Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
COOPER
A few days later I’m on Pinterest after practice. I’ve never been on Pinterest before. Heard of it, but have never gone down the rabbit hole of recipes and outfit ideas.
My sisters and mom have used it. Pretty sure Jaxon’s found all of our past Halloween costumes on the app too. Plus, this felt easier than having ‘How to ask your best friend to be your girlfriend?’ in your recent internet searches.
Chase and Jaxon are walking back into the main part of the locker room, towels wrapped around their waists, hair damp from their showers. I was supposed to shower twenty minutes ago, but I’m lost on this stupid app.
“Come here. I need help,” I request.
They sit next to me. Chase at least grabs a pair of shorts from his stall behind us, but Jaxon leans into me, not a care about his towel or what’s up for show-n-tell.
“Whatcha doing?” Jaxon asks, peering at the screen. He shakes out his hair, droplets scattering everywhere. “Ooo. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about this.”
Truthfully, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to input himself.
He’s never been shy to share an idea or what’s on his mind.
At first I wondered if the distance I’ve put between us at the start of this season, school year even, was finally starting to affect us.
Jaxon’s always happy, and I didn’t want to drag him down on my bad days, but it’s people like him, opening up, that make those bad days good.
I turn to face him, green puppy eyes, and ridiculous frosted tips. He’s always reminded me of a golden retriever, even more so now that his light brown hair is tipped in an English cream.
Jaxon, with extreme flexibility and dexterity, reaches around himself to snag his phone. In two swipes, he’s opening the app, and taps on a board that is labeled ‘How to Get the Girl.’
“Seriously?” He nods, wide-eyed and enthusiastically. “Who are you trying to get?”
Chase snorts.
“You have no room to talk.” Jaxon flicks him in the head.
“What am I missing?”
“Nothing,” they say hastily in unison.
We go through Jaxon’s board. Veto flowers and writing on paper.
Overdone. I veto a similar tactic, but with her favorite drink.
He suggests I lie naked in her bed, I veto that too.
Chase is quick to veto before I can even finish the idea of using a Jumbotron at a game or showing up at her apartment with a boombox.
We bounce around getting Dr. Manning involved or her sister, but that idea deflates.
Jaxon keeps scrolling while I take a shower. More and more of the team joins in, and when I return ten minutes later they are all huddled around my locker…with no good ideas.
“You’re overthinking this, dude. Just ask her out,” one of the freshmen say.
“And that’s not boring?”
“This isn’t prom or a wedding proposal,” someone else chirps.
“But—” I’m about to tell him how I didn’t get to ask her to prom.
Jaxon presses a finger to my mouth. “Stop overthinking it. Have you been on a date yet?”
“Our practice one.” That didn’t feel very practice, nor did I consider it a practice one.
Besides being caught up in Sutton, we’ve both been caught up in school and hockey. She’s prepping for an internship interview and final revisions on her paper. I’m focused on conference play next week. We spend time together, but we haven’t been out on a date-date.
“There you go.” He claps as if he’s solved life’s greatest mystery. He does have a point, though.
I’m throwing on a pair of jeans and a Bears sweatshirt. When I reach into my bag to grab my socks and shoes, a bracelet falls out of the pocket I tucked it away in before showering.
Her beaded charm bracelet.
Beck walks over to us, shouldering his bag. “The idiot is right. Just ask the question, that’s all Sutton’s looking for.”
“See! Beck’s got it.”
I think about it again, and have an idea in my head.
“Hi. Gimme a minute,” her tender voice echoes. I must be on speakerphone.
Setting my phone down, I press the mute button and take a large breath. Slowly inhaling. Then exhaling out my nerves—only for them to return when I take my next breath.
The guys were right, I should take her on a date, and I want to take Sutton on a date. A proper one—pick her up, hold the car door open. Hold her hand. Drag the sensitive skin of her knuckles up to my lips and kiss them. Kiss her.
I want to kiss her. A lot.
Maybe sit on the same side of the booth. Be those people, because I’ve waited almost a decade to be those people with her.
Nudge the tip of her shoes with mine. Watch as she blushes because even as much as we know each other, turning a new page in our book, she’s still Sutton. She’s still the girl who asked for help at the beginning of the semester. She’s confident in everything but this.
Maybe we’d share a shake—no. That’d be pretty hard. We aren’t going anywhere with shakes. We could pick them up though. Yeah, that’ll work.
Maybe she’d like Italian instead, or maybe she’d hate both and wants takeout.
“Sorry about that. You still there? Coop?” Her voice stops me from spiraling over our date and replanning the entire thing. “I was cleaning up my lab.”
Sutton rambles on about it.
Why is her talking nerdy to me turning me on right now? I’ve always admired her brain, found it hot in recent years.
“Nerdy?” She laughs.
I must have said that out loud. I roll with it. “Truthfully, any way you talk to me usually does it.”
“Even when I’m being mean to you,” she challenges my piece of truth.
“You mean bratty. You were never mean.” A smirk curls at the corners of my mouth. “But yeah, Dave, even then. You might have tried to be mean, but it never worked.”
“What did it do instead? Make you want me more?”
“Yes,” I reply pointedly. “I want to take you out on a date.”
“Really?” Her voice jumps up an octave.
“Don’t sound so surprised. People who like each other do that.”
“I also like Jaxon and Beckett. I’m not going on dates with them.” There’s her teasing, borderline bratty, tone.
“Stop making this difficult. Will you go on a date with me?” I ask this time, and then add, “Please.”
Sutton giggles, and I know it’s accompanied by a fluttering eye roll. “Yes, I’d love to go on a date with you. When is this date?”
“Tonight. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“What if I wasn’t free?”
“According to your color-coded fridge calendar, you are.”
When I pull into the parking lot of the apartment complex, I spot someone in the entryway. I park and sprint to the door. Sneak in as they are leaving.
Taking three stairs at a time, I knock on her door.
Music is playing loudly from the other side of the door. I knock again. Harder. Louder.
She swings the door open, and my breath is stolen.
“Wow.”
“Is this too much?” She smooths down a little green dress. A slip—I think that’s what it’s called—dress with dainty spaghetti straps. There’s a slit in the right leg.
My jaw hangs open. I shake my head, unable to form words.
Sutton stands there, eyes fixed on me. She raises her brow and bites her bottom lip.
“Do you want to come in? I need to grab shoes.”
I follow her in. Follow her to her bedroom at the back of the apartment.
“What are we doing tonight?” she asks, but I can’t stop staring at her. I run a hand over my mouth. “Are you okay?”
“You’re beautiful.” I’m finally able to formulate a sentence. “We’re going to the movies.”
“This is way too much for the movies.”
“It’s not.”
“I was going to wear those.” She points to a pair of heels.
Okay, so maybe those won’t exactly be perfect for tonight, but…
Everything I’m thinking is on my face.
Sutton blows out an audible breath. “I’m going to change.”
I step into her. “No, I love this dress.” I kiss her forehead. Tilt her chin up to me and kiss her softly.
“I’m going to change,” she whispers against my lips. Kisses me again.
“Can I watch?”
Sutton slips into her closet, reappearing in a pair of leggings, pink fuzzy socks, and an oversized graphic shirt.
Her hair is pulled back into a checkered clip.
She spins and does a tada movement with her hand, dragging down her body.
“Ready.” There’s an excited smile on her face. I match it, and she blushes.
On our way out of her apartment, she stops, grabbing her vintage patchwork jacket.
I pick up the pizza I ordered and head back to my house. Sutton is confused the entire time, even commenting on how the theater is in the opposite direction.
The gate to our backyard is open. I pull my Jeep through the back, barely missing the string lights.
“Cooper…”
“The drive-in closed. You never went, did you?”
“No. I always wanted to go.”
“What about your grass?”
“I’ll reseed it or glue blades back into the ground.”
I park. She tries to climb out, but I run around the car, almost parkour over the top. Open her door and help her out. Sutton turns around to grab the pizza.
We walk to the back of my car. I unlatch the trunk door, push up the top window, revealing a palette of pillows and blankets already stacked in the back.
I vacuumed earlier. Made sure any hints of my gear were removed, which is a feat in itself. Found every spare blanket in the house—and Jordan’s dorm room—washed them, and lined my car for us to lie on.
The side of our house has a large white sheet stuck to it. A small projector is set up at the perfect distance, plugged into my laptop with an HDMI cable. Two movies are queued up for the evening.
Sutton climbs in first. I climb in after her.
She sits cross-legged, leaning back.
“How did you know that I wanted to go to the drive-in?” she asks me. I hand her a sparkling water.
“Or do you want wine?”
“No, this works.” The can cracks open, but Sutton’s attention doesn’t leave me. “Are you ignoring my question?”
I shake my head no, putting the pizza between us and scooting back next to her. I lean back on my elbow to face Sutton. My legs are straight out in front of me, and I toe off my shoes, kicking them to the yard below.
I hang on to every word you say. There’s a special place in my brain that records it, and I can hit play whenever I need to. That’s what I could say, but I don’t.
“You’ve mentioned it a couple times, and—”
“And you remember.”
“There’s not much about you that I don’t.”
“Hmmm.” She scrunches her mouth to one side. “What was the name of the stuffed animal that I lost in Disney World?”
“Mr. Bunny, but he wasn’t a bunny. He was a white unicorn with purple hair and a pink metallic horn that fell out in the Winnie-the-Pooh ride. We rode it five more times trying to find it.”
“Where’s the scar I got when Meave pushed me off my bike?”
“Under your chin.” I tap the small scar. “The buckle of your helmet clipped your skin.”
“Favorite color…”
“Give me an age, because you change it every year, because you never want one color to feel left out. Seven, sky blue. Twelve, lemon-lime green. Fourteen, that disastrous shade of orange.”
“It clashed so badly with my hair.”
I laugh with her, but continue getting into the years she probably thought I didn’t pay attention. “Eighteen, that was your black clothing era. Last year, yellow. Right now, purple.”
“And your favorite color has always been red.”
“Red,” I say at the same time.
We scoot closer together, careful of the pizza going cold at our feet.
She runs a hand along my jawline demurely, almost as if she’s studying me. “I never forgot or stopped caring about you. Not that you exactly let me.” Sutton levels me with a look. “What are we watching?”
I wiggle my way out of the back of the car. Extremely uncoordinated, and I hear her laughing at me. I tap the space bar on my computer, the intro to How To Lose A Guy in 1o Days starts.
When I climb back into the trunk, Sutton’s pulling the pizza into her lap.
We each take a slice and tap it together in a cheers motion. Sutton brings the point of her slice to her lips and slowly parts them to take a bite.
Three-quarters of the movie later, Sutton turns to face me.
“Cooper.”
“What’s up?” I mirror her position.
“I need to ask you something.” Her cheeks go red.
“Ask away.”
“Will you be my boyfriend?”
I bolt upright. “No.”
“No?!”
“I’m supposed to ask you!”
“Who said so?”
“You.”
“Okay, maybe, but you dragged your feet—”
I point a finger at her. “You wanted this.”
“Wanted what?” She plays dumb, but from the glint in her eyes, she knows I’m right.
“Brat.”
“What are you going to do about it? Say no?” Sutton sits up, crossing her arms.
“No, I’m saying yes. You. Are. My. Girlfriend.” I sneak a kiss between the words, moving until she’s pinned underneath me. Hair spilled out around her as a red halo.
Sutton laughs manically. “You might have won this round, but just wait,” I say as a promise.
We make out till the credits begin to roll.
“I was going to ask you tonight.”
“You’re just saying that.”
I sit up, straddling her thighs, and pull out the bracelets from my back pocket.
The first is a friendship bracelet that says Will you be my girlfriend.
The other is as close to a replica of her other one as I could find.
A few charms are different. A C for me, a skate, a book, flowers, a paintbrush for Meave, a bike for Elliot, a bear for Lakeland, and a sun.
“Gimme your right hand.” She’s left-handed and hates wearing jewelry on that hand. I push the first bracelet on her wrist, spin it so she can read it. “Told ya.”
“Cute.”
“Cute?”
“I’d have said yes.”
I roll my eyes at her. “And so enthusiastic about it.”
She shrugs, then I put the other bracelet on her. Eyes widen. “Is that…is that my bracelet?”