Never Stop Falling

by Ashley Drew

  “Is that so?” I muffle a response, a sarcastic tone ringing through.

  “You can’t tell?” He presses himself, hard and unrestrained, into the small of my back as a soft grunt accompanies his exhales.

  I pull my body away from him and cradle the edge of the bed. One more inch, and I’ll be kissing the wooden floor below. “Huh. I would have never guessed that. You certainly have a funny way of showing it.”

  The bed dips as I feel the weight of Cooper’s body hovering over me. I open one eye and see his radiant blues looking down on me. “Oh come on, Corinne. I thought we were done talking about that. You know how busy I’ve been. I hardly had time to eat, sleep, or shit, let alone talk to anybody.”

  “Including me?”

  He ignores my question. “How many times do I need to apologize? Besides, who sends an e-mail to her fiancé that says she’s not coming home?” he says, his voice smothered with sarcasm. “Seriously, Corinne, who does that?”

  Now I ignore his question.

  He shifts his weight, pushes me flat on my back, and rolls on top of me. My eyes flutter open completely as he brushes my hair away from my face. “Honestly, Corinne. If I didn’t miss you, do you think I would have flown across the country? During one of the craziest weeks our company has ever had? Perhaps I’m letting my paranoia get the best of me, but when I read your e-mail...fuck, Corinne. It drove me crazy, what you said, about not knowing when you would come home. That isn’t something a man wants to hear.”

  Little does he know, it isn’t the first time I’ve said that to a man.

  “I know, and I’m sorry, but you’re making it sound like I was never coming back. Trust me, an e-mail was not the way I wanted to tell you, but reaching you on the phone was impossible.”

  “Then let’s say we call a truce? Because the only thing I want to do right now is be with my fiancée,” he whispers, his dimpled smile flashing across his face, before burying his head in my neck.

  My eyes roll back at the sensation of Cooper’s lips trailing down my chest and waking up my body. I run my hands through his dirty-blond hair down to the tanned, muscled contours of his back. When it comes to sex, Cooper and I have always been compatible. Of course, his Abercrombie model looks make the physical attraction easy, and even though our personalities couldn’t be more different, throw us together and the chemistry is explosive. I guess that’s why our relationship has always been easy, because when the times get tough, we use sex as a distraction. Needless to say, Cooper is doing a good job keeping me distracted as his lips cover the skin around my belly button, his warm tongue trailing between them. But when he begins to tug at the waistband of my shorts, my conscience tugs at the reality tucked in my mind, pulling it out in one continuous motion like a magician’s handkerchief, until the very last piece of the reality comes undone.

  Nick.

  My eyes fly open, and I gently push Cooper’s hand away from my shorts. “Baby, we can’t do this here. Not in my dad’s house.”

  His lips continue their voracious pursuit up toward my chest. “You never worried about things like that before. Remember what we did at your mother’s house?”

  My cheeks heat, because how could I forget?

  It was Thanksgiving, and Cooper and I had spent the night there. After a heated argument with my mother about spending another Christmas with my dad, I’d needed a distraction, and Cooper was happy to make that happen for me. Although we didn’t get caught, it was a rather stupid call of judgment, considering she could have woken up at any point during the night and walked in on us having sex on her dining table. And on her kitchen counter. And on her couch.

  “Besides, we’re not technically in your father’s house.”

  “You know what I mean,” I remark, rolling my body from underneath him and propping myself on the edge of the bed. “Anyhow, Dad and Jamie will be heading off to work soon, so I’d like for you to meet them before they leave.”

  “You are killing me, woman.” He turns over and leans up against the headboard of the bed. It’s obvious how turned on he still is as his lusty eyes skim my throat. “Please tell me there will be time later because I can’t wait to get my mouth on that neck of yours.”

  Images of Nick’s lips on my neck assault my mind, but I quickly brush them away. Shaking my head, I walk toward the bathroom. “Let’s just get dressed.”

  I decide that a shower is in order to wash away the stickiness of the heat. Or maybe what I really want is to wash away the remnants of Cooper’s mouth all over me, out of my guilt for Nick. Or to wash away my thoughts of Nick, out of my guilt for Cooper.

  Unfortunately, the shower doesn’t wash away any of it because my life has just become a hell of a lot stickier.

  “That went well, wouldn’t you say?” Cooper slides his aviators over his eyes as he backs the red convertible Porsche out of the driveway. The car is a little over-the-top, if I must say, but Cooper wouldn’t be Cooper without having the best of the best.

  “Did you not expect it to?”

  “No. Of course I knew it would go well. Parents love me,” he boasts, showing off his perfectly pearly whites beneath his confident grin.

  We caught Dad and Jamie in the kitchen right before they left for the day, and needless to say, the two of them were quite surprised by Cooper’s unexpected visit.

  They surely weren’t the only ones.

  Cooper drives toward downtown with the top down, sun streaking across our faces, wind blowing through our hair. I only wish my mind felt the way the day looks because no amount of sun could burn off the uncertainty clouding my head.

  “I’m happy to see you all were able to work out your differences. It looks like you accomplished what you came out here to do.”

  Have I? If that means resolving my issues with my dad, reconnecting with my childhood friend, and almost jumping into bed with him, then I deserve a freaking medal because all of that happened.

  I perch my elbow against the door, leaning my head on my fist as the wind whips through my disheveled hair. “More or less.”

  “So you’ll come home with me tomorrow?”

  My head snaps toward him, but his eyes hide beneath his dark shades; his attention remains fixed on the road in front of us. I would say that Cooper isn’t asking me to come home tomorrow. He’s telling me.

  “I guess I haven’t really thought about going back. I sort of just thought I would play it by ear.”

  “Play it by ear?” Cooper repeats, his voice displeased. “What does that even mean, Corinne? A few more days? Another week?”

  I sigh. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.”

  He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “That’s very reassuring. A week ago, you couldn’t wait to come home. Now, you don’t know? You do realize our wedding is in less than a month, right?”

  How can I forget? The three-carat diamond on my finger reminds me every day.

  “Being back here has made me realize how much I miss home, Coop, how much I love this place. New York is my home now, but this?” I say as my hand motions in the air. “This will always be home to me.”

  He reaches for my hand, brings it up to his lips, and places a kiss on the back of it. “Then show me.”

  I raise a curious eyebrow. “Show you?”

  “Yeah, show me. You’ve never really talked about what it was like growing up here. I want to know what Corinne Bennett did for fun—young, hot, Corinne Bennett,” he says with a sly, seductive grin. “What she did, where she hung out. I want the Corinne Bennett experience...a history lesson, if you will.”

  My history. I swallow so hard that for a second there, I think I’ve somehow swallowed my uvula. It’s not like Cooper doesn’t know anything about my past. He just doesn’t know everything.

  For some reason, opening up this part of my life to him seems so private, like instead of a history book, he’d be opening up my diary, filled with my deepest thoughts and secrets. Every childhood memory, every laugh, every joke, every kiss, and ev
ery hug. The ups and downs, the good and the bad. Every page scribbled with the same name over and over again. A name that is present so often in my history that the line between then and now becomes obscured. A name that owns every page of my history that I’d betray it all for allowing anyone else to read it.

  But I give it anyway. I give Cooper a Corinne Bennett history lesson, only this version is condensed, full of facts, devoid of emotion, and names not cited.

  We’ve driven around Santa Cruz for the better part of the morning, and I’ve kept up my end of the bargain by giving Cooper what he asked for. I show him where I went to elementary, middle, and high school. We stroll along The Boardwalk and ride the Giant Dipper roller coaster; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so green before. We walk along Pacific Avenue, and I tell him that area was once called the Pacific Garden Mall, and how much destruction the quake of ’89 left in its path.

  Facts. Cold, hard facts.

  “I see why you love it here,” Cooper says as we drive along Front Street, a light breeze caressing the top of his hair. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and I already love it.”

  It doesn’t surprise me that Cooper could easily fall in love with my hometown. With the wispy, periwinkle sunsets and Victorian charm-lined streets, anyone could.

  What does surprise me is the proposition he throws at me from out of left field, or more like the upper level deck: move to Santa Cruz once we start a family.

  That one knocks me upside the head because my eyeballs are practically hanging out of my sockets. “Are you kidding?”

  “Why would I be? This place looks perfect for raising a family.”

  “But,” I hesitate, still in disbelief over Cooper’s suggestion before continuing, “we’ve always talked about staying in the city. You love New York.”

  “I know we did,” he acknowledges with the tip of his sunglasses between his teeth, before resting them on the console between us. “And yes, I love the city and said I’d never leave it.” He reaches for my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine. “But I love you more, and just seeing your face light up as you showed me around today is reason enough to change my mind.”

  “What about your job?”

  With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Cooper casually answers, “What about it? That’s the great thing about real estate; I can do it anywhere. Besides, Corinne, this week has given me a lot of perspective on what our life could be like if the company continues on its current streak. I hate how I allowed work to consume me as much as it had, distracting me from something as simple as a phone call to my fiancée. And it worries me that I could be spending more time at the office than with my family. That’s one of the reasons why my parents’ marriage failed.”

  “Their marriage failed because your father spent more time with his twenty-something, brunette secretary than with your mother,” I dutifully remind him.

  “You are right,” he affirms, squeezing my hand and quickly pulling his eyes from the road to glance at me. “But we’re not going to be that couple, Corinne. I love you too much to even think about hurting you in that way.”

  At the sound of Cooper’s words, my heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach, where I hope it corrodes in my guilt because it certainly does not deserve his love. How could I have allowed myself to almost hurt Cooper the way he vows to never hurt me? This man—a man who helped me get through one of the most difficult times in my life—loves me with everything he has. Not once has his love ever faltered.

  After I could only offer him friendship when he wanted more, he loved me. When I couldn’t give myself to him physically, he continued to love me. And even when it took me months to give him a simple three-letter answer to his marriage proposal, he never stopped loving me.

  I could have ruined us. I could have ruined him. Cooper is safe, and I love him. How the hell could I have easily forgotten that?

  Two words: Nicholas Kelley.

  Yes, we kissed. Maybe we went further than a simple kiss, but perhaps we allowed it to go that far only because we owed it to ourselves to reconcile what we’d started all those years ago. Now that we’ve revisited that part of our past, maybe it’s enough for the two of us to finally move on with our lives, with the people we’ve promised ourselves to as planned.

  Then again, can I actually envision Cooper and myself raising our family here in Santa Cruz, facing the likelihood of running into Nick and Riley around town? Maybe they’ll be the couple that claims their spot at the beach next to ours, giving me a front row seat to Nick rubbing sunblock all over Riley’s body. Or maybe Riley and I end up giving birth in adjacent hospital rooms, where I catch a glimpse of Nick rocking his newborn baby to sleep through the open blinds of the window. Or maybe their son and our daughter grow up and fall in love, leaving me to ponder what might have been.

  I could handle that, right?

  I lift our wrapped hands and place a sweet kiss on top of his. “We don’t have to figure everything out right now, do we?”

  Once noon rolls around, we’re famished. I run through a list of places where we could grab a bite to eat, but before my mind has time to settle on one, Cooper is pulling into the parking lot of Kelley’s. My hands clench at the armrests, as if doing so will stop the car from moving any closer.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Cooper parks the car in an empty space. “What do you think we’re doing? You said you were hungry.”

  “I am. But…here?”

  “Yeah. It’s a cool little joint. Grabbed a drink here last night while you were still in Monterey,” he mentions as he quiets the engine and steps out of the car. “You know this place?”

  It takes all my willpower not to beeline it to Cori’s place once I pull into the nearly empty parking lot of Kelley’s. Mondays are pretty uneventful, and I’d trust Andi and Lucas to handle things should I decide to bail for a few hours to see Cori. My mind runs through every possible way she and I could put those few hours to good use as I drag the side of my index finger back and forth over the suggestive curl of my lips.

  But I haven’t heard from Cori since I tried calling her cell phone last night, and I can only assume she’s still trying to figure out how to end things with Cooper. I don’t blame her. After wearing out my brain with ways I could break off my engagement without hurting Riley, it took all of yesterday to figure out that heartbreak is inevitable. There is no easy way in telling the person you planned on spending the rest of your life with that you were meant to spend it with someone else. And I hate myself for it, knowing that I will be the cause of Riley’s heartbreak when she’s done nothing but love me all of these years. Still, I’d hate myself more if I allowed Riley to give herself entirely to me when I could never do the same. I know what I need to do, but it doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.

  Before I change my mind and say screw it to all of my responsibilities, I park the Jeep next to a shiny, red Porsche in front of the pub, and wonder what it is about my bar that’s attracting all the yuppies lately. It surely can’t be the spastic punk girl shit I hear pounding its way through the pub doors.

  “I thought I told you to leave your crap CDs at home,” I shout over the music at Andi once I make it inside. “No one wants to listen to this over their soup and salad at twelve in the afternoon.”

  Her head bops up and down with the quick tempos as she polishes a wine glass. “You’re the only one complaining. If you haven’t noticed, it’s fucking dead in here. We could liven this place up a little.”

  I rest my elbow against the edge of the bar and scan the room. Besides the blond guy sitting in a booth in the corner and the few occupied tables in the center of the room, Andi is right; no one seems to be paying attention anyhow. But I’ve already told her countless times to go with soft rock during the day.

  “I don’t care. Change the music,” I order, catching her in an eye roll as I start heading toward the back office.

  Andi drags herself to the other end of the bar where the stereo system
is placed. “At least that twat friend of yours appreciates good music.”

  I immediately stop and turn around. “What friend?”

  “That brunette chick that got completely tanked here the other night with Braiden, and called me a fucking fire-crotch,” she says as she opens up the cabinet, tilts her head to the side, and runs her index finger along a row of CDs. “She’s in the restroom.”

  “Cori?” My feet carry me toward the restrooms even before Andi answers. She utters something, but her voice goes muffled under the piercing cries of the female vocals and Cori’s name ringing in my head.

  The sweetest hint of vanilla lingers in the hallway. I lean against the wall at the end of the corridor, massaging my jaw because I’m smiling so much that it’s starting to hurt. I said I’d wait if she needed more time, but thank God I don’t have to because I’ve missed her so damn much. When she exits the restroom and starts walking toward the main area, I tug at her arm and gently pull her back into the dark hallway.

  “Hey,” I whisper with a smile so wide my mouth may tear at the corners.

  I must have startled her because her jaw drops slightly when she realizes it’s me. “Hey to you, too,” she answers, the drop in her jaw slowly curling upward into a grin as her eyes light up. “I didn’t think you were here. I didn’t see the Jeep in the parking lot.”

  Inching closer to her, I brush my hand down the length of her arm as a trail of goose bumps emerges beneath the drag of my fingertips. When my hand finds hers, I weave our fingers together. “I arrived a few minutes ago. Andi said she saw you walk back here.”

  “I’m surprised she even made the effort to tell you I’m here. I think she hates me.”

  “Hate is a pretty strong word. I’d say more like a very strong dislike,” I tease, pulling her closer. “You did call her fire-crotch.”