Perfectly Undone. Jamie Raintree
tell her was that I didn’t think Cooper could wait much longer either.
I could ignore her—submit my application anyway—but the board won’t review it without a letter from my mentor. I could try to find another mentor, but they aren’t easy to come by, especially with only a couple of weeks left until the deadline. The truth is, since there are no grants listed specifically for women’s health, my application will get pooled into a general category, which makes the competition stiff with or without Vanessa’s support. I’m out of options right now, and it will likely be a year or more before another suitable grant becomes available. I was hesitant about whether or not I was really ready to do this research, but now that the opportunity has been ripped away from me, I don’t know what to do with myself. I have no purpose.
Cooper comes over and wraps his hand around the back of my neck, lacing his fingers into my hair. “I’m sorry, babe,” he says. “That’s tough.”
I shrug and sniffle. “That’s life, I guess.” I take a sip of my wine, gathering myself.
Cooper’s hand drops, and he looks out the window to the backyard, his expression vague and distant. I don’t need to see his eyes to know what he’s feeling. His exasperation shows in the slouch of his shoulders, the downward tilt of his head.
Finally, he opens his hands to me and says, “Come here.”
“Cooper, I don’t want to—”
“Come here.”
“What?” I ask him, my voice bordering on hysteria.
A moment passes in silence before he drops his hands. “Dylan, you’re a doctor now,” he says. “You can do whatever you want. I don’t understand why you have to have this grant to help people.”
“It’s these people I need to help, Cooper.”
I set my glass down on the counter with too much force, and wine sloshes onto the granite like drops of blood. I escape out the back door and walk down to the creek, my breathing shallow, unwilling to defend myself again, after trying and failing with Vanessa. Doing right by the people we love should be reason enough.
No, life with Abby wasn’t always easy, especially during her final months, but Abby and I had always been close growing up. Though we fought, like sisters do, I knew I could count on her when it mattered. When she became a senior in high school, though, she started to spread her wings more than my parents and I were used to—more than we were comfortable with—like she knew the freedom she’d always craved was just around the corner and she couldn’t wait that long. She suddenly stopped sharing the gossip she’d heard from her friends with me when I crawled into her bed in the middle of the night. She started locking the door to her bedroom more often and disappearing with random people from school in the evenings. One Friday night, as she prepared to go to a boat party on the lake, I lay on her bed and watched her put on her makeup, hoping to get the details. An invitation would be too much to ask for.
“So who’s going to be there?” I asked.
Abby finger-combed her blond hair back from her face and leaned closer to the mirror on top of her dresser. She blinked her eyes as wide as they would stretch before she pulled out the wand from her mascara tube and began to apply thick, black layers to her already long lashes.
“I don’t know,” she said evasively. “The usual.”
I knew she didn’t try to keep me at a distance on purpose. At least, I hoped she didn’t. It was just one of the habits she picked up from hanging out with the popular girls. They kept everything about themselves from each other, only trading other people’s secrets like currency.
I scooted farther forward on her floral-print comforter and tested out the question I really wanted the answer to. “Is Christian going to be there?” I asked.
Abby’s cheeks flushed beneath her applied blush, and I knew the answer without her having to say it. She plunged her mascara wand back into the tube and turned to me.
“Everyone’s already talking about us being prom queen and king,” she said, biting her lip as if she didn’t dare believe it. Up until the previous year, Abby had always flown under the radar—the kind of girl who got along with everyone, never falling into any particular clique. When her breasts filled out, though, and she started to catch the attention of the football quarterback, the popular girls had no choice but to bring the enemy closer into their fold.
“Have you kissed him yet?” I asked, pushing my luck. It was the wrong question. Abby frowned and turned back to her mirror.
“Of course we’ve kissed, Dylan. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m eighteen, not twelve.” I hated it when she talked to me like I was so much younger than her. Oftentimes, though, I felt like I was. At sixteen, I’d hardly talked to a boy I was interested in, let alone kissed one.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, but Abby was already closing her makeup bag and checking her purse for the necessities. I spotted her lip gloss on her nightstand, scooted across her bed on my stomach, swiped it up and handed it to her. “You really seem to like him.”
She softened. “I do,” she said. “He’s just so... And he makes me feel...pretty. But I don’t want to be one of those forty-year-old women who married their high school sweetheart, is tied down with kids and is completely miserable because she never lived while she could, you know?”
I nodded, though I couldn’t conceive of Abby ever being forty.
“You should have some fun, too,” she said with a laugh and pressed her palm against the side of my head, pushing me over onto her bed. We both laughed, and long after she left, I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face—not only because Abby and I both knew what a ludicrous idea it was—me going to a party, me making out with a guy behind the English building—but because I knew that she might be going through a rebellious phase, but when she came out on the other side, we’d be best friends still. I had one thing going for me that no other girl could claim, no matter how popular: I was her sister.
* * *
I come home from work on Tuesday to an unfamiliar truck parked in the driveway. It’s a newer model Chevy with silver metallic paint, and though it’s hidden by the shade of our trees, slivers of sunlight catch its sparkle in the places where it isn’t covered in mud. Handles of miscellaneous tools stick out at all angles like Cooper’s hair after a hard sleep. There’s a parking sticker on the windshield for a big-time tech company in the city.
Inside, I toss my keys on the foyer table and call out Cooper’s name, but he doesn’t answer. I peek into the bedroom and bathroom, but it isn’t until I pass through the kitchen that I hear Cooper’s voice, along with that of another man, coming from the other side of the back door. When I step outside, they break from their conversation like I’ve caught them in the act of planning a crime. The stranger is dressed in designer jeans and a dark button-up shirt with hands covered in soil up to his elbows. He seems to have no concern of spreading it as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“There you are,” Cooper says. He comes over to place a hand on my back and leads me forward a few steps. “Dylan, this is Reese. Reese, this is my...Dylan.” He’s always hated the word girlfriend. He says it makes us sound like teenagers, whose biggest concern is where to sit in the cafeteria at lunch, rather than two adults who have lived together and loved each other for the better part of a decade.
“Um...nice to meet you?” I say, more a question than a statement.
“And you,” he says. He dips his head in a little bow but makes no move to shake my hand, thankfully. He looks young—midtwenties, maybe—his hair dark in purposefully unruly wisps drawn up from his head.
“Babe, Reese is a landscape architect.”
“A landscape architect,” I repeat in an attempt to digest this. “Like, a landscaper?”
Reese smirks.
“Well...” Cooper steps toward me and touches my fingers but doesn’t