Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
COOP
It was like waking up inside a dumpster fire and realizing you were the one who lit the match.
My phone was still buzzing under my pillow, screen lighting up with messages, missed calls, a few very unfortunate memes, and at least six “we need to talk” texts from people who had no business needing to talk to me right now. Especially not Laura’s dad.
And definitely not my mom.
The ringtone I’d set for her—some chirpy acoustic guitar thing that I’d thought was safe—now sounded like a death march. I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to… yet.
Jake had already texted me three times by the time I sat up in bed and wiped my face.
Jake:
Wake up
Jake:
it’s bad
Jake:
Like fake your death bad
He wasn’t wrong.
A quick scroll through Post-it-gram confirmed that Sharon The Saboteur had officially made me a main character on the worst day of my life.
The video wasn’t just the pool party or the club or the stupid topless chicken fight (which, for the record, wasn’t my idea).
No, the crown jewel was the betting pool.
Shaky footage of Bubba reading out our scoring system like it was the damn NBA draft.
Style. Sophistication. Spontaneity.
Extra points if she didn’t know your name till morning. Double if she was someone's ex.
And of course, a little side bet I definitely regretted making—“Coop and Laura: Over/Under three weeks before she cries?”
I didn’t remember saying it. But there it was. In my voice. With my face. On the internet. Forever.
I sat there, staring at the screen, nausea crawling up the back of my throat. I had never wanted to disappear more in my life.
The worst part? I liked Laura. I genuinely liked her.
She was cool and funny and had a thing for old horror movies.
And yeah, we hooked up. A few times. But I never wanted to hurt her.
Not like this. Not like a punchline in a viral clip with a sweaty Bubba yelling “point five for clumsy bra removal!”
It wasn’t just a bad look. It was a character assassination. And I was the one who wrote the damn script.
Another message pinged in.
Archie:
Just stay quiet. Don’t engage. Let it settle.
Archie:
You’ll make it worse if you get defensive.
Of all of us, Archie was the only one not completely losing it. Jake had already threatened to fight Sharon in three different parking lots, Bubba was too hungover to form a full sentence, and I was sitting on my bed trying to remember how to exist like a normal person.
Bubba:
She’s evil
Bubba:
I mean objectively
Bubba:
FFS did you see the thing with the towel??
Bubba:
I had seen the towel thing.
And the ice cube thing.
And the time-lapse of Jake doing shots off that girl’s stomach that looked like it was filmed on a GoPro strapped to someone’s thigh.
There was no erasing it. No spinning it. No “boys will be boys” bullshit that could put this genie back in the bottle.
And Laura’s dad? Apparently he saw it too.
Because right after I crawled out of bed and made the mistake of wandering into the kitchen, Mom was waiting. Phone in hand. Coffee untouched. A look on her face that made my spine want to evacuate my body.
“Sit,” she said.
I sat.
“I just got off the phone with Howard Christensen,” she said coolly.
Of course his name was Howard. He always wore polos and looked like he judged people’s recycling bins.
“He’s Laura’s father, Coop. He’s also one of the parents on the fundraising committee. And now, thanks to your little internet debut, he’s threatening to pull his support unless you’re suspended or removed from every extracurricular you’re in.”
I blinked. “That’s… not a lot.” I hadn’t really signed up for much this year, I wanted to focus on other stuff.
Her smile was terrifying. “Yes. I’m aware. Which means he’s going to focus on getting you suspended and possibly making sure that every admissions counselor in the country knows you were in those videos.”
There wasn’t anything I could say. She didn’t want excuses. She didn’t even want truth. She wanted blood. Mine, preferably.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” she said, crossing her arms. “You are going to call Laura. You are going to apologize, without making this about you. You are going to do it today. And then you are going to figure out a way to make this go away before I lose my job, your sister changes her last name, or I have to sit through a meeting where someone brings it up with a sorrowful shake of their head and this is what happens to boys who come from bad homes.”
Footsteps behind me.
“I already changed my last name,” Trina said, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk. “It’s Disappointed. Trina Disappointed. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“I will literally Venmo you to leave the room,” I muttered.
“Cool. Start with a hundred and we’ll talk.”
“Trina.” Right now, Mom wasn’t even looking at her but there was no mistaking the knife edge on her tone.
“Whatever. Just don’t let him get his gross boy germs on my oat milk.”
She disappeared with a huff and a full-on shudder like I was some radioactive creep.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I just slumped forward and dragged both hands over my face. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“No,” Mom said, not unkindly this time. “But it did. And now you need to take responsibility for it. That means no more jokes, no more ducking calls, no more pretending you can charm your way out of this.”
I hated that she was right.
It wasn’t just about Laura. Or the group chat. Or the videos.
It was about Frankie.
I hadn’t even heard from her. She hadn’t responded to any of our texts. No thumbs-up. No “wtf, Coop.” No anything.
She’d seen it. She had to have.
And I didn’t know what hurt more—her silence, or the knowledge that she probably wasn’t surprised.
I opened my phone again and stared at the group chat with the guys. Still active. Still a mess. But none of them had said anything about Frankie. Not yet.
Maybe no one wanted to be the first one to admit it.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Because whatever else this week had been—a nightmare, a scandal, a ticking time bomb—I knew one thing for sure.
We’d broken something. Something real.
And I didn’t know how we were going to fix it.
Or if we even could.
I sat at the dining table with my phone pressed to my ear, watching the call go to voicemail for the fourth time.
“Laura, it’s me—” I started again, but her recorded message cut me off before I could finish the sentence.
Beep.
I hung up.
Again.
My thumb hovered over the redial button.
“Don’t you dare,” Trina said, walking by with a bowl of cereal like she was the Ghost of Poor Decisions Present. “She clearly doesn’t want to talk to you. It’s called dignity, Coop. Try it sometime.”
“Thanks, TED Talk,” I muttered.
She threw a Cheerio at my head and kept walking.
I clenched the phone tighter, jaw set, heartbeat pounding with that gross mix of anxiety and guilt and something else I didn’t want to name. I wasn’t trying to win anything here. I just wanted to tell her I was sorry. Like, really sorry. Even if it was too late.
So I called again.
And this time—this time—she answered.
“What the hell do you not understand about stop calling me?” she screamed, her voice jagged with fury, pain, and betrayal all woven into one explosive sound.
“Laura, I just—please, I’m not trying to—”
“Don’t you dare make this about you, Coop.
Don’t you dare. You used me. You laughed about it.
You bet on it. And now you want to feel better by saying sorry?
Well, too bad. I don’t care how bad you feel.
I don’t care if your life is imploding. You’re not going to make me part of your redemption arc. ”
And then the line went dead.
I stared at the screen. Call ended.
It was like being slapped with a brick.
Slowly, I lowered the phone, swallowing hard.
Mom stood in the doorway, arms folded, her expression unreadable.
“She won’t talk to me,” I said, because stating the obvious felt safer than admitting anything else.
“She doesn’t have to,” Mom said. “This isn’t about what you need to say, Cooper. It’s about what she needs. If she doesn’t want your apology, then you find a way to make it right that doesn’t involve her having to deal with you.”
I gaped at her. “How is that supposed to work? If she won’t talk to me, if she won’t hear it—how do I apologize without making it about me?”
She studied me for a moment. “Maybe the first thing is realizing you don’t get to feel better yet. Some things don’t get fixed in a day, or with words. Sometimes they’re things you have to learn to carry.”
“Awesome,” I said bitterly, dragging a hand through my hair. “So basically, suffer in silence, eat my guilt, and hope she magically forgives me someday?”
“She doesn’t owe you forgiveness, Cooper.”
No, she didn’t. Didn’t mean I didn’t want it. I looked down at the table. My phone buzzed again. Jake’s name lit up the screen.
Mom sighed as she shook her head. “This isn’t going to end well for anyone.”
I pushed back from the table, phone in hand. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Then I turned and headed down the hall toward my room, the floorboards creaking under my steps like they were annoyed at me, too.
Jake’s call went to voicemail before I answered. I didn’t redial.
Instead, I stood in my doorway for a second, staring at my room like it belonged to someone else. Someone who still thought it was funny to put tally marks on a whiteboard. Someone who hadn’t watched everything fall apart in 1080p and slow motion.
I flopped onto my bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling fan spinning lazy circles above me.
I wanted to rewind the whole summer.
Back to before the videos.
Before the pool parties.
Before I said something so stupid it followed me like a curse.
Back to when Frankie used to text me first.
Back to when Laura laughed with me instead of at me.
My phone buzzed again. Group chat.
Jake:
We need to meet
Jake:
Today
Jake:
Frankie’s not answering
Bubba:
You don’t say?
Bubba:
We’re radioactive
Archie:
Then let’s start acting like cleanup crew. Not another explosion.
Jake:
Are we even salvageable?
Archie:
We’ll find out.
I didn’t reply. Not yet.
I just stared at the screen, thumb hovering.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t know what to say. So I just closed the message thread.
I stood under the shower until the water ran cold.
Didn’t matter. I stayed there anyway, forehead against the tile, letting the water pound my shoulders like maybe it could wash the last three months off me.
Like maybe it could scrub out the stupid grin I’d worn at Bubba’s party or the sound of Laura’s voice screaming down the phone.
It didn’t.
By the time I dragged myself out, my fingers were pruned and my reflection in the fogged-up mirror looked like some guy I didn’t want to know. Hair damp, eyes bloodshot, jaw clenched. No swagger, no jokes. Just me.
I threw on a clean shirt—well, cleaner than the last one—and shorts. Stood there staring at my apartment key for a long second before I grabbed it.
Mom’s voice floated from the kitchen as I headed out. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” I said.
“Out where?”
“Just out.”
She didn’t push. But when I glanced back, she was watching me with that same look—like she wanted to say something but had already decided I wouldn’t listen.
Maybe she was right.
I knew where I was going.
Frankie.
She hadn’t answered any of my texts, but maybe if I showed up, if I looked her in the eye—she’d at least let me explain. Let me apologize. Hell, even if she slammed the door in my face, it would be better than this silence.
It wasn’t like I had to go far, she was three doors down. She’d been three doors down for most of our lives. My heart was still rabbiting by the time I got there.
Tiddles sat in the front window, watching me like a tiny, judgmental gargoyle.
I knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again. Louder. “Frankie? It’s me.”
Footsteps.
Relief surged up for half a heartbeat—until the door swung open.
And it wasn’t Frankie.
It was Edward Standish.
Archie’s dad.
Standing there in a pale blue button-down with his sleeves rolled and a watch that probably cost more than my mom’s car, looking every bit the guy who was not supposed to be at Frankie’s front door on a Saturday morning.
I froze. My brain, already running on fumes, short-circuited.
“Mr. Standish?” I said, my voice cracking like a middle-schooler’s.
His gaze swept over me, cool but not quite cold, like he’d been expecting me—or at least expecting someone. “Cooper,” he said smoothly, like we were shaking hands at a fundraiser instead of me standing on Frankie’s porch like an idiot.
I blinked. “Uh… hi. I—uh—is Frankie here?”
Something flickered in his eyes. Not annoyance exactly. More like… ownership. A boundary. “She’s not available right now.”
“Oh. Okay. When will she—”
“That’s not really your concern at the moment.”
I swallowed hard. “Right. Yeah. Sure. Uh…”
This was weird. So weird. Archie’s dad at Frankie’s door. Telling me she wasn’t available. Like he lived there. Like he had some claim.
And that was when it hit me, creeping up my spine like ice water.
The tone in his voice.
What the hell was going on?
“I just—” My voice cracked again. “I just wanted to make sure she’s okay.”
He tilted his head slightly. “She’s fine. She has a lot on her mind right now.”
I nodded, because what else was I supposed to do? “Okay. Uh. Can you tell her I stopped by?”
His expression didn’t change. “If it’s appropriate, I will.”
“Right.”
Then he closed the door. Not a slam. Not rude. Just… final.
I stood there for a long second, staring at the painted wood like maybe it would open itself back up and Frankie would be there. Like maybe she’d push past him and roll her eyes and say, God, Coop, you’re such an idiot, come in.
But the door stayed closed and my stomach stayed twisted.
By the time I turned and headed back down the steps, my heart was hammering so loud I could hear it in my ears.
Edward Standish. At Frankie’s. On a Saturday morning.
Holy crap.
What the hell was going on with that?
I didn’t even make it to where she parked her car before my phone buzzed again.
Jake:
Yo Coop, where r u
Jake:
We need to talk
I ignored it.
For the first time all summer, I wasn’t sure who the bad guy even was anymore. I just knew it felt like everything was about to get a whole lot worse. When I got to the parking lot, I stared at her usual spot.
Her car wasn’t there.
That meant she wasn’t home.
I checked my watch. It was too early for her to be at work. But Archie’s dad was at her place…
I sent her a text.
You okay?