Snowed Under (Aspen Peaks #2)

14. Cooper

C hase (magazine husband): Can’t wait to see you and Madeline next Friday!

Cooper: we wouldn’t miss it

“So you blackmailed her?” Finn asked as we set cones out on Monday morning.

As soon as I left Madeline’s house under the eyes of her cautious family, I fired off a text to her.

Me: youre the best fake girlfriend ever

Me: whats your go to order at the cafe downstairs I’m bringing you breakfast every day this week

Madeline: I’m assuming this is Cooper?

Me: how many fake boyfriends do you have

Madeline: Not enough. You are not off the hook yet. You’re lucky you didn’t get the Spanish inquisition from my parents like I did the moment you left. Also: of course you’re buying breakfast—a caramel macchiato and a bacon cheddar scone. Also: learn how to use punctuation.

Joke was on her, really, considering bringing her breakfast was an excuse to see her this morning. What I lacked in punctuation, I made up for in punctuality.

“I didn’t blackmail her.” I wasn’t that cruel. She said so herself at dinner. She didn’t like her mom trying to set her up with random men. I also did not like that. She had a problem that curved perfectly against my own, and boom, I’d solved both. “She needs me as much as I need her.”

“Did she say that herself?”

I paused. “Not in so many words, but kind of, yes.”

“Ugh, Coop.” Finn groaned. “Olive doesn’t have a ton of friends, and if you ruin this for her, I seriously might kill you.”

My hands flew up in defense. “I am not ruining anything. She doesn’t even like me. I am just doing both of us and this lodge a great service.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I waved a hand. “Relax, I can do this.”

My phone buzzed in the side pocket of my salopettes—French for ski pants, essentially—and I pulled it out to turn off my alarm. After she’d texted back on Saturday night, I said we probably should meet for breakfast in the mornings in the lobby. That way, we could hammer out the details of our arrangement for the interview. To my surprise and enjoyment, she agreed. Plans were already circling.

“I gotta go.” I put my phone back in my pocket and scattered the cones in a somewhat straight—actually, not straight at all but would have to do—line.

“Where?”

“My first date with Madeline is this morning, and I refuse to be late.”

I snagged my bag off the bench and slung it onto my shoulder, not waiting for his response as I trekked through the snow toward the lobby.

True to my word, I sat at a table in the back corner of the café, near the low hum of the speakers playing “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the smell of fresh espresso being poured wafting around me. I had Madeline’s order sitting in front of me while I waited for her to walk in.

Not long after, Madeline came in wearing a cream sweater with a thick scarf wrapped around her. I frowned at her lack of gloves and the red fingers wrapped around her keys. It wasn’t the worst weather Aspen had seen—especially compared to last week—but still, she needed gloves.

She smiled all the time. I wasn’t sure she knew how to stop, honestly. It was like a switch she had to force off.

I raised my arm and waved, showing her where our table was. The smile spread a tiny bit before locking into a scowl. She sauntered in and took the seat in front of me, staring at me as if I had spit in her coffee before she entered the room.

“What?” I asked, on the defense.

“I’m still mad at you.”

I nodded. “Ah. Are you, though?”

“Yes.”

“I did you a favor.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. “Not in the way I needed it. My mom is going to have our Pinterest wedding board planned out by tomorrow.”

I shrugged. “You said you needed help. I helped—”

“No, what I needed was a mother transplant. Instead, you added stress to my already daily chaos. Now she’s trying to watch the kids so we can do ‘date night.’”—she threw her hands up in quotations—“once a week without them there, and I’m gonna have to come up with some crappy reason why I don’t need that.”

“Oh.” I twiddled my thumbs underneath the table. “I didn’t think about it like that. I’m sorry.” I said it sincerely, lowering my voice and my gaze to match hers.

Madeline looked at me for a moment before taking a sip of her drink and sighing. “It’s okay. I’m just overwhelmed right now.”

I nodded. Made sense, taking care of two kids on top of nursing school, work, and her parents’ pressure? How often did she actually get to come out of her shell like she had last night? How often did Madeline get to come up for air?

“Well, good news is this is just for a couple weeks. It will be done before you know it.”

“That almost makes it worse.” She stirred the ice around in her drink. “Because now, if we just randomly break up, then Mom is going to try to pull Charlie from classes to avoid you.”

At that, my brows lowered. “Hell no. You can’t take that kid out of classes. He’s got more talent in one pinky than most do in their whole bodies. If anything, we could switch him to Finn’s afternoon classes, right?”

I hated the thought of him giving up. I watched it happen to other students. Life got busy or their parents had to move, and you watched this raw talent shrivel up and die. It hurt from an outside perspective, and I couldn’t imagine how bad it would hurt Mini Coop too.

Madeline shook her head. “He can only do mornings on the weekends. I have classes in the afternoon, and my mom has doctor appointments on and off throughout the week. It just wouldn’t work. That was why I said no in the first place.”

I nodded, considering. I was able to admit that I’d screwed up and had to fix it. “Let me think for a second.” I hummed to myself and looked at the coffee shop around us like an answer would pop out directly in front of me with jazz hands, saying here I am, exactly what you’ve been waiting for! Contrary to my belief, the chatter of tourists around us and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee mingling with the scent of pine from the wood-burning fireplace did nothing for my empty head.

I turned to the large windows to my left that offered the perfect view of snow-capped mountains and small glimpses of skiers and snowboarders gliding down the slopes in the distance. Even that wasn’t giving me any ideas.

“Let me keep thinking on it, but I will find a way to make this better for you.”

She let out this sigh that said not likely, but it only made me more determined. I pulled a notebook and pen from my backpack and set them on the table.

“All right, for now, we need to talk business.” I opened the notebook and tapped the corner of my gel pen to it.

“Business being…?”

“The business of Madeline and Cooper, super couple and ski extraordinaires. We should probably get a good couple name going for us too. I’m leaning more toward Cadeline than Mooper. Mooper sounds like a rejected member of the Muppets and doesn’t exactly scream sexy.”

“And Cadeline does scream sexy?”

“Sexier than Mooper.”

She shrugged. “True. Or we could just not have a couple name.”

The pen moved as I waved my hand. “Nah, we gotta sell this. For the actual interview part, it would be best if we knew everything about each other in case they ask you something specific about me.”

Madeline nodded and took another sip of her drink, leaving a pink lipstick stain on the lid that I had a hard time pulling my eyes from. “Fair.”

I clicked my pen and prepped it to write. “So go ahead and tell me everything about you, and we can go from there.”

“Everything about me?” She scoffed. “I can’t even remember what I ate for dinner last night.”

“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask that.”

“I can’t just…tell you about myself. It’s not that easy.”

I crossed my arms, possibly marking my shirt with my pen, but I wasn’t worried about that at this particular moment. “Is too. Watch this. Hi, my name is Cooper. I am a children’s ski instructor at my family’s lodge, Aspen Peaks. I enjoy spending most of my time on the slopes or with my friends and family. My favorite board game is Clue, and I think I look best in all black. When I was a kid, I had a hamster named Truman, whom I still miss. And I am totally on Rachel’s side when it comes to her and Ross’s whole ‘we were on a break’ moment.”

Madeline stayed silent, staring at me like maybe I had more to add to that. I did. I could go all day long. I liked homemade Rice Krispies Treats way better than the packaged stuff, and I would sometimes think about eggs, and it would make me sick. I could fill every piece of paper in this notebook with things about me.

She muttered a soft and slow “how?”

I answered. “Well, technically, they were on a break, but I don’t think that gave him any right to be with another woman. I mean, he waited like ten seconds to stick his tongue—”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “How are you so good at that?”

“What?”

“That. Talking about yourself, knowing yourself. I had a meltdown the other day because I didn’t even know what brand of cereal I like anymore.”

She pulled at her hair, and in that moment, I noticed just how tired she looked. I hadn’t seen them before, the heavy, bloodshot eyes and the yawning over and over again.

I didn’t know how to answer that, not really. I just knew myself. I kind of figured everyone was like that. “I…I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond, just slumped her shoulders a bit as her gaze zeroed in on the notebook in front of me.

“If it helps,” I said softly, “I totally think you’re a Cinnamon Toast Crunch kind of girl.”

She snorted at that, and her eyes turned lighter for just a moment. “Maybe you’re right. Doesn’t change the fact that you had to tell me that. I didn’t even know it myself.”

I leaned back in my chair so I could take a better look at her. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. Saturday night, you knew plenty about yourself.”

“No. I knew plenty about obscure things I did or did not like in life.”

“So?” I smiled a bit when she finally lifted her gaze to me. “Who says all those little things don’t make you who you are?”

Madeline’s head cocked to the side. “So you think if I just tell them I like fancy toasters, then that’s all they’ll need?”

I shook my head and tore a piece off my own croissant. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just think you know yourself more than you think you do.”

She didn’t agree or argue with me, but the way her eyes darkened told me something about that didn’t sit with her. I glanced one more time out at the window beside me and watched a guy on a snowboard gliding down the mountain, his board taking him in long, smooth, curved strokes. And that was when it hit me.

“I got it.” I leaned forward, sitting on the edge of my seat.

“Got…what?”

“The solution to every problem you and I have.”

“Not every proble—”

My hand reached out to hers, the short-sighted version of me thinking it would be a genius idea to hold her hand. She looked at our joint fingers, all warm and soft, before looking back at me. “Every. Problem. Madeline.”

She squinted at me in disbelief but didn’t move her hand either, so I kept leaning into the table, ignoring the edge stabbing my gut.

“Here’s what we can do. You liked Saturday night, right? I’m not just making that up in my head?” It was worth asking, considering I had been known to make more of things than I should.

“Sure, it was nice.”

“Let’s do that once a week. Once a week, your parents can watch the kids, watch me pick you up and drop you off. And we can go somewhere to figure this out.”

Her brows pulled down in confusion, but she didn’t seem totally averse to the idea. “Figure what out?”

“You.” I squeezed her hand, and we both looked down at our joined fingers. “We can meet once a week, and I can help you learn more about yourself to make up for whatever we’re going to endure in the interview. It’ll look like we’re dating very seriously, and we can sort out your perfect LinkedIn/Tinder bio. An all-in-one combo.”

“For how long?”

“Until you feel ready. Until you feel like yourself again.”

I knew for a fact, mostly from yanking information out of Olive, that Madeline had changed after her brother’s death. She hadn’t explained how or provided details. When I asked, she simply said, “She isn’t who she once was.” Something I understood all too well.

I was fortunate in that my grief was the kind to knock you into reality. Like a punch to the face from life, but in a loving way. In a way that said you’re better than this, and I turned myself around. Grief, for others, sometimes meant going in a downward spiral and getting lost along the way. I saw that in my cousins. In my uncle, who buried himself in work. In my mom, holding tears back at her father’s funeral. Everyone grieved differently, and everyone grew from it differently too. Maybe this could be Madeline’s growth.

“Why? Why would you do that for me?”

Because after the interview, I wouldn’t have an excuse to see her anymore. And because I wasn’t quite ready to let whatever that meant for us go. “Because I feel like I owe it to you, since I brought you into this in the first place.” I started to leave it at that, but it felt cheap and all too fake, so I added, “And because I like you. I think you’re cooler than you think you are, and about what it would be like if I could get you to smile like you did on Saturday all the time.”

She laughed at that, and I laughed too before pulling my hand away from hers. Her smile died down a bit, turning into this soft, sweet grin when she said, “Seriously, my mom might drive you crazy. And I don’t want Charlie to know, since none of it’s real. He has a big heart, and he is already way too attached to you.”

I held a hand up. “To be fair, he was my friend before I knew you well enough, so I agree. Bros before ho—” I caught myself midway. “No, I can’t even say hos because that doesn’t apply here. Bros before hot aunts. I’ll stick by that.”

Her cheeks turned the prettiest shade of pink when she said, “I can’t believe I am agreeing to this.”

“So you are agreeing?”

“I mean, not like I have much of a choice. Mom’s breathing down my neck about getting a man in my life. She sends me the numbers of so many of her friends’ sons that sometimes I just text them and say, ‘If Eloise Sage happens to mention her daughter is interested in dating, please be advised that said daughter is not at all.’”

The thought of numbers being flung her way left and right made my palms itch and gave me this dreadful sense of unease in my gut.

“Perfect. What’s your schedule like?” I asked because the alternative words—on average, how many men are reaching out to you each day?—felt like an invasion.

She hummed and muttered to herself for a second, mumbling about speech lessons and schooling and picking up groceries before settling on a day. “Friday nights would be best. I have online classes only on Friday, and it would be good for my parents too, since I think that’s when they’re most available.”

I nodded and bit my lip. “Fridays, then? For our dates?”

“They’re not dates.”

“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “Fridays for our not-dates?”

She nodded and, without my permission, my brain immediately started rattling ideas off for the next few weeks in my soon-to-be-booked winter.