“I don’t know. I just…got this feeling. You’re all buff and cool and kinda quiet. Guys go for the strong, silent type.”
Coop couldn’t accept the compliments that were somewhere in there. His body, his attitude, it was all a cover, and it worked. But it made Coop feel like a crappy friend. Rafe had poured his heart out to him on several occasions, many times unprompted. Coop considered him his best friend, but how could that be when everything Rafe thought about him was a lie?
He pulled his computer from the foot of his bed and reached into folders on his desktop that he hadn’t opened in a long time. These were not photos kids at Browerton would see on his social media.
“Come over here,” Coop said. A folder full of image files took over his screen.
Rafe sat next to him. Coop opened the first image, a picture from Christmas sophomore year of high school. Coop posed next to the family Christmas tree wearing something more suited for an ugly sweater Christmas party.
“Is that you?” Rafe looked back and forth between Coop and the picture.
Coop nodded yes.
“That’s you? You’re so skinny. Like skinnier than me. And paler than me.”
“Yep.”
“And your face. All that acne.”
“We get the point, Rafe.” Coop opened another image.
“You played flute?”
“Yep.” Coop gawked at the picture his scrawny self in his baggy white-and-black band ensemble.
“What’s going on with your hair?” Rafe wasn’t laughing. He sounded almost genuinely concerned.
“I was trying to make it look like Chris Pratt’s inGuardians of the Galaxy.” All those times standing in front of the mirror willing his hair to look effortlessly tousled, it never cooperated.
“It looks like Groot’s tree branches.” Rafe opened another image of Coop taking a selfie in the bathroom mirror of his hideous, clashing outfit. “Am I being catfished here?”
Rafe didn’t mean any harm, but his words still stung. Maybe one day Coop would be able to really laugh about all this. But that day was not now.
Coop exed out of the pictures. “That was me in high school. The real me.”
Rafe studied Coop, trying to find String Cheese underneath. “You’ve changed.”
“I haven’t. Not in here.” He tapped at his head. He told Rafe the whole story about life as String Cheese and his physical transformation the summer before college. “I didn’t want to go through that again at college. I wanted to be cool.”
“You are cool!” Rafe said. He was supposed to say that. That was his job as friend.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. I totally would’ve been friends with String Cheese.” Rafe’s voice was heavy with sincerity, and dammit, that meant something to Coop. “If you really were oh-so-cool, you wouldn’t have fallen for this amazing guy, you wouldn’t have played Settlers of Catan, and you wouldn’t have been friends with me.”
Maybe Rafe had a point. Amidst all of Coop’s hard work to be cool, he’d wound up becoming best friends with a quirky, melodramatic, nerdy, hella awesome gay guy. He couldn’t fake that.
* * *
That night, Coop had plans to play Catan with the guys. Matty cancelled to work on his project, and Coop had no qualms about having plans to play board games. He didn’t care if it was considered cool or not. It was fun as hell.
Walking over to Akash, Tim, and Tom’s dorm, Coop got a call from his dad.
“We’ve found a buyer for the house.”
“Oh.” Coop found the closest park bench.
“It’s a nice couple. The wife is pregnant with their first child. It’s going to be a great home for them.”
