Paper Airplanes by Monica Alexander Read Free Book Online Page B

wealthiest neighborhoods in town. His question was justified.
    I nodded. “Yeah, I needed something to do this summer.”
    “Right. I heard you were home. You doing okay?”
    Crap. Of course he’d heard about the shooting.
    I smiled good-naturedly, because it was a surefire way to move past this awkward conversation topic I so didn’t want to entertain and said, “I’m good. Thanks for asking. How’s life at LSU? Still playing baseball?”
    Nothing like a solid subject change.
    He grinned. “Yeah, we had good season this year. It was pretty great.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “It’s cool that you’re going to work here,” he said then. “You’ll make fat tips and the crew is pretty awesome.”
    I returned his smile . “Sounds great.”
    I wanted to groan at how forced our conversation felt, but I just wasn’t as good at talking to people as I used to be. That fact equally unnerved me and pissed me off. I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be me – the me I used to be. I knew I was going to have to work on my interpersonal skills if I wanted to avoid people at the restaurant thinking I was an awkward spaz.
    “ Well, I gotta go clock-in,” Hale said then, rescuing us both from the uncomfortable silence that had descended on us. “Gotta get set up before we open. Good luck with the job. I’ll put in a good word with Rick for you.”
    “Thanks, Hale. I appreciate it .”
    He shrugged. “No prob.”
    I’d just settled back down when the door opened again and two guys walked in having a heated discussion about something.
    “No, dude, you’re so wrong,” the guy who was tall and thin with blond hair was saying. He looked vaguely familiar. “If you put in the code, it’ll get you additional lives, but if you add the star at the end, you get the invisibility shield.”
    The dark haired guy he was with rolled his bright blue eyes. “That’s not true. I tried it last night,” he said softly but firmly.
    I noticed he had ridiculously long lashes for a guy, and his cheeks were flushed from either the heat outside or the argument he was engaged in.
    “ After work I’ll show you,” the blond guy insisted, his hands waving widely as he gestured. “I’ll–”
    He stopped talking and his eyes went wide when he saw me sitting there. He looked like he recognized me. Did he know me? I wasn’t sure if I knew him.
    The other guy turned his beautiful eyes on me, and it seemed like they darkened when what looked like recognition flashed across his face, but I was positive I’d never met him before.
    “Hi,” I said when neither of them said anything. No time like the present to start working on those social skills.
    They just kept staring. I hoped they didn’t recognize me from the pictures that had come out after the shooting. The same photos of me had been shown countless times as the names of the dead and the injured were reported. The last thing I wanted was to answer questions about what had happened.
    A few reporters had tried to get me to do interviews after I’d gotten home from the hospital, since they loved the story of how I’d been shot and then in a coma and had ended up coming out of it relatively unscathed, but the last thing I wanted to do was sensationalize what had happened to me. I found something profoundly wrong with that, so I’d declined their requests as politely as I could. I definitely didn’t want to offer up any details about the shooting to two guys I didn’t even know.
    In front of me t he blond guy’s eyes suddenly got wide and excited. “Hi!” he responded cheerfully. Then he turned to his friend and mumbled. “Dude, she said hi to me.”
    He was acting like I was some kind of celebrity. I really, really hoped he wasn’t some weird kid that thought it was cool to meet me because I’d been shot. That was just sick. But instead of interjecting and being a bitch unnecessarily, I kept the smile plastered on my face and waited to see what his endgame was.
    The dark