“Leave it.” Honestly, I’m not in the mood to hear it.
He pulls away from the curb among the long line of cars parked on the street for the reception. “Unbelievable. You hooked up with her.” He slides a side-eye at me, which I ignore. “Jesus Christ. You were gone for ten minutes. What, you were like, I’m so sorry for your loss, here, have my penis?”
“Fuck off, Coop.” When he phrases it like that, it does sound kind of bad.
Kind of?
Fine. Alright. Maybe nearly having sex at her mother’s funeral reception wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but … but I missed her, damn it. Seeing Gen again, after more than a year apart, was like a punch to the gut. My need to touch her, kiss her, had bordered on desperation.
Maybe that makes me a weak bastard, but there you have it.
“I think you’ve done enough of that for the both of us.”
I grit my teeth and force my gaze out the window. The thing about Cooper—when our dad died and then our mom basically abandoned us as kids, he somehow got it in his head that I wanted him to become both. A constantly nagging, grumpy bastard who’s always disappointed in me. For a little while, things got better after he settled down with his girlfriend Mackenzie, who managed to yank the stick out of his ass. But now it seems like finally being in his first stable relationship has got him back to thinking he’s qualified to pass judgment on my life.
“It wasn’t like that,” I tell him. Because I can feel him fuming at me. “Some people cry when they’re grieving. Gen’s not a crier.”
He half shakes his head, twisting his hands on the steering wheel while his jaw works on grinding down his molars, like I can’t hear what he’s thinking.
“Don’t give yourself an aneurysm, bro. Just spit it out.”
“She’s barely been in town a week and already you’re in it up to your neck. I told you it was a bad idea going over there.”
I would never give Cooper the satisfaction, but he’s right. Genevieve shows up and I lose my damn mind. It’s always been that way with us. We’re two mostly harmless chemicals that when mixed become an explosive combination, leveling a city block with salt water.
“You act like we robbed a liquor store. Relax. All we did was kiss.”
Cooper’s disapproval pours off him. “Today it’s just a kiss. Tomorrow is another story.”
And? It’s not as if we’re hurting anybody. I frown at him. “Dude, what does it matter to you?”
He and Genevieve used to be cool. Even friends. I get that maybe he holds a grudge about how she left town, but it’s not like she did it to him. Anyway, it’s been a year. If I’m not still making a thing of it, why should he?
At a stoplight, he turns to meet my eyes. “Look, you’re my brother and I love you, but you’re an ass when she’s around. These last few months you’ve really gotten your shit together. Don’t throw all that away on a chick who’s never going to stop being a mess.”
Something about it—I don’t know, the contempt in his voice, the condescension—sticks right in my craw. Cooper can be a real self-righteous prick when he wants to be.
“It’s not like I’m dating her again, okay? Don’t be so dramatic.”
We pull up to our house, the two-story, low-country cottage-style on the beach that’s been in our family for three generations. The place was all but falling apart before we started making renovations over the past several months. It’s taken most of our savings and more of our time, but it’s coming along.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Cooper shuts off the engine with an exasperated breath. “Same old pattern: takes off whenever she wants, suddenly pops back in, and you’re ready to bake cookies together. Sound like any other woman you know?” With that, he hops out of the truck and slams the door shut.
Well, that was uncalled for.
Of the two of us, Cooper has held the hardest grudge against our mother, to the point he’s resented me for not needing to hate her as much as he does. In her latest episode, though, I backed him up. Told her she wasn’t welcome to hang around anymore, not after what she did to him. Shelley Hartley had finally crossed one line too many.
But I guess taking Cooper’s side wasn’t enough to get him to ease up on me. Everyone’s full of low blows today.
At dinner later, Cooper still hasn’t let the Genevieve thing go. Not in his nature.
It’s damn irritating. I’m trying to eat my damned spaghetti, and this asshole is still laying into me while he tells Mackenzie, who’s been living with us for the past few months, about how I basically screwed my ex on top of the still-warm casket of her dead mother.
“Evan says he’ll just be a minute, then leaves me by myself in that house to give our condolences to her dad and five brothers, who pretty much think it’s Evan’s fault she ran out of town a year ago,” Cooper grumbles, stabbing a meatball with his fork. “They’re asking where he is; meanwhile, he’s got Mr. West’s baby girl bent over the bathtub or whatever.”
“We just kissed,” I say in exasperation.
“Coop, come on,” Mac says, wincing away from her fork, which is coiled with pasta and hanging mid-air. “I’m trying to eat.”
“Yeah, have some tact, jackass,” I chide.
When they’re not looking, I slip a piece of meatball to Daisy, the golden retriever puppy at my feet. Cooper and Mac rescued her off the jetty last year and she’s nearly doubled in size since then. At first I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking care of this creature Cooper’s new girlfriend had dumped on us, but then she spent a night curled up at the end of my bed having puppy dreams, and I broke like a cheap toy. Dog’s had me wrapped around her paw ever since. She’s the only girl I can trust not to take off on me. Luckily, Coop and Mac worked out, so we didn’t have to fight a custody battle.
It’s funny how life works out sometimes. Last year, Cooper and I hatched an admittedly mean-spirited plot to sabotage Mac’s relationship with her boyfriend at the time. In our defense, the guy was a douchebag. Then Cooper had to spoil all the fun and catch feelings for the rich college girl. I couldn’t stand her at first, but it turned out I’d read Mackenzie Cabot all wrong. I was at least man enough to admit I’d misjudged her. Cooper, on the other hand, can’t keep his thoughts to himself so far as Gen’s concerned. Typical.
“So what’s the real story with you two?” Mac asks, curiosity flickering in her dark-green eyes.
The real story? How do I even begin to answer that? Genevieve and I have history. Lots of it. Some of it great. Some, not so good. Things have always been complicated with us.
“We got together freshman year of high school,” I tell Mac. “She was basically my best friend. Always good for a laugh and down for anything.”
My mind is suddenly flooded with images of us messing around on dirt bikes at two in the morning with a fifth of tequila between us. Surfing the swells as a hurricane moved in, then riding out the storm in the back of her brother’s Jeep. Gen and I constantly dared each other’s limits of adventure, getting into a few scrapes with death or mutilation that we had no right escaping unscathed. There was no adult in the relationship, so there was never a point when someone said stop. We were always chasing the rush.