“What if he doesn’t come back?” I ask in a small voice.
“He has to come back. He lives here.”
I let out a breath. “I mean, to me. What if he doesn’t come back to me?” My pulse quickens at that horrible notion. “I just … I can’t shake the feeling that it’s over this time. One fight too many and there’s no getting past it. What if Cooper’s fed up with me?”
“Okay.” Evan seems to ponder that for a second. It’s still eerie after all this time how his mannerisms exactly match Cooper’s, yet they’re like a recording where the audio doesn’t quite sync with the video. Everything’s a half second off. “So not to be a dick or anything, but that’s dumb.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. You remember my brother almost knocked my teeth out because I was an ass to you once, right?”
“Once?” I echo with a raised eyebrow.
Evan grins. “Yeah, well. Point is, it’ll take a lot more than a few arguments to run him off you. There was one summer Coop and I were at each other’s throats over I don’t know what, and we were beating the tar out of each other about every other day.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t mean shit. Fighting is how we worked things out.”
“But you’re brothers,” I remind him. “That’s a huge difference.”
“And what I’m saying is, Coop cares that much about you. You’re not staying here for the rent money or because he likes your cooking.”
He has a point. I don’t cook. At all. Ever. Not once. As for rent, every month I’ve been here I’ve left what I thought was a fair market value of a rent check on Cooper’s dresser, but he keeps refusing to cash them. So I always leave a backup with Evan.
“But …” My teeth worry my bottom lip again. “You didn’t see the look on his face when he stormed off.”
“Um. I’ve seen every look on his face.” He mugs for me, seeking a laugh.
Fine. That was sort of funny.
“Look,” he says, “at some point, Cooper’s going to stumble in piss drunk and grovel for you to forgive him once he’s come to his senses. He’s got a process. You just gotta let him work through the steps.”
I want to believe him. That despite all the ways we have absolutely nothing in common, Cooper and I somehow developed a connection stronger than what separates us, deeper than the scars that keep him up at night. The alternative is too painful. Because I can’t change where I come from any more than he can. If this is the distance our relationship can’t span, I’m not ready to consider what my new life would be without him.
Evan throws his arm around my shoulder. “I know Coop better than anyone. Trust me when I say he’s crazy about you. And I’ve got no reason to lie.”
Evan’s pep talk digs my mood out of the gutter at least marginally. Enough that when a yawn slams into me, I’m motivated to get ready for bed.
“Promise you’ll wake me up if he calls you?” I fret.
“I promise.” Evan’s voice is surprisingly gentle. “Don’t stress too hard, Mac. He’ll be home in no time, okay?”
I give a weak nod. “Okay.”
“No time” ends up being a quarter past midnight, as I’m woken from a restless sleep when the bed dips beside me. I feel Cooper slide under the covers. He’s still warm from a shower and smells of toothpaste and shampoo.
“You awake?” he asks in a whisper.
I roll over to lie on my back, rubbing my eyes. It’s pitch black in the bedroom but for the pale glow of the floodlight on the side of the house, filtering in through the blinds.
“Yeah.”
Cooper lets out a long breath through his nose. “I talked to Levi.”
That’s what he’s leading with? I’m not sure what relevance it has to our situation or our fight, and part of me wants him to stop stalling and tell me if we’re going to be all right. But I keep my impatience at bay. Evan said his brother has a process. Maybe this is part of it.
So I say, “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” A long beat. “I’m going to press charges against Shelley. For stealing the money.”
“Wow.” It hadn’t occurred to me that would even be an option. But it makes sense. Mother or not, she stole more than ten thousand dollars from him. “How do you feel about it?”
“Honestly? Fucked up. She’s my mom, you know?” I’m startled to hear his voice crack. “I don’t want to think about her getting thrown in jail. At the same time, what kind of person steals from their own kid? If I didn’t need the money, I’d say whatever. To hell with it. But that was every cent I had saved up. Took me years.”