I huffed. “But…?”
“But you use your phone like a geriatric patient. Actually, no, my grandma uses her phone to call her representatives and make complaints, like, three times a day, so she’s using it better than anyone.”
“Is there a particular representative you’d like me to call?” I asked, smiling to myself. I wasn’t sure if Avery was distracting me on purpose or not, but it was settling my nerves. A little, anyway.
It was only Cooper. He’d been nothing but kind to me. Kinder to me than most people, aside from the one I was on the phone with, had been in my life.
“Tousle your hair for me. So that one strand that never behaves flops down over your forehead.”
I put the phone on speaker again—without accidentally hanging up—and did as I was told, pulling out the one strand Avery was talking about.
“How does this help?” I asked.
“Makes it irresistible to tuck it out of the way,” Avery said. “And if he’s that close, he’ll want to be closer. You can make prolonged eye contact. It’ll be a whole thing. Trust me.”
“I do,” I said. I didn’t trust many people—not anymore—but I trusted Avery with my life.
Cooper…
Well, I probably would have trusted him with my life, but more because I thought he could be trusted withanyone’slife. He was capital-R Responsible, more than most people. So much more that he couldn’t even see it himself.
“I really like him, Ave,” I said as the thought came to me, stomach swooping at the admission. When had I lastreally likedsomeone?
Maybe never, aside from teenage crushes. That was what this felt like.
It was terrifying.
But it was terrifying in the way that a grande jeté I wasn’t sure I could land was terrifying. In the run-up, I was always scared I’d miss my footing and fall flat on my face—even after over twenty years. The pain would be one thing, but the humiliation was the thing I was really scared of.
The only thing that got me over that was the moment in the air. I’d never been able to describe how that felt, except that it made me feelfree.
Cooper…
Well…
“Aww,” Avery cooed on the other end of the line. “This is adorable.”
“Shut up,” I said, heat rising to my cheeks.
“Seriously,” Avery said, their voice softening. “You deserve this. You’ve been through so much shit. The least the universe could offer you is a big, uncomplicated sweetheart to fuck your brains out.”
Uncomplicated.
Was he?
“He’s unbelievably sweet,” I said, because that part was definitely true. I couldn’t stop thinking about how sweet Cooper was—not just with me, but with Benji, and his parents, and by all accounts everyone else he ran into.
“Well, if you get tired of him, you can pass him along to me. I could use some of that.”
“Jamal didn’t work out?” I asked, hoping that was actually Avery’s most recent partner’s name and not two or three previous.
“Xie moved to Toronto to teach transcendental meditation,” they said. “I dunno. The first energy cleansing was cute, after that it started to feel a little judgmental. I don’t think my energy’s all that dirty.”
“I plead the fifth,” I teased. I didn’t need Avery in the room to clearly picture them giving me the finger for that remark.
“They neverwork outfor me,” Avery said. “Because I don’t really want them to. I’m happy dicking around and seeing what’s out there. But I don’t think you’re like me. I think… I just think thisis good for you. He sounds nice. You sound like you’re smiling when you talk about him. I never once saw you smile when you talked about Piotr.”
Hadn’t I?
