The Space in Between
Page 7

I blushed at the thoughts filling my head, and lowered my voice to answer his question. “The Pretty Woman rules.”
He drifted over to me, sporting his perfectly perfect dimples. “You do know how that movie ends, right?” Cooper turned away from me and slipped into his pants. I couldn’t help but let a small grin slip from my lips. I realized the expression of pleasure plastered on my face and shook it off as Cooper kept talking. “I just…I don’t want to be one of those guys. I want to take you out to—“
“YOU BITCH!” was heard from the living room. Ladasha was home. “How the hell did you get Roger to let you get a damn promotion without even staying the whole freakin’ night?! And how the hell did you get someone to pay six hundred dollars for a damn lap dance?!” she hollered.
My eyes widened, looking to Cooper. “Six hundred dollars?!” I paused. Well, he got what he paid for.
“I picked up a pizza on the way back, dude. Seriously though. Teach me your…” Ladasha barged into my bedroom before I had a chance to tell Cooper to somehow turn invisible. The piece of Brooklyn style pizza in my roommate’s hand froze in mid-air as Ladasha saw me wrapped in a sheet. Her eyes landed on Cooper and she finished her sentence. “…secrets…”
Her eyes bugged out when she realized there was a man standing in my bedroom. “What did I miss?” she questioned as the cheese on her slice of pizza slid to the floor.
“I should probably get going,” Cooper said, and I agreed before he even finished his thought. We wedged our way past Ladasha, who was fast to follow behind us. Cooper turned to me once we reached the front door, smiling. “I would really like to see you again though, Andrea. I’ve never done this before.” He paused and his cheeks turned rosy with embarrassment. “Well, I’ve done this, just not like this. Ya know?”
He was cute, trying to find the right words. But I couldn’t help but feel a knot in my stomach growing larger and larger. “Coop,” I whispered, trying to make him understand. But his green eyes lit up at the sound of my voice. He rested his hand on his chin and studied me.
“Andie,” he whispered back. I didn’t correct him. To tell you the truth it sounded kind of nice. I opened the front door and allowed him to kiss me on the forehead before he exited. “I’ll call you.”
“Don’t,” I begged.
He grinned and strolled down the hallway. I could still see his dimples in my head as he walked away. I stepped into the hallway and looked in his direction. “No really, Cooper. Don’t.”
Tossing his hand up in the air, he waved goodbye to me. I sighed. That goodbye wave was sexy, too. And that would probably be a problem. I stepped back into my apartment, closed the door, and slipped down to the ground. Ladasha walked over and slid down to join me.
“Was there an extremely sexy man in our apartment?”
“Yep.”
“And you…had sexy time with him?” she questioned.
“Yep.”
A level of silence filled the room. We sat there, both a bit stunned. Finally Ladasha found the ideal words to say. “Take that, Richard Gere!” she hollered and stood up to do a victorious dance. It involved a lot of awkward air humping and invisible ass slapping. I couldn’t help but chuckle at my overreacting friend. As I glanced at her, my smile faded when I realized what I’d done. Ladasha also figured out what I’d done and her smile evaporated.
“Andrea…” Her voice was soft, filled with concern; I shook my head and stared forward.
I ‘d just had sex with Cooper Davidson.
Crap.
I WAS DIRTY. Turning on the shower, I stepped inside as the water began to hit my skin in random spurts. Picking up the soap, I started rubbing my ghost-white skin, scrubbing harder and harder, trying to erase the past few hours from my memory.
I promise to love you without reservation. Comfort you in times of distress. Encourage you to achieve all of your goals.
No…
I scrubbed more intensely, watching my skin turn red, trying to make the guilt that had somehow sunk into my soul disappear. My tears began to mix with the water droplets. There was no way to tell the liquid streams apart from one another. I let my body fall to the tub and sat there. I sobbed into my hands, allowing the water crystals to slap me with the reality I was now facing.
MICHELLE WAS FORCEFULLY dragging a kid over with her as she came to visit Eric and me. The kid looked a few years older than me, maybe nine or ten.
“You guys! This is my cousin Cooper. He’s spending the summer here because his dad is crazy.” Michelle sang, bouncing up and down. He had a camera hanging around his neck and shifted his feet on the ground, not looking up at us.
“What’s with the camera?” I asked, watching as his eyes rose up to meet mine. My tummy started swirling around as I watched his lips curve into a nice grin and his dimples appeared.
“My mama gave it to me, before I left. What’s your name?”
“Andie Evans. This is my brother Eric.” Cooper didn’t look over to acknowledge Eric, he just kept smiling at me, making me feel a bit weird. “Why are ya looking at me like that?”
His cheeks reddened and he went back to looking to the ground, kicking around dirt. “Just never seen anything like you before, that’s all.” His eyebrows frowned as he slapped his face. “I meant that in a good way. It came out wrong.”
Michelle rolled her eyes and began walking near Eric. “Come on you guys, let’s go to the park. Last one there buys everyone ice cream!” Eric and she went running off down the street.
Cooper cleared his throat and held up his camera in my direction. “Can I take your picture?”
I ran my fingers through my hair, and prepped myself for my first ever photo shoot. Placing my hands on my hips, I turned to Cooper, begging him to only capture my good side.
His hand ran over his face and his green eyes smiled my way. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I can miss it.”
Chapter Six
I SAT IN Kyle’s office watching him grin ear to ear at me like a proud papa. “Hell yeah! See! What did I tell you? A one-night stand has a way of changing a dude’s perspective on an issue. Now we can move on, and I got a few papers for you to sign. Which magazine do you want to reach out to first? Star? Us Weekly? I can get the cover on People.” Kyle went searching on his computer, with his pleased grin still framing his face.
I had to admit, I couldn’t stop smiling either. “Listen, Ky.”
He snorted and nodded his head as he kept at his computer. “Oh I’m listenin’. Tell me all about it. Was she good? Did she use the feathers? Jasmine uses the feathers.”
“No. Listen, Kyle. I mean really listen.” I slammed my hands on his keyboard, which made him whine like a puppy dog in pain. He fell back in his chair and tossed his hands up in defeat.
“Okay. What?”
Clasping my hands together, I leaned in closer to him. “I like her. I like her a lot.”
The sudden shift of character in Kyle’s eyes was drastic; he knew where this was going, “Shut up.”
“She's different, Kyle.” My heart started pounding as I thought of the night before. Andrea was mysterious and different from anything I had ever felt with Iris. There were parts of her that were the same Andrea I knew when I was younger, but there was so much more depth to her nowadays that I found so f**king attractive. “And the way she kissed me…” Her lips... Andrea Evans’s lips could make any man daydream of kissing her for the rest of their lives.
“One. Night. Stand. That’s it, Cooper. One night! None of this instant love bullshit again. You know where instant love put you last time? In the damn psych ward!” Kyle hollered at me, but I wasn’t interested in his opinion.
“She's beautiful. Not the type of beautiful most people see. But a sad type of beautiful, the type of beauty that changes people. And…” I chuckled, thinking of how insane what I was going to say next sounded. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“I already do. Tell me anyway.”
“But Jesus...in the mental health clinic… he told me I would meet someone. And a few weeks after I got out of the clinic, POOF! I’ll be damned, there she was. And I have you to thank for that! If it weren’t for you sending me to that club, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Kyle sat there, stunned for quite a bit of time. “Get the hell out of my office. And take your damn pills!”
As my cell phone went off from a text message, my eyes widened when I saw the name ‘Andie’ displayed. She finally got back to me after the few text messages she seemed determined to ignore. I stood up and nodded, walking near the door. “I’m going to see her.”
A firecracker was lit under Kyle’s seat, sending him skyrocketing from his chair. “What! No. Noooo. She’s a stripper, Coop. You can’t actually be seen with her!”
“I'll see you later, Ky.”
I glanced back into Kyle’s office in time to see him tossing his paperwork into the air and kicking the side of his desk.
He was so dramatic sometimes.
SHE LOOKED PERFECT. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and somehow she managed to look f**king great. Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, and I instantly stood up from the table at the café when she walked in. She quickly raised her hand to stop me from greeting her. She took the seat across from me and I lowered myself back down.
What was there to be said? I figured I should take a stab at it.
“Andie last night was—”
“Call me Andrea, Cooper. And last night was a mistake.” She removed her sunglasses and roughly rubbed her hands across her tired face.
Sitting back in my chair, I looked at her, taking note of the puffiness of her eyes. I had a small feeling I was the cause of her suffering. I didn’t know what to do or how to make it better. I laid my hand across the table to give her comfort, but she refused it. I felt like such an ass. She’d opened up to me last night, and I took advantage of her.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say.
Lowering her head she shrugged. “It’s not your fault. But if you could do me a big favor and pretend this never happened? Please? I’m not the same girl I was back then when you knew me.”
“And I’m not that same guy, Andrea.” The fact was that I didn’t want her to be that same girl that I knew. I was so deeply engrossed with the broken creature before me and I wanted to capture her out-of-order smile in my mind forever. A beautiful mess she was. She was everything my soon-to-be-ex wife wasn’t. And I wanted to know more. I asked her to give me a chance.
She wouldn’t. She explained once again how she had already broken one too many rules.
“Please. Cooper, trust me. You’re better off. Don’t text me anymore. Don’t show up at the club. Don’t reach out to me. I’m sorry about all that is going on in your life, but that’s not my problem. And to be honest, my issues aren’t yours.”
Andrea stood up from the table, placed her sunglasses back on, and walked out of the café. I wanted to follow after her, but hell, what right did I have to do such a thing?
Chapter Seven
UGH. I FELT terrible for how harsh I’d had to be with Cooper, yet I knew if I hadn’t been he would still show up. And I’d needed to make it clear to him that I wasn’t interested in getting to know him, or anyone else for that matter, anytime soon. I stood outside of the café and literally counted the beats of my heart. One hundred and twenty beats per minute. I turned back to look through the glass window at Cooper and pounded my fist against my waist.
“We need rules,” I insisted as I barged back into the café and sat across from him.