Snowed Under (Aspen Peaks #2)

28. Madeline

F rom: [email protected]

Madeline,

Friday night was perfect, as always. Please scroll to see the attached full evaluation. Next Friday will be perfect too. Different perfect, but still. Thank you for being a cooperative patient.

P.S. I told you there would be more food than just apple cider and hot pretzels involved.

All the best,

Cooper Graves

OVERALL EVALUATION FOR NOT-DATE 3 (2 was technically spent in the hallway floor outside a bathroom): Madeline Sage is, for lack of better terms, a keeper. Beauty is one thing, brains and humor are another. To keep this one sweet and simple: she is everything she thinks she’s not. And it is a pleasure to show her otherwise.

I loved a good snowstorm.

For a few reasons. It reminded me of home. Not so much my parents’ home, but the feeling of home. Nostalgia and comfort. Remembering December and January nights where snow and ice flew to the ground with such force that it should have been scary. The way it piled up in front of the door and the windows. As a kid, maybe it should have frightened me to see my parents rationing food in the kitchen, making sure we’d be fine. But for me, it meant a day of sitting in Will’s bedroom, looking into the backyard and watching our half-broken trampoline get covered up by a white blanket. It meant pillow forts and watching movies and eating mountains of chips, knowing we had nowhere to be. Even when he turned sixteen and started working, it meant he wouldn’t be going in to work. He would be home, so home felt like home, if that made any sense.

But also, snowstorms felt like God’s way of saying “here’s a new start.” Something fresh. Something exciting. Enough to tempt your heart rate up a bit, but hint at some grand surprise outside the next morning.

I usually loved a snowstorm, I should say. I’d loved it until our power went out. Then it felt like I was playing Survivor. But instead of a tropical island surrounded by a bunch of hot people and camerapeople, we were on a frozen wasteland, where you might as well give up on life.

I was in the middle of a quiz when the lights flickered once. I heard a loud what the crap? from my nine-year-old, who must’ve picked up on the power outage when his TV turned off. Piper stayed on the floor; her legs positioned in a way that would probably make most yoga instructors jealous. “May?” she whispered into the semi dark room.

Charlie’s loud feet thundered through the house to where we were. “I’m right here, baby,” I announced.

I checked my phone. Seventy-eight percent battery was good. Plus it was already 6:50, so we weren’t too far away from bedtime. We could make it along just fine.

“I’ll turn my flashlight on. We can use it until we figure it out.” I was sliding a thumb down the screen to click on the flashlight access when a notification fell from the top.

Cooper: your power out

If there was one thing about this man that annoyed me, it was his texting.

Me: Are you allergic to question marks?? Or any kind of punctuation?

The three-dotted bubble popped up and back down, and his reply came a moment later.

Cooper: deadly

Cooper: is your power out

Me: It flickered once a while ago, but it just went out completely a few minutes ago. Did yours?

Cooper: yea

Cooper: see you in a sec

I looked to Charlie, who was reading the text exchange over my shoulder, which made me incredibly grateful that the keyboard was still up. Otherwise, he would have seen a text from Cooper just yesterday asking me what I was sleeping in. Or my response of my grandmother’s old night gown. To which he responded with vintage and hot.

“Mr. Cooper’s coming over?” he asked with nothing short of pure delight in his tone.

“I…guess so?” I tried to tamp down on my own delight. “His power is out too, so I’m not sure why.” Then it hit me. It was snowing like a freaking blizzard outside, and despite having snow tires on his SUV, there was no way he could drive here. Even if it was only a block. His driveway was also on an incline, whereas mine was a little flatter. Even so, I wouldn’t be able to get out of here.

I texted him quickly.

Me: Are you seriously coming over?

Cooper: packing a bag

Cooper: does mini coop like cheezits

Cooper: do you

Cooper: i know what half pint wants

Me: Yeah we all like Cheez-its.

Cooper: white cheddar okay

Me: Cooper, it is snowing so hard I can barely see our driveway. Please don’t. drive

Cooper: i wont

Cooper: that was a question earlier

Cooper: is white cheddar okay

Me: It’s fine, also, please don’t come here if it means you getting hurt.

Cooper: honored you care that much madeline

I texted two more times about his absolutely unnecessary need to come here, but both messages were unanswered, so I could only assume he was busy packing a bag and somehow finding a way to fly over here.

“I guess he is coming, yeah.”

Charlie didn’t respond, but ran over to his room and closed the door. Then I could hear shuffling around. I turned to Piper, who was still plopped on the ground, aligning her dolls in a very specific Piper order.

“Half-Pi?” She phrased it as a question that I couldn’t quite piece together, so I hummed a noncommittal response.

Unsure of how much time I had before a wild Cooper popped up on my doorstep, I frantically picked up the house. Or as much as I could in the dark. And then, because clearly, I had my priorities straight, I rushed to the bedroom to take off my oversized banana-yellow third annual oyster shucking competition T-shirt—that was actually Will’s from when he’d taken a trip to Maine in college—and replaced it with the cutest matching pajama set I owned.

A long-sleeve lavender cotton button-up with matching bottoms and fresh socks.

Because, of course, my matching socks were much higher on the list of importance than, let’s say, loading the dishwasher or deep cleaning our guest bathroom, scrubbing the sink from signs that a ravenous Piper had been in there earlier to brush her teeth.

I searched the kitchen for one of the two lighters we owned and pulled out three different candles. Peach Bellini, Christmas Wonder, and Mint Julip were all going to have to coexist in the same space, because I’d never thought of needing scentless candles until this very moment.

As I set the third candle on the coffee table, one sharp knock came from the door, followed by a pause and then three more knocks.

Piper raised both arms in the sky with a loud uh, signaling she wanted to be picked up. I reached down to grab her and settled her on my hip while she scowled at the door. Maybe we didn’t need a better security system after all. If we ever did have an intruder, it was likely that this girl would bite some ankles if the time called for it.

“It’s just Cooper.” I bounced her on my hip as we walked.

She straightened. “Half-Pi?”

It didn’t fully register to me until we opened the door to a snow-covered Cooper, who was standing on my front porch with a backpack on his back and something square wrapped under a black-and-white gingham blanket in his hands. His eyes drank me in with a dark, hooded look, from my socks to the ponytail my hair was pulled up in. That smirk that I’d grown so fond of quirked its way up, soft, slow, and then all at once. He looked at me like he wanted to eat me alive. Looked at me in the same way I was taking him in. In boots partially unlaced, dark gray sweats, and that same black hoodie with the lodge logo on it, he stood there smirking while I found myself entirely grateful for my sudden switch in pajamas.

And even after the way he’d taken me in, I wasn’t the first one he addressed. “Hiya, Half-Pint.”

Piper didn’t respond, but she did a very tiny wave. That alone had my mouth gaping. And then she pointed to the bag on his back.

He laughed a little. “I got something for you, don’t worry.”

Cooper turned his gaze to me then, starting at my forehead and down to my lips, like his eyes were jumping from one freckle to the next. “Hi, Madeline” poured out like warm, sweet honey.

I like the way Madeline tastes in my mouth.

I slumped forward a little, eyelids heavy. “Hi, Cooper.”

“Can I…come in?” He lifted whatever was under the blanket, and I registered just how cold it was out.

“Oh! Yes.” I pulled back and cracked the door open farther for him.

Cooper passed by us and playfully pinched one of Piper’s socked feet, to which she let out the tiniest smile before shutting it right back down.

He set down the blanket-covered square on the coffee table by the lit candle and then pulled his backpack off. Piper immediately started squirming in my arms, reaching desperately for the ground, and the minute I let her touch it, her feet started taking off, Road-Runner style, straight to him.

“I know,” Cooper chuckled. “Here you go.” He pulled out an extra-large Slim Jim, the kind you’d normally get at a gas station, and handed it straight to her.

By the smile that lit that kid’s face, I swore you would think our living room had transformed into Disney World itself and that all the princesses she’d ever loved had made their way in, one by one. She turned to me and tilted that smile even farther, as if to say can you believe this guy?

I snorted. “You have an addiction.” But because she was nearly three-years-old, she looked at me like I’d spoken an entirely different language.

Charlie chose that moment to come barreling into the living room. “Cooper?”

Cooper stood at full height from his crouch by Piper and smiled. “Hey, Mini Coop. What are you up to?”

“The power’s out.” He said it with the tiniest hint of sass, like don’t you see?

“I noticed. I thought maybe I could help.”

Like a magician pulling a bunny out of a hat, Cooper lifted the throw blanket from the square contraption and revealed a black rectangle with wires and a handle on top.

“A generator?” I recognized. “You brought us a generator?”

He nodded. “Yup, figured you could use it, and I noticed you didn’t have one when I was here last.”

“You drove—”

“Actually, I walked. Mercy doesn’t do well during bad storms, and I was worried about taking it to the street.”

I ignored the fact that he’d named his SUV Mercy.

“You walked…the whole way here…in a snowstorm. Carrying”—I pointed to the hefty box—“that?”

“It was only a block.” He shrugged. “You guys needed it.”

You like this man, my brain fired off. No, you more than like this man. I just might be falling in love with someone who didn’t belong to me. Someone who would complicate an already complicated life. I knew that, logically. But that didn’t seem to stop me.

Cooper must’ve caught on to the fact that I was coming close to spilling tears over a generator, because he spoke in a soft, testing voice. “’S just a small one. Nothing crazy. But we can hook up the TV so we can watch the weather until it blows over, or I brought my laptop. We could hook it up to my hotspot if you wanted to watch a movie.”

I nodded and smiled. “Either would be nice. Thank you.”

He smiled back, and I forced any hint of sadness about my future self, doomed to deal with a broken heart by the hands of this strong, yet so kind, man in front of me down into the depths of my chest to never be retrieved again.

Only twenty minutes later, Cooper and I had an entire setup in our living room. We couldn’t quite get the TV going, since our signal was off, and it took a lot from the generator anyway, so we settled for movies on his laptop. I took the two nugget couches that my parents had gotten Piper for her birthday last year and set them up in a giant palette. Charlie and Cooper rearranged chairs and couch cushions, surrounding it, then they raided the linen closet for various throw blankets, muslin swaddles, and spare sheets. They draped the linens over chair backs and couch cushions, using chip clips to hold them on like the top of a circus tent. A perfect blanket fort, adorned with battery-powered string lights and LED candles that came with a tiny remote covered in buttons of every color in the rainbow, lighting the fort underneath in a pink glow. Piper’s choice of color. It spread across half the living room and left one gaping side facing the fireplace.

Underneath, Cooper sat with Charlie to his left, leaning in so close I worried about the screen making him go cross-eyed, and Piper to his right a foot away, but still staring. “All right, guys. We got Shrek one and two, Finding Nemo, Beauty and the Beast—”

“Beauty and the Beast?” Charlie guffawed.

Cooper shrugged. “My first crush.”

“Mine too.” I smiled.

“The beast?”

“Lumiere, the candleholder.”

Then Cooper guffawed. “You guys know you’re related to a lunatic, right?”

Both of the kids giggled, but he kept scrolling through his previously downloaded movies. “Jackass one and two—don’t repeat that one. Black Hawk Down—and you know what? Yeah, they just get worse from here. Pick from the top row.”

Immediately, Piper’s tiny pointer finger shot straight for Belle, whereas Charlie settled on Nemo. He let up, though, because he was a tiny version of his dad and seemed to always want what was best for Piper. “You pick first, Pipes.”

Beauty and the Beast it was.

Cooper pulled out a few more tricks from his bag, a Nerds rope for Charlie, a bag of pre-popped popcorn for us, more Slim Jims and a tube of mini M&M’s for the little one.

“You’re like Nanny McPhee with that bag.” I laughed as he brought a portable charger for our phones out and plugged them in side by side.

“Like when she becomes hot, though, right?”

“Of course.”

Charlie’s head lifted up. “Who’s Nanny McPhee?”

Less than an hour later, both kids were passed out between Cooper and me. The kids talked, mostly Charlie, through the movie. Asking Cooper questions, wondering about what other movies he liked when he was his age. At one point, Piper shivered between me and Cooper, to which he sat up and said, “You know what this night needs? A bonfire.”

“It’s storming,” I reminded him.

“You have gas logs, don’t you?” He pointed to the cobblestone fireplace with a set of gas logs in there, never used.

“May can’t figure out how to turn it on.” Charlie huffed, making Cooper chortle.

“Hush.” My cheeks started to warm. “I just haven’t had time to try.”

“Is your pilot light on?”

“I think so?” Truthfully, I hardly even knew what a pilot light was or its purpose. Homeownership was quite the adjustment when all you’d ever done was call your landlord when something broke or when your lightbulbs were screwed on too tight, and no, they weren’t stuck. It was why I had Gary the super on speed dial for years, considering Jake had less experience in handyman work than I did.

Cooper paused the movie and crawled out of the blanket fort to go check it out, and within a few minutes, we had a fire going. Warmth spread through the house as we listened to the artificial crackles and pops. We never even turned the movie back on after that. Just watched it blaze in front of us, the flame transitioning from blue to orange to yellow tips, dancing in tandem waves.

“Can we sleep out here?” Charlie whispered, like if we talked at normal level, the fire would go out.

“Nope.” I hummed. “Cooper’s sleeping out here. We’re all going to our own rooms.” It was a reminder for myself as much as it was for them.

Still, though, not long after I said that, both kids were passed out, Piper’s head resting on my chest, Charlie’s head leaned back against a pillow, mouth wide open, snoring like an old man.

“Good God,” Cooper whisper-yelled. “It’s like a wood-chipper is in his mouth.”

“You should hear him when he sleep sings.”

“Sleep sings?”

I kept a whisper in my chuckle. “Sometimes it’s Mariah Carey.”

He looked down to the nine-year-old beside him and snorted. “That’s amazing.”

We stayed like that a little longer, occasionally whispering to one another or glancing over to hold eye contact for just a little while before breaking apart when Charlie’s snore would rise to a volume that shook the entire house.

“You carry the little one, and I can wake up the big one?” he offered, already sitting up.

I nodded and jerked my knee to Charlie’s. “Come on, bud. Gotta get to bed.”

He hummed back to me, something that sounded an awful lot like “Always Be My Baby.” I raised my eyebrows at Cooper. See? He gave an impressed frown.

“Charlie,” I whispered a little more sharply this time, and his eyes jolted open. “Come on. We gotta go to bed.”

He grumbled a bit but eventually stood up and sleepily crawled out of the fort, Cooper’s blanket in hand.

“Night, Mini Coop.”

“G’night Mista Coopa,” came back in this grumbled tone, and we both chuckled.

I slowly stood and carried Piper to her own bed, with Cooper following right behind me. I tucked her into the pink sheets and ensured the windows were locked—force of habit. I also reached to turn on her night light, then completely forgot the power was off, so I left and gently closed the door behind me.

Cooper and I lay under that fort, blankets folded over our laps, watching the fireplace glow in front of us, tired but unwilling to sleep. I didn’t know if I’d ever had a sleepover like this, friend or otherwise. If I’d ever stayed up into the late hours of the night where secrets felt safe to spill. Where any walls around my past seemed to crumble and disappear into the snowy night sky.

We talked for hours. It started the way it always seemed to. The way Cooper always made it. “I like crab cakes,” he said, and we went from there. Touching on subjects from our worst childhood nightmares to our favorite fonts—turns out he absolutely despises Comic Sans. We talked until our eyes felt droopy and our sentences started running together. I asked him if he wanted coffee, and he said, “If it means staying up and talking a little longer, then yes.” So we each had two cups during the hours that were beginning to slip toward morning.

Cooper told me about his dad. Or his lack thereof. How his mom and dad were married and agreed they never wanted kids. Cooper was an accident, and when his mom saw the sonogram, she realized she changed her mind. She loved him instantly. His dad didn’t, so they divorced, and he never heard from him. Neither did she, apparently. When I asked if he felt like he’d missed out on something growing up, he immediately said no. “My mom was enough for me. I never had to wonder, because she was always there. A built-in best friend.” And I wondered how much it would take for me to be the same for my kids.

I told him how I was nervous about the semester coming up. How I had to pay for my classes by next week and how the end of every semester felt that way, crammed and stressed. Extra things to worry about on top of an already busy life. And when he asked if he could help, I told him I wished I could say yes, but that I didn’t even know how to help myself.

“Can I ask,” he said while I was mid-sip. “What were you like as a kid? You said you were like your brother, but you never gave me anymore. And you seem to, I don’t know, flinch or something when I ask about high school.”

I felt myself wince as he said it, as delicate as it was.

“School was never good to me,” I explained, knowing how much deeper it went. Remembering the nights of staying up late, wondering what was wrong with me, felt like they were right behind me.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

He didn’t say it with any humor in his voice, but I chuckled a little anyway.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“My whole night is yours.”

I leaned back into the pillow that I had now turned to face the fireplace, watching the flames crackle and pop.

“When I was a kid, I struggled to make friends.” It was an understatement, really. I had so many imaginary friends that my parents genuinely wanted to take me to a psychiatrist.

“I don’t know if it’s because I was shy, or because I just wasn’t the girl people immediately ran to, but for so long, it felt like just me. Except when he was around.”

“Will?” Cooper asked behind me as he settled onto the same pillow.

I nodded. “Will never made me feel like that. He would let me go everywhere with his friends, even when they clearly didn’t want me there. Playing Xbox at midnight with seventeen-year-olds when you’re twelve makes you feel wanted.”

Cooper’s hand snuck around to mine, and I didn’t fight at all when his fingertips danced along my palm up, then to my wrist and back in smooth, soft swirls.

“When I got to middle school, some of his friends had younger siblings, and I finally started making my own friends. It felt like, for once, I was my own person. Like I was something more than just a random speck. My hair got longer. I started getting boobs. I was wearing makeup, and I felt like I was finally growing into my very own…someone. Someone beautiful.” It was an innocent and blissful four months. A time where I was entirely unaware of the future and felt like nothing else bad could happen. All was right in the world.

“One night, we had a sleepover with some of the girls I’d met. And after watching Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging”—I turned to face him—“which really cemented my crush on dark-haired boys who could play guitar, by the way.”

His brows lowered. “I already hate this movie.”

“There was this game. You anonymously rate everyone in a circle out of ten. Their nose, eyes, hair, figure, everything. I gave out nines and tens left and right—”

“Of course. Because you are an angel incapable of hurting someone’s feelings.”

“No, because I truly thought that highly of everyone at the time. I really thought no one could not be beautiful. I still think that, really. Anyway, when we all got our papers back, I quickly found out that I wasn’t what I thought I was.” The memory felt like a sting in my chest that never healed. “That my nose was worth a three. My ears a two. My figure a one. All these little numbers started adding up, and each one seemed worse. And I realized then that my value was only worth what the people around me considered it to be. That even at my best, at what I considered my prime, I was a twenty-three out of one hundred.”

“Madeline.” Cooper’s fingers laced through mine, and the pain eased a bit. “You’re breaking my heart.”

“I can stop?” I offered.

“Don’t. I just. I wish I had been there that night. To give you every single ten you deserved.”

My laugh was dry. “Cooper, we never would’ve been friends.”

“Not true. Your love for manatee mailboxes would have made that clear.”

He leaned a little closer to me, and I adjusted back into him until my head was on his shoulder, our palms pressed against one another.

“What happened after?” he asked, and I winced once more.

“Then I got to high school, and this new boy, this guy who had no preconceived notion of who I was, looked at me, and in an instant, liked me. He told me I was pretty.” I was so, so easy to catch. “He was smart and funny, and it was like he filled every single crack in my heart. Maybe I loved him. Maybe he was just kind to me. It was hard to know the difference.”

When you’d never heard someone call you beautiful other than your direct family, who basically had to, it felt more impactful than most would understand. How even in my most awkward, brace-faced, acne-scarred stage of life, there was a blond-headed boy who liked me.

“Will hated him—”

“Yeah,” Cooper scoffed. “Me too.”

I laughed a little. “That should’ve been the first sign. Will never hated anyone. But he was my first love, and I was so blinded by his words that I didn’t really see his actions. Anyway, time went on, and we were great. For years. He went to college, I worked. We did everything together. And when he asked me to marry him when we were twenty-two, I didn’t even second-guess it. He said he would work hard for me so I could stay home with kids one day. It felt like a dream life in the making. For years, it was so great. It felt like I was finally getting the life I deserved after time had screwed me over again and again.”

I wish I could end it there. But then again, if I did, I wouldn’t have Cooper sitting beside me.

“We would babysit for Will a lot. One night, we watched Charlie and Piper for their anniversary, and then…”

“The wreck?” His assumption was but a whisper.

I dipped my chin and felt my voice shaking. But there was no stopping it. “A drunk driver. He hit three cars, but Will and Savannah were the only deaths. The cops called me first, because I was listed as the emergency contact for both of them.”

“Madeline.” Cooper’s voice was shaky too. “You must have been so scared.”

I nodded. “I was. And I kind of shut down after.” Maybe I should have explained it further, but I’d watched Cooper in his shut-down phase. I’d brought him dinner and brownies and watched as his eyes seemed like two broken orbs lost in space, wondering if there was any way back.

“You know how that feels,” I whispered, like anyone else could possibly hear us.

He nodded.

“Anyway, Jake and I pushed through the next few days, weeks, up till a month. Then he kept saying I needed to open up. But I just wanted to be quiet for a little longer. I couldn’t force it out yet. Then when he found out about Will leaving the kids to me for good, it was the breaking point. He said he didn’t want kids yet. We were only twenty-seven, and we were too young to stay settled down like that. Our wedding was supposed to be two months later, and he said he couldn’t do it. So we didn’t.”

“And you just handled it…all alone? The death of your brother and your only friend on top of losing your fiancé, in what, a month?”

I nodded and realized how stupid it was that I was ashamed of it. How could I possibly be embarrassed about something this tragic?

“Gah, Madeline.” He squeezed my hand. “My heart hurts.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No.” Cooper leaned forward, put his hands on either side of my face, and squished my cheeks together until I looked like a chipmunk with very full cheeks. “Don’t apologize for a thing. Ever. Especially not to me.” He paused. “Except liking Comic Sans. That’s still ridiculous.”

“It’s fun and whimsical,” I murmured as much as I could with a squished face.

“So is LSD, I’m sure, but you don’t see me using it.”

He let go of my face and planted a light kiss on both cheeks where his grip had vanished. “I meant what I said, Madeline. You deserve to be surrounded by people who would never give you anything below a ten.”

My heart felt like it was jackhammering against concrete by the way it took off without my permission.

“Your hair.” His hand left mine to trail through it, gently yanking on my ponytail. “Is always a ten. I keep waiting for you to catch me staring at it when it swishes from side to side.”

His fingers trailed back toward my face, cupping my jaw and pulling it closer. “Your eyes.” He stared right into them, unwavering. “I think of them at night, when I can’t sleep. You know I can tell exactly how you’re feeling, just by these eyes? I swear it, Madeline. I could stare at them all day. They’re hazel, but they have this light ring around the center like…I don’t know. Like honey or something.”

His hand moved farther down, fingertips trailing over my collarbone, down to my heart, where two fingers gently caressed above my pajama top. “Your heart. It’s so good, Madeline. I’m honestly jealous.”

I sniffled and realized my eyes were watering, and when I looked up to Cooper, I thought his might have been too.

“You think you don’t know who you are? I think you grew up too fast and had no time to figure out what you liked. Not your brother, not your ex. You. And now you feel like you’re racing the clock to make strings pull together and add up. I’ll tell you right now who you are, Madeline.”

I sucked in a shaky breath and felt a tear fall down my cheek, where Cooper met it halfway with his thumb.

“You”—he pressed his thumb into my half dimple for emphasis—“are everything. You’re kind to a fault. You’d rather walk around in pain than say a word to anyone about it. You love everyone with so much fire, so much passion, that it pours out of you. You wanna know what my mom said about you?”

I looked back up to his eyes, watching them move back and forth between mine.

“Before we came to your house, I told her I had a crush on a girl, like I was fifteen again.” We both chuckled a little. “I told her I was going on a date that night with a single mom, and when she heard that, she paused in her tracks. Gave me this whole speech about how I was in over my head, not ready for something like that. Then she figured out it was you, and when we left? We got back to my house, and she took it all back. ‘Madeline’s different,’ she said. She warned me to take care of you. Of the kids. That you had a heart of gold, and she could see so much good in you.”

I had always been a silent crier, or at least I tried to be. I kept to myself and licked my own wounds in a quiet corner, where no one could find me. But I was lying here, mentally bare in front of Cooper, giving him every piece of me as I cried away. And he didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to only like it more.

“So yeah, this heart,” he continued with his elbow propped up against my side, palm resting on my chest, “will always be a ten.”

His other thumb moved to my lower lip, pushing and then pulling just enough to release it. “And kissing you? Is an eleven, all day, every day.”

I smiled, despite my tears, because he always could pull that out of me, and lifted my face to his.

Our lips reached for each other, settling naturally like we had done this hundreds of times before. Like our bodies knew just what to do with each other. We kissed with every bit of teeth and tongue and lips that we could while managing to keep quiet enough to not bother the other two in the house. I had never been so grateful for creaky floors as I was when his hands and lips and pelvis all took their turns between my hips. I stifled my sighs and moans in my hand, and when he looked up at me from his crouched position with the most confident smirk and said, “give me one more,” I genuinely thought I was going to pass out.

I wasn’t sure how long we moved like that, taking our turns exploring and guiding each other. Learning and teaching. Growing together, moving closer to a cliff that we were both unprepared to fall over. We whispered each other’s names over the low murmur of the music from his computer and eventually settled under one throw blanket together, with happy-drunk giggles erupting around us.

When I woke up, the weight of Cooper’s arm resting over my waist, curling into me, comforted me. I was engulfed in the smell of clove and cinnamon on the blanket we had spread over us. Light poured outside of our tiny fort, our tiny getaway. Wait…light?

I shot up from where I was lying down, the blanket falling to my waist. Piper was always up before the sun. Always. Especially during winter. I was scrambling out from under the covers frantically when a deep, groggy voice spoke behind me. “Mmm. Stay.”

“Why isn’t Piper up?”

“What?”

I turned to face him so I could rephrase but stopped once I caught a single look at his face. Piper was up. I knew so because there was dark purple evidence on Cooper’s forehead. And some blue on his cheek. There were swirls of markers all over his face, and a tiny red dot on his nose.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He groaned.

“I, um…” Was really, really praying those were the washable kind. “Here.” I opened the camera app on my phone, and he turned it around, looking in horror at himself.

“I look like a…human doodle pad.”

“It’s pretty bad.”

“The worst,” he agreed.

We both crawled out of the blanket fort and stopped halfway, on our hands and knees, when we saw Charlie and Piper sitting in the kitchen, shooting us looks full of glaring disappointment.

“Wha-What are you two doing?”

“Having breakfast,” Charlie pointed at the cereal in their bowls. “What are you two doing?”

I ignored that. “Did you let her color on his face?”

Piper was grinning from ear to ear, knowing she’d been caught.

Charlie shrugged. “You should’ve told me you guys were dating.”

Cooper and I shared glances that looked equally embarrassed and guilty. “Well, it’s complicated, bud—”

“You never know how to handle these things—”

“I don’t consider myself a fatherly type, so—”

We spoke over one another, excuses falling out one after the other.

Charlie went back to his cereal. “I kind of figured it out when May talked about how good the fondue was with Mrs. Olive, and then you started mentioning it to Finn at practice the next day. Plus your Google calendar is easy to access.”

“My what?” I asked.

Cooper and I stood up and walked over to them. Piper walked over to me and reached up, so I picked her up and settled her on my hip.

“We okay?” he asked Charlie.

Charlie nodded. “Remember what we talked about, though.”

Cooper nodded back. “I’ve got you, Mini Coop.”

Then I wondered if I was still dreaming, because Cooper suddenly asked him, “You ready?”

Charlie smiled, and his eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“If this isn’t a time for it, I’m not sure what is.”

And just like that, Charlie and Cooper stuck their hands out to one another and did what could only be described as a minute-long handshake.

“What was that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”