Paper Airplanes (43 page)

“Go away,” Cassie growled from inside, and my heart cracked a little more.

“Cassie, it’s me,” I told her, as if it would have been anyone else.

“I know!” she shouted back “It’s why I said to go the fuck away!”

Oh, God. She was so pissed at me.

“Cassie, please,” I said, resting my head against the door in defeat.

I’d so fucked up, and I had no idea how to fix it. She wouldn’t talk to me, so I couldn’t apologize. I was fucked.

“Jared, just go away. Go to fucking Chicago, and leave me alone!” she screamed.

Come with me.
             

I thought it. I didn’t say it. I should have said it.

Fuck it.

“Come with me,” I said through the closed door, my head still resting on the hard wood. “Give up college, move in with me and just put me out of my fucking misery, because I’ve felt like shit ever since I made the conscious decision to move to Chicago for
Austin. Come with me, because I’m a selfish bastard who loves his girlfriend more than anyone else in the world. I want you in my life, Cassie. I want you in my bed, and in my house, and in every freaking corner of my world, because you made it bright again. You pulled me out of the goddamn darkness, and I don’t want to leave you. I love you, and my life would suck if you weren’t in it.”

I stood there for several moments, my head resting on the door, my words hanging in the air around me
, the silence of not getting a response suffocating me. After minutes that dragged on and on, I saw something move beneath my feet. Sliding under the door was a piece of paper folded into a crude airplane. My heart leapt at the gesture, and I grabbed it up and unfolded it.

Are you just saying that?

“Hell no!” I called out in response to what was written on the airplane. “Cass, I love you so much. Please, come with me.”

A few moments later another airplane slid from under the door.

I love you too.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I read those words.

“If you love me, open the door. Please, Cassie.”

A few seconds later, the door opened and Cassie stood there, her eyes red, her cheeks tearstained, so I let instinct take over and pulled her into my arms. She fell into me, her arms wrapping around my waist as I held her.

“You told me to stay with you,” she mumbled into my shirt. “You told me to stay.”

“I know. I know,” I said as I held her as close as I could. “And I meant it. I meant it with everything in me. I love you.”

Her arms just squeezed me tighter. “I don’t want you to go,” she said then. She looked up at me. “I put everything on hold for you. I made the very conscious decision to stay here for another year because of you, Jared. I’ve always been honest. I told you that I had the chance to go to Illinois, but I turned it down. It was because of you, and then you just up and decide to go to
Chicago
without me? How could you do that?’

I looked down at her
. “I didn’t want you to choose me over your life. I wanted you to be happy and follow your dreams. I didn’t want to ask you to do anything that would hold you back from everything you want in life.”

“Jared,
you
are what I want in life. You’re all I want. Everything else is just details. Don’t you get it? I can get my degree anywhere, anytime, but I can’t find another
you
.”

She looked up at me as new tears formed in her eyes and threatened to spill over.

I sighed, feeling like a jerk at the same time my heart filled up so much it almost burst. “I didn’t want to keep this from you, but I didn’t know how to tell you. Cassie, I love you. Please don’t think I wanted to end things with you. It’s not the case. I figured we could do long distance. We could make it work.”

“I don’t want to do long distance,” she said firmly. “I want to go to Boston for you.”

I looked at her in confusion. Had she heard me wrong?

“Boston? No, Chicago. I’m only moving to Chicago. It’s only an hour away. Trust me, we can make long distance work.”

She sighed and mumbled something about Boston being a metaphor for Chicago that made no sense to me.

“I don’t want to
do long distance,” she said petulantly. “I want to move in with you. I want to see you every day and tell you I love you and kiss you. I don’t want you part time.”

That was exactly what I wanted to hear, but I hated what she was considering giving up.

“What about college?”

“My dad has connections at Northwestern. He went there for undergrad, and he’s a very supportive alumni. I’m sure he can pull the same strings he did at Illinois, but
even if he can’t, it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “I almost died this year. My boyfriend was killed, and I lost one of my best friends. My year started off shitter than most people ever know, but then I met you, and it was like I could breathe again. I wanted to live, really live, because of you, Jared. College can happen now or it can happen in a year. But I can’t wait a year for you. Don’t you get that? The last thing I want is for you to disappear on me, even if it is part time. And Boston is a metaphor. It means I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, because you’re the guy I want more than air. That’s what it means.”

I pulled her against me, wanting to feel as much of her warm body as I could.
She needed me more than air, and I knew exactly how she felt.

“Cassie, you have to know that I want you to come with me. I want you to move in with me. I should have asked from the start, but I didn’t want to hold you back from your life.”

“
You’re
my life,” she said, interrupting me.

“I know,” I said, the relief I felt coursing through me. “
I feel the same way, and the prospect of being separated from you sounds like it would be a slow torture, so even though I know it’s wrong and it’s not what I should want because it’s so self-serving, Cassie Witter, will you move in with me, in Chicago?”

She laughed through her tears. “Yes,” she said, looking up at me. “In a heartbeat.”

“Are you sure? My seventeen year old brother will be there?”

She smiled up at me. “I don’t care.
As long as you’re there, nothing else matters. I’ll be roommates with you and Austin, and we’ll figure the rest out. We have our whole lives to figure the rest out.”

I hugged her tight against me, never wanting to let her go. She was right. We did have our whole lives to figure things out, and the truth was, our lives were just getting started. All the bullshit I’d dealt with my whole life, all the bullying and the feeling like I wasn’t good enough and the fighting to get over the hand I’d been dealt melted away in an instant, because of the girl standing in front of me. She loved me, for me, and she thought I was worth it.

I could leave everything else behind and just be with Cassie. I’d been given a second chance in January when I hadn’t died on the floor of that dining hall, but until now I hadn’t known what to really do with it. With Cassie I’d get a second chance to live the life I wanted, to chase my dreams and to know that regardless of what happened, I’d always have her with me. She told me she wanted me to be selfish and brave and to fight for what I wanted, and I was going to do that. And when it was all said and done, no one was going to tell me that I didn’t take my second chance at life and live it to the fullest. I’d make sure we both did that.

Epilogue

Cassie

I was running late to meet Jared for dinner. I’d been in the library on campus, buried in
notes from several interviews Andrea had done over the past month, pulling out key information that might be relevant to her thesis, and time had gotten away from me. When I looked down at the clock on my laptop, I realized it was fifteen minutes past the time I needed to leave to meet my boyfriend.

Jared had been working a day shift at the restaurant where he’d been working since we moved to Chicago and had texted me around lunchtime that he wanted me to meet him for dinner. I’d initially told him I couldn’t, since I had a ridiculous amount of work to get through, but he’d insisted, and I’d acquiesced, feeling like I’d been neglecting him as of late.

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.

Jar
ed 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 asked, 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.”