He’s talking to me. That’s a good sign.
Except then, he falls silent, and the two of us lie there, not touching, both seemingly afraid to disturb the air too much. After several seconds tick by, I realize there’s nothing stopping me from going first.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I was out of line earlier. I got defensive and lashed out. It was mean and you didn’t deserve that.”
“Well …” he says, and I think I detect a hint of a smile in his voice. “I had it coming a little. Shelley gets under my skin, you know? I just want to throw shit when she’s around. And then she goes and steals my money …” I can feel the tension building up in him, the effort it’s taking to stay calm. Then on a deep breath, he relaxes again. “A lot of what I said came out at you because I was mad at her. You were right. I’ve got some bullshit that was there way before you came along.”
“I get it.” Turning on my side, I find his silhouette in the dark. “I thought offering you the money was helpful, but I see now how in that moment it hit a nerve. I wasn’t trying to throw money at the problem or emasculate you, I promise you that. It’s just … that’s how my brain works. I go into problem-solving mode—Money stolen? Here’s money. You know? It wasn’t meant to be a statement about our respective bank accounts.” I swallow a rush of guilt. “In the future, when it comes to that kind of thing—family stuff, money stuff—I’m here if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll butt out.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want you involved.” He shifts, rolling over to face me too. “I don’t want all these lines and rules and shit.” Cooper finds my hand in the dark and brings it against his chest. He’s shirtless, in only his boxers. His skin is warm to the touch. “The money thing is always going to be there, and I’ve gotta stop getting bent outta shape about it. I know you’re not trying to make me feel any sort of way.”
“I was afraid you weren’t coming back.” I swallow again. Harder. “As long as I was here, I mean.”
“Gonna take more than that to get rid of me.” He tangles his fingers in my hair, rubbing his thumb against the back of my neck. It’s a sweet, soothing gesture, practically putting me right back to sleep. “I figured something out tonight.”
“What’s that?”
“I was sitting in this grimy little bar with Levi and a bunch of sad old bastards hiding from their wives or avoiding their sad old houses. Guys only twice my age but who’ve already done everything that’s ever going to happen to them. And I thought, fuck me, man, I’ve got this crazy hot girl at home and our biggest problem is she’s always trying to buy me shit.”
I smile against my pillow. When he puts it that way, we sound like a couple of dumbasses.
“And this jolt kind of hit me suddenly. I thought, what if she isn’t there when I get back? I was glaring into the bottom of a glass feeling sorry for myself. What if I’d run off the best thing that ever happened to me?”
“That’s sweet, but I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I’m serious.” His voice is soft yet insistent. “Mac, things around here were never good. Then my dad died, and it was confirmation that nothing would get any better. Shelley split. We made do. Never complained. And then you showed up and I started getting ideas. Maybe I didn’t have to settle for slightly better than nothing. Maybe I could even be happy.”
He breaks my heart. Living without joy, without anticipation that tomorrow can still be extraordinary, will suck the soul right out of a person. It’s the cold, dark, strangling infinity of nothingness, of being swallowed up by despair. Nothing can grow in the empty places where we resign ourselves to the numbness. Never really alive. It’s the same long tunnel into complacency that I saw closing in around me the harder I looked at the future Preston and my parents imagined for me.
Cooper saved me from that. Not because he whisked me away, but because meeting him finally revealed the possibilities I’d been missing. The exhilaration of uncertainty. Passion and curiosity.
I was half asleep until I met him.
“I thought I was happy,” I tell him, gliding my fingers up and down his ribs. “For a long time. What was there to complain about, right? I’d been given everything I could ever ask for—except purpose. A choice. The potential to fail, to get hurt. To ever love something so much the thought of losing it tears me open. Tonight, when I thought you and I might really be over, all sorts of things ran through my head. I was making myself crazy.”