Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
COOPER
Evan
Why did a cherry slushie and a bag of bagels just appear at my front door?
Me
Because your blood pressure cuff was delivered yesterday.
Evan
So what?
Me
I thought you might need a little extra incentive to actually unpack it and use it for the first time. Take your blood pressure; get a treat.
Evan
A treat in the form of a cherry slushie?
Me
Your stomach likes cold things and cherry flavored things. Figured a cherry slushie might work.
Evan
How do you know I won’t just drink the slushie and keep the blood pressure cuff in the box?
Me
Because you’re going to take a picture of the readout and send it to me, so I’ll know. If you don’t send a picture, I’m never making you bagels again, and I’m dumping all the phone logs in the discovery boxes on you for the next month.
And if you don’t do the blood pressure thing fast enough, the slushie will melt. No one likes a melted slushie.
Evan
I hate you.
Me
Time’s ticking, Rhodes.
Evan
I can’t breathe.
Me
Call me on video. We can do it together.
Evan
I just got out of the shower.
Me
Love that for me.
Evan
No.
Me
Take your blood pressure, Rhodes, or I’ll come over and do it for you. I know where you live.
Evan
Fuck, fine. I’m an accomplished litigator. I can chew out an opposing counsel without even blinking. For sure I can take my blood pressure, right?
Me
You’re a badass, Rhodes. Do the damn thing.
Evan
[picture attached of readout on blood pressure monitor]
It’s high, but not as high as it was at the doctor’s office.
Me
Good girl.
Evan
It was hotter when you said that to me two months ago while you were taking off your pants.
Me
I don’t know…I think bribing my baby mama to take her blood pressure is pretty hot.
Evan
Oh my god, gross. If you ever say baby mama again, I’ll cut off your balls to make sure you can never impregnate another woman for the rest of your life.
Me
Honestly, I would deserve it. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever said. I want to banish that phrase from everyone’s vocabulary.
What are your plans today?
Evan
I’m expected to attend my parents’ fancy Thanksgiving situation where I will, no doubt, have to defend my choice to be a lawyer at least twice and will have to listen to my parents carry on about how my brother was robbed of the World Series title to which he was entitled.
And I’ll have to do it all without even one single alcoholic beverage.
At least Chris and Rio will be there too.
Me
Have you told your parents?
Evan
About what?
Me
Seriously?
Evan
Ugh, no. I’m putting that off as long as possible. My parents aren’t nearly as cool as yours. They’re actually kind of awful. I bet your Thanksgivings are a wholesome delight.
Me
I don’t know if I would say they’re wholesome.
At least one of my brothers will be making out with his girl in the corner at any given time.
My grandmother will make it her mission to get everyone as drunk as possible and make veiled predictions for all of our futures.
And my mom will complain about how no one is helping her in the kitchen and tell us she raised us better than that.
Evan
So, help her in the kitchen. You make bagels from scratch for fuck’s sake. I’m sure you can handle mashed potatoes.
Me
So…there’s this thing.
Evan
What thing?
Me
It’s going to sound super weird.
Evan
Weirder than you getting me pregnant after a one-night stand in a conference room?
Me
Maybe?
My family thinks I can’t cook.
Evan
Why do they think that?
Me
Because I made them think that.
Evan
When?
Me
About twenty-three years ago.
Evan
I need more information.
Me
It’s really a better story in person.
Evan
Tomorrow. First thing. My office. Bring bagels.
Me
Like a date?
Evan
No, not like a fucking date.
Me
How first thing are we talking about? So first thing that you’re still doing whatever it is you do in your pajamas with a candle burning before anyone else gets in?
Evan
Okay, let’s make a deal. Because you sent me a cherry slushie, which is actually the best thing I’ve ever tasted, if you tell me why your whole family thinks you can’t cook when you can actually make bagels from scratch, I’ll tell you what I do in my pajamas at five in the morning.
Me
Deal.
Evan
Happy Thanksgiving, Cooper.
Me
Happy Thanksgiving, Rhodes.
I put my phone down and sit back on the couch, my eyes still fixed on the text thread.
For some reason, I hate the idea that she’s spending Thanksgiving with her parents, who are obviously not her favorite people, as much as I like the fact that the snacks I sent helped her get through her first time using the at-home blood pressure cuff.
I kind of wish I was there in person to help her, and I’m not sure what to think about that.
In the couple of weeks since the doctor’s appointment, we’ve settled into something resembling a routine.
Evan gets to work at ungodly early hours, and I sometimes get there early enough to earn a dirty look and a slammed door in my face when I catch a glimpse of her still in her pajamas doing whatever mysterious work she does before seven a.m. I bring her a bagel and seltzers if she’s running low and meet her outside the bathroom with Jolly Ranchers when she gets sick.
We’ve managed to work together with the same low-level animosity and competition that has always been the hallmark of our working relationship, but now it’s laced through with something else.
Some kind of awareness of our current situation that shows up in glances that last just a little too long, a brush of hands, a kind of knowing that hums between us as we go about our days.
And then there are the texts.
We text constantly. First thing in the morning, during the day when we’re listening to Austin drone on about something ridiculous in a meeting, and late at night when we should probably be sleeping.
It started as a way for me to check on her when I thought just showing up at her apartment at random times would be weird, and it’s turned into a long thread of messages about nothing and everything.
Things we would never say in person. Stories we would never tell.
Two people, tied together by situation and circumstance, saying to each other This is me.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it. Didn’t like her.
I’m not in the business of lying to myself.
It’s some fucked up kind of whiplash to go from This person is making my life a living hell to I think I kind of like her, and it’s messing with my head, maybe even more than the fact that, in about six months, I’m going to be a parent.
I’ve been so focused on making sure Evan has everything she needs that I haven’t spent much time thinking about the baby of it all. No need to rush that particular train.
At the knock on my apartment door, I push myself up off the couch, wondering who it could possibly be.
Everyone who lives in this brownstone—meaning my brothers, Jo, Amelia, and Hannah—would just walk in.
My parents are at their house getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner, and my grandma who lives next door texted all of us earlier that she was having Thanksgiving brunch with my grandfather and not to bother her.
My grandfather who has been dead for six years.
It says a whole lot about my family that not one single person questioned it.
When I pull open the door, a guy who can’t be more than twenty is standing there, alone, slim cardboard box in his hand. “Are you Cooper Wyles?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah, who are you?”
He shoves the box in my hand, mutters “Happy Thanksgiving,” and without another word, turns and trots down the stairs and straight out the front door of the brownstone.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, staring down at the package.
There’s no address and no return label, so obviously I take a minute to contemplate the possibility that I’m holding a bomb or something.
But I don’t do criminal law, and I do have a sister-in-law who loves sending weird presents when the mood strikes even though she lives right upstairs, so whatever this is, it’s probably from her.
Opening the flap on the box, I pull out a long black cylinder with a loop of ribbon hanging out of the plastic top, obviously meant for opening the thing.
Dropping the box on the table by the door, I tug the loop.
When it doesn’t budge, I give it a hard yank, and a deafening pop echoes through my apartment as the plastic top explodes off and a spring comes shooting out of the cylinder in a cloud of confetti and rainbow glitter.
“What the fuck?” I yelp, blinking sparkles from my field of vision. Glancing down at the cylinder still in my hand, I see a message written on the flat top of the spring. Squinting through the glitter that is definitely in my eyes, I can just made out the words.
Congratulations on accidentally impregnating your worst enemy. Your super sperm is to be commended.
“I’m going to kill them,” I mumble, because this has my older brothers written all over it.
Shaking my head, a waterfall of glitter and confetti comes raining down onto my arms, my clothes, and the floor, and I notice for the first time that the confetti is penis shaped.
I’m covered in rainbow glitter and a million tiny pink dicks.
“You guy are dead!” I bellow out into the stairwell, and I’m answered by a chorus of hysterical laughter as all three of my brothers come bursting into my apartment.
“You look really good in sparkles, Coop,” Noah manages, laughing so hard tears are streaming down his face.
“Really brings out your eyes.” Jordan’s shoulders shake with laughter as he looks me up and down and then leans out my front door to yell up the stairs. “Jo Jo, get down here! You’re not gonna want to miss this!”