Perfectly Undone. Jamie Raintree
as a favor.”
When we lived in our studio apartment, I used to tell Cooper all the time how much I wanted a garden.
But why now? Like I’ll forget about my research grant? Like I’m a child he can distract with a new toy?
Cooper’s eyes are bright with excitement, unaware of how I really feel, or maybe just ignoring it. He knows by now that sometimes that’s all he can do. I look around our neglected yard and try to picture a garden there. I’ve done it dozens of times, but this time all I can see is my mom’s garden and the way she was tearing into it on Abby’s anniversary.
“I don’t know,” I say. “We don’t really have time for this, Cooper.”
I try to direct my words in Cooper’s direction, aware of the stranger’s stare. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I’m having a hard time believing Cooper’s intentions are completely selfless. I wish I knew he still believed in my research. I wish I knew he still believed in me.
Cooper takes my hand fully. “But...maybe you’ll find this is what you really need.”
What I really need... I wish I knew.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes, and I turn my face so neither of them can see. I let my hand fall from Cooper’s.
“Fine,” I spit out. “I want a moat.”
Reese lets out a chuckle.
“A moat?” Cooper asks.
I sniff and stand up straighter, composing myself.
“Yep,” I continue. If Cooper wants me distracted, I’ll make it the biggest project either one of them has ever seen. “All the way around the house. Flowing water. And a waterfall.”
“Okay,” Reese says, his response smooth and amused. “What else?”
I list a few more things—flowers I like, stepping-stones, a swing.
A few minutes later, I watch through the front window as Cooper walks Reese to his truck. Cooper laughs at something Reese says, then takes his hand in a firm shake and the deal is done.
I meet Cooper at the front door when he comes in.
“What do you think?” Cooper asks, still not seeming to understand how his act of kindness is affecting me. “Happy?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain it. I’m not my mom.”
I clench my teeth shut to keep my chin from quivering. Cooper frowns. He knows how tenuous my relationship is with her. It’s been a sore subject since he first asked me about my family—an innocent question all couples bring up at the beginning of a relationship. But without telling him the whole truth about Abby, I always had a hard time explaining our discord to him in a way that made sense.
One Christmas a few years ago, I overheard him ask my dad about it. Fumbling over his words, Dad had tried to lay it out for him—how when I was seven, his father had died and we’d moved into my grandfather’s house in Lake Oswego, the most prestigious gated community in the Portland area. Everything about our lives changed—Dad taking over his father’s investment company, the three of us kids going from public to private school and Mom fulfilling the implicit obligations of a woman of upper-class society. It went against everything she’d had planned for our life, and she resented it. She pulled away from all of us. All of us except Abby—her carbon copy—and I had felt most betrayed by that. With as much time as Dad spent at the office to avoid Mom’s anger, I was surprised to discover he’d noticed it all those years. Cooper never brought up the subject with me again.
“Is that what all that was about?” Cooper asks. He nods toward the backyard. The moat, he means.
I release all the air in my lungs. It’s all the answer Cooper needs. He takes me by the hand and pulls me over to the couch. He sits me down, then he sinks into the spot next to me. When that’s not close enough, he pulls my legs onto his lap, awkwardly bumping elbows and knees. I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Do you remember when we went to Hawaii for Stephen and Megan’s wedding?” he asks.
I nod against his neck, my nose brushing his loosened tie. Cooper, Stephen and I were still in the middle of our internships, but despite all three of our protests, Megan refused to put the wedding off any longer. “You’re always going to be too busy,” she’d said. “You just have to make the time.”
“It was so beautiful there,” Cooper says. “That gorgeous blue water. You waking me up in the middle of the night and making me go swimming in that cove on the beach.”
That was the last time I truly lived in the moment. Being so far away from our everyday worries, it was easy to let my hair down. It was easy to forget about my mission of familial reconciliation. A long weekend of late nights on the beach, luaus and umbrella drinks, sand between our sheets and bodies. I laugh at the image in my head of Cooper naked, toeing his way into the water. “You were such a wimp.”
“Hey,” Cooper says. “Jellyfish near my nether regions is a very logical fear.”
I laugh harder. It feels foreign, but so good. Cooper rests his head on mine.
“Do you remember,” he asks, “how we told the hotel we were on our honeymoon, and that big Samoan concierge winked at us every single time we passed him on the way up to our room? Even when we were just coming back from breakfast?”
“Well, sometimes he was right.”
Cooper nods. “Yes.” He pauses. “Let’s do that again.”
“What, lie to hotel staff?”
“Let’s go somewhere and pretend we’re the only two people who exist. Well, the two of us and the horny bellhop.” Our laughter eases the strain on my heart. He’s the only one I’ve ever been able to count on, even when it’s him I’m fighting against.
“Cooper,” I say softly, afraid of shattering the moment, “neither of us has the time to go on a vacation. We can barely find time to eat a meal at the same table.”
“That’s exactly my point. Do you know that trip is the last time we spent any real time together without being interrupted by calls from the hospital or kids with the flu? That was four years ago.”
“Coop,” I say and reach out to take his hand. “I miss you, too...but I don’t see how that’s possible. I need to figure out what I’m doing with my career. I need to find another way to make this grant happen. Plus, you know how much my patients depend on me.”
“So let’s start planning now. I’m sure if you talked to your coworkers, they could spare you for a week.”
“A week?” Anxiety sticks in my throat, like a pill without water. I feel like he’s testing me—pushing me to see if I’m listening to him. I am. I hear him. But how do I leave when everything is up in the air? When I’m balanced at the top of a pole with nowhere to step without plummeting down?
He clasps my hands and holds them tight. “Dylan, I’m asking you, please. Please, do this for us. I know your job is important to you and you have people who need you, but I need you. I miss you. I miss the woman who used to drop everything to see a movie with me just so we could share a box of Red Vines, even though we both knew you were going to give me one and eat the rest yourself.”
I smile. Those times during medical school were the best times of my life. Falling in love with Cooper, I learned to open up and trust in a way I thought I never would again. I found my first true friends in Stephen and Megan. And the responsibility I bear felt so far away. I knew I was on the right path, but I was only a student. Back then, that was the most I could do for my family and families who had suffered like ours.
But not now.
“Cooper—”
“It doesn’t have to be Hawaii. You’ve been saying you want to go to Thailand since I first met