I was addicted. Like father, like daughter.
“How long do I have you?” he whispered.
“All weekend.” I grinned against his mouth.
“All weekend?”
“Mint went to the Georgia game. Last-minute decision.”
Coop spun me in a circle. “A whole weekend.” He set me down. “This is perfect. I got you something.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Coop produced a bottle of red wine from his pantry with a flourish. “Your favorite.”
“You remembered.” I’d discovered red wine this year, and it was like my entire palate changed overnight. Now, it was the only thing I wanted to drink. It left my lips and teeth stained crimson, like a vampire’s, but I didn’t care. Red wine was classy, sophisticated. A sign I was growing up.
Good wine was also expensive.
“You didn’t have to buy it,” I said as he twisted the cork with a small pop. I hated when Coop spent money on me, because I knew where it came from.
“I wanted to talk to you.” The wine, dark as blood, snaked out of the bottle and down the side of the glass. “About something important.”
My heartbeat picked up. This couldn’t be good.
“Here,” he said, handing me the glass. “Cheers.”
I clinked and downed half the wine, feeling it coat my lips. “So. Something important.”
Coop took a step closer. It took everything in me to keep my shoulders straight, not lean into him, bury my face in his chest. He smelled like things that came from the earth—wood and citrus and grass.
Panic gripped me, sudden and fierce. I didn’t want this to be over.
“Come on,” he said gruffly, picking me up again.
“Hey!” My feet kicked uselessly. “You’re so manhandley tonight.”
“Grab the bottle.”
I rolled my eyes but snagged the wine.
“And—set—it—down—right—there,” Coop took a few exaggerated steps to his bed and lowered me over his bedside table. The instant I placed the bottle down, he tossed me.
“Jesus, Coop!” I bounced high on his bed, but he reached for me, pulling me over so I lay against his chest, our legs tangled.
He rested his head on his hand. “Come home with me for Thanksgiving. Meet my mom.”
I drew back. “What?”
“Hear me out.” He raised a finger. “One. My mom really wants to meet you. Two. You could see my teenage bedroom, including all my emo band posters from high school. The blackmail material writes itself. Three. We’d get a whole week together without anyone else. Just you and me in the exotic town of Greenville, South Carolina. And four—I know you don’t want to go home.”
I didn’t. My dad’s latest stint in recovery had ended in flames when he got high and drove his car straight through the parking lot and into his office lobby. That made three unsuccessful admissions to rehab in three years. Three pointless family days, sitting in a little circle, waiting for my dad to do something—anything—different. Maybe look my mom full in the face without cutting his eyes away; maybe say something to me that wasn’t about school; maybe talk about those times when I was young and he reshaped me with his cruelty. Maybe he could admit to being sad, or lonely, or depressed. Or even mildly disappointed.
Yeah, yeah, we asked for so much.
The first stint in rehab, my mom and I had expected the impossible—waited for him to say something that let us know he recognized the pain underneath the fog of the pills. But he didn’t, of course, and after that we’d stopped expecting it.
And now this. He was finally unemployed, and spiraling. No one knew what to do next.
“What about Mint?” I asked, pushing thoughts of home aside. “He’s going to think it’s weird if I go home with you.”
“I was thinking,” Coop said slowly, studying my face. “What if you ended things?”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“We could tell him together. I mean, I’ll do it if you want. We could come clean, and then after a little while…we could be together. For real. In public.”
My brain was having trouble processing. Coop, scorner of all things traditional, earnest, wanted to be my boyfriend?
“You want to date?” I asked dubiously.
He took my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes. How terrifying, to be truly looked at.
“Coop—” I started, wanting him to turn that gaze away, unsure where this was going. There was a charge building in the air, a feeling: Today, something starts that will never end.