18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
“There is an intrinsic bond between the parents of a child, an unbreakable connection that will remain for the rest of their lives.”
A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood
Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)
E mma found me later, sitting at the kitchen table with my doggie bag full of pasta smelling up the room. Of course, I couldn’t eat any dinner. After David dropped his bombs—his bombs, since the one about the baby is bigger than Hiroshima—I completely lost any appetite I had.
You’d think I’d be excited. David suggested having a baby with me, and wasn’t that my ulterior motive, my master plan? Sure, but the wicked curveball—the gay thing—had thrown me into a bit of a dither. Obviously. Plus, I felt like some sort of non-woman—did I make him gay? You can see how my mind was working right then. Or not working.
Like I said, Emma got to me first, finding me sitting in the darkened kitchen with the white Styrofoam container in front of me. I found I couldn’t move. I was surprised I actually made it into the house. If David hadn’t insisted on driving me home, I would probably still be sitting in the restaurant with the bowl of uneaten pasta in front of me.
I couldn’t stop running through my four-year relationship with David to see if there were any clues I should have picked up. Anything at all I should have noticed. I’m not the smartest girlfriend, but you’d think it might be apparent when you’re having sex with a gay guy. But so far all the hints I might have gotten were his lack of assertiveness in the bedroom, which I always took for lack of experience, and silly stereotypes like listening to Mariah Carey and the Backstreet Boys and knowing most of the songs from The Sound of Music when we’d watch it at Christmas.
″Casey?” Emma said loudly. I had the feeling it wasn’t the first time she called me as I sat at the table. “Are you okay?”
″Fine,” I told her, still staring off in space and mentally dissecting the trip David and I took to Florida in our third year with Brit and Morgan and their boyfriends at the time. Had David been interested in one of the guys? Paul, I think that was his name, had been pretty cute. I remember the night we got drunk and played strip poker—had David been more interested in Brit’s or Paul’s bare chests?
″What are you doing just sitting there like that?” Emma asked gently. Either gently or like she was scared of me. Poor girl—she hadn’t even been officially living there two weeks, and already I’d turned into some sort of woman-who-can-make-men-gay nutcase demanding to get pregnant.
″I’m putting my dinner away. I had some leftovers left over—I think I’ll go to bed now.” Leaving the Styrofoam container on the table, I got up and walked downstairs, tripping on the last step like I usually do, only this time it made me cry. Quietly, so Emma couldn’t hear.
About twenty minutes later, the tears were gone, and I was back to being numb. I was just getting comfy lying in my fetal position on my bed, after ripping off my clothes, including my lucky underwear, which I threw in the garbage when I heard Cooper’s footsteps on the stairs. He didn’t even knock on the door to my apartment, but just walked right in.
″Casey, what’s going on? Emma says you’re acting wonky.” He came and sat on the foot of my bed. I could smell the odors of the restaurant mixed with his spicy-scented cologne, and I was glad I’d had the foresight to throw on my nightie. “Talk to me. What happened?”
I can only shake my head. I was remembering the times David kissed me—did I always initiate that too? Did he wish my lips weren’t so soft and covered in lip gloss? Did he want me to have five-o’clock stubble on my cheeks that he could rub his face against?
″All right then,” Cooper said, rubbing the instep of my foot. “First I’m going to commence the tickling until you tell me what’s up. Then, if that doesn’t work, I’m going to try that Dutch oven move, where I crawl into your bed and fart a bunch of times, then stick your head underneath the covers. And I’ll steal your cat. ”
Cooper’s words reminded me about how David would always blame his flatulence on our nonexistent dog, Henry.
″You wouldn’t do that,” I said to Coop softly. I was fighting to keep from crying again, but I wiggled my fingers to coax Sebastian onto the bed with me. Because he’s a cat and I doubt he loves me, he was not offering any comfort by sitting in the doorway just watching me. But I still didn’t want Coop to steal him.
″Oh, no? Try me.”
I focused on Cooper with some difficulty. “I had dinner with David tonight.”
″He doesn’t want to get back together with you, does he?”
″How—why do you say that?”
″It’s the only reason you’d be so miserable. C’mon, Case, it doesn’t take a Dr. Phil freak to figure out why you always go for the jerks in the world. You pick an asshole, so there’s always a reason for the relationship not to work, so you can save yourself for the day you can woo David back into your life. Right? And this whole, oops-I-bumped-into-him was your attempt at wooing?”
I gave him a ghost of a smile. “Wow, Coop, you’re smarter than the average bear.”
″It doesn’t take a genius. So what’d he say? What’s his lame reason for not wanting you back?”
″He told me he’s gay.”
Cooper sat back on the bed and tightened his hold on my foot. “That’s a pretty good reason,” he said carefully.
″I thought it would be perfect if we got together. It would solve the baby thing, because we could have a baby right away together, and then I wouldn’t have to keep doing the dating thing with all those assholes. I’m so tired of them, Coop. I thought this—David—was the perfect solution. I thought it was fate or something stupid like that. How dumb can I be? And then David told me he was gay,” I finished heavily. This time I couldn’t help the tears filling my eyes, but kept blinking so Coop wouldn’t notice. I felt like an idiot about the whole thing. Having him see me cry over some gay guy I’m hung up on would be the last straw in achieving ultimate loser status.
″Oh, Casey.” Coop opened his arms and I crawled into them, resting my cheek on his chest. “Poor little idiot. Took his time, didn’t he? What happened, did you come on to him, and he said, ‘Sorry, I’m playing for the other team now’?” I shook my head. “Casey, you know that there’s nothing you could have done that would have turned him gay, right?”
″That’s what my head says. My heart is telling me a whole other story.”
″You didn’t do anything. People are gay from birth, not because of anything their slightly obsessed ex-girlfriend did in bed.”
″I’m not obsessed,” I protested weakly. Even though Cooper didn’t respond, I could tell he’d raised his eyebrow at me. “Maybe a little obsessed, but not that much.”
″Well, we can agree to disagree on that issue. But David being gay wasn’t caused by anything you did. Or didn’t do. And you know that. You’re not stupid, even though you probably feel like it right now.”
″I guess,” I muttered into his shoulder.
″I’m sure knowing he’s gay explains a lot.”
″Kind of,” I admitted. “He never seemed as into me as I—”
″Please. No details.”
″You obviously have an issue talking about sex.”
″I don’t need any more images clogging up my brain. Sex aside, Case, even though I hate seeing you like this, I’m glad things didn’t work out. I’ve never met the guy, but wow, you can really get a hate on for someone from hearing how perfect he is. This way you can finally give up any hope about you and him, because there’s absolutely no hope now. It’s been over ten years, so maybe you can get rid of his ghost and move on.”
″He wants to have a baby with me.”
″Of course he does. I’ve moved from hate to loathing, just so you know. What did you tell him?”
″I don’t know.”
″You don’t know what you told him, or you told him you don’t know?”
″I told him I don’t know.”
″Because he’s gay?” Coop asked honestly. “Because that would solve your problem about getting your donor guy, even though I’m under the impression this guy is more than your usual asshole. Or is it that he’s gay and you didn’t know it? So you dated a gay guy—it’s not the first time. Look at Liza Minnelli and Star Jones—they married gay guys!”
″The fact that you know that scares me.”
″I’ve been living with you for years. You leave enough magazines around to wallpaper the place. I’ve picked up a few worthless tidbits here and there. But do I have to remind you where you work? You’d think you’d have developed better gay-dar.”
″I know, I know. I mean, when it’s obvious, sure, but they don’t wear signs, you know.” Coop laughed at me, which almost made me cry again. “I didn’t know,” I told him, serious again. “Honestly.” If I had a baby with David and we were connected by this bond for the rest of our lives, and I had to watch him get involved with men, knowing that I wanted him involved with me but would never have the chance… “I’m an idiot.”
″No, you just haven’t gotten over your first love. You haven’t let yourself get over him,” Cooper corrected. “It might be time, don’t you think? You’re thirty-five and still pining over this guy. Since you were twenty? Maybe a bit of an idiot.”
″Do you think I should have a baby with him?”
″No,” Coop shook his head empathetically. “It would make it too complicated, him being gay or not. You’d open yourself wide open and you’d never get over him; you’d only get hurt. I don’t want that for you. If you want to have a baby that bad, I’d rather you use me than him. Let David find his own incubator.”
″He doesn’t think of me as an incubator.” I gave a little laugh that ended in a hiccup.
″No, and that’s the problem.”
It felt nice sitting here with Cooper’s arms around me. He’s such a good friend. This thought led me back to Morgan’s comment the other day. “Morgan thinks you were in love with me,” I blurted out.
″What?” His voice had the right amount of disbelief, but the way his arms abruptly stiffened around me made me pull back with disbelief.
″You were in love me with me?”
“No,” Coop scoffed without looking into my eyes.
“You were! How can I not have known this? Are you still in love with me?” I couldn’t believe Morgan was actually right about this.
Cooper finally looked at me. “No, Casey, I am not in love with you. I love you dearly as a friend, but that’s it. Maybe I once thought…”
″Really?” My voice softened with amazement. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
″It was obvious the interest was only one-sided.”
“But you still should have said something. When was this? You should have told me! I could have…” I trailed off. Could I have developed feelings for Cooper? It was always the friendship that attracted me to him, not anything physical. I’d always thought he was very attractive, but for me, the magical chemistry was never there, not like it had been with J.B. If Morgan were right and Cooper had been in love with me, it had probably been when I first met J.B. when I was obviously interested in him. Poor Cooper.
″You could have fallen for me,” Cooper finished my sentence. “Sorry, but I wasn’t about to take that chance. Either it was there, or it wasn’t. It was for me—at one time. Not now,” he assured me. “But it wasn’t for you. I’m okay with how things turned out.”
″Because you have Emma,” I said uncertainly.
″Even if I didn’t, I would have gotten over you. Just because you want to keep your past loves dangling doesn’t mean I do. It was bad enough with you hanging around all the time, insisting that I feed you.”
″That’s so mean,” I gasped, when his wide grin told me he was teasing.
″Besides,” he began with another wicked grin, “who knows what would have happened with us? You might have turned me gay, too.”
With an enormous shove, I pushed him off the bed. He was still laughing as he hit the floor.