34. Cooper
34
Cooper
I ’m with Alice: I like Leah Bradford. A lot.
I might like Leah more than I’ve ever liked another woman in my entire life. She’s different than other women I’ve dated. She’s driven, passionate, and real.
I’m not gonna lie, I had a lot of fun in college. I focused on the degree and dating. I never wanted anything serious. I wanted to get my degree, get a job at a big law firm, and in all my not-so-spare time, have fun.
I did.
I never had a girlfriend—not really. I had girlfriends , plural. Always fun, always casual.
But nothing inside of me feels casual about Leah.
In fact, at times, I feel urgent.
I graduated from school.
I got the big, fancy job.
None of that feels important right now. If Leah isn’t happy, then I’ve failed in life. Levi would call me dramatic—and he might be right. But this is what my head is saying. Or maybe it’s my heart .
I failed her once in high school, and I don’t ever plan to do it again. I want Leah to be happy. Always. And I just might want a miracle too—because I want her to see herself with me. I want her to believe that I’m someone who could make her happy.
In the sixty seconds I’ve been contemplating life, my brain has formed a plan—a good one. At least, I hope it’s good and not a product of my ever-growing insanity.
“Do you mind checking on Lula?” I say to Leah. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Sure.” Leah nods. Her dark wavy hair rains down her back, while her sweet scent wafts through my nostrils, all spurring on my not-so-sane plan.
Alice presses one hand to her hip and tilts her gaze up to me. “What’s up?”
Sitting at the kitchen table, I reach out a hand for my niece and tug that ten-year-old over to me. “I need some help.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you up for a challenge?”
“I’m always up for a challenge. I’m the best at challenges. You know that.” She glares, annoyed I’d ever suggest otherwise.
“I do. But can you keep a secret?”
Alice rolls her eyes. “Do you have to ask?”
“Right. Okay, let me make this clear. I have a secret. I like Leah.”
“Like… you like like her?”
“Yep.”
“I knew it! Wait, do you love-like her?” Alice whispers, smacking her palms flat on Mom’s kitchen table.
“Let’s stick with like like for right now. Okay?”
She wrinkles her button nose. “Fine. What can I do? ”
I clench my jaw and flick one glance at the empty doorway Leah walked through sixty seconds ago. “I like her . But I’m not so sure she likes me yet. She may need some convincing. Secretly.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle Coop. My lips are sealed.”
Ten minutes later, we stand around the table, Mom’s heart-shaped cookies spread across the top. Lula has officially eaten more icing than she’s frosted any cookie with. And Alice is trying out tips from Leah.
Clearing her throat, my niece looks around the table. “After cookies, I’d like to watch Forever Mine .”
“Are you sure?” Mom says. York is on her hip as she helps him frost a half-eaten heart-shaped cookie. “I thought you wanted to watch Elemental or the live-action Cinderella .”
“Nope,” she says. “I have made up my mind.” Staring at me, she says, “Chick-flick, grandma. I’m in the mood for something romantic .”
Mom blinks. “Okay.”
“Leah, can you show me those dots again? How do you make frosting do that?”
“Sure,” Leah says. Her long hair is pulled back at her neck. She leans over her heart cookie, giving Alice space to watch, and slowly pipes three small dots onto her cookie. That woman can pipe faster than a winning racehorse at the Kentucky Derby, but she slows down her movements, letting Alice study.
“Can you move my hand?” Alice asks.
“Oh. Sure.” Standing behind Alice, she holds her by the wrist and helps her dot her cookie. “That’s better,” she says as Alice pipes three, then four dots onto her pink heart.
“So much better,” Alice agrees. “You should probably show Uncle Coop because his dots look like splattered raindrops rather than buttons. He does not have the baker’s touch.”
Leah chuckles. “I’ve learned recently that icing isn’t your uncle’s strong suit.”
“You are one hundred percent accurate, Leah. So, help the man out.”
Leah glances up at me, confused amusement in her eyes.
“I’m always happy to learn,” I tell her.
“Sure, just hold your bag at a ninety-degree angle. Make sure you’re applying steady pressure and?—”
“Nope. He’s waaaaaay worse than me, Leah. You’re gonna have to show him. Just like you showed me.”
I give my niece a pointed stare. I’m going for subtle help. Subtle . But then, I did ask a ten-year-old to aid my love life. I’ve created my own monster. I am Frankenstein.
Then again, why throw away the opportunity? “She’s right. I’m terrible at this.”
“Um. Okay,” Leah says, glancing first at Alice, then Mom, and lastly me. She stands next to me, placing her fingers over mine and shifting into position.
She adjusts my hand, then edges herself closer to my side. Her cheek brushes my arm as she peers down at the cookie we decorate together. “Good,” she says.
“It’s like a freckle, not a rain splatter,” Alice tells me.
“Right,” I say, but the only thing I can focus on is the woman next to me.
“She’s right. That’s a good visual, Alice. It’s like a freckle. You can also try this,” Leah says, taking the piping bag from my hands. She peers up at me and I look down at her. And then the woman is piping on my face. Three small dots on my cheek. “See? Freckle.” Leah grins, her red lips wide and joyful, her long lashes batting with her giggle.
Mom chuckles and Alice busts up. Then, Lula takes her plastic spoon and bowl of frosting and smears one long smear across her own nose and cheek. Her brown curls bob with her rolling laughter.
“Lula.” Mom laughs.
“Oh.” Leah drops the icing bag. “My fault. I’m sorry!”
“It’s no problem. We like those sweet freckles. Don’t we?” I pick up my niece. “Come on, Lulabelle. Let’s go clean up, huh?” Lula’s chubby fist is tight around the spoon in her hand. She smiles, then happily smears icing over my cheek. “Delicious,” I tell her in my best Cookie Monster voice. I nibble a little of the icing from her chin and lightly brush my beard over her cheek.
Lula squeals with delight, making our audience laugh.
I bounce her all the way down the hall and into the bathroom. Setting her on the sink, I drench a washcloth beneath a stream of water.
“Muncle Poop is messy,” Lula says.
“Lulabelle is messy too,” I tell her, swiping a finger of frosting from her cheek and plunging it into my mouth. Lula follows my lead, wiping at the frosting on my face.
“Excuse me, what’s going on?” Mom says, appearing in the open bathroom doorway.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Leah and Alice—what was that?”
“You know Alice,” I say, not mentioning that maybe there were some ulterior motives to Alice’s request for Leah to teach me like she taught her. It was smart—maybe not subtle, but smart. The girl loves being the star of a good plan.
“I do,” Mom says. “And I’m pretty sure that was only a suggestion she’d have made if encouraged.”
“ Encouraged ?” I wash more icing from Lula’s cheek.
“Hey!” Alice’s head pokes into the bathroom. “What’s going on back here? The woman is getting suspicious. Do you want this plan to fall to bits?”
“Plan?” Mom says. “What’s going on, Alice Jasmine?”
She sighs as if Mom has really twisted her arm. “Uncle Coop has the hots for Leah, but she is all cooled off. He needs her to like him, so I’m helping.”
“Hey!” I say, too loudly for our secret plans.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, man. We need Grandma’s help.”
“What happened to your lips being sealed?”
“I unsealed them,” she tells me. “For the emergency situation.”
“Cooper,” Mom says. “You like Leah?”
I clear my throat. “I do.”
“You’re smart and handsome and perfectly wonderful. You do not need a scheme to get the girl to like you back.” My mother sees zero flaws in all of her children. Either that, or she just adores our flaws as much as she adores our gifts. Or more likely—I’m simply her favorite.
“She’s guarded. We have a rocky past.”
“High school does not count,” Mom says, her tone more defensive than I’d like it to be.
“I think she might have some feelings for me.”
She seemed to the other night, that’s for sure. Leah isn’t the kind of person to fool around with feelings.
“But she’s hesitant.”
“I’m going back out there,” Alice says, as if she were going off to war. “You two hurry up.” She squeezes between Mom and the bathroom doorway, sneaking out and skipping to the kitchen.
“Sweetheart,” Mom says, pulling the washcloth from my hands. She steps in front of me, taking my place in front of Lula. She wipes the little girl’s face with the wet rag, her eyes on my niece but her words for me. “You really like her?”
“I do. She’s different… and special. And I like how I feel when I’m around her.”
“You know, I’m not as unaware as you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t been quite the same since you moved back home. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful you chose a small-town law office and Coeur d’Alene, but you gave up a lot to be here, Coop. I fear it’s made you unhappy.”
“I haven’t given anything up. I’m not unhappy,” I tell her, realizing it’s true at the same moment I say the words. I’ve been brought down a notch or six. I’ve learned things the hard way. I got what I wanted, and I lost it.
But that doesn’t mean I have to be lost. I’m rebuilding. I’m figuring things out. And if I hadn’t come home, I wouldn’t have had this time with my family. I wouldn’t be able to support Miles at all. I wouldn’t have reconnected with Leah.
“I hope not.” Mom sighs. “She does make you smile.”
“You make me smile too. So does Alice. I’m happy to be home, Mom.”
She lifts her rag to my face and wipes at the frosting on my chin. “I’m glad. And if Leah makes you feel good, then you probably need to do more than sic your ten-year-old niece on her.”
I snicker. “I have. She thinks maybe we’d be better as friends. She spent a lot of time disliking me. We’re just mending that now, and she thinks romance might ruin it.”
“It sounds like she already likes you.”
“Yeah?”
“And that she’s afraid.” Mom puts a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know her well. But as a woman, I can see why she’d be anxious. Plus, you’re you, Coop.” She pats my cheek. “You are well-loved—by everyone. But you don’t always reciprocate those strong feelings. If you’re being proactive about this girl, you’re feeling things.”
I swallow. “I am.” It’s scary to admit it—especially to my mother. She sees me so clearly as it is. This is me giving her extra-shine window wash on those Cooper Bailey windows.
“Then she should know. What if you just asked her out?” Mom says.
“What if she says no? She already told me we should just stay friends.”
“Logic and the heart don’t always agree. Just think about it. Besides, there are far worse things than being told no—like never having tried.” Mom picks up my niece and rubs her hand over Lula’s back. “Think about it, sweetheart.” She leaves me standing in front of the mirror, frosting still on my face and her words in my head.
Ask her out? It cannot be that simple. Not after she said we should just be friends.
I wipe the icing from my cheek and peer at myself in the mirror.
I’m the same Cooper I’ve always been, and yet I’m not. I’ve changed and grown. That’s not a bad thing. Just a fact. Just time and life. Maybe Leah just needs time.
Mom’s right. Not trying, no chance at all with Leah, sounds much worse than being told no.
Muffled voices become clearer as I walk out to the kitchen. I walk through the open doorway from the hall to hear Alice say, “And that’s how Cooper got his name.”
“What—no. Alice .” I turn to Mom—she’s the adult here. “You let her tell that story?”
“She was in the middle of it when I came out,” Mom says as if this is an excuse to let her finish.
Leah’s brows pull together, and she looks at me with real sympathy in her eyes. “The dog?” She pinches her lips, stifling a laugh and swallowing. “You were named after the dog?”
“He truly was the sweetest dog. You’d have to have met ol’ Coop.” Mom shakes her head, her eyes nostalgic. “But he was the best, and I loved him dearly.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” Leah says, and this time she can’t hold back her laughter.
“You have a nice laugh,” Alice tells her.
Leah looks at my niece, and it stirs something in my gut. Coco would call it butterflies. Levi would call it indigestion.
“Thank you,” Leah says.
“And your hair is pretty.” Alice sets her icing knife on the counter and runs a hand down the long length of Leah’s wavy coffee-brown hair.
“Thanks,” Leah says, finishing the last dot on her cookie. “I like yours too.” She sets her piping bag down next to Alice’s knife. “You must have a dozen colors of blondes in your hair.”
Alice giggles. “I do.”
“Jude is so dark,” Leah says.
“My mom is blonde,” Alice says. “Not Coco. Coco and I both have two moms. It’s one of all kinds of things we have in common. We both like dogs and riding horses, too.”
“That’s nice.”
Mom holds York on her hip while icing a cookie. She’s focused on her work, not even watching the conversation take place. But I’m guessing my mother can hold a baby, frost a cookie, and observe this interaction. I can’t frost or move or take my eyes off Leah.
Alice is one of the most important people in my life, and watching Leah take time for her only makes the feelings and attraction I have for Leah grow.
“How many moms do you have?”
“Just one,” Leah says, and she and Alice giggle. “But I did have very special grandparents. I called them Abuela and Abuelo.”
“Why?”
“Because Abuelo is the Spanish word for grandfather. And Abuela means grandmother. They are my Puerto Rican grandparents. We used to bake together all the time.”
Alice grins. “Like me and Grandma Lucy.”
“Yeah. Abuelo was my best friend.” Leah sniffs, but there’s still a smile on her face.
“Like me and Uncle Coop.”
Leah presses her lips together, and her green eyes lift to mine. I’m watching her—no hiding it now. The skin around her eyes creases with her smile. “Yeah. Like you and your uncle Coop.”