CHAPTER TEN Mike
Twelve Years Ago
Cooper began to fill out and catch up to me in the size department the year we turned sixteen.
It was that summer on our birthdays that I began to notice how beautiful he’d become as he physically matured.
Every time I felt a surge of emotion for him that I didn’t understand, I’d tamp it down deep out of confusion.
“Street legal, buddy,” he said, waving his temporary paper license in my face.
I grabbed it from him and stared at his handsome face in the black and white picture on the thin paper. “Yikes,” I said. “Sorry the pic turned out so bad, dude.”
Cooper snatched it back and stared at his image before looking at me. “The pic’s not good, is it, Mikey?” he asked, looking sad. “Now I gotta show this for six more years and be embarrassed.”
“Five,” I reminded him. “We get new ones at twenty-one, bro.”
“Shoot,” he responded. Typical Coop. Too sweet to swear much. “Lemme see yours,” he said.
I handed it to him and watched as he studied my image.
He looked at me and smiled. “Handsome as usual, Mikey. I wish mine looked this good.”
In my eyes Cooper was good looking for a guy.
In fact, I’d begun to see him as a beautiful boy.
Different than I was in that regard. I had a squarer jaw with more masculine features.
I also had that dimple in my chin that Coop said was like a small ass crack even though he also said it made me look super sexy.
“I think yours is good actually,” I stated. Which I honestly did but had hesitated to admit to him that he always looked so damn sweet and innocent in pictures.
Cooper was blond and blue eyed like me with a smaller frame.
Even though he was about three inches shorter, he was muscular because we were both active in sports and exercise.
His face was where we differed. He had high cheekbones and delicate features that caused him to appear less manly.
His soft features defied the naturally athletic boy he really was.
Shaggy, blond, beach-bum hair framed a face with soft flawless skin that continued over his entire body.
Coop had a muscular build but nature had given him a pretty face.
A face that caused a heat to stir inside, a face I wanted to touch, a boy I wanted to protect out of fear he was too gentle to protect his own self.
“You sure the picture is okay?” he asked, startling me out of my daydream because he was simply too beautiful to look at.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I was just pickin’ on ya. You know you always look terrific in pictures,” I reminded him because he did.
Both of our folks sat across the room in the DMV where they waited for us. I noticed that they smiled and whispered to each other.
“Let’s go show the folks,” Coop said, laughing and pointing out the foursome that were as tight as Coop and I were.
“Look at my dad,” I whispered, cupping my mouth and leaning into Coop. I could see Dad was a minute from tears. He was a sensitive soul like Mom, but less weird about the world. “He’s gonna hug the shit outta both of us, Coop,” I added. “Consider yourself warned.”
The moms hugged each other as we approached and commented on how their boys were growing up too fast. The dads stood side by side, bobbing their heads in unison like those goofy dogs you sit on a dashboard
“Get it over with, people,” I urged, opening my arms. “Your boys are men now,” I added, tugging Cooper toward me as we got crushed in a group hug.
“We’ll get you a used car,” Dad said, pulling me aside and resting his hands on my shoulders after the hugs ended.
“Possibly when you’re seventeen after you show Mom and me you can be responsible enough to have your own.
” He beamed at me and pulled me in for another hug.
“I’ll teach you how to tune it up and change your own oil too,” he spoke into my ear, squeezing me one more time before he pulled back, a tear in his eyes as usual.
Dad died the following summer, just before my seventeenth birthday.