All I did back was nod.
I didn’t know what to do with the look that came over his face.
So I decided to change the subject. “How’s Lydia, by the way?”
I wondered if he was still hung up on Rip helping me out, but he managed to say, distractedly, “She’s great. She was asking me about you a few days ago. I think she was planning on inviting you over for lunch or dinner this weekend, if you’re free.”
“I’m always free for you two,” I told him honestly.
“Have you been going on your dates?”
“Kind of,” I told him, giving him a little smile.
Ripley had kept me company at the bar I’d been stood up at, I thought to myself. “I’ve gone on two and got left hanging at another one.”
I could tell he was distracted, but he still managed to ask. “Any winners?”
Ialmostsnorted. “No. Not even close, but I’ve only gone on three. I don’t want to waste my time, and a lot of these guys don’t want anything serious so….” I shrugged. “I’m just being picky and don’t want to settle. I just want… the right man.” And my heart wanted the wrong one, but I wasn’t going to think about that again in the next millennium. Nope.
Mr. Cooper’s nod was grave, but his voice was even more serious. “I get it, honey.” He sighed. “I was married before Lydia. Did you know that?”
I hadn’t up until I had overheard his and Rip’s conversation—a conversation I wasn’t supposed to have been eavesdropping on. So I lied and shook my head.
He seemed to swallow, to think for a minute before saying, “I was forty when she passed. We had been together since I was twenty-one.” His voice was quiet, serious. “We were together for nineteen years, and it seemed like six months. It was a lifetime, but it never felt like it.”
Was it silly of me that I felt embarrassed and even a little protective of Lydia? Knowing now that Mr. Cooper had been with someone else for so long?
He kept going, his voice still holding onto its gravity… and something else that might have been bittersweet. The hard bob of his throat confirmed it. “She was… she was the love of my life,” he admitted. “Lydia is too in a way, but Bea was my world. It’s been twenty-three years, and I don’t miss her any less than I did when she first died. Lydia came into my life a lot sooner than I would have dreamed of, a lot sooner than I would have liked, but….” His shrug looked like he had three hundred pounds on his shoulders. “It was meant to be. Lydia came when she came, and I can’t say that it wasn’t fate that brought us together.”
Oh jeez. I blinked. “How soon after?”
He swiped his hand over his head again and looked up at the ceiling. “I met her six months after.”
What was I going to do? Judge him? If he had been anyone else, I would have scoffed or thought something terrible, but Mr. Cooper had always been honest with me. He had loved me back when I hadn’t loved myself much. I had seen him with Lydia. I knew there was a deep love there.
I was the first person in the world to understand that life wasn’t white and black. I hadn’t even been able to find one person to love me romantically, much less two. All I knew was that based on the face he was giving me, other people in the past had given him a hard time for moving on, for finding love. After all this man had done for me, I wouldn’t be one of them too.
“Can I ask what she passed away from?”
His hesitation made me feel terrible. The breath he sucked in and then let out made me feel like an asshole. “She was—”
The sound of knuckles hitting the door came a second before the door creaked open and a familiar voice said, “Ready?”
Mr. Cooper ’s face instantly flushed, and he lowered his voice, “We’ll finish this conversation later, okay?”
He didn’t want to finish the conversation because of Ripley, did he? I wondered… but nodded anyway. There were some things in this life that you didn’t want to talk about. Not ever. And especially not in front of certain people.
I understood that better than most. There were plenty of years that I didn’t enjoy talking about.
“Come in, Rip,” Mr. Cooper called out a moment later.
Sure enough, the biggest man I had ever seen in my life, swung the door completely open and stepped inside, shutting it behind him. He stood there in a gray shirt that was plastered to his upper body. I glanced back at Mr. Cooper as Ripley took the seat that I had left unoccupied closest to the door. He glanced at me once, grunting out a “Luna” that I replied with, “Hi, Ripley.”
“You all right?”
“I’ll live. It’s not the first time he’s jumped me.”
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.
