Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
SUTTON
“You are going to have to tell Mom.” Meave bumps my shoulder as we peruse a new romance-only bookstore in Chicago. We’ve already been to two art stores, and are going to her favorite thrift store after this. “She’s been planning your wedding to Cooper for years.”
“We aren’t even dating, Meave.”
“Does he know that?”
She pulls a book from the shelf and adds it to her pile. I run my finger along another shelf, reading titles to distract from answering her question.
“Sutton…”
“No, I suppose he doesn’t. We aren’t not together. I like how things are going. There’s no pressure. No…” It’s barely two weeks, ten days to be exact, but each day feels like a year. In the best way possible.
“Do you love him?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Meave.”
“So that’s a yes.” She rests her chin on my shoulder and leans her head into mine. “And now I can finally admit, while you are good at a lot of things, sis, you are a terrible doodler. The doodles you did of you and Cooper are hideous.”
“How does that have anything to do with this?”
“I’ve just needed to get that off my chest for about fifteen years.”
“I was six!” I interject.
We head to the checkout desk, arms stacked with books. “But this is it for you two, yeah?”
There are still unspoken truths that sit between me and Cooper. High school lingering like the ghost of Christmas past. As good as things have been between us, there are moments it’s as if there is another person in the relationship, a hurdle we haven’t jumped yet.
“I hope.”
We stop to have lunch after thrifting and before returning to her loft apartment. Meave has a commission to finish and locks herself away in her makeshift studio with promises of takeout and a movie later.
I decided to go on a long walk, explore the Chicago more.
Making my way back, from a block over, I spot a familiar profile throwing pebbles at a window. I sneak closer.
Cooper throws another, hitting the rectangle in the center. He’s been in the city volunteering with his cousin’s charity. Dawson and Jaxon, too, but they left.
“That’s her neighbor’s window,” I announce.
Cooper spins on his heels, a smile on his face. “Oops.”
“You’re lucky they aren’t here this week.” I peep the duffle bag resting at his feet. “Going somewhere?”
“Was hoping for a sleepover on Meave’s pull-out couch.”
Speak of the devil, she waves from her window—next door to the one that he was throwing rocks at—a paintbrush in one hand.
“I think I can squeeze.”
He squeezes me into his side, dropping a kiss to the top of my head. “I missed you.”
“It’s been three days.”
“And?” He picks up his bag, sliding it on the arm not wrapped around me. We head into Meave’s building. “Don’t be scared to admit you missed me too.”
“Fine.” I lift my leg backward and kick his butt. “I missed you too.”
We crash with Meave for the night, before driving back to campus. Unlike our last drive, we triple checked the weather. No precipitation in the forecast for the next week.
Cloudless blue skies stretches for miles in every direction.
Cooper keeps singing the lyrics wrong. By the seventh song, I know it’s on purpose. It’s remarkable how quickly someone can learn, or remember, your buttons. What makes me smile or roll my eyes. How to make me laugh or get into my pants. The limit of how hard to push before he annoys me too much.
Maybe it was quick, or maybe it’s what happens when you grow up together.
His body is like a puzzle piece I’m fitted to. A hand I grew up holding, picking me up when I fell learning to ride a bike and how to skate. He’s a Tempur-Pedic mattress that’s memorized my shape and grown around it.
MOM appears on the screen in his car. We turn off the music and answer it. I tap my chest, then bring a finger in front of my mouth, communicating silently a shh, I’m not here.
“Hey, Mom. How are you?”
“Cooper, honey.” She sounds delighted but surprised that he answered. “Better now. How are you? Midterms go well?”
“B plus in two, A minus in another, and I don’t have the results for the others yet. I was a little distracted while studying.” He shoots me a taunting look, reminding me that I’m the distraction. The hand firmly placed on my thigh squeezes. A giggle shoots out of me.
“B’s get degrees,” she singsongs.
“I think it’s C’s get degrees, Mom.”
“Then you’ll be graduating summa cum laude,” she jokes. “A B plus in statistical mathematics is like a triple A plus compared to what your father took while he was in school.”
I prepare myself for him to recoil, but it doesn’t come. Cooper chuckles. “What was it again that he studied?”
“Something that sounded made up.” His mom makes a handful of jokes about his dad in college, and trying to cheat off of her in the class where they had their meet-cute.
I laugh, managing to pick the moment there’s a lull in the conversation.
“Is that my daughter?” Of course she’s with my mom. Where there’s one, there’s usually the other.
“Hi, Mom,” I pipe in, leaning back into the seat to stare at Cooper with my eyes wide. How we are going to explain this? Our siblings are the only ones who know about our rekindled friendship.
“I didn’t realize you were with Cooper. Where are you two going?”
“Back to campus. Cooper was in Chicago volunteering.”
“And you went with him?”
“No.” I get nervous. “I spent spring break with Meave. Remember?”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Sorry, we’ve been out for drinks.” There’s a muffling of laughter from their end.
I glance at Cooper and mouth Are our moms tipsy?
Totally he mouths back.
“First the gallery, now this. Have you two been spending a lot of time together?” my mom asks.
Comparative to before? Yes.
Almost every day outside of spring break.
Cooper walks me to class in the morning, showing up with a perfect dirty chai latte in hand.
Between classes, studying for midterms, therapy, practice, and games, we take any stolen moments we can—last week he found me in the psych building, after getting back from an away game the day before, surprising me from behind with strong arms wrapped around my shoulders.
Walked me backward and into a closet that I’m still not sure how he opened because his arms never left my body.
A hand was running up my outer thigh, tickling and bringing to life the bare skin as he found his way underneath the skirt part of my overall dress.
His other hand tugged my chin, twisting my head up to his and kissing me. My mouth opened to let his tongue in.
“I’ve never played seven minutes in heaven,” I whispered to him.
“I’ve never been to heaven,” he responded against the skin between my jaw and ear. “But I imagine this is what it’ll be like.”
The hand up my skirt drew circles over my underwear. A finger snapped the waistband, then snaked under it.
“Can I take you to heaven, baby?” I nodded. He stared into my hazel eyes pointedly. “That’s not gonna work for me. Can I, Sutton baby?” he said the term of endearment again, and I almost melt. If it weren’t for his body holding mine, my legs would have given out, a mess on the floor.
“Cooper,” I whimpered.
“Fuck,” he whimpered back. “Say my name again.”
“Cooper, please.”
He pushed a finger inside of me and kissed me again.
Kisses moved down my throat, rotating our positions, my back now against the shelf. The next kiss stung, and I tossed my head back when there was a thud. He pulled his mouth away from me, eyes frantically looking over me, checking me for injuries. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh. I think that was a paint can. Keep going.”
Cooper started again, continuing his escapade of my body, not that he hadn’t already learned all of it. Sometimes I think he’s making up for lost time, or savoring me like I’m the final drops of the perfect summer day on the lake.
He pushed the denim up, then my ribbed long sleeve. Kissed the skin along the hem and a soft one to my outer belly button whilst his fingers worked inside of me.
Finally—I acted like that wasn’t his destination and that it’s been more than two whole agonizing minutes—he’s on his knees in front of me, moving a leg over his shoulder and pulling aside my underwear.
My favorite mouth in the world finally on me. Stealing from me the way we’ve stolen glances at each other the past five years.
I cried out his name, not caring who was in the hallway or could open the door. All I wanted was to be with him. Give in to the cravings that festered inside of me, taking shape as dislike for so long, when I think all I ever wanted to do was love him and be loved by him.
Cooper squeeze my thigh, and I snap my head to his, realizing we aren’t in the closet anymore but in his car on the phone with our moms.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
Mom repeats herself.
My jaw drops when Cooper answers, “Actually. We’re dating. Sutton’s my girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend!” his mom, Susan, squeals. “I had a feeling when you asked for tulips.”
“Dating? Susan, you knew about this?”
“No. Maybe. Sort of! He didn’t say Sutton’s name. How long have you two been together?”
“About a month or so.”
“A month? Cooper James Carmichael, you have been dating Sutton Elizabeth Davis” Why are we both being full named now? “For a month, and you’ve failed to mention it once? Not at dinner or a game or—”
A month? I count back days. Is he referring to the night in the bar or our fake date? Counting all of that time?
“Or Sutton, could you have mentioned it when we were planning our summer holiday over family FaceTime. This is huge.”
“Monumental.”
“We have to call your fathers. They are going to be…” Sutton’s mom trails off. “Maybe not right now.”
“Why?” Cooper asks.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you two have been intimate, definitely more than kissing, and—”
Our moms are in an in-sync double Dutch routine. Susan jumps in. “Oh, I beg of you to please use protection.”
Cooper throws a second curveball. “We haven’t had sex. No worries, no grandkids yet.”
That sends them on a second frenzy.
“Grandkids? Oh, Suz, we are going to be grandparents together.” I think one of them is crying. “At least another five years, maybe ten.”
“Or tomorrow. I kind of want to be a grandma. I’d be such a cool grandma.”
“The coolest,” my mom backs her.
They’ve been best friends forever. I’ve never not known them as being two peas in a pod.
Even before I was adopted, they’ve been inseparable.
Through his mom getting pregnant in college, to my mom’s miscarriages and unsuccessful rounds of IVF.
They’re the type of best friend relationship you always dream of having—including your kids dating.
Cooper huffs out a laugh over this conversation. He tells them goodbye with a promise that the six of us can get dinner next time they visit.
The song we were two minutes and thirty-three seconds into starts playing again. He spins the dial to the left, lowers the volume to barely above an echo.
“You okay? You went quiet.”
“You never asked.”
“Asked what?”
“You never asked me to be your girlfriend. I didn’t know that’s what I was.”
“Of course you are, Dave. I don’t want to see anyone but you. You feel the same way, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“But. There shouldn’t be a but. We’re dating. This is it.”
“But you never asked,” I repeat. “You still need to ask.”
He chuckles. I don’t hear it, but see it in the way his chest rises and falls. Shoulders bounce against the seat. “Okay, then. Will you be my girlfriend, Sutton Davis?”
“No.”
We’re pulling into his driveway. His roommates’ cars are parked in their Tetris configuration to work for their busy schedules. Cooper cuts the ignition. Jerking the gear shift into park first.
“No?” He’s taken aback.
“Try again.” His mouth starts to split. “Not right now. You’ve waited how long for this?” I unbuckle myself and open the door. Lean across the console and kiss him. “Goodbye, Carmichael.”
He’s smirking, shaking his head at me. Gotta keep him on his toes somehow.
“Goodbye, Davis.”
I tilt my head over my shoulder, run my tongue along my top teeth. Give him an eye roll and close the door behind me.
Not that I’m going very far. I walk inside, find Elliot and Jordan on the couch. We leave two minutes later.
Leaning against his car, Cooper has his arms crossed in front of his chest. Sunglasses pushed up into his thick hair.
We lock eyes, stare at each other my entire walk to Elliot’s small SUV.
“What’s wrong with my brother?” Jordan asks.
“Nothing,” Cooper and I say in unison.