AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I got the funny feeling that you wouldn't quite approve of her,” I said, tiptoeing around the hard truth.
“You're a grown man.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “What does it matter if I approve or not?”
“Like how there's not anyone in the world good enough to date Camilla?”
“That's different.”
“How?”
“It just is,” Cooper insisted, crossing his arms over his chest.
“And there it is,” I said.
“There what is?”
“The motto of the hypocrite,” I said, sounding a lot meaner than I mean it to.
“Now, that's not fair.”
“And it doesn't make a lick of difference that my girlfriend that you wouldn't approve of is Camilla?”
I had planned to say more. To say how serious it was, how much I loved her, and that I was thinking about marrying her. That was the plan. One that was cut off by Cooper punching me in the jaw.
“Seriously?” I said, the strike bringing up only the dullest of aches.
He tried again, apparently not having learned his lesson, and I cleanly dodged the second strike as well as the third and the fourth, driving me back into the wall of another cubicle. I knocked it over, sending Carlos and Chris running to avoid getting hit. I tried to get out of the strike zone, but Cooper followed, swinging again. His punch connected with Lucky knocking him over. I got out of the way, and Cooper turned on me, rage in his eyes.
Needing to end the situation before it could go any further, I threw a punch, a single blow, hoping to shock Coop out of it. My friend dodged, and I slammed my fist into the watercooler.
“What the fuck?” Camilla demanded, returning with lunch and staring at the sopping carpet.
“I didn't mean to.”
“He really didn't. Cooper threw the first punch and went a bit crazy,” Chris said.
“Now who's being an immature brat?” she screamed in our general direction before storming off.
It was clearly meant to both of us. Cooper for throwing the first punch and me for responding. Apparently, she would have preferred if I had just stood there and let her brother punch me. Which made no sense to me at all.
“What the hell is going on?”
Cooper and I both looked over to see Ryan and Beau come at us from down the hall, just finishing off the handoff between them.
“Get cleaned up,” Ryan said to Cooper, no doubt referring to the blood flowing from his nose.
“Aden, get these walls back up,” Beau said, the look of disappointment on his face worse than any punch I could have gotten. “And clean up this water!”
“The expenses for Chris's computer terminal will come out of your pay,” Ryan said, as Cooper went to wash off.
His disgust was apparent, and I knew that I was lucky that I hadn't been fired.
