“You’ve whipped this place into shape,” I said.
“It was nice before.”
“It was charming,” I said. “Now it’s sleek and sexy and even more charming.”
She laughed. Once again, I was caught off-guard by just how wonderful that sound was. I wanted to make her laugh again. Over and over, I wanted to make Cordelia smile. She’d had a hard time. It had been a rough life for her, and while I couldn’t help her reclaim the past, there was a part of me that wanted to help her channel the future.
I wanted to help her take care of what was coming. I wanted to help her figure out who she wanted to be and where she wanted to go.
“Thanks, Coop,” she said. “That means a lot.”
“Anytime.”
“What about you?” She whispered. “What happened to you after high school?”
I opened my mouth to tell her, but suddenly, my phone rang, interrupting the moment. It was James. My little brother didn’t call me too often, but when he did, it was usually important.
“I have to go,” I told her. “Trust me, I’m not happy about ditching you right now. Rain check?”
“Yeah, of course,” she nodded. “Thanks for holding my hair while I puked.”
“Anytime,” I said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So I can take you to dinner,” I said.
“Cooper, it sounds like you’re asking me on a date.”
I grinned. Hell yes. It was years overdue, but I saw an opening, and I was going to go for it. Cordelia wasn’t the only person who worried they were too old for second chances. I worried about that every damn day. I was going to take my own advice today, though. I couldn’t change my past, but I was the one in charge of my future.
“I’m asking you on a date. Will you go out with me, Cordelia?”
The smile she offered told me everything I needed to know.
5.
Cordelia
A DATE.
I was going on a date.
I was going on a real, proper, regular-person sort of date, and I was going with Cooper Clark. Somehow, it seemed like a dream and a nightmare all at the same time. I had a million questions rushing through my head.
Was I ready?
Was this another trick?
Was fate somehow going to taunt me and then throw me under the bus again?
Cooper and I parted ways. I hung up the flyer in the window of my shop. It still felt strange to think of it as my shop and not Hannah’s shop. Still, it was the kind of place where anything could happen – even reconnecting with someone I used to adore, apparently.
My walk home was quiet. When I got back, instead of going into my apartment and taking a long, much-needed shower, I went to the main house to talk to my aunt and uncle. I knocked on the door, and Hannah called out for me to come inside.
“You know, you should check who it is,” I told Aunt Hannah.
“I knew it was you,” she said.
“How?”
“A hunch,” she smiled. Aunt Hannah patted the couch next to her, and I went and sat down beside her. She reached for the remote and turned off the television.
“Where’s Uncle Ray?”
“Sleeping,” she told me.
“Already?”
“He’s tired a lot these days.”
“Not you?”
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
“I don’t have much time left, my dear. I don’t want to waste it on sleeping.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“You aren’t going to fight me?”
“On what?”
“Talking about death.”
I shook my head. No, I wasn’t going to fight my aunt. She was the one facing the end: not me. Who was I to tell her how she could talk? I didn’t know what she was going through or what she was facing. It was up to her how she wanted to handle things from here on out. My only job was to listen to her and help her through all of this as best I could.
“No,” I said. “I won’t fight you.”
“How was your day?”
“It was okay,” I said, wiggling back onto the couch. I tried to make myself a little more comfortable. She watched me carefully.
“Something happened.”
“What?”
“Something happened today,” she said. “What was it?”
“Nothing gets past you, huh?”
“I’m sick,” she said. “Not blind, and not dead.”
“Cooper Clark came by Savored today.”
“Did he now?” She reached for a sip of her water, and she looked over at me.
“Wait a second,” I realized. “You knew.”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously.
“Oh, what are you talking about?” She laughed. “Knew what?”
“You knew he was going to come by.”
“I might have placed an idea in his head,” she waved her hand. “That’s all.”
“What idea?”
“Flyers?” She winked.
Clever girl. Cooper had told me it was his idea. Hannah had a way of doing that, though. I wondered what question she had asked to get him thinking of using the shop as a way to bring more people to the high school’s carnival booth.
“Wait, when did you see him?”
“Cooper comes by every day to check on me,” she said. “Ever since he ran into you baking and discovered I was sick. He’s been coming by either on his lunch break or after work to make sure I’m doing okay. He’s been helping your uncle, too.”
“What? I didn’t know that. You didn’t say anything.”
“There wasn’t really anything to say,” she told me. “Cooper is a good man, and he does a lot for this town. It was kind of him to think of a little old woman, but I didn’t want to bother you by telling you.”
“Why would it bother me?” I asked quietly.
She just shook her head.
“All of those years, and you still love him, don’t you?” She whispered.
I swallowed hard.
“You knew?”
“That you were in love with your best friend from the time you were in kindergarten?” She chuckled. “Yeah, I knew. Your mom and I both did. We wondered when you kids were going to figure it out, but then...”
Her voice trailed off.
“Larissa happened,” I finished for her.
“Larissa was never a nice girl,” my aunt said. “She was always looking out for herself. She’s still that way. Your mom and I...well, we wanted to let you make your own choices and your own mistakes. Besides, if we’d told you that she was playing you and Cooper, neither one of you would have believed us.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked. I was a little bit rankled that she hadn’t at least tried to say anything. Shouldn’t she have said something to me? She could have saved me some stress and some anxiety by filling in the blanks for me, but she seemed unconcerned with that.
“Because your mother and I were the same way,” she said. “Only our mom did try to warn us about things, and neither one of us ever listened to her. We both had to learn things the hard way,” Aunt Hannah said. “And you’re like us in that way.”