“Girlfriend!” his mom, Susan, squeals. “I had a feeling when you asked for tulips.”
“Dating? Susan, you knew about this?”
“No. Maybe. Sort of! He didn’t say Sutton’s name. How long have you two been together?”
“About a month or so.”
“A month? Cooper James Carmichael, you have been dating Sutton Elizabeth Davis” Why are we both being full named now? “For a month, and you’ve failed to mention it once? Not at dinner or a game or?—”
A month? I count back days. Is he referring to the night in the bar or our fake date? Counting all of that time?
“Or Sutton, could you have mentioned it when we were planning our summer holiday over family FaceTime. This is huge.”
“Monumental.”
“We have to call your fathers. They are going to be…” Sutton’s mom trails off. “Maybe not right now.”
“Why?” Cooper asks.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you two have been intimate, definitely more than kissing, and?—”
Our moms are in an in-sync double Dutch routine. Susan jumps in. “Oh, I beg of you to please use protection.”
Cooper throws a second curveball. “We haven’t had sex. No worries, no grandkids yet.”
That sends them on a second frenzy.
“Grandkids? Oh, Suz, we are going to be grandparents together.” I think one of them is crying. “At least another five years, maybe ten.”
“Or tomorrow. I kind of want to be a grandma. I’d be such a cool grandma.”
“The coolest,” my mom backs her.
They’ve been best friends forever. I’ve never not known them as being two peas in a pod. Even before I was adopted, they’ve been inseparable. Through his mom getting pregnant in college, to my mom’s miscarriages and unsuccessful rounds of IVF. They’re the type of best friend relationship you always dream of having—including your kids dating.
Cooper huffs out a laugh over this conversation. He tells them goodbye with a promise that the six of us can get dinner next time they visit.
The song we were two minutes and thirty-three seconds into starts playing again. He spins the dial to the left, lowers the volume to barely above an echo.
“You okay? You went quiet.”
“You never asked.”
“Asked what?”
“You never asked me to be your girlfriend. I didn’t know that’s what I was.”
“Of course you are, Dave. I don’t want to see anyone but you. You feel the same way, right?”
“Yes, but?—”
“But. There shouldn’t be a but. We’re dating. This is it.”
“But you never asked,” I repeat. “You still need to ask.”
He chuckles. I don’t hear it, but see it in the way his chest rises and falls. Shoulders bounce against the seat. “Okay, then. Will you be my girlfriend, Sutton Davis?”
“No.”
