place is really small. I’m not sure he’ll go for that.”

Even if Evan and Tiffany agreed to it, i
t wouldn’t work anyway. Evan wasn’t his legal guardian, and until Austin turned eighteen in May, he’d have to live with me or in campus housing if he went away to school. The letter explained that the dorms were already full, but if Austin could find housing, he had a starting spot on the football team. Just thinking about how much an apartment in Chicago would cost, I knew I’d have to take out major loans that I’d never be approved for anyway just to afford the rent.

“We’ll find a way,” I t
old him, thinking maybe we could find some place close to the city.

Maybe we could live halfway in between there and home. But
Austin didn’t have a car, and I couldn’t afford to buy him one. And if we so happened to find an inexpensive place close to the school, I’d have to find a new job. I was sure I could, but I had tenure at Dawson’s and a guarantee of hours. I hated to give that up. Maybe I could work two jobs and just put school on hold for a year.

“No, it’s fine,”
Austin said quickly. “I mean, it would be so cool to go there, but it’s too expensive. I can still get a scholarship to college. Coach told me he’ll have scouts at our big games, and the Big 10 coaches were at camp this summer. It’s alright. I just think it’s cool that they want me to play at View Crest.”

He said that, but I could tell he so badly wanted us to find a way to make it work so he could go. Maybe I could talk to Chris and Diana.
My pride would take a serious hit if I did that, but I just might have to sacrifice it. Maybe I could ask them for a loan or something.

A knock on the door caused us both to look up. “Come in,” I said, knowing it was Cassie.

“Hi,” she said, smiling softly at me. Then she noticed Austin was there. “Hey Austin.”

“Hey,” he said
glumly, rising to his feet.

He held out his hand for his letter, so I
passed it to him. I stood up and patted him on the back. He gave me a weak smile as he left.

“We
’ll talk about this tomorrow,” I offered, hoping I’d figure out a solution by then.

Cassie came over and sat on my lap, curling up and resting her head on my shoulder. “What’s up with
Austin?”

“Nothing. Just girl stuff,” I lied, not wanting to burden her with our financial challenges.

“With Saylor?” she questioned.

“It’s fine,” I assured her, not wanting to lie. I really just wanted to go to bed. “He just wanted to talk, brother to brother.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, kissing my cheek. Then she yawned.

“Okay, I lied,” I said, not able to keep anything from her. I hated being dishonest.

“You lied?” she questioned.

“Yeah, I did.
Austin wasn’t upset about Saylor, he was upset about football,” I said, and then I proceeded to tell her the whole story.

“Man, that sucks.
Austin deserves that scholarship. He’s such an awesome kid.”

“I know. There’s just nothing I can do. My hands are tied. But he’s right, he doesn’t need to go there to play in college. He’d have a sure in if he did, but it’s not like he won’t get interest from good schools if he stays where he is.”

“Yeah,” she said, seemingly not convinced. Then she yawned again.

“Come on, let’s go to sleep,” I said as she slid off my lap.
I felt like I’d have a better perspective in the morning when I wasn’t so tired.

Cassie
took my hand and led me into my bedroom a small smile playing on her lips.

“What?” I asked, as I pulled back the covers and she climbed in.

“I like sleeping in your bed, that’s all,” she said, as I slid in next to her.

I wrapped her up in my arms. “Well, I like you sleeping in my bed.
If I had my choice I’d never let you leave.”

She turned and fa
ced me on the pillow and smiled. “I like that idea. Maybe I’ll just move in here next year.”

I wasn’t sure if she was serious or kidding, but I knew
I’d do that in a heartbeat if it was feasible. I watched as Cassie’s eyes closed. Within a few minutes, she was asleep, so I rested my head on my pillow and stared at her, thinking about how the problem I was trying to solve for my brother had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. Even if I sucked up my pride and asked Chris and Diana for help, if Austin and I moved to Chicago, I’d have to leave Cassie.

That was just about the last thing I wanted to do, but there was no way in hell I’d ask her to come with me. As tempting as that was, I’d never ask her t
o give up school for me, and unlike the University of Illinois, she didn’t have an in at any schools in Chicago. If I moved and she stayed, we’d be an hour apart. That wasn’t a big deal, but if I moved, I also was fairly certain she wouldn’t want to stay. She’d go to Illinois, and then we’d be more than two hours away from each other.

We’d truly be in a long distance relationship at that point. And watching her sleeping inches from me, so close that I could inhale her
now familiar vanilla scent, I knew how much it would tear me up to do that. I loved her. The absolute last thing I wanted was to be separated from her, but I had to do what was right for Austin. He wanted to go to View Crest more than anything, and if I could make it happen, I’d do it for him. I’d just have to figure out a way to not lose Cassie in the process.

* * *

A few days after Austin told me about his scholarship offer, I woke up alone and reached for Cassie. Then I remembered she’d left earlier, kissing me goodbye as she slipped out of bed after staying the night. She did that from time to time. I hated when I didn’t get to wake up next to her, but I knew she didn’t like it when her parents caught her doing the walk of shame, so she liked to go home early on the days they’d be home. She said to come over later and we’d lay by her pool. Neither of us had to work until six, so we could hang out until then.

At eleven
, I texted her that I was heading over to her house. Since it was a Saturday, there was a good chance her parents would be at work already, and we’d have the place to ourselves. Or we’d have to share it with Marley and Scott since they were splashing each other in the pool when I walked into the backyard. They were seriously like little kids, giggling and teasing each other and play fighting. It was like Scott had found his match in a tiny, hyper, female version of himself.

Cassie was lying on a lounge chair, her sunglasses covering her eyes. I stood directly over her, blocking the sun.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” she asked me, sliding her sunglasses off so she could glare at me.

I smiled and sat down on
the chair next to hers as she smiled back at me. She couldn’t even stay fake mad at me for long.

“You didn’t wake up last night,” I said, looking over at her.

She shook her head. “No, it was a good night. The second one in a row. No bad dreams.”

“Maybe you’ll have another
good night tonight,” I offered, hoping it was true.

“I hope so. I’ll just have to sleep at your place again.
That seems to be the key.”

“Maybe I’m the lynchpin. You sleep well when you’re with me.”

She grinned. “Maybe that’s a sign that I really should move in with you,” she said, repeating what she’d said a few nights before, and my breath hitched as she said that.

I knew how much I
wanted that to be a reality, but after muttering it before falling asleep next to me, she hadn’t brought it up again, so I’d let it go. I now had a feeling she might have been serious.

I smiled at her, but it was forced. “Yeah, that would be fairly perfect,” I said,
urging the cheer into my voice, because I didn’t want her to know that living together wouldn’t even be an option in a few weeks.

I’d talked
to Chris and Diana the day after Austin had told me about his scholarship, and once I told them about the offer he’d gotten from View Crest, they just about demanded that he go. I tried to explain about the housing situation and the fact that I couldn’t afford an apartment in Chicago, but Diana had looked at me like she wanted to murder me.

“Jared,” she’d said firmly, and it had been years since she’d talked to me that way.

“Yeah?” I’d said sheepishly, wondering if I was in trouble.

“How long have you lived with us?”

“Three years.”

Was that a trick question?

“And in those three years, what have you let us pay for?” she demanded.

“Everything,” I said, feeling guilty about the fact that we ate their food and used their utilities. She’d even furnished the pool house for me.

She raised an eyebrow at me as Chris stifled a laugh. “Everything? Really?”

“Yes,” I said glumly. “I promise one day I’ll pay you guys back. I swear, I will.”

“Stop it,” she said then. “Jared, you and Austin are like our kids. Don’t you realize that?”

I just looked at her, knowing I’d thought of them as my parents for years, but it had only ever been in my head. I’d never told them.

She shook her head. “You are the most prideful man I’ve ever met,” she said, reaching across the kitchen table for my hand. She squeezed it. “You’ve insisted on giving me money each month for the past three years when you didn’t have to. We wanted to pay for everything, but you were so insistent when you moved in here that you wanted to contribute. So we let you.”

“It was the least I could do,” I insisted, knowing that a few hundred dollars each month was nothing in trade for all that they’d given us.

Diana gave me a hard look. “No, it was more than you ever should have done, and because of that, Chris and I put that money into a savings account for you and Austin. And we might have also made our own monthly donations. As it stands, you have close to thirty thousand dollars in there now.”

My eyes got wide and my jaw dropped. “That’s not even possible,” I said, doing the math in my head.

Even if it had never been my best subject, I still knew that if I’d given them around three hundred dollars a month for the past three years, and they’d matched me dollar for dollar – which was insane to even think about – thirty thousand was ridiculously more than should have been in that account.

I shook my head. “I can
’t accept it. That money was from Austin and me, to pay you guys back for taking us in when we didn’t have another option. I wanted to contribute.”

“I don’t care what you wanted, Jared,” Diana said then, and Chris put his hand on her shoulder
to calm her. She had as much passion as her son, and when she got going, she could rant for hours. Chris knew that.

“Jared, we meant what we said
. We think of you and Austin as our kids,” he said, and Diana nodded.

“We do, Jared,” she echoed
, the passion returning in full force. “I’ll never understand how your parents could
ever
just give up two boys who are as caring and kind as you and Austin – not even your father – and don’t get me wrong, I understand why he was upset, but he definitely took his anger out on the wrong people in his life. But we’re the ones who got lucky when you boys came to live with us. I don’t care that we’re not blood related. It doesn’t matter to us. You will always be our kids. And if Scott or Saylor had an opportunity to go to a school like View Crest, we’d pay. We want to do the same for Austin.”

I swallowed, not sure what to say, but anything I might have said would have probably gotten stuck in my throat anyway.

“Let us do this, Jared. Let us help,
” Chris urged. “Please. We can afford it. It’s really a non-issue.”