5. Spring Break #2
Anyway, when I woke up again, it was maybe one or two in the morning.
The whole house was quiet, with just the sound of the ocean outside.
It took me a few minutes to remember what had happened earlier—how I’d embarrassed myself at dinner and Mr. Cooper had helped me upstairs to my room.
How Jayne had swung by, just to make sure I knew how tragic I was, having to be helped to bed by her dad.
And my less drunken self definitely clocked the innuendo in her voice and the gravity of her accusation, which was just… no.
For a minute, I wasn’t sure what had woken me up. But then my phone pinged again, and I realized I’d forgotten to put it on silent before I’d passed out. I checked it and saw a new text from Ben. In fact, I had about six new texts from Ben.
Seriously, Stratton. What the hell is going on down there? Why aren’t you answering?
I can’t imagine what he thought was happening, but based on the last five texts, it seemed like Ben had decided Sadie was out at the clubs, going absolutely crazy with some oiled-up Florida boys.
Part of me—a big part, actually—wanted to let him just go on believing that.
But I also knew that if I let it go, Sadie was going to get a bunch of shit from him the next morning, and it would probably ruin the entire day.
All good here, dude. Chill. Your priority spot as the hottest guy in Sadie’s life is safe.
I hit send, rolled over, and closed my eyes. Hopefully, that was enough to get him to leave me alone. My phone pinged again.
So you think I’m hot, huh? ;)
See, what I should have done at that point was let it go. Not even responded. But the text was just there. Open-ended. Begging for a response, like a challenge. And I could never say no to a challenge.
That’s how it started. Just texting, me and Ben.
I don’t think he even meant anything by his response.
Just him being an asshole. But I took it, and I ran with it.
Just to see if I could. Just to see if I could really be a Cooper.
And so we started talking. And we kept talking.
But that’s all it was, all it ever would have been.
I would have never taken it so far… until the moment I did.
But that’s not what this was about. It’s just important to know why I was still awake an hour later. Why I was up and decided I was thirsty.
I got out of bed, mostly just to keep myself from spiraling, and went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
In the morning I’d have to apologize to everyone for my behavior, but it wasn’t like this was the first time someone had gotten a little too buzzed on a Cooper family vacation, so I wasn’t stressed about it.
What stressed me out more was the part when Mr. Cooper had taken me up to bed and what Jayne had said about it.
Did Carly and Sadie think I was obsessed with Steven too?
The whole thing made me feel so guilty. The weird part was that I probably should have felt guilty about my flirty texts with Ben, not a legitimately innocent interaction with Steven.
But Jayne could do that—get a thought stuck in your head, even when you knew it had no business being there.
It was in the kitchen that I first heard the voices.
They were muffled, and I realized that Steven and Carly were sitting outside on the steps of the deck that led down to the ocean.
Whatever they were talking about, it was clearly intense.
For a second I wondered if Steven had told her that something had happened upstairs earlier.
That I had behaved inappropriately. But then I realized how stupid that was.
Nothing had happened. No matter what Jayne had tried to imply to mess with my head.
My curiosity got the better of me. Since they clearly hadn’t seen me and I was still drunk enough to think eavesdropping was a good idea, I decided to get closer. One of the windows facing the deck was still open a little bit, and I crouched down next to it.
“This is too much, Steven. You can’t even spend one week away with your family without texting… sorry, what’s the name of the latest sidepiece? It’s so hard to keep track.”
I would have laughed out loud at the idea of perfect Carly Cooper using a term like “sidepiece,” but the tone of her voice let me know that obviously this wasn’t a laughing matter. I’d never heard her sound so bitter.
“I told you, she’s the one who texted me,” Steven said quietly.
“Oh, so that makes it better? Is that the rule you’ve come up with? It’s okay if they make the first move?”
“No, no, of course not. That’s not what I’m saying. And no one even made a move! You’re being paranoid. She’s just a girl from the office. Hell, you met her at the Christmas party last year! She was texting about a work issue. It was nothing.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. Steven Cooper, cheating on his wife? Carly must have this wrong. But at the same time… Steven didn’t sound convincing. Not even a little bit. He sounded like a defensive asshole who’d just gotten caught cheating and was trying and failing to cover it up.
“I saw the picture she sent you,” Carly said.
Oh shit. This was really happening.
It was quiet for so long that I wondered if one of them had just gotten up and walked away, but I didn’t want to glance out the window to check. Then, finally, Carly spoke again.
“Look, I thought we had an understanding.” Her voice had changed. It sounded tired now, but resolved. I guess it sounded like the voice of a woman whose husband had nothing to say when she told him she knew the truth.
“You agreed to be discreet,” she continued.
“You agreed that your family would still come first. And in exchange, I agreed to look the other way. And for the record, it’s pretty damn hard to look the other way when you are quite literally parading this in front of my face.
When you’re bringing it from the office into the house.
And then we go on vacation, and you bring it from the house onto your phone for anyone in this house to see if they happen to glance over your shoulder at the wrong minute.
You cannot disrespect me and your daughters this way.
I won’t allow it. You do what you want on your own time, Steve.
You can sleep with every pretty young woman who walks through your door, asking for an internship, who is foolish enough to believe you when you say you’ve—what was it you said with the last one?
Oh, right, that you’ve ‘never felt this way before.’ You can have every single one of them if you want.
See if I care. See if I will walk away from this marriage, because I won’t.
But you will not bring your dirty habits anywhere near this family. Do you understand me?”
Steven sighed. Even though I couldn’t make out his expression from where I was, I would bet anything that he was rolling his eyes—at least on the inside. And that he probably thought Carly was somehow the unreasonable one here.
What a bastard.
“Understood,” he said finally, and Carly nodded. I watched as the shadow of her silhouette stood up, and she squared her shoulders like someone with nothing left to do but accept their reality and learn how to live within it.
“And tomorrow,” she said, forcing a normal voice, “we’re going to have a beach day.
And it’ll be a tech-free day for you, to set a good example for the girls.
They’re all glued to those phones. It will be good for them to see that even the great, all-powerful, all-important, ever-perfect Steven Cooper can exist without his. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear.”
I crept back upstairs before they came back inside, my heart breaking for Carly with every step.