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“But the process can fail.” Which had happened in the past.
“Yeah.” Coop downed the rest of the coffee, then flopped back on the sofa. “I started posting my schedule where the kids could see it and not just in the office. Then I gradually resumed only coming a couple of times a week. Michael was coming to group, he still wasn’t talking—but he came. That was a big step.
“Eventually, he talked. It started when one of the girls confessed to being jumped in the bathroom at school. She was scared to go back to one. She’d rather hold it all day or go across the street to the convenience store, or whatever. She couldn’t go back in the bathroom. She went to Michael’s school. He told her if she needed to go to the bathroom, text him. He’d make sure she could.”
There was an element of pride in Coop’s words.
“She was scared to take him up on the offer. But he was scared to make it. They both looked at me and I asked them what they wanted to do… It was a first step of him reaching out. She could have blown him off or dismissed it, maybe undoing all that work. But—she didn’t. She hesitated, but she asked him how could she know she could trust him?”
That made me curious but I waited him out as Coop smiled for real, for the first time since I came in.
“He said, ‘I don’t know. I just—think you should be able to go to the bathroom when you want. I don’t like bullies and bitches. So…you want to piss, I’m your guy.’ Then he pauses and they both look at each other and then laugh. She said she’d think about it. Couple of weeks went by, and she mentions she can go to the bathroom at school again. It helped build her confidence and his.”
He scrubbed both hands over his face and then sat forward again. The grief was raw and visceral.
“It was such a small but huge step for both of them. They tried to reach out and someone was listening. Friendship followed. No romance or anything just—good friends. He was still trying to figure himself out. It wasn’t that he liked guys or girls, he just—he didn’t like either. Thought it was weird or made him freaky. The day he finally told me that, I said, ‘you’re probably asexual. Or you haven’t met the person you want. There’s nothing wrong with it.’”
Real emotion ripped through his expression and he was fighting to hold onto it. I moved to put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t need me to press him or force him to do or say more. He just needed to know he wasn’t alone.
“He cried. This big, buff fifteen year old kid who looked like a linebacker, sat down and fucking cried. Cause he didn’t know it was a thing. Why do we always have to put labels on everything? High school is so damn tough to begin with then you throw all that social shit into it.”
“You’re the expert,” I reminded him and he snorted, giving me a misty-eyed glare before he stood and I let my hand fall away. I got the need to move, so I reclaimed my coffee cup and watched as he picked up one of the water glasses on the table, then filled it up with water from one of the silver pitchers.
“She ate, by the way,” he told me. “Not a lot at first, but the appetite hit around the second or third round. Then she was starving.”
I nodded. Sex and food, two ways guaranteed to take care of our wife. “Good.”
“Anyway… Michael’s spent the last three years busting his ass to graduate. He was gonna go into the military. He weighed all his options and he was thinking about the Army. Get the training and the experience, get out of his home where he wasn’t happy and build a future. Then maybe college after…”
“He didn’t graduate until the end of this year, did he?”
“Yep, he was gonna graduate before Christmas… he didn’t care about walking, just wanted the diploma.” He was a million miles away.
“What happened?”
“Car accident.” Coop didn’t look away from the water. “He was waiting for the bus. Car jumped the curb. Plowed right into him and three other people. He and an older man died at the scene. The other two were taken to local hospitals. Driver was arrested, probably already out on bail and Michael’s just gone.”
“I’m really fucking sorry, Coop.”
“Yeah… Me too.”
He didn’t say much after that. Instead, we sat out there drinking piss poor coffee. If he was going to be up, I’d stick it out with him. He didn’t tell me to fuck off.
We were still sitting there at three in the morning when Frankie opened the bedroom door. Naked, hair mussed and tangled from sleep and the imprint of a pillow on her cheek, she looked at us with confusion.
Then the sleep vanished from her eyes as she laser focused on Coop. I didn’t have to say a word. She just walked across the room to crawl onto his lap. I rescued the coffee cup as she wrapped her arms around him.
At the first choked sound of his sob, I moved to wrap them both up into a hug. He clung to Frankie and I held onto both of them. It took time, but eventually, she coaxed him back into the bedroom.
I’d have left them to it, but she caught my hand and Coop gave me a faint smile. “Stay, Bubba. I think we’ll all feel better.”
I could do that. “Come on then, both of you. In bed.” Frankie vanished into the bathroom to pee, when she came back out, she had a washcloth. She used it to clean Coop’s face and I gave them a beat while I made sure the hotel room door had the safety bar on, then I shut down the lights.
Back in the bedroom, I climbed in on one side of Frankie as Coop curled up on her other side.
“I’m here,” she whispered to him.
“I know you are,” he said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow…or maybe the next day. Right now I just—I just want to hold you and the babies. Is that okay?”
