Chapter 7 #2
Nico’s eyes especially. He watched as his coach approached the podium and placed a lowball glass with nothing remaining in it other than ice.
Cooper gripped both ends of the wooden podium with his big hands.
Cooper’s eyes searched the crowd, and even from a distance, Nico noticed there was a glisten.
“I’m nervous,” Matteo whispered to Nico. “Callahan does not like public speaking.”
Nico turned to his teammate with an arched brow. “I never would have guessed.”
“There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said by better orators than me,” Cooper said. “I’m not going to stand here today and say something poetic. In fact, I might say something dumb. I have a tendency to do that as many of you are aware, which is why sometimes I don’t talk at all.”
Echoes of restrained laughter filled the room.
“When I first met Luke, we were two dumb college kids with the same dream. The last time I saw Luke, we were two dumb football players with that same dream, a dream that was cut short.”
Nico turned to Matteo beside him. “You told me Callahan was distant, that you could never quite reach him.”
“I don’t recall saying that,” Matteo said with a shake of his head, all the while his eyes remained fixed on Cooper. “It sounds like something I would say, though.”
“What did you mean?”
Matteo shrugged. “He’s not a social butterfly. Doesn’t have the battery for it.”
Nico could tell Matteo was able to multi-task by listening to both Cooper’s speech and Nico, but Nico himself was too focused on getting answers from his friend. Cooper’s speech faded into the background.
“What was Luke like?”
Matteo turned to him. “The exact opposite. Loved everyone and everyone loved him. Callahan was the muscle of the team and Luke was the heart. The two of them played together in college and miraculously got drafted onto the same team. That was his best friend. He’d die for him, but the rest of us?
We were just teammates. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad dude. ”
“He’s kind of a dick,” Nico pointed out a thought that he instantly wished remained in his head.
“That’s because he’s not trying to be your friend.”
“What?”
Does he know?
Matteo narrowed his eyes at Nico. “He’s your coach.”
“Right, right.” Nico breathed a sigh of relief, but then his thoughts… Elsewhere. “He seems to be in great physical shape. Do you think I should be worried about him stealing my job?”
“If you asked me that question six weeks ago, I would’ve said you should absolutely be terrified.” Matteo patted Nico on the shoulder with a smile. “Playing the way you’ve been playing the last few weeks? I think your position is pretty damn safe.”
“Yeah…”
Soft music played overhead as couples scattered around the dancefloor.
Cooper and Stassi inched toward each other and found an opening amongst the crowd.
He took her by one hand and pulled her close to him.
The heat of the bourbon boiled in his gut, giving him the courage to finally face her.
Maybe his mother was right about something.
Maybe he should have started drinking the hard shit a long time ago.
“Time for our obligatory dance, I suppose,” he said.
“You make it sound painful.”
Cooper took hold of her waist with one hand and the two of them turned in slow circles. “Permission to be honest?”
“Permission granted.”
Cooper tongued the inside of his cheek, contemplating how to breach the subject. She came to a stop, signaling she was tired of waiting.
“You’ve been distant,” Cooper said.
“And you’ve been hiding from the world.” She massaged his shoulder with one hand before picking back up the slow pace of the dance. “We just grieve differently.”
“I can’t shake this feeling that…” He gritted his teeth, knowing he couldn’t say the words. “I don’t know.”
She nodded silently. “You know I don’t blame you, right?
That was it. That was the thing on his mind.
The thing that’d been on his mind since the accident.
He wasn’t drinking, wasn’t doing drugs. It was just an accident on a slick winter road.
Stassi was a woman of her word. She meant what she said.
She’d finally said the words he so desperately needed to hear, and he believed her. But it wasn’t enough.
“Wish I could say the same,” he said softly, the pangs of guilt riding the wave of the words coming out of his mouth.
She gripped his shoulder tighter. “Things are different without him here and I know I haven’t been the best friend or the best girlfriend to you.”
“Like you said, we grieve in our own ways.”
As they continued to dance, the faces in the crowd pulled to and from focus. But when his eyes met Nico’s, standing over at the bar with a beer in hand, he looked a little too long.
Stassi’s hand gently caressed the side of his cheek, guiding his gaze back to her. “How long has it been?”
He thought about lying, because again… the betrayal. Not of Stassi, but rather a ghost. Instead, he told the truth. “A few weeks.”
The last time was in the plane bathroom with Nico.
Something that shouldn’t have happened.
Something that shouldn’t happen again, and yet it’s all he could think about.
“Who?” Stassi’s eyes searched his, as if she was trying to pull the answer from his very soul. “It’s someone in this room, isn’t it?”
“You know that’s not how this works.”
She nodded before a confession of her own, “I met a guy in LA.”
“Oh?” Cooper couldn’t hide his curiosity. “What’s his name?’
“Not how this works.”
“Touche,” he said with a chuckle.
“He’s gorgeous,” she continued. “He’s funny, and smart. Everything a normal girl dreams of.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because he’s not you. He’s not this.” She pushed her body against his and the two melted into each other.
It had always been a perfect fit, a perfect match.
“You once said this thing between us was a cage, and you asked how long I could live in it with you.” She stared into his eyes.
“I didn’t have an answer then, but you’re my best friend in this world.
I can live in this cage forever with you. ”
His eyes chased Nico on the opposite side of the room. He couldn’t look at her, not like this. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“I’m Stassi fucking Davies. Have you ever known me to do something I didn’t want to do? I’m a spoiled, rich girl. I always get what I want, and this is exactly what I want.” She pulled him by the back of his head, down to meet her where she stood, and kissed him softly. “So, drop it.”
“Consider it dropped.”
And they continued to dance in silence, the world around them none the wiser.
It’d stay that way forever, because it had to.
“Good to see you,” Nico said to Natalie, his younger sister and guest for the evening. She was dressed in a rented black gown he had acquired for her, the sheer arms lined with glistening stones. “I was beginning to think you ran away.”
“Trust me, I considered it.” She reached for two shots of tequila and pushed one to Nico. “Unfortunately, I was accosted by some daddy-type guy out on the terrace.”
“I hope you were well compensated for your time,” Nico laughed.
“Oh, he promised me the world,” she swooned as she raised her glass. “All I have to do is suck his dick once or twice a week. That was the implication.”
“When do you start?” Nico laughed, for which he earned a punch against his chest. “Cheers to horny old men.”
The two glasses clinked together, a dollop of tequila splashing against the wooden bar. In unison, they swallowed the shots whole. Nico immediately bit into a slice of lime while Natalie tossed hers into the empty glass.
Nico grimaced while his sister smiled. “You’re a freak of nature.”
“While you were waking up at six in the morning every morning for training, I was recovering from a long night’s bender.” She shrugged. “We’re just built differently.”
Nico watched Cooper make the rounds behind Natalie, schmoozing with donors. Cooper wore a smile when face-to-face, but that smile would dissolve the second he turned around. It was a pattern Nico noticed rather quickly, not that he was watching the other man all night.
Nico turned to his sister, for no other reason than to find a way to distract himself from what he couldn’t have. It’d been three weeks since the mile-high shenanigans and all advances since then had been rebuffed. All work. No play.
“How’s dad?” he asked.
“Doing dad things.” Natalie laughed, but then her face drew something more serious. “Why don’t you ever ask about Elon?”
The name still stopped Nico’s heart every time he heard it. It was easier to forget when he was hundreds of miles away, living in Columbus. He motioned for the bartender with two fingers, signaling another round of shots.
“What’s there to ask?” He shrugged it off. “If something changed, like waking the hell up, I’m sure someone would call.”
The bartender poured two more shots and each of the siblings took one in hand.
Nico raised his glass first. “Cheers to our dearly departed brother who’s still here.”
He threw back his head and downed the shot, the tequila stinging the back of his throat. This time, he forewent the lime as a show of bravery. Yet, he still grimaced, exhaling between gritted teeth. “Next time you see him, let him know I’m going to finish this.
She thumbed over his cheek and smiled. “He’d be so proud of you.”
“I think we have two entirely different memories of our brother.”
“He was an asshole,” she pointed out, and points to her for correctly assessing the reality.
So often when something tragic happened to someone, people glossed over all the bad parts. Nico wasn’t like that and sometimes, he hated himself for it.
“Maybe not so different,” he said.
“But he was our asshole.”
“But this…. All of this.” Nico gestured at the crowd of football players gathered in the downtown building. “This is what he wanted. This was his dream. If he were here, he’d pry it from my hands. And I’d let him take it.”
“You were born to play football.”