Chapter 34: Breakaway: Chapter 34

I’VE NEVER HAD baby fever, aside from the occasional reaction to a well-written breeding kink scene, but if I become a parent, I think it’s going to go something like this. In the past week, Cooper and I have texted about nothing but Tangerine. Tangerine’s feeding schedule. Tangerine’s shots at the vet. Tangerine’s progress with the litter box. He snuck her into my dorm room last night, and she made biscuits with her little paws on his chest while we watched Eclipse. He keeps saying that he’s still warming up to her, but I’ve seen the pictures he sends. He’s obsessed with her, and so am I, and that couple with the tiny baby we saw at Target a couple of days ago while we were buying Tangerine a proper cat bed has nothing on us.

Currently, though, Tangerine is staring at Cooper as he tries—again—and fails—again—to teach her how to play fetch. I finish scribbling an answer in my lab notebook and peer down at them. I’m on my stomach on his bed, homework spread out around me. He had been working on a paper, but boredom eventually won out, and now he’s on the floor, sitting cross-legged while Tangerine stares at him.

“She’s not going to do it,” I say.

“She will,” Cooper insists. “She was interested in it earlier. Tangy, show Penny what we’ve been working on.”

Tangerine just flicks her tail, blinking her bright eyes. Her collar, which is hot pink and covered in rhinestones since Izzy came with us to Petsmart to buy it, stands out against her now-shining fur. She looks nothing like she did a week ago, all muddied and half-frozen; I swear she’s gained a pound already.

He tosses the toy mouse again, and again she watches it sail over her head with only mild interest. He sighs, scratching her between the ears. “All right,” he says. “If it’s just between you and Daddy, that’s cool.”

I sort through the papers in my binder. The lab report I’ve been working on for the past hour is, to put it kindly, a mess. I had to redo the math in step one approximately seventeen times. And now I can’t find the data collection sheet I need to move on to the next section. “Shit.”

“Something wrong?”

“I left something I need at my dad’s house.” I sit up, biting my lip as I check the time on my phone. “This is due tomorrow; I need to go get it.”

“I can drive you.”

“It’s only like three blocks over.”

“I’ll walk with you, then. You said he went out, right?”

I sigh as I slide off the bed and grab my boots. “Yeah. He wouldn’t say, but I think he’s on a date.”

He grins, snatching up Tangerine for a kiss before depositing her on the bed. “Go Coach.”

I roll my eyes. “I wouldn’t even mind. It’s not like I want him to be alone. But he’s so secretive about it, like he thinks I’ll die if I hear he has a girlfriend.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure.” I open the door, and Tangerine jumps off the bed rather athletically, running out into the hallway. She adores sleeping on Izzy’s bed.

“Iz, we’re heading out for a few minutes,” Cooper calls.

Instead of answering, we hear Izzy shriek, “Tangy! You can’t jump on my computer!”

He snorts as he leads the way down the stairs. “Do I know her?”

“Yes.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Tell me.”

We bundle into our coats and head out into the cold. I wouldn’t mind driving, actually, but in case Dad is around, I wouldn’t want him to see Cooper’s truck. “I think it’s Nikki.”

“Our boss Nikki?”

“Yep. They’ve known each other for a long time. She trained with my mother. She’s the one who told him about the coaching position at McKee.”

“Huh. Like I said, go Coach. She’s pretty hot.”

I roll my eyes again, but he’s right, she’s beautiful. That’s about as far down that road as I’m willing to get, so I’m relieved when we reach the house. As I unlock the door, Cooper peers around like he’s standing in front of a haunted house, not one of the many perfectly pleasant colonials on this block.

“This is kind of weird,” he says. “I’ve never been to Coach’s house before.”

“I keep trying to get him to host a team dinner here,” I say as I jiggle the doorknob. This is an old house, like most of the ones in this part of town; the front door always sticks because it’s not quite centered in the frame anymore. I don’t mind this house, but I still miss the one we had in Tempe, even if it felt a lot smaller and sadder after Mom wasn’t around anymore.

“Yeah, we always have the winter banquet at Vesuvio’s.” Cooper follows me to the kitchen in the back. On the table, which as usual is covered in binders and stat sheets and the big sketch pad Dad uses to plan out his playbook, I find the data collection sheet I filled out in the lab earlier this week. Somewhere in between shoving around all the crap on the table so we could eat our takeout and grabbing my stuff so I could head to Cooper’s, I totally missed it.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say. I wheel around, practically smacking into Cooper; he’s looking down at the sketchbook.

“That would never work,” he says, frowning as he traces Dad’s messy handwriting. “Jean’s not good at feinting.”

I hold up the sheet. “We’re good. Let’s go.”

“And deny me the pleasure of seeing your bedroom, Red?”

“Trust me, it’s nothing to write home about.”

“What if I told you it came with a make out session?”

I bite back my smile. “Fine. But you’re not allowed to make fun of my Robert Pattinson poster.”

“Like that’s news, sweetheart. I’ve seen the way you look at Edward.”

I reach over to pinch him, but he steps out of the way in time. I sigh, leading the way upstairs.

We moved to Moorbridge before my senior year of high school, so I spent an entire year living here full time before starting at McKee. Cooper was a freshman during my dad’s first year of coaching at McKee. For whatever reason, it’s weirder to think about me going to Moorbridge High School while Cooper was only ten minutes away than to think of last year, when we were both on campus and didn’t cross paths. If we had, though, I doubt we’d be doing what we’re doing now.

I flick the switch for the overhead light. Cooper has a thoughtful expression on his face. It’s one thing, seeing my dorm room, and something else entirely to see a version of my teenage bedroom. Yellow paint on the walls, a blue area rug on the floor. A tiny twin bed settled against the wall and books everywhere. My Twilight poster, which I pinned over my bed and never took down, and of course an entire shelf full of trophies and medals, relics of a time in my life that’s long gone. I reach down, rubbing at my knee. Phantom pain always crops up whenever I ponder the cost of those awards.

“You made first place a lot,” Cooper says.

I smile wryly. “I had a good coach.”

“Was it your mom?”

“Yeah. Someone else took over when she got sick, but before that, she was my coach.” I sit on the bed, swallowing down the wave of emotion that always accompanies talking about her. I know I could stop, and Cooper wouldn’t push, but something about seeing him here makes me want to continue. He sits down next to me on the bed, taking my hand in both of his. “I know that the stereotype is like, the mean mom forcing her daughter to do the same thing she did, reclaim her glory, whatever, but she wasn’t like that.”

“What was she like?” he asks softly.

I trace over his palm. “She was wonderful. She made it fun. I did all my routines to upbeat songs. At my ballet lessons, she danced alongside me. We kept scrapbooks of all my competitions, the program notes and ribbons. She always kept gummy bears and sour worms in her purse in case I needed cheering up. I know her career ended because she got pregnant with me, but she never made it seem like I ruined her life. I was a surprise, but my parents wanted me.”

I smile, remembering a time she told off another mom for yelling at her daughter after a disastrous program. “She never yelled. When I made mistakes, we went over them in a way that somehow made me feel better, even though I messed up, you know? She made me feel grateful that I had the opportunity to make the mistake in the first place and learn from it.”

My voice sounds thick, the way it always does when I talk about her. It’s almost been a decade, and yet I can’t reminisce without crying. I wonder sometimes if that’s how it’ll be for the rest of my life; if I’ll tell my kid about her one day and sob the whole time. It’s like the pain becomes fresh all over again, like I’m experiencing every moment in that hospital all at once.

Cooper pulls me into a hug, and I melt against his chest gratefully. “I’m sorry,” he says. He winces. “And I’m sorry for saying that. I know those words aren’t helpful.”

I shake my head. “It’s fine.”

“What happened? If you want to share.”

“She had ovarian cancer. It was really aggressive.” I wipe at my eyes, looking at him. “She had the same hair as me, you know. This pretty ginger color. It all fell out the moment she started chemo. I was thirteen. Fourteen when she passed.”

He hugs me so tightly it knocks the breath from my chest. “I remember from the picture on your nightstand in the dorm. Should I stop calling you Red? Does it bring up bad memories?”

“No.” I sit up, sniffling as I try to manage a smile. “I really like it. Don’t stop.”

He brushes his lips over my forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I don’t talk about her often enough.” My smile goes wobbly again. “Dad doesn’t like to. I think it still hurts too much.”

“You know, it would feel weird to make out under the gaze of Edward Cullen,” he quips.

I laugh wetly. Three times in a row now, his thoughtfulness has taken me aback. Asking about my mom. Checking that I still want to be called ‘Red.’ And now this—knowing exactly when I need humor to keep from spiraling.

“We go way back,” I say. “I started reading Twilight in the hospital. It was the series that made me fall in love with reading.”

“Well, that settles it,” he says. “We need to do a book swap. I’ll read Twilight, and you can check out Lord of the Rings.”

I reach over to the bookshelf next to my bed; my well-worn copies sit right in the middle of the top shelf. I take out the first one and flip through it. If he reads it, he’ll see all the passages I highlighted. I’ve read hundreds of books since, and I know the series isn’t perfect, but I still adore every single word. “You probably won’t like them. The books are nothing like what you usually read.”

“I like the movies,” he says. “And you’ll like The Fellowship of the Ring.”

“Fine,” I say. “But if I bail because there isn’t enough romance, don’t—”

“Bug?” Dad calls. “Are you home?”

My heart drops straight through to the floor.

“Closet,” I mutter, shoving at Cooper. “Go.”

He shuts himself in my closet at the exact moment Dad knocks on my door.