Baseball Cheater: You’ll have to introduce me sometime. I’m curious now.
Cooper: You and your private island and cats, him with his hatred of people and love of sheep? No way. You’d cancel with me for this week and go fly to see him instead.
Baseball Cheater: *laughing emoji*
Cooper: So. Denver. Thursday. You. Me. The cover of darkness. And the best date you’ve ever been on.
Baseball Cheater: TALKING. You’re doing this to annoy me, aren’t you?
Cooper: I can talk your ass off. But in case you forgot, you’re talking to Cooper Rock. Yeah, there’s some annoying here, but there’s also FUN. This talking? It’s gonna be the best talking of your life.
7
Cooper
I’ve hadtwo days to contemplate this, and I don’t have a fucking clue where I’m taking Waverly for ourtalk.
For the record, I’m keeping my hands to myself, and I will only do talking. And listening. Only the listening part even, if that’s what she wants.
But also for the record, I can be one charming bastard when I want to be, and if mytalkinghappens to inspire her to want to do anything else, I’m game.
Make no mistake.
She saystalk.
I sayholy shit, I’ve been attacked by the bee swarm of love, and for the first time in my life, I want to be a one-woman man, and that woman is her, and I will not waste this second chance to prove it to her.
I can dream up the world’s best pranks in the blink of an eye. I can be standing in my house up on Thorny Rock mountain back in Shipwreck and sense that one of my family members needs a helping hand with one of their businesses downtown. I can be in a bar and sort through which women would be clingy and which women would be up for a night of fun and which women need a guy to slide in next to them and play the jealous boyfriend for a hot second to get a douche who can’t take the hint off their back. I’ve had rooftop dates and ballpark hookups and rendezvous in zoos and quickies in parking garages.
And I have no idea where I can take Waverly to impress her.
“Is the air thin up here?” I ask Luca Rossi in the locker room before the first of our four-game series in Denver. He’s a tall white dude with the best hair in baseball. Or that’s what his shampoo sponsor—which should’ve been mine—would like you to believe. “It’s thin up here, right? My brain feels like a balloon. Like an awesome balloon filled with confetti and rainbows, but still like a balloon.”
Darren Greene snorts on my other side. He’s a bulky Black dude who’s been with the team second longest after me, and I think he’s having the samewhat the hell do I do with my life if we pull off the win of the century?nerves that I’m currently claiming whenever anyone asks why my game’s off this season.
It’s not a lie.
But it’s far from the whole truth
“Air’s not thin,” Darren says. “You’re getting old.”
I gasp.
Diego gasps.
The rest of the guys crack up.
“Holy shit.” My words are barely audible, even to me, as the truth finally penetrates my skull. “I’m getting old.”
That has to be it.
I can’t figure out where to take a woman who I have the biggest crush on of all the crushes I’ve had in my entire life.
I have a massive crush on a woman.
A single woman.
A woman who broke my heart once a long time ago, but let’s face it. I was young and naïve and not nearly as confident in myself back then. That doesn’t count. Not when I had a lot of growing up to do still.
