Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
COOPER
Dave
Hi
Hi
Dave
Where are you?
My bed. Where are you?
Dave
Not there…
*attached a video*
I click play. Her face fills my screen before the phone tumbles to the ground.
Are you drinking?
Dave
Definitely not
Maybe a little
I’m typing when her next message pops up, beating me to it.
Dave
Okay…moderately
Your spelling is impressive
Dave
I’m impressive
You are
Is Sutton Davis drunk?
Dave
Who is that?
Thought I was Dave
You hate when I call you that
Dave
That’s not true
Okay, Dave
Dave
Okay, Coop
I’m hungry
Want me to pick you up?
Sutton shares her location with me—indefinitely—but I know what party she’s at.
We won a hard earned game tonight and my roommates wanted to celebrate.
I had a beer with them here, reaching for a second in the fridge when they left, but it’s sitting next to me undrank.
I have an exam tomorrow and a study packet from tonight’s review I missed ready for download.
I climb out of bed and slip on a pair of sweats and grab my second favorite sweatshirt. It’s cold out, and I doubt from the video she sent me that what she’s wearing is very warm and is most certainly out of Elliot’s closet.
Ten minutes later, I’m opening the door to the basketball house. It takes me almost another ten to locate her. People stop to chat or offer me a beer. I’m pulled in a million directions before heading to the basement.
To the left of the stairs, I find Chase and Beckett on a couch facing the table Sutton is dancing on.
The leather skirt she’s in is short. Long, muscular legs stretch for days from this angle and the added height from the knee-high, heeled boots she’s in.
The entire outfit is black, which I’m not used to seeing her in.
Everything Sutton wears is bright and colorful—even the only pair of black jeans she owns have some sort of flair to them.
Sutton’s hips move freely to the music with Elliot and another girl with dark hair. She’s familiar but I can’t pinpoint how.
“Hey, Cap,” Chase says. “Thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’m not. Picking up Sutton.”
“Oh?” Chase replies, intrigued.
I nod my head at the dark-haired girl. “Who is that?” Her baggy sweatpants and fitted crop top make her stand out. No one else is dressed as casually.
Except Beck, who pulls the beer away from his mouth. His icy blue eyes and chipped electric blue nails—courtesy of his little sister—are bright even in the dim lighting.
“Iris,” he bites.
“Do you know her?”
“No. But there is a rumor going around that she is a backup dancer,” Chase chimes in excitedly. “Part of those insane world tours and is in music videos. She’s been taking online classes but is back this year.”
I peer at Beckett to see if he knows her. He grunts and gets off the couch. “I’m getting another beer.” Standing in front of me, he slips off a bracelet and hands it to me. “Madeline made this for you. Wear it.”
The elastic stretches to the size of my wrist. She must have used her brother’s wrist to fit mine. Beck disappears before I can show it off to him, quiet for his large stature.
I silently laugh, pushing the friendship bracelet under my sleeve. Then return my search for—
“Cooper!” Sutton squeals. Across her face is a smile that’s reminiscent of the same one she gave me when I asked her to be my friend over a decade ago. Bright and stretching from ear to ear as if the freckles on her cheeks are pulling at the sides of her mouth.
I allow my gaze to roam over all of her.
I’m normally careful, but not tonight. Not when she’s doing the same.
My hair is a mess, and I’m pretty confident there is a stain on my sweats, but none of that matters when she stares at me like I’m the only one that exists.
My shoulders relax, releasing any tension.
“Hey, Dave.”
“Are we getting nuggets?” she yells over the music.
“Whatever you want.” I try to hide my amusement at the sparkle in her eyes and the slight sway in her body. “You done dancing on the table?” Sutton nods. “Need help?”
“Mhmmm.” She hums, stretching her arms out to me.
Against my better judgement, I bypass them, gripping her waist and picking her up, then setting her down on the ground. She waves goodbye to everyone, even says hello to people she definitely doesn’t know.
As soon as we are in my car, she takes off her boots and moans. “I hated these, but I promised Elliot I’d wear them. Did you like them?”
Did I like the way they were molded to her calves or stopped at the knee, exposing the skin on her thighs, places I’ve imagined my hands being?
“Of course.” I reach behind my seat and snag the sweatshirt I brought with me. “Here. Put this on so you aren’t cold.”
She takes the sweatshirt but places it in her lap. “You didn’t say please.” Sutton tilts her head in my direction, smoldering.
“Please.”
A sleeve hits the roof as she stretches her arms, slipping each one uncoordinatedly into the sweatshirt, and then pulling it over her head.
Sutton buckles in and takes the water I also brought with me, drinking the entire thing on our drive.
“What do you want?” I ask as we drive up to the menu.
Sutton unbuckles herself and leans over me to order.
“A ten-piece nugget. Large fry.” She pauses. “Oh! And a chocolate shake. Please,” she tacks on.
Her face spins. Right in front of me. She smells good, even with the faintest hint of tequila—she’s a lightweight. Probably had two drinks tops, I bet.
“Are you not going to get anything?”
Wasn’t planning on it, but she convinces me with one flick of her eyelids and a pout.
“I’ll do the same.”
Sutton opens the top of her milkshake and dips a fry in. Her moan bounces off the walls of my Jeep. Strikes me in the chest. Flickers up my spine, finding a spot in my brain to lodge itself into.
I’ll be hearing that in my dreams tonight…if I can even sleep.
Haven’t been able to sleep lately—barely finding time. My mind energized despite the exhaustion weighing down my body, but tonight I’ll be up for other reasons.
“I love French fries.” She moans again.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat one before.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cooper,” she says in the tone of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. Rom-coms, I told ya. “They’re my favorite food.”
“No, they aren’t. Your favorite food is a pizza.”
“That’s a meal,” she retorts, dipping two fries in this time.
“Kiwi.”
“I had a good one this morning,” Sutton exclaims, a smile trickling from her. “Did you know they are good for your digestive system? I have to eat them now because you know what they say. Hot girls have stomach issues.” She giggles at herself. “But, I love fries too.”
“That’s true.” I smile lightly.
“Spaghetti.” Sutton bites her bottom lip after blurting out my favorite meal. My head falls, eyes watching her fingers twiddle with the red and white straw. “At least it used to be. I guess I don’t know anymore.”
“Maybe if you spent less time hating me, you would,” I say, realizing when her face falls it came out sharper than I meant.
“I don’t…I don’t hate you.”
“You’ve been drinking.” I make up the excuse for her admittance.
“Does that matter?”
Now I feel guilty, because no, it doesn’t. I’ve been so messed up lately that even getting this attention from her helps ease the pressure building inside of me. It turns down the dial of the pressure cooker I’ve become. Invisible steam creeps out of me.
She doesn’t know she does that for me.
She doesn’t know that when I’m around her, even in the same room or house, not even talking with her, she makes me feel more alive than I have in years.
Sutton allows me to be me—the guy who was out on the ice last week, the one I focused on being this week in my games—not the person others have concocted me to be.
“No,” I finally respond.
“Plus, drunk words, sober thoughts. Right?” Sutton steals a nugget from my container, already having inhaled all of hers.
“Anything else you wanna get off your chest then?” I egg on.
She purses her lips as if she’s thinking, curls spilling over her shoulders and fanning across my cloth seats. Sutton rolls her head, pressing the side into the head rest. “Nope.”
I offer her my final nugget, withholding the fries, and ask, “Where should we go now?”
“I don’t know,” Sutton says into the bag, digging for a napkin. Wiping her hands off when she finds one. “Where do you want to go?”
Anywhere you are. That’s what I want to say, but I bite my tongue.
“I can take you home,” I offer.
Please say no. Please say no. Please say no.
“I’m not ready to go home.” She pops up straight. “Maybe we just drive?”
We drive around for another twenty minutes. To nowhere, really. Laps around campus.
Finally, I start to head toward her apartment complex. I stop a few blocks away, pull my car over, and cut the engine.
Sutton unbuckles her seat belt and turns to face me. She pulls her legs up onto the seat and manages to sit crisscross, accidentally flashing me her underwear. I swallow harshly. Her milkshake is in one hand, the other is playing with the straw again.
I mimic her. Unbuckle and turn to face her, but only pull up my right leg to bend beneath me.
She looks like she wants to say something.
“What’s rolling around in your beautiful mind?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes at me. One corner of her mouth ticks up. “Beautiful?”
“Yeah, beautiful. Big and organized and calculated and stuffed with information. Maybe too much, but still beautiful.”
“Your brain is beautiful, too. Even the dark parts. You just have to learn to find the beauty in them.” Sutton’s arm stretches forward and rubs a thumb over my temple.
“I’m trying.” She pulls back, but I catch her wrist. My thumb brushing over her racing pulse point. “I’ve got a good teacher.”
She huffs, loudly. Then lets out a singular laugh. “Yeah, well, I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“No! He’s never asked me once to practice kissing.”
“That’s a damn shame. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to see you kissing other people.”