Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Nico slept in the car while Cooper set up the campsite. He had fallen asleep a half-hour into the drive and slept the entire three hours. It’d been the first time Cooper had driven more than a half-hour since the accident and he was in a mild state of panic the entire time.
The sun fell from the evening sky, replaced with the shadow of night.
Cooper built a teepee with kindling first, added small twigs, and lit the fire from beneath. It quickly blossomed into a proper campfire, stacked with logs purchased from a random person off the side of the road selling firewood.
He heard the car door slam shut and looked up to see Nico rubbing his eyes.
“Good morning, princess,” Cooper said with a sly grin. He rubbed his hands together, dusting off the remnants of bark. “It’s actually nighttime.”
“Did you seriously bring me camping?” Nico dragged his palms over his face and sighed. “I fucking hate camping.”
As did Cooper.
Cooper patted the back of a blue camping chair that still had the tags on it. “Come take a seat.”
Almost everything still had tags on it. He’d ordered all the essentials from the local Walmart and picked it up using a fake name.
The middle-aged woman who brought him his order didn’t seem to recognize him, and thank God because he had no idea how he was going to explain driving down to Orlando if anyone caught him.
After all, he was supposed to be prepping for the Pro Bowl game he was voted to play in the following week preceding the Super Bowl.
Nico took a seat beside the growing campfire, dropping his backpack on the ground beside him. Cooper tore off the tag, threw it into the inferno, and took a seat in a red chair on the opposite side of the fire.
A chorus of frogs croaked in the distance, a melody Cooper couldn’t translate, but he imagined they were arguing with each other.
Obnoxious, but it was better than the feeling of standing in a room with a hundred people vying for your attention.
Out there, in the middle of nowhere, Cooper found peace and he hoped Nico would find the same.
“Why did you bring me out here?” Nico asked, his voice strained, as he pulled a Knights hoodie over his head.
Because Cooper knew what it was like to lose someone and when that happened, he got none of the things he needed.
Instead, he got everything he didn’t. Thoughts and prayers from the entire fucking world, well-wishes to get better by friends and fans alike, bouquets and cards, hugs he didn’t consent to, and leadership who watched as their wallets got a whole lot smaller.
Nothing but fucking noise when all he wanted was to be left the fuck alone.
All these were things Cooper never said out loud, not even to Stassi.
“After Luke died, all I needed was silence but everyone around me wouldn’t shut the fuck up.” Cooper shifted his gaze to the fire between them. “So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to shut the fuck up.”
“You know I don’t like the silence.”
“Nobody is stopping you from talking,” Cooper said with a barely there smirk.
“If this is your best attempt at roleplaying a therapist, I don’t think you’re properly equipped.”
“I took a few psychology courses in college. I know things.”
“Do you believe in god?”
Cooper shrugged. “It’s not something I think about too often, but whenever I do think about it, I’m cursing his name so I’m going to go with an emphatic no.”
“Do you know my dad is a pastor?”
“It was in your dosier.” The only thing that wasn’t in Nico’s file was that he was bisexual, but who would’ve known?
“I don’t believe in god, either.” Nico said flatly. “I think that makes me a bad person.”
“You’re cocky, bratty, and you get on my last damn nerve sometimes, but you’re not a bad person. Trust me, I know plenty of people who are terrible. You’re nothing like them.”
Nico tongued the inside of his cheek. His eyes searched the dark forest around them. “I was pretty awful to my brother after his accident. I said some horrible things to him when he was sleeping. I’ll never know if he could hear me, and I don’t know if that comforts me or makes me even angrier.”
“You’re mad at him for leaving you.” Cooper said, and it wasn’t a question. It was a feeling he knew all too well.
“I was angry at him for so long, but I’m not angry anymore.” Nico dropped his head. “It’s a feeling that’s something worse, like every time my heart beats, it feels as if it’s being ripped in half.”
Nico leaned over the side of his chair, dug through his bag, and pulled out a bottle of pills. Cooper jumped to his feet, ripped the bottle from his hands, examined the label, and tossed the bottle into the fire.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Nico shouted as he stood, his eyes going straight to the fire as if he might make an attempt at salvaging the pills.
Cooper stared at him. “Those drugs are for anxiety, which you don’t have.”
Nico’s bottom lip curled, his voice cracking again, “I’d very much like to be sedated right now.”
The orange glow of the fire flickered over Nico’s face, and Cooper noticed tears caressing the other man’s cheek.
“Drowning your feelings right now isn’t going to help you long term.
What happens when you stop, if you stop?
You’re only delaying the inevitable.” Cooper sat back down and gestured for Nico to do the same.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to crash.
It’s better to break now when there’s nobody else around you. ”
“I think I’d like to take you up on your offer of not talking,” Nico said as he sat back down, pulling his arms tight around his body.
They both sat in silence for a while, but since Cooper’s phone was off, he had no idea how much time had passed.
The boy sitting across from him stared blankly ahead, not at Cooper, but right past him.
Cooper imagined the kind of battles going off in Nico’s mind and wanted to comfort him, but he needed to keep his promise—to shut the fuck up.
As the fire died down, Cooper got up and added another log to embers. “Are you hungry?”
Nico shook his head. Cooper was hungry himself, but he wasn’t going to set up the campfire kitchen he had purchased to make food for one. Instead, he grabbed a bag of chips and popped it open.
“Can you make me feel better?” Nico asked, his voice barely audible over the cracking of the fire.
It was a terrible time for his request too, as Cooper chomped down on a mouthful of wavy chips. He chewed as fast as he could and tongued the inside of his mouth. “I’m not going to comfort you by saying I know how you feel, because the truth is that I don’t know how you feel.”
“You’ve lost people.”
“Everyone loses people.” Cooper rolled up the bag of chips and placed them on a stone beside his chair. “We lose them in different ways and we grieve that loss differently. So no, I don’t know how you feel.”
“Empty.”
And Nico looked every bit of it, his face washed out and eyes that didn’t waver.
“Like there’s a piece of you missing?”
“I look at this life and I…” Nico stopped himself and exhaled. “What was the fucking point?”
“Of?”
“All of this.” Nico gestured outward as he rose to his feet.
He began to pace back and forth. “The only reason I started playing football was because I felt like I needed to finish what my brother started. He was on the verge of going pro before it all went to shit. I’ve lived so much of my life filling the void he left behind that I don’t know who I am. ”
“I’m going to ask you a question and I don’t want you getting mad at me,” Cooper said and waited for the other man to stop pacing. “Do you even like playing football?”
Nico twisted back to Cooper. “Of course I do. It’s what I’m good at.”
“I know you’re fucking good at it, but that wasn’t the question.”
“It wouldn’t have been my first choice in life, but it’s a little late to change direction.”
“It’s never too late to live the life you want to live.” Cooper knew his words of wisdom were more than a little hypocritical.
“And this is the life you want to live?”
It was a pointed question. One that Cooper could only respond to by changing the goalpost. “We’re not here to talk about me.”
“We don’t talk about what’s happened between us, like ever.
” Nico stepped closer to the fire, as close as he could without walking right into it.
The only thing that separated them was the forks of the fire that rose to their waists.
“We don’t talk about that shrine in your bedroom.
We don’t talk about all the times we’ve gotten pissed off at each other and went months without talking.
I want you to talk to me about these things so I don’t feel so fucking crazy. ”
Cooper traveled all the way from Ohio to Florida to comfort Nico.
He calculated how many miles he’d need to drive, how long those miles would take to travel, how many times he’d need to stop for gas, but he foolishly hadn’t calculated that comforting someone else often meant being vulnerable yourself.
Honestly, what the fuck did he expect? He’d ride down to Orlando to save Nico like a knight in shining armor and they wouldn’t talk about the horrible way things ended the last time they saw each other?
Fuck.
Nico grew tired of waiting for Cooper to say anything and glided back into his chair. His fingers drummed on the edge of the arm of the camping chair. Cooper knew the look on Nico’s face all too well and he was about to start prying.
“What was Luke like?” Nico asked.
Cooper opened his mouth to protest, but instead, the truth came bumbling out, “He was the sun in my world and it’s been dark since he’s been gone.
” He cleared his throat and straightened himself out.
He couldn’t talk about Luke without falling apart, but he needed to keep it together for Nico’s sake.
What good was a knight in shining armor if he broke?
“It never got better. I never got better. Almost five years later and I still wake up sometimes expecting him to be on his side of the bed.”
“I’ve never been in love, but I think that kind of heartbreak would kill me.”
“They call it heartbreak for a reason. It’s scientifically proven to damage your heart.
Somewhere out there, someone has died from having their heart broken.
” Cooper got up and circled the fire until he stood in front of Nico.
He squatted down, sturdying the weight of his body on his thighs.
He caressed a hand on Nico’s cold cheek.
“If you want to know why I drove all the way down here, it’s because I wanted to make sure you were safe.
I wanted to help your heart not feel so broken.
I wanted to make sure you didn’t break like I did.
” He stood up and held his hand out. “Now, let's go to bed and when we wake up, I’ll make us a nice breakfast before heading out.”
Nico took hold of Cooper’s hand.
What was left of the fire crackled into the late hours of the night, when the howls of far-off coyotes punched through the symphony of frogs.
Cooper and Nico laid on a bed of blankets with another blanket pulled over them.
Both were fully clothed and yet it was the most intimate Cooper had ever felt with Nico.
With both of them being about the same height, Nico’s body fit perfectly against Cooper’s.
“I’m sorry about what I said the last time I saw you,” Nico whispered.
“I know.” Cooper’s hand crawled beneath Nico’s shirt and rubbed his stomach in slow circles. “Sometimes, when I’m with you, I can see the sun rising again and that fucking terrifies me.”
Nico shifted his body backwards, and Cooper held him tighter.
“And it scares me,” Cooper continued, “because every time I touch you I feel like I’m cheating on a ghost.”
“You can’t ever love someone else because you’re too busy loving someone who is gone." Nico grabbed Cooper’s hand and squeezed. “What’s the game plan for the rest of your life?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.”
Nico’s grip loosened and his head dropped slightly ahead. The tension dissipated from the other man’s body as if he were on the fast track to dreamland.
In the stillness of the night, in the middle of nowhere, Cooper felt the faintest tinge of hope. Hope that better days were on the horizon. He pulled Nico tighter, if that were even possible, and nuzzled his head against Nico’s.
It occurred to him that this man he couldn’t stop fucking was backed up against him in the perfect position, and yet his cock remained soft. It wasn’t for a lack of wanting, though. Rather, it was peace. It was safety, and that was so much more powerful than sex.
Cooper kissed the back of Nico’s head and whispered, “Goodnight, Nico.”