The Funny Thing Is - 7. ...I Never Quite Knew What to Expect

The Funny Thing Is… I Never Quite Knew What to Expect

As things changed, I thought I knew what the outcome of certain things would be. I thought I knew what Devon would say when the divorce was underway. I thought I knew how my kids would react to me leaving for a completely new life. And when Chase left, I thought I knew exactly what was in store for me. The truth is, readers, I didn’t. I didn’t know what to expect at all.

I woke up in a cold sweat on Wednesday morning. Kyle’s arms were still around me, and how he hadn’t let go of my pasty, writhing body was beyond me. The dream sat in my mind vividly because it was more than just a simple dream… it was my worst memory relived.

“So I can’t come with you?”

“Cooper, the situation is complicated,” he said with those big eyes, stuffing t-shirt after t-shirt into his bag in a way that annoyed me. I watched his big arms flex back and forth, a constant reminder of his top priority. “I can make a plus one case for domestic partner or even fiancé. I can’t make a case for them to sponsor boyfriend.”

The bitterness that laced that sentence was loosely veiled at best. It was dripping with resentment and regret and I would have been deaf not to hear it.

“I gave up my summer at Northwestern to be with you,” I said coolly.

“Look, when the Men’s national team announces that you’ve been bumped up from alternate to swimming four races, you don’t exactly hesitate,” he replied, not even stopping to look at me. He added something scathing under his breath. “And you don’t exactly use your boyfriend as a bargaining chip.”

“But you ask them if I can come, Chase,” I said, willing myself not to appear as angry as I’d felt.

“You have school,” he said, raising his voice. “You have a life here. I don’t. I can do this and come back, and we’ll pick up right where we’re leaving off, gamin. It’s just three months. This isn’t the end of the fucking world.”

I wanted to believe it, but I couldn’t. I knew Chase too well. I saw how he was with his friends, his teammates, his parents. Out of sight, out of mind. I’d be out of both in forty-eight hours.

“You’re a jackass,” I muttered almost under my breath. Chase threw his duffle bag to the side and slid on top of me. Our discussion the day before had ended in a marathon love-making session. I was pretty sure this one wouldn’t.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said, his face an inch from mine.

“You want the truth, or you want the gold star boyfriend answer?” I asked. My head hurt and he was crushing my breathing.

“Monsieur.”

“I don’t want you to go. At all.”

Him leaving for the Olympic games was my biggest fear. He’d go and become a rockstar and then come back and be different: we’d be different. I didn’t want to lose what we had. What we had was the best thing I’d ever had.

“Why not?”

I pushed him off of me and walked into the bathroom we’d been sharing since last May.

“Because I know that you leaving will change things,” I called, willing myself not to get emotional. It was time to channel my ex, Kyle, and keep a straight face no matter how pissed off and scared I was.

“Cooper, nothing will change,” he said.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop saying that. At least acknowledge it; that’ll make me feel better. You live in this world where nothing can touch you and me. You think you can just run off to England where you’ll be surrounded by gorgeous, naked, foreign guys all the time and you won’t get tempted. You’ll be a celebrity, Chase. They’ll be crawling up your ass. Just call this what it is.”

He shook his head at me. I took my shorts off and turned on the shower. I waited for it to get hot, my arms crossed, staring Chase right in the face.

“Are you fucking joking? When have I ever given you any indication I would ever cheat on you? Some of us take this relationship seriously.”

“Yet you’re packing a bag for one. You take it so seriously.”

“I’m not gonna get to London and start bending it over for any and everyone’s foreign cock, gamin. But, hey, thanks for sharing where your head is at. It’s good to know what you’ll be up to as soon as I get on the plane. Thanks for the heads up.”

I turned to him slowly, my eye twitching with all kinds of rage.

“You did not just say that,” I replied, my voice steely and even. It was a trait I’d picked up from spending time with my good friend Devon.

“You’re the one with the track record, Cooper. What? Shouldn’t I be worried that you’ll be adding more names to your fuck list while I’m gone?”

I narrowed my eyes, willing myself to control my rage. I had been a vastly different guy a year ago. Freshman year, I’d admitted to Chase, was a learning curve for me. I never expected the love of my life to throw those stupid decisions in my face to win an argument.

“Yeah, you should,” I said with a slight sniffle. “The whore of a boyfriend you’re leaving behind is going to…”

“Cooper, I didn’t mean…”

“…whore it up all over town, buddy! You had better watch the fuck out!” By the time I was done, I was shouting. I hopped into the shower and drew the curtain. Chase stopped it.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said.

“Then why did you say it?” I paused and turned, the left side of my body getting pelted by steaming water. I couldn’t pinpoint one reason why I was upset. It was a culmination of everything. Everything I had given up to spend the summer with Chase. It was everything I was about to lose when he left in two days. It was the nagging feeling that if he got on that plane and left, he’d be gone forever.

Finally, it was the feeling that if I’d answered differently in January, when he first learned he hadn’t made the team, I would be packing my bag as well. But the reasons not to say yes then were stacked. At the time, I knew he only asked me to do it because I was the only constant left in his life. I was the pillar of support after his number one dream fell through. And then I let my fears get in the way, and in a way, I fell through as well.

At the end of the day, it was my fault he was going alone, and I think if I had searched my heart of hearts then, I would have known he wasn’t going to come back.

“You don’t get to close me out because you’re scared, gamin. I get it, it’s a million miles away for three fucking months. I get it, there is nothing tying me here to bring me back. But don’t you ever forget that I asked you, Cooper and you’re the one that said no. You’re the one that said we were too young for a commitment like that. If you’d said yes, we’d be engaged and you might be coming with me right now.”

I couldn’t look at him. Looking at him made my face hot with anger. Nothing was ever his fault. This split couldn’t, in any way, be the perfect Chase Pallendrino’s fault.

“I didn’t say no to you because I didn’t love you, Pal,” I said evenly. “I said no because we were less than a year in. I wasn’t just going to say yes so I could get a free ride on the off chance that they picked up the phone and called you; which how the fuck was I supposed to know that would even happen? Sorry…”

I knew I was hitting below the belt. I wanted to take the words back as soon as I said them, but I couldn’t. It was too late.

“Wow. You’re a jackass,” he spat. “Boyfriend of the year, right there.”

I watched him walk out of the bathroom. I heard him pick up his duffle bag and zip it shut. I wanted to throw one more quip his way, but we’d both sufficiently hurt each other enough.

Standing there in the shower, I had two thoughts simultaneously. I thought that there was no way it was the end for us. And then I had the thought that nagged me every day for twenty some odd years.

Maybe Chase Pallendrino isn’t the one.

The next morning, I was a shell of my usual self. I drank my coffee in silence. I drove to work slowly and everything along the way got on my nerves. I ignored the department assistant as she tried to say ‘good morning’. I let every single call roll to voicemail.

By the time the day was done, I was determined to snap out of it. My kids weren’t going to get themselves back. I would swim through hell and high water to prove I was capable of shared custody. I would do anything, even if it killed me, to get them back.

Kyle came over to my place after work that night and found me midway through painting CJ’s room the blue color that Chase had picked four days earlier.

“Come in,” I said, opening the door. I held the paint brush over my hand to keep it from dripping and I walked straight back upstairs to the bigger of the two kid’s rooms.

“I thought you’d be at my place,” Kyle said, taking his coat off and tossing it on the couch. “How are you?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to be short with him, but I really didn’t have the desire to talk. I was over everything. I just wanted to paint.

“You want some help?” he asked.

“Grab a brush,” I said. I pointed at the spare and watched Kyle roll up the sleeves on his ninety dollar shirt and dip the roller into the blue tray. We painted in silence for twenty minutes before Kyle wisely took his shirt off, poured us a glass of wine and started brushing the edges.

By 10:30 that night, my son’s room was done.

“I have yellow for Liz’s room,” I said, ready to head next door and continue my task. The somberness of the house was suffocating, but I couldn’t lift my feeling of doom. I already hadn’t seen my kids in a week and now it would be another ten days before I saw their faces again. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for and I hated myself for not seeing this coming.

“I think maybe we wait until tomorrow on that one,” Kyle said grabbing the can from me and setting it down. “Better yet, let me get you a decorator to do everything for you. Stay at my place for a week, by next Friday, everything will be perfect.”

I looked at Kyle and narrowed my eyes at him. He looked amazing with his steadily growing facial hair and a blue smudge under his eye. I smiled my first smile in twenty-four hours.

“Of course I can make all of those calls tomorrow,” he whispered. A second later, he kissed me. I knew right then and there that this wasn’t Kyle’s idea of a rebound fuck. Kyle didn’t know how to just fuck. This was uncharted territory.

After twenty years, an Olympic athlete, a Sigma president, a law associate, and a wife, we were finally back together and there was nothing rebound about that.

“Fuck me,” I whispered to Kyle as my hand travelled from his shoulder to his chest and down his trail to his slack-clad paint roller. I squeezed it tight, wanting it for reasons beyond my own understanding. I hadn’t felt for Kyle in years, and yet there he was being so sweet and so amazing through everything, I had no choice but to feel for him.

He nodded slowly and led me downstairs. There was no haste in anything that we did. In fact every single one of our motions was deliberate and slow. I lay down on my bed and Kyle literally fell on top of me. He slid down my body, raking his nails across my chest. When he got to my belt line, he undid my pants and slipped them off. When we were both naked, he sprang back up, met lip to lip and pressed my legs back toward my shoulder. A second later, I felt his dick pop right into my ass.

I couldn’t believe I still knew how Kyle liked it, but I certainly did. I let him intertwine our hands and stretch them out as wide as they could go across the bed. With no guidance, he pushed in slowly, allowing me time to adjust. When we kissed, we kissed for real. When we made eye contact, nothing could have come between it.

“Cooper, what are we doing here?” Kyle whispered. His teeth bit down sexily on my shoulder and I writhed upwards, impaling myself even more by Kyle’s straining dick.

“I don’t know,” I said, letting him suck on my clavicle. He moved down to my nipple, picking up speed. I felt a bead of sweat on my brow. “I don’t know.” I said louder, letting go of Kyle’s hand and clawing into his back.

When I say Kyle Wriggs can fuck, that’s exactly what I mean. It was visceral. Animalistic. Electrifying. I writhed up and down on the bed as Kyle stood on the floor over me and passionately plowed in and out, holding onto my ankles for good spread-eagled measure.

The best thing about being fucked by a power bottom like Kyle is that he understood exactly what I was going through. He knew how to pace things perfectly to bring me to the brink and then pull me back, edging us out until we are impossibly turned on and ready to explode.

I was in the middle of one of Kyle’s bigger crescendos when my doorbell rang and he suddenly stopped.

“Are you expecting someone?” he panted. I wasn’t. I looked to the left at the clock and realized it was almost midnight. The last time anyone had come over that late, one had been carrying divorce papers and the other had been carrying a band of gold and a bouquet of calla lilies.

“No,” I said pushing Kyle back and standing up. I pulled a robe on as Kyle lay on the bed and caught his breath. I brushed the sweat off my brow and turned the lights on as I walked towards the front door. I pushed my boner down as far as it would go, praying for the blood to redistribute before I got to the door.

I opened it when I felt like my crotch had reverted to an acceptable level.

“Dad,” CJ said, looking up at me as I opened the door wider. He was wearing his backpack and holding his cell phone.

“What the… what are you doing here? Does your mom know you’re here?” I asked. I pulled him into the house by his head and gave him a weak sideways hug.

I was floored. My old house in Highland wasn’t far from my apartment on Lemmon. If he’d taken a cab, it wouldn’t have cost much at all. Still, it wasn’t something CJ would do, just up and cab it halfway downtown without calling first.

“Dad, I’m sorry… were you sleeping?” When he said that, I realized I looked like a complete and total wreck.

I faked a yawn and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “I was just turning in, kiddo. Tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I got into a fight with Mom,” he said sheepishly.

“CJ,” I started.

“Before you yell at me, Dad, she was being totally crazy. I had a friend over and when Mom got home from work, she flipped out on her and said she had to leave and I told her I’m almost fourteen years old, I’m not a little kid. And she said I couldn’t have anyone over, let alone Samantha, before I did my homework…”

“Okay, okay,” I cut him off. “You’re rambling just a little. Listen, go put your stuff in the blue room upstairs. I’m going to call your mom and sort this out, okay?”

CJ nodded and sprang up the steps. He was too tall, athletic and charismatic to be almost fourteen. When the hell did he grow up so fast?

“What’s going on?” Kyle said, coming in wrapped in a towel. He was flushed and looking around like we were being burgled.

“Nothing,” I replied. “CJ is upstairs. He came over God knows why, but I have to call Devon on this one.”

“Yes, call her. Go,” Kyle said. As soon as he heard CJ, he reached for a pair of pants and began pulling them on.

While I dialed, Kyle sprinted upstairs to see if CJ was okay. I loved how much my friends loved my kids. Uncles Bass, Spencer and Kyle were second, third, and fourth parents to them. They’d grown up with Mike as an older brother. Kyle running up to check on my kid was second nature.

“Cooper,” Devon answered. “Where is he?” She sounded frantic.

“Relax, Dev. Please. He caught a cab to my place; he’s totally safe,” I replied.

“I’m coming to pick him up,” she said. I could almost hear her cross the living room to the front door.

“Dev,” I said calmly. “Maybe, and I’m not trying to start anything, but maybe he should spend the night here. I’ll take him to school in the—“

“No way in hell,” she cut me off.

“Dev,” I said, reasonably. “There’s obviously something going on and he hasn’t talked to either of us about it. Maybe it’s a good idea to give him that chance tonight. I’m begging you on everything that I have to let him spend the night here and let me figure out what’s going on with our son.”

I knew Devon. I knew it was either her way or the highway. But I also knew she was generally reasonable. Coming here at midnight to pick up a kid that had run away from home and fight him back was futile and foolish, and she knew it.

“Who’s there with you?” she asked slowly. I heard her swallow.

“It’s me and Kyle,” I replied truthfully. Why did she care? Did she think Chase had magically reappeared? Did she think I had lied in court about Chase and me splitting up?

“He has clothes?”

“He has whatever’s in his backpack. We’ll pick up anything we need in the morning.”

I could almost sense the wheels in her head turning. CJ needed this. He needed to be able to talk to me and realize I was still his dad and I was still there for him.

“If he’s late to school tomorrow, Judge Sizemore will hear about it,” she said, her voice slightly softer.

“I’ll call him myself,” I said. I told her I would talk to her later and then I hung up.

I walked quietly upstairs and when I got to the blue room on the left of the skywalk, I saw Kyle and CJ sitting on the unmade bed, looking at each other. It looked like Kyle had said something really deep to my son, because after a couple seconds of silence, CJ nodded.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, Kyle, I got it,” CJ said. He noticed me standing in the doorway, my heart breaking in a million ways.

“Can I cut in?” I asked. Kyle stood up and walked passed me, patting me on the shoulder as he left. I entered CJ’s new room, the fumes of paint lingering but clearing quickly. CJ would definitely have to spend his first night over on the couch in the living room.

“Dad, I just…”

“I know you’re sorry,” I said to him, sitting next to him.

“And I swear it…”

“I know it won’t happen again,” I interrupted.

CJ gave me a questioning look.

“You aren’t mad?”

“Oh, I’m furious,” I replied, taking in a deep breath. “And so is your mother. She’s worried sick and we both question your judgment at pulling a stunt like this.” I took a dramatic pause. I had already vowed not to lecture. “But we both understand. Kiddo, what you and Lizzie are going through isn’t easy for anyone, and we get that. But you’ve gotta talk to us, not yell at your mom and certainly not hop in a cab and come downtown.”

“Okay,” he said, in the way that kids say okay when they hear you and have nothing else to say.

I lay back on his bed, put my hands under my head and ignored the lingering fumes of drying paint. CJ did the exact same thing. An aerial view of the two of us would have looked like a microcosmic piece of art. Father and son.

“You going to tell me why you did it?” I asked.

“I told you, mom was flipping out on me and I couldn’t take it.”

“Not that,” I replied. “Why, CJ?”

“I don’t know,” he said calmly. The hint of puberty was just surfacing in his voice. In the week since we’d gone apartment shopping, I could have sworn his voice had deepened half an octave.

“I miss you, Dad,” he said. “And it sucks that you chose to live alone and forget about us. And everyone at home is pissed off and cranky all the time. The whole situation is just stupid and it sucks.”

“I miss you too, kiddo,” I said.

“Then come back.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, my heart breaking again and again.

“I bet if you apologized over and over and brought mom flowers or something, she’d forgive whatever you did.”

“Cooper, it isn’t about what I did or what your mom did,” I said quietly, aware that I was about to have the talk with my son that no father knows how to prepare for. There’s no manual on how to tell your kid that you left his mother for a man. There’s no how-to, or Google search, or parenting script to find those words. I’d thought about it a million and one times since they were both born. I knew one day they would know about the particles of my imperfect past. But here it was in the present and affecting my future perfect.

And so I lay there, all tense, and I talked to my son like the adult he was growing into.

“Cooper, before I knew your mom, I was in a relationship with someone,” I said quietly. I could tell he was listening intently because CJ always breathed slowly and deeply when he was really paying attention. “I was dating a guy named Chase Pallendrino. And the two of us were hopelessly in love. It was… toxic. And amazing.”

“You were in love with a guy?”

“Yeah,” I said. I turned my head and looked at him.

“Like Uncle Kyle and Uncle Spencer?”

“Exactly.”

“Like my friend Luke’s dads,” CJ said evenly.

“Yeah, just like Luke’s dads,” I replied.

“So you left mom to get back together with this Chase guy?”

“Not really, but something like that,” I replied. I looked into his eyes. I could tell he had a million questions and then some in reserve. Dallas had reached a place where seeing two guys together with kids and a family wasn’t the strangest site. In fact, it was more and more common every day. But that sort of alternative lifestyle doesn’t usually come crashing down on a thirteen year old boy.

“So does this mean you’re gay, Dad?”

I sighed. “It means that I loved your mom very much while we were together. And now… it means I’m in love with someone else.”

“Chase?”

I didn’t respond. I knew what I had said and I knew whose face I had seen in my mind when I said it.

“I’m in love with someone else, let’s leave it at that, alright?” It didn’t, at the moment, matter who that someone was.

“Wow,” CJ said, his face growing red. He wore every emotion on his face and I could tell he was confused, frustrated, and somewhat surprised. When should I have told him about all of this? My kids knew more about my life than most parents would deem healthy, but this was on a different level. For his entire life, I’d been more or less happily married to his mother. Never in that time did “Hey son, guess what? Your dad is a big ‘mo,” seem like an appropriate thing to say.

“This is so fucking weird.” He sat up, looked at me, stood up and then paced his room a couple of times. “How am I supposed to feel about this?”

“However you want.”

“No, Dad, there’s like definite feelings that go along with this. Am I supposed to congratulate you? Am I supposed to be pissed off?”

“What do you want to be, son?”

“I just… I don’t know. Am I gonna be gay too?”

I cracked a smile. I stood up and faced him.

“Considering you keep getting caught with this Samantha girl,” I joked.

“Studying, Dad. That’s gross.”

“Of course. Studying.” I grabbed him around his stomach and dug my fist into scalp, mussing up his hair.

“Dad.” CJ pushed me away. He wasn’t amused. He looked at me like he hadn’t seen me before in his entire life, and I got it. All I could think was to give him time to process everything, so I said goodnight, told him I’d put blankets out on the couch in the living room and then I went downstairs and into my bedroom to find Kyle.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, sitting on the bed and rubbing my head. My life had devolved into one big headache that I didn’t even notice it anymore. “I told him about Chase.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow. “How’d he take it?”

“Let’s just say that I am currently being reimaged in his mind,” I shrugged. This couldn’t have been more fucked up if I’d tried to make it so.

“He’ll come around,” Kyle assured. “I mean, I’m his favorite uncle, so it’s not like he’s a homophobe or anything.”

“Yeah, but no one expects their dad to come out to them when they’re thirteen years old. It just doesn’t happen. He asked if it was contagious, Kyle.”

Kyle gave me a reassuring look and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. He kissed me on the forehead. I sat and wondered what CJ was thinking just then. Probably that I was the world’s biggest liar. He was probably taking everything he knew about his dad and turning it upside down.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and I told CJ to come in.

“So this Chase guy,” CJ asked boldly. “If you loved him before you met mom and you loved him enough to leave mom, where is he now?”

I hesitated. This was where sticky got stickier. This was the embarrassing part I dreaded telling.

“That part’s not for you to understand right now.”

“Stop saying that!” CJ shouted. “I’m not a little fucking kid, Dad. Sorry for cursing, but come on. I’ll be fourteen soon, I know what sex is and I know what gay is and bi is. Believe it or not, kids at my school are already having sex. So just tell me what happened with you and this Chase guy. Did you love him more than you loved us?”

“Absolutely not,” I countered, my voice rising just a tad.

“So what happened?”

I could sense his frustration. This wasn’t the kind of thing that kids just let go and pick up later, especially CJ. If something bothered him, he’d harp on it until he was too hungry to harp anymore. Even then, he’d eat a sandwich and return to harping.

“It didn’t work out. Listen to me,” I said when I noticed him rolling his eyes at me. I got it. It seemed like I had thrown everything away for something that just didn’t work out. He felt what I had projected, and it was time to clarify that. “Listen up. I didn’t leave you guys at all. Your mom and I have had issues for a long, long time and I did the difficult thing and I ended it. What happened with me and Chase is a byproduct of that, do you understand?”

“Yes,” he swallowed.

“I will answer anything you want to ask me, kiddo, believe me I wish I had talked to you and Lizzy about this a million years ago. But you know better than to raise your voice and roll yours eyes at me and especially at your mother, you understand that?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Alright,” I replied, calming down. “Anything else before you go to bed?”

“Um, sort of. Were you and Uncle Kyle doing it when I rang the doorbell?” I saw a crack of a smile when he asked it and I was relieved, if only slightly.

“Okay, kiddo, bedtime,” I said. I stood up and ushered him out of the room.

“What? You said I could ask anything. What about you and Uncle Spencer?”

“You’re wearing me down, kiddo,” I said when we got out to the living room. I tossed a blanket onto the couch and turned off the lights.

“You know I love you, right kid?” I asked a few minutes later after we’d both settled down and CJ was tucked into the couch.

“Yeah, Dad,” he replied with a grin. “I just wish everything wasn’t so screwed up.”

I took in a loud, deep breath. “That makes two of us. You have no clue how much I wish I hadn’t screwed everything up.”

CJ had a hundred more questions, but we both knew that Devon would kill us dead if she knew it was rounding the corner of midnight and one o’clock and he was still up. School in less than eight hours, and my son was notoriously cranky with anything less than a full night’s sleep.

“How’d that end?” Kyle asked me when I got back into the bedroom. I was genuinely glad he was there. I wouldn’t have been able to do that alone.

“Much, much better than I could have hoped,” I replied. “One down.”

“Your kids aren’t stupid, Cooper,” Kyle said, trying to cheer me up. “They know that things weren’t perfect between you and Devon. Give them some credit, and I bet they’ll return the favor.”

I kissed Kyle thankfully, took off my robe and joined him in bed. He snuggled up behind me, flipping our usual sleeping position. I could feel his dick press up against my back and I turned my head to smile at him. Kyle bit down on my ear and I squirmed. The next thing I felt were Kyle’s warm fingers wrapped around my dick.

“I’m not fucking you with my son right outside the door,” I whispered naughtily.

“Who said we had to fuck?” he asked. I turned around, looked Kyle in the eye and grabbed a hold of his cock. We slowly brought each other to the edge, not once letting go of our intense eye contact.

I knew something was going to happen on Thursday night. Everything in my life was too calm for something not to happen on Thursday night.

I drove CJ to the house in Highland at seven in the morning. He drooled for the entire twelve minute car ride there. He took a quick shower and changed clothes, and because Devon would have had to leave already before he was done, I waited around so I could drive him to St. Mark’s.

Before Devon and Liz had a chance to escape the house, I pulled Liz aside in the kitchen. Leaning on the corner, I asked her if everything was okay.

“Yeah, Dad, everything’s fine,” she said shortly. She grabbed a water bottle and an apple out of the fridge. I knew Devon would be down any second.

“Look, I want to talk to you,” I said, looking her deep in the eye. “I want to make sure you’re handling all of this fine.”

She sighed really big. “How am I supposed to be handling this?”

“It’s okay to be mad at me,” I said.

“Good,” she picked up her purse and turned away, calling, “Mom, I’m in the car,” as she left.

I noticed a cheerleading schedule on the fridge. Her first game was a day away and I vowed to be there, front and center.

The girls left and I shepherded CJ out of the house just in time for me to drop him off before the first bell. Attitude from Liz, hiding out from Devon, rallying CJ, and all before breakfast… it was almost like the old days.

The rest of my morning consisted of errand after errand. I made four keys to my apartment and I delivered them all over Dallas County. We each had keys to the other’s places, and Spencer had already bugged me about getting a copy of my new one. Bass was first at his office in Carrolton.

“How you holding up?” he asked. I knew he didn’t have much time to talk, so I made my update quick.

“Meh,” I confessed. “CJ is opening up. Liz is still a closed book. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be apart from them.”

“Yeah,” Bass said, clearly preoccupied by whatever was on his computer screen.

“Let me get out of your hair, Bass,” I said. “I just wanted to drop that off.”

“Okay,” he said. He looked up for a second. “Say, Cooper. Um… Mike is taking Liz to some season opener dance at her school tomorrow night. Did you know anything about that?”

“No,” I said, easing back down. “Is something going on between them?”

“I don’t want to concern you or anything,” he said. “I just think you should know they’re talking.”

“They’re practically brother and sister,” I retorted.

“And they’re at that age,” Sebastian reminded me. His son was one shake away from being sixteen. Liz wasn’t far behind him.

I left Sebastian’s office wondering what else I was missing in my daughter’s life. She could barely look at me, let alone talk to me for two minutes and fill me in. If anything was going to change, though, it would have to start with me.

I got to Spencer’s apartment just after lunch to give him his copy of my key.

“So the new place is all ready,” he said. I nodded at him. “How are you doing?”

“Hanging in there,” I replied.

“Well, why don’t you let your hair down… for this,” he said, handing me a card. It was the official invitation to Spencer’s annual Labor Day party. Summer didn’t end when school started or with a mid-September solstice. Summer ended when Spencer threw his biggest bash of the year.

“Lake Lewisville?” I asked, surprised that it had crept up on me so suddenly.

“Go big or go home,” he said. “I’m getting three barges. There’s going to be an after party at Sneaky Pete’s. Open bar. It’ll be the biggest one yet.”

“Spence, I don’t know if I’m up for a party.”

“It’s not like you have the kids this weekend,” he joked. The salt stung and he saw my face shift. “Too soon?”

“Little bit,” I said, trying to be breezy, but failing pretty solidly.

“Anyway, I hope you’ll come. Who knows, you might meet someone there that makes Chase seem like he never happened.”

The words shuffled back and forth in my ear as I drove away towards my SMU office. There was no way I’d ever forget Chase, regardless of what he’d done. But Kyle was doing a pretty good job of blurring him from the picture. I knew I’d have to tell Spencer about that sooner or later, but I settled on later.

My students had a reading response paper due. It wasn’t anything big, just six pages and two sources. I planned on skimming them over the weekend, but with Liz’s game on Friday and now Spencer’s party on Sunday, I’d have to put it off until next week. I went by my office to pick up the stack they were supposed to drop off by five.

When I opened the door and turned on the light, the manuscript stared straight at me from my desk. Mason must have dropped it off. It was neatly arranged in the center of my desk with a note on top.

To Cooper: Finish edits 17-end ASAP.

The handwriting belonged to someone at Knowles and had been scribbled across a sticky note. Under that writing was another short note in Mason’s signature chicken scratch.

To Cooper: Do this or they’re dropping you. I’ll pick it up Friday at five.

I looked at my watch. It was just after five on Thursday and the campus was beginning to slow down. I had two options. I could go home and wallow some more, or I could stay at the office and finish something that was twenty years in the making. This was something they couldn’t take away from me.

I sat down, took off my jacket and dove in, starting with Chapter Seventeen: Chase.

As I read and changed and edited phrases and paragraphs, I remembered just why I’d fallen in love with Chase at the start. He was the guy who was hotter than everyone and yet he wanted me when he could have had anyone. He pursued me after our first night together. When I found out Spencer was crushing on him too, I told him I couldn’t see him anymore and my loyalty to a friend must have turned him on even more. He was definitely there for the chase at the beginning.

By the time I relived how he’d gone all the way to Austin to see my first volleyball tournament or how he asked me to go exclusive with him by saying something sexy like “Let’s get in the habit of this,” or how I completely changed my life around to accommodate him, it was perfectly clear to me that he had been the one at one point a long time ago.

He was the sun.

And then there was Kyle.

I finished editing the manuscript at just after midnight. The words they wanted me to change, the phrases and the structure were fine and dandy. It made for a better narrative and an easier flow. Somehow, my team knew my style better than I did. But the emotions couldn’t be edited out and that was clear.

Rethinking Chase, reliving our whirlwind courtship, made things complicated again. I could be happy with Kyle. He was good with my children. He was a friend first, and that was important. He was amazing in bed.

And Chase was a liar. That was the bottom line. Those feelings were over. Chase and I were over.

Kyle hadn’t thrown me the relationship bone, but if I knew Kyle, I knew he was winding his arm. The question was, was I ready to catch it?

When I got home, I was exhausted. It had been ages since I’d done edits and even longer since I’d been out of the house for a full day. It was good to keep my mind occupied. I didn’t return to my melancholy that day. Keeping busy suited me.

And my feeling that everything could be normal for just one day evaporated as soon as I stepped foot inside my apartment. I knew something would happy on Thursday because days don’t just go by perfectly without something happening.

When I got home and tried to let myself in, my key didn’t click like it was supposed to, meaning someone was already inside. The only people that had keys were my three best friends and CJ. I opened the door, turned on the foyer light and I called out.

“Who’s here?” I asked loudly. My phone was out and I had my thumb on the nine key, ready to dial the police if it was a dangerous intruder.

And then I saw the candle. And then I saw all of the candles. I looked down and with the dim light that the trail of candles created, I noticed a million rose pedals and calla lilies, my favorite.

“What the fuck?” I whispered, scanning the apartment. I slowly followed the trail into the open space that was my living room. The view of the flowers and the candles and the man kneeling on a small pillow and grinning at me was breathtaking.

“Cooper,” he said with a tear rolling down his eye. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. “Cooper, I was an idiot. And I know that. I never should have let you go in the first place and I should have been honest and sincere with you from the get go. But we all make mistakes and the beauty of it is we get a chance to make it right. You and I. Let’s make it right.”

By the time he was done talking, I was so overcome with emotion, I could have died right then. I looked at Chase, his hair catching the candle light beautifully. He smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

Before I could respond in any way, he produced the black box. He pulled it out of his pocket and he opened it in front of me. A platinum band with four diamonds and four sapphires embedded perfectly in metal sparkled.

“I love you,” he said. “And I will never ever stop loving you. And I will never stop telling you how special you are to me. And if you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me, I’ll try to leave you alone, I will. I swear. But I can’t promise I’ll be any good at it. Je t’aime, mon cheri. Veux-tu m'épouser.”

I had no clue what to say to him. I searched my mind and my soul for what felt like hours, but what had to be a matter of split seconds. I loved him too, that much couldn’t be denied. Flaws and all, Chase had been the one from the get go.

Half of me wanted to forget everything, drop it all, get rid of every piece of baggage I carried and be with Chase once and for all.

But there was one thing standing in my way. Something that had been there all along, but was just starting to eclipse every feeling I thought I had about Chase. One thing I couldn’t forget about.

Kyle Wriggs.

“Cooper, I love you.” Chase stood and took a step towards me, waiting to hear my response.

I searched every crevice of my soul and finally, as the world stood still around us, I answered him.

“Chase…”