by Nina Bocci
What also didn’t help was that she saw me getting out of Cooper’s car with my top button still undone and Cooper in his tiny undershirt.
She was standing outside our building, clearly locked out, again, as she stood there shivering with Larry, her soaking wet, equally shivering Pomeranian. Her eyes widened as I walked over to let her inside, Cooper’s car still rumbling out front. “I’m getting this story later,” she hissed as I pulled out my keys.
“Get changed, we’re working tonight,” I mumbled, unlocking the front door to let us inside. “And for the love of all things holy, get a new front-door key! One of these days I won’t be here to save you.” Glancing back as I held the heavy glass door for Nancy and Larry, I spied Cooper leaning over the center console of his car.
He was waiting until we got inside. That was unexpected.
I waved him off before Nancy noticed. Of course, she already had. He shot me a grin over the console, beeped, and drove off.
She leveled me with a look. “What was that about?”
“What was what about?” I asked, hoping my voice stayed even as I closed the door behind me. Any little break or jump, and she’d pounce on it.
“Hmmm,” she said, shaking out her soaking wet arms in the foyer. “There’s a story there.”
“There is no story.”
“Oh, but there is, my friend. One that ends with Cooper driving you home. In the rain. So romantic.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I see that you didn’t bring your bike back with you. Does that mean you’ll have to see him again? Maybe tomorrow when you’re wearing nothing but a trench coat and heels?”
I paused on the step that led upstairs, then turned. “Seeing him again implies that we were together tonight. He just drove me home because of the weather. My bike is still at Notte’s. I’ll get it tomorrow. Alone.” I purposely ignored the rest of her comment.
“So . . . no trench coat and heels?” she asked hopefully.
With a sigh I tossed up a silent prayer for the strength not to strangle her and her one-track mind. Aware that the apartment building corridor was not the most ideal place for this conversation, I stepped back down to her landing. Standing outside her apartment wasn’t much better, but I was working with the cards I’d been dealt.
“You’ve seen us practically rip each other’s faces off at work firsthand, and yet you’re still barking up this tree,” I whispered. “How on earth could you think something could be going on?”
She shrugged, waving her hand in the air. Water dripped off her sleeve and splattered against my shirt. “Sometimes the best sex is with the people you think you hate. I don’t write this stuff, lady, it’s just gospel.”
Brushing the water off, I laughed. “But I don’t think I hate him, I know I do. Also, I feel like that is completely untrue.”
“Whatever, I read it on the internet, so it must be true.” She laughed. “Throw me a bone. I have to live vicariously through your sex life until Javier gets home.”
Her husband, Javier, was deployed on his second tour in the Middle East. After his deployment, she had adopted Larry from the town shelter, converted their too-big house on the lake into a B and B—with the help of me and the CDO, of course—and hired a local family to manage it. Moving into my building and becoming my neighbor was her way of fighting the loneliness.
“You’ve got to stop with this notion, Nance. It’s never going to happen,” I said, turning around again to slosh up the stairs to my fifth-floor apartment. “Oh, and when you come up, bring the pooch. I picked him up a new toy.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” I heard her snicker as she unlocked her door.
One hike up to the fifth floor and a hot shower later, I was marginally warmer in my apartment but still wired from the night’s events. Nancy and Larry arrived as I walked into the living room, towel-drying my hair.
“All right, lay it on me: what’s so important that you’re dragging us up here on a perfectly miserable Friday night? I was bingeing Elementary before his highness had to go potty and you showed up,” Nancy whined, pretending to warm her hands over the electric fire that I’d turned on as soon as I’d walked through the front door.
Larry waddled over and plopped down on his dog bed by the hearth. Nancy had brought the bed up the week after she’d moved into the building. Once she realized that she had taken a job with an unapologetic workaholic, she figured it would help us both to have Larry keep us company while we worked. Larry, as usual, ignored us, curled up, and was snoring within seconds.
I paced in a small circle, rubbing the towel over my hair as I thought about how to launch into explaining why I ruined her night. Rolling up the towel, I tossed it into the laundry basket in the small hall closet. From my spot in the kitchen doorway, I watched Nancy as she settled into her favorite seat by the window.
I held up the take-out container of pasta to my nose and moaned. I was starving. “Want to split this?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Had some delish General Tso’s earlier. If you’re going to make me work, I can’t sit here. I’ll fall asleep.” She stood, mumbling about how comfy the chair was before moving to sit on the love seat. She pulled her long legs beneath her. Opening her laptop, she lobbed, “And wait, I thought you were at dinner. Isn’t that dinner?” She motioned to my takeout.
Popping the bowl into the microwave, I turned. “It’s a long story, and yes, I’m sorry, we’re working. I have a few ideas for that Jackson deal I mentioned the other day.”
“I’ll forgive you if you tell me one thing.” Here we go.
I sighed. “I’m going to regret this. Go ahead.”
She tapped her pencil against her temple, smiling. “Why was Cooper not wearing a shirt?”
I laughed. She was ridiculously persistent. “You’re like Larry with a bone.”
She groaned. “Oh, come on, give me something. He’s so buttoned up all the time. Yet you two show up here, and he’s smiling, relaxed . . . and shirtless. Which is a sight to behold. Thank you for that.”
“Oh, my God, he was not shirtless. Don’t say that out loud. Could you imagine if people thought something happened between us?” I demanded, my voice rising. “And for your information, he had to take off his dress shirt because it was soaking from the rain. Which is a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“Oh, relax. I’m just teasing. I have to be honest, though, I don’t know what the big deal would be if you two were an item.”
“Nancy,” I warned.
That was territory that no one besides my mother was allowed to venture into. And the only reason my mom did was that she refused to take a hint.
“Okay, okay, no shirtless Cooper,” she said with a resigned sigh.
“Shirtless Cooper is why we’re working tonight,” I explained, padding to the refrigerator. “You can binge-watch Elementary all day tomorrow.” I smiled guiltily. “Wine?”
She nodded. “I’m curious about this whole Jackson business, especially now that I know a shirtless Cooper factors into it. You were vague the other day at the office. Gimme the skinny.”
I kept busy in the kitchen while the microwave ticked behind me. I straightened my towels, rearranged a couple glasses, poured a glass of wine for Nancy and myself. Mindless tasks to keep my fingers busy while my brain went a mile a minute through the Jackson history.
“Well, what do you know?” I asked, opening the microwave door to stir my pasta.
“Not much. I know it was before I started, and it ended poorly,” she said.
“That’s putting it mildly. It was Hope Lake’s version of a sex scandal.”
“Was it really that bad?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly. “I know it was a while ago. I wasn’t here when it happened, so finding info has been a challenge.”
“Six years ago,” I began, then paused. Had it really been that long? “Wow. I know it sounds cliché, but it feels like it just happened. No one really talks about it, thankfully. But people still remember it.”
I
walked over with the wineglasses, settling myself into the chair across from Nancy. Staring into the deep red liquid, I launched into the fiasco that had sent Cooper and me down the hate-filled path we were on.
“You can’t repeat this,” I said as I took a sip.
She motioned crossing her heart. “Promise.”
“Cooper and I used to be really close. You knew that, right?”
She nodded. “What does that have to do with the Jackson deal?”
“I’m getting to it. In order to explain the Jackson deal, I have to go through my past with Cooper, and I know I’ve been vague with you about it.”
“Go on,” Nancy said. Sipping my glass of wine, I grimaced at the burn it left in my throat. There was the public story that was out there about the Jackson deal, and then there was the story. One that painted Cooper with a very unfavorable brush.
“As kids, there were four of us who were inseparable, especially after my friend Charlotte left town around second grade. That was right when Cooper’s mom started with the state government and traveling all over the state.
“It was me, Cooper, Henry, and Nick. Always the four of us.”
Even though we hadn’t always felt tied to Hope Lake, we’d all come back as adults.
As with many childhood friendships, over the years our relationships had morphed into an interesting dynamic among the four of us.
“As we got older, Henry and Nick always seemed to—well, I think they thought there was something between Cooper and me, so they tended to try and leave us alone while they did their own thing. They’re a bit like yin and yang, those two. And as far as Cooper and I went, it was the same thing. Between my dad as the mayor and his mother firing up the ladder in Pennsylvania politics, we were like two peas in a pod. We both had to go to a lot of political parties and schmoozing events for our parents. As we were usually the only kids there, we helped each other get through them.
“We were thick as thieves . . .”
Until we weren’t.
“I guess with any friendship, there’s ups and downs. We all went through a patch where we lost touch in college.” I paused, not ready to disclose why I had started avoiding Cooper in college. “That was the hardest for me.”
“Oh, honey, that’s sad,” Nancy consoled me, taking my hand.
I shrugged. “It happens. In hindsight it was sort of like a long-distance relationship. I think we assumed we’d come out of four years of being away from Hope Lake still being the best of friends. This place was sort of the glue that held us together. But when you get to college and experience that freedom and a whole new life, calling your buddies from home takes a backseat. When one of your buddies is a girl—well, let’s say I wasn’t even in the same car.”
Nancy squeezed my hand. “What do you mean?”
“I was taking eighteen credits at Penn. Add in some housing drama, and I wasn’t exactly great company. Cooper, on the other hand, fit in at Drexel like a glove. Philadelphia suited him, you know? Big city, lots of parties—”
“Lots of women,” she interjected, rolling her eyes.
I huffed, “Yeah, that, too.”
“Anyway, when I came back home, it was awkward, to say the least. I was trying to find a footing back here. Being away from each other for years didn’t help an already fraught situation. Cooper stayed in Philly for months after graduation, and I didn’t hear from him at all. I was—”
“—forgotten,” she finished for me.
I nodded. “Then I started working at the CDO for Mary Nora.” I paused at Nancy’s sharp intake of breath.
“That woman is infamous,” she gasped. “Javier introduced me to her once. She was friends with his grandmother. One time was enough for me to never want to meet her again. Thank God she was long gone by the time I joined the department.”
I nodded, and poured myself more wine. “Yeah, she was . . . difficult.”
“You’re being kind, Emma. That woman was obviously a nightmare. So rude and arrogant.”
“She’s the reason that Cooper and I have the positions that we do. Did you know that? I worked so hard for her. Sixty hours and more a week, but nothing was ever good enough. She would call me at all hours, weekends, holidays. It didn’t matter. Then, when she left, she convinced the town council to divide her position as the CDO coordinator into two and created positions for both Cooper and me. I was gutted. She was an enigma. You’d have thought that as a successful woman she would have championed a fellow woman—especially an eager, hardworking one just starting out. Nope.”
Nancy shook her head. “I’ve only heard stories, and nothing has been kind.”
With a shrug I stood and stretched my arms over my head. “I did learn a lot from her. I think she’s the reason I have a steel backbone now. Anyway, she was totally against all of my ideas. I tried and failed dozens of times to bring in some younger ventures. It wasn’t until Cooper showed up and got a job there that she was willing to listen.”
“That must have pissed you off royally.”
“You have no idea.”
The state of our already fractured friendship had been compounded by his moseying into the CDO and being welcomed with open arms by a woman who had shown me nothing but disdain since I had arrived.
“So what, he shows up suggesting the Jackson company and she immediately falls in love with it?”
“Not exactly. See, Jackson Outdoor Extreme, aka JOE, had been the first of its kind. It was going to be a hybrid of a sportsman shop, sort of a cross between the X Games and Rent-A-Center. Cooper went to Colorado one spring break, and they had a location there. He found out that they wanted to build a location in an already established outdoor enthusiast area. Cities with ski resorts, kayaking, hunting, fishing—anything that involved the outdoors and had a lot of people as either permanent residents or visitors. Hope Lake didn’t exactly fit that description. We weren’t big enough.”
“So how did he get her to take a chance on approaching them?”
I frowned. “He did the work. He created the proposal, and he presented it to her and then the council and my dad.” I remember offering to help, but he refused. He wanted to prove himself.
“Twenty-two-year-old Cooper sounds like a go-getter.”
Unlike twenty-eight-year-old Cooper.
“He was cockier than he is now, if you could believe it. He was more inclined to use his mother’s political positions to his advantage. It’s how he coaxed the Jacksons to come here in the first place. They were originally looking at the Poconos.”
“Logical choice,” she admitted.
“Absolutely logical, but Cooper wasn’t deterred. He was hell-bent on them coming here. It was a tough sell since we’re so small, but Cooper convinced them that a newer location with no real competition was a benefit.”
“Genius move.”
“Cooper took the lead on the project, but he and Mr. Jackson never saw eye to eye on anything. The closer they got to signing the contract, the more heated the negotiations became. Cooper was unwilling to incorporate Mr. Jackson’s thoughts and concerns into the contract, and Mr. Jackson was equally unwilling to see what he was suggesting. Then Haley Jackson appeared, and it all went to hell.”
“She’s what? The daughter?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head.
“Oh, boy, need more wine?” Nancy stood to grab the bottle off the counter and gave me a generous pour.
Taking a sip, I felt every stitch of anger I’d felt then rush back. “She was Mr. Jackson’s new wife. Something like forty years his junior.” Nancy’s face pinched up. I chuckled. “Exactly. The long and short of it is that Cooper was Cooper and he got caught in a compromising position with the wife. Not just caught but immortalized on film. Someone had taken photos of them down at the site where they were hoping to build the complex. Needless to say, the family saw them and pulled out of the deal before we ever could finalize it.”
“Why the hell would he do that? If the deal meant so much to
him, why risk it all?”
“That is the multimillion-dollar question. I think—and this is just a hunch because we never talked about it—he honestly didn’t know she was Jackson’s wife when he met her. From what I could gather, he met her at a nearby bar and he was trying to show off by walking the site with her and telling her about his big plans. By the time he found out who she was, it was too late. The sad thing was that he did work really hard on that project, only to have it fail epically because he wasn’t thinking with the right body part. Still, even knowing that it was a mistake, it was basically the final nail in the friendship coffin for us.”
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
I shrugged. “We didn’t talk much when he got back from Philly, but we weren’t not talking, either. Does that make sense? The friendship had already been strained to the point of breaking. Add in the stress from working together under the circumstances that we had, and Cooper and Emma didn’t really stand a chance at being what it used to be. And once the Jackson deal blew up, I couldn’t look at him the same. It was like the Cooper I thought I knew never actually existed. All that hard work and potential for Hope Lake down the drain, and for what? A lay?”
“Why try and nab them again, though? Isn’t it risky? You think you can get them back?” Nancy asked, standing.
I rubbed my hands over my tired eyes. “They actually approached me this time. They still haven’t found their perfect East Coast location, and Hope Lake is at a different place now. Plus I’ll be the one in charge this time, not Cooper. And we both know I wouldn’t let sex get in the way of something so important.”
• • •
AFTER HOURS OF WORKING on new sketches of the area that would hopefully house the Jackson business, I was too bleary-eyed to continue without reinforcements.
“Nancy, did you put on more coffee?” I asked, squinting at my watch. It was just before two. “Nancy, you alive?”
Looking up from my laptop, I could see she was slumped over the kitchen counter. “Great, I’ve killed Nancy.”
Her head popped up. “What? I’m awake!”
She swiped at a drool puddle with her sleeve before toppling off her stool onto the tile floor. “I’m good!” She hopped up and opened the refrigerator door to pull out the cereal box that she had put in there after her midnight snack. If I had to guess, the milk was spoiling away in my cupboard.