Snowed Under (Aspen Peaks #2)

21. Cooper

H ey,” I said, frantic and out of breath. “Is Elsa still in?”

“Is…Elsa in?” Finn asked, as if he hadn’t heard every word I just said.

My foot anxiously beat against the tiled floors of the Target aisle I was standing in. Surrounded by princess dresses, fairy wings, and a Barbie Corvette that I pressed one single button on and now had alarm bells screaming at me. I had a feeling I wasn’t as intimidating as I wanted to be. One hand on my hip and one hand holding a box with an Elsa doll with a tiny snowman beside it didn’t help either.

“What the hell is that noise?” he asked before I could answer his first question.

I lifted the box to my head in frustration. “The alarm of Barbie’s Corvette is more sensitive than you’d think.”

A mom with a young girl turned into the aisle, staring at me, while the toy to my left obnoxiously shouted “let’s go for a ride.” I wanted to ride Barbie off the edge of the Grand Canyon at the moment. I dipped my chin in a hello, and the mom put a hand over her redheaded daughter’s eyes, slowly pushing her away from the aisle without breaking eye contact and shaking her head side to side. Because clearly, in my socks and crocs, standing in the bright pink aisle full of Barbie Dream Houses and Rapunzel-themed Tiaras, I screamed “child-taker.”

“Can I ask what you’re doing? I feel like you think some things you say are easily translated, and I promise, they aren’t.”

I sighed and set down one Frozen set before grabbing the next one. Twenty bucks for a bunch of cheap plastic seemed ridiculous. “Half-Pint is sick, and I wanted to find something for her.”

“Again, please use as many words as possible.”

I put down that set and looked in the thirty-dollar range, which now also had a cool-looking blond guy with a reindeer. At what age did kids start putting Legos together? Two felt young…

“Half-Pint—Madeline’s girl—she got sick on Friday, some kind of quick bug, but it was a mess. Mom and I went to see them, and you should have heard her crying—”

“Your mom met Madeline and the kids?” He might as well have said “you went to the moon and had a martini with a dog wearing a top hat?” in that tone.

“Yes,” I said, firm and clear. I was about to give up on this stupid aisle and my phone entirely. “No more interrupting.”

His silence let me know to press forward. “She finally went to sleep, but Mom and I stuck around a bit, and I…” I wasn’t sure what to plug in to finish my sentence.

I…feel like Madeline needs extra help—besides her parents, who belittle her.

I…feel like these kids deserve more.

I…really, really like this girl, and I’m kind of praying Elsa will pull this together.

“I saw something in them that made me want to pitch in,” I conceded. “So I’m now at Target with a cart half full of stuff that I think will help. I want to get both of the kids something exciting. So is Elsa still in? That movie came out like ten years ago.”

“There will probably be geriatric women in white and blue dresses singing “Let It Go” at its hundred-year anniversary, and Elsa would still be in, Coop.”

I nodded. “I figured.” My hands reached out, and I looked between the two sets before grabbing them both.

“What else did you get?” Finn asked.

I looked at the half-full cart below me. How could something feel like too much and not enough at the same time?

“Some basics for the little one. Pedialyte, soup, a cup with a blue dog on it, candy, and an extremely large package of Slim Jims.”

“Every two-year-old’s dream,” Olive chimed in.

“Thank you, Olive Branch.” I moved on. “Got Mini Coop two small Lego sets and one Xbox gift card. But now that feels like a lot compared to Half-Pint …” My eyes scanned the aisles, all the way down to that stupid Corvette still singing to me, telling me to come for a ride. A Tiana doll sat on the top shelf, and I shrugged before tossing that in the basket too.

“Madeline is getting a mug that says World’s Hottest Mom. There wasn’t an aunt one. A candle too. It smells like the resort”—or at least the closest I could find to it—“and two books—a sexy romance and a scary thriller.”

“Ooh, good idea. In my experience, women love murder and high standards,” Finn chimed in.

“Agreed.” I nodded and moved those to my keep pile, right by the gummy vitamins that my mom mentioned to Madeline yesterday. But my keep pile was less of a keep pile and more of an entire cart full of stuff.

I walked down the aisle and turned where Christmas trees and decorative ornaments with little mice on them were on display. My hands instantly reached for the Hershey’s chocolate peppermint bars, and I decided that one was for me. Those kids could rip it from my cold, dead body. Madeline could have one square.

“Does that seem like enough?”

“Seems easier to buy the whole store to me.” Finn snorted, and he wasn’t wrong.

Mom said gift-giving was my love language. A softer way of saying I buy my friends. An old habit that had stuck with me to this day. Even in preschool, Ma would send me with a toy, and I’d give it away the second we got there. She said it like I was some generous, noble kid, when in reality, I knew exactly what it was: a down payment on a real friendship.

In middle school, it turned into free ski trips at the lodge with kids who didn’t even like me or hardly talked to me. In high school, I could afford to buy the forbidden alcohol from a couple of college sophomores. Or I could throw the best parties, get the best people together. And still, every night, with company all around me, I felt entirely alone. In what would be my college days—I dropped out midway through my first math class—it was buying drinks for the hottest girls, which usually meant the coolest guys being around too. Again, rooms full, heart empty. Over and over. Every single relationship I made that wasn’t family was bought. And the more I did it, the more it seemed to dig deep.

Except for Finn. My one friend who didn’t see a dollar sign or a new opportunity when he looked my way. My one friend who fought with me and laughed with me the way I always thought friends were supposed to. He got on my nerves sometimes, and I got on his nerves a lot. But it was real, authentic. A friendship that would stand the test of time. Marriage, babies, nursing homes—Finn Beckett was my first ride or die. Madeline Sage was a very close second.

I looked down at the cart in front of me and winced. It was a lot. Maybe too much. But it kept coming back to me. Why did I come here in the first place? Never once had it crossed my mind that doing this for this family would secure them in place. It didn’t feel like a back-up plan. In the last hour, I hadn’t once felt like a stray dog putting a dead squirrel on a back porch for a random family in hopes that they’d take me in. I’d felt like I was doing something they deserved and nothing more.

So I pushed my cart farther down the aisle. “All my money goes to me now. It’ll be nice seeing it put to good use.”

That made it sound like I was some billionaire or that I made enough money to fund a nonprofit organization, which I wasn’t and didn’t. I made the same amount as Finn, even when offered advances over the years because of my last name. But I had a good, steady income with a low mortgage, no car payment, and a 401(k). Alcohol was gone from my life, as were parties and women and any extravagant non-necessities that had taken up financial space in my past.

Looking down at the cart in front of me, I swore it was like the tiny white-haired princess winked up at me. This was different from all those other times. This felt like, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I had something good going on. A cart full of toys and candy and—Oh my gosh. I was Santa Claus.

“I’m proud of you, Coop.” Finn’s voice broke up my thoughts about how hard it would be to dye a beard white. “You seem like you’re…you again. Like the real Cooper, not the old one.”

There wasn’t an ounce of me that felt offended at that, because I agreed wholeheartedly. “Thanks, man.”

Silence passed.

“You would get a crush on Olive’s friend.”

I laughed a little at that. “I told you our kids would be best friends.”

He snorted a little—Olive did too in the background—and sighed. “Yeah, yeah. They would be.”

When I arrived at Target, it had been light out, the sun doing its best to melt the snow packed in the parking lot and warming my skin under my thick coat. When I left, it was pitch-black, the stars scattered in the night sky and the crescent moon shining over the half-lit parking lot. I didn’t know what it said about me that I’d spent nearly three hours in the place or that I’d come in for three items, tops, and was now packing twelve bags into my trunk. But that’s where I was.

On the bright side, it was pushing nine o’clock, so I knew the kids were in bed. I could drop this stuff off on their porch and run without making a huge deal of it.