Chapter Four
I shook my head but couldn’t hide my smile. I liked his banter. He had a certain arrogance and boldness that came with age. Or lack of it.
When the elevator doors opened, Cooper stepped out into the foyer and gave a smug smile and cute little wave to Lionel the doorman.
I rolled my eyes. “Cut it out. He didn’t let you up to my apartment because he was doing his job.”
Ignoring the jibe, Cooper smiled as we walked from the foyer out onto the sidewalk. “So, what are you buying me for lunch?”
“An attitude adjustment,” I replied quickly.
Cooper laughed. “I heard the little Vietnamese place up here is one of the best.”
“It’s one of my favourites.”
“Where else do you go out?”
“I don’t, really.”
“Not at all?”
“I work a lot. The people I’ve dated don’t understand the long hours.”
We walked in silence for a bit, while Cooper obviously thought about what those long hours meant in the career he’d chosen.
“Does that scare you off?” I asked with a smile.
“What?” he asked quickly, looking at me. Then he shook his head. “No, no. Not at all. I don’t mind the long hours.”
We walked into the little café, I ordered some steamed vegetable rolls and a noodle salad to go, and I bought some ground coffee from the café Cooper had bought coffee from this morning.
The walk back to my apartment was quieter, his banter was gone. I grabbed some plates and dished up lunch for us both. The dining table had our work all over it, so we ate at the kitchen counter.
I was about to ask him where the impressive Generation Y mockery had gone, when he said, “Ryan told me.”
“Told you what?”
He stabbed his noodle salad with a fork. “About your divorce from Mrs. Elkin.”
I put my fork down and frowned. “And what else exactly did Ryan tell you?”
He took a mouthful, seemingly oblivious to my discomfort. “That it was hard on him, that it was hard on all of you.”
“It was,” I said quietly, still unsure of his point.
“He said you’ve dated a few…people, but nothing serious.”
I cleared my throat. “Really. Is that what he said?”
Cooper nodded, took a drink from his water bottle and pushed his empty plate away. “You know, it’s not easy for anyone,” he said. “Jesus, I remember when I came out to my parents, I thought they’d flip their shit.”
I blinked. Twice.
I remember when I came out…
“What?”
“When I came out,” he repeated, as simply as discussing the weather. “When I told my parents I was gay. I knew I had to do it before college. I knew I had to be out before I went to college, or I’d spend the next four years in the closet.”
He was gay. He was telling me he was gay after discussing my divorce, which meant he knew why I got divorced.
I shook my head, really not sure what to say. “Yeah.” I snorted in disbelief. “God forbid you end up living a lie until your fortieth birthday.”
I didn’t mean for it to sound so biting, but I didn’t apologize.
He looked straight at me. I was half expecting him to say sorry for bringing it up, for even discussing my personal life with me, but of course he didn’t. “Is that what happened for you?” he asked me outright. “Did you get to forty and think—”
“I can’t live a lie anymore,” I finished for him.
He nodded. Then he did the darnedest thing. He put his hand on mine. “You’re not living a lie anymore.”
“No,” I whispered. “I guess not.”
He pulled back his hand then he brightened considerably. “So? Seeing anyone?”
I shook my head and laughed at the incredulity of the conversation. “No.”
Then he stood up off the stool, leaning in close to me as he did. “That’s a shame,” he said. He was close enough for me to feel the warmth of his skin, to smell his aftershave.
Fuck.
Still leaning in close to me, he slowly took my plate then turned to walk around the counter and put the plates in the sink.
Apparently he spoke, but my head was still spinning at what had just happened, I didn’t hear him ask me anything. He waved his hand in front of my face to get my attention. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied, though the smug bastard smiled at me.
“I asked you how your coffee machine worked,” he said.
I stood up, walked around the counter and took the coffee from him, giving him a glare as I did. It didn’t help that he smiled.
If it were Ryan speaking to me like that, I’d chip him for disrespecting me. Yet, I found it sassy in Cooper. The way his eyes danced, the way his lips twisted in that playful smirk.
The strong smell of coffee seemed to clear my senses a little, sobering me, as I filled the machine, but when I turned to face Cooper again, he wasn’t next to me. He was back at the dining table. And he was back to being all business.
I put his coffee in front of him, answering his questions and discussing the insulation properties of different types of glazing and New York’s planning requirements for retrofits. He was inquisitive and had a thirst for learning everything he could, and the way he just switched from flirting to professional left me wondering if I’d imagined the flirting side of it.
I mean, why would he flirt with me? Not only was I twice his age, and the father of a friend of his, but it could be career-ending.
Well, not for me. I might get a slap on the wrist, but his career would be over before it had even begun.
Why would he flirt with me? Who the hell was I kidding? What the hell was I thinking? I could have kicked myself for even considering the idea. First the dream, then the fantasizing about it. Now this?
I needed to go out and hook up. Find some one-night stand and fuck him senseless. Or be fucked senseless. I needed to lose myself, for just one night.
The fact that I’d fantasized about Cooper, about having him underneath me, should have been enough warning. It had been too long since I’d had sex. I was only interested in him, I told myself convincingly, because I’d gone too long without fulfilling sex.
I needed to go out. I needed to get laid. Then there’d be no more of this irresponsible infatuation with a twenty-two-year-old.
“Plans for tonight?” Cooper’s voice startled me.
“Um, yeah,” I told him. “I have plans.” Only very new, not-thought-through plans, I thought to myself. But plans nonetheless.
“Where are you off to?”
“Just catching up with an old friend,” I told him, when the truth was I had no clue.
“I’m supposed to be going out with Ryan and some other guys tonight. But I might cancel,” he said, looking straight at me, as though he was trying to suggest something.
“You should go,” I told him. “You don’t need to be working here with me. Go hang out with the guys, have some fun.”
Cooper stretched his arms above his head and yawned. He looked to the table in front of us and changed the subject. “We got a lot done today.”
“We did,” I agreed. “I have a bit more to catch up on tomorrow,” I said, and he nodded. I quickly added, “You don’t have to come in tomorrow. I won’t tell Jennifer.”
He smiled at that. “We’ll see,” he said. “But yeah, I should let you go. If you have plans.”
I nodded. “I do.”
Cooper started to pack his papers up, he closed down his laptop and slid it into his satchel. “Thanks for lunch,” he said. “Though, seriously? A peanut butter sandwich would have been fine.”
He collected his things and he’d no sooner walked out of the door than I was in the shower. Fuck. I had a hard-on from just being around him, his smile and his smell. It was the second time in as many days I needed to jerk off in the shower because the thought of him was too much.
It was the second time in as many days I imagined it was Cooper underneath me, over me, or his lips around me.
I didn’t even wait for nightfall. I got dressed and went downtown to a local bar I’d been to plenty of times. It was only early, so there weren’t many people, but everyone I looked at wasn’t right for me.
I just wanted some faceless, nameless guy, who I could take to a hotel. I only lived a block away, but I never took casual hook-ups home. I wanted the anonymity, the security. But as I scoured the faces of men for hours, and as other men approached me, none of them were what I was looking for.
None of them had that shine in their eyes, or that mischievous smile. None of them were young and vibrant, not like Cooper.
Fucking hell.
I ended up back at my apartment, pissed off and frustrated. I couldn’t even have a one-night stand without thinking about him. I stripped down and climbed into bed naked and this time, with images of him behind my eyelids when I jerked off, I imagined him inside me. I imagined what it would be like to be pinned underneath him, while he buried himself in me.
I came so hard my head spun.
But I slept like a baby.
* * * *
The next morning I was up early, as always. Even being a Sunday didn’t mean I couldn’t get work done. Amazingly enough, for the first few hours I was up, I didn’t think of Cooper at all.
Until it was about nine o’clock when my buzzer rang. Lionel’s apologetic voice crackled through. “Sorry to interrupt you on a Sunday, sir.”
“It’s fine, Lionel.”
“Cooper Jones is here again.”
“Is he just?”
“Yes, sir,” Lionel said. “He said to tell you he has coffee…” There was a muffle of voices again and Lionel groaned. “And peanut butter, sir. He said to tell you he bought you peanut butter.”
I grinned into the intercom, grateful they couldn’t see me smile. “Send him up.”