But since it’s actually part of Cooper’s job to be unobtrusive when he needs to be, he can sneak up on people, which is what he’s done now, startling all three of us.

“Dick,” he says again, and points to the name on the drink menu in front of us. His dark eyebrows are raised skeptically. “Really? A gay bar named Dick? Couldn’t they have thought of something a little more subtle?”

Tom has collapsed into giggles across the table, but Steven is clutching the menu and pointing at the tiny line beneath the word “Dick.”

“Moby-Dick,” Steven says. “As in Herman Melville’s greatest novel. That’s why there are spear guns and fishing nets on the walls. This is a Herman Melville tribute bar.”

Cooper isn’t having any of it.

“Sure it is,” he says. He glances at the bored-looking waiter who’s wandered toward our table. “I’ll take a—Christ, look at these prices. Whatever you have on draft. And a shot of Glenfiddich.” Cooper turns to me. “You’ll never guess who I spent my afternoon with.”

I’m startled. He’s actually going to share something about his work?

“The fact that you just ordered a shot tells me a little something,” I say. “You’re not much of a drinker, except under certain conditions. Were you with your family?”

His frown is all the answer I need.

“But,” I say in surprise, “you said you had a meeting—”

“I did,” he says. “I did have a meeting. The woman who made the appointment said it was with a Mr. Grant, and gave an address I didn’t realize until I got there was the new office for Cartwright Records Television. Obviously I was suspicious at that point, but it wasn’t until I walked in and saw Grant Cartwright standing behind the desk that I knew what was going on.”

I wince, picturing it. “That must have been . . . unpleasant.”

“It was.” He looks across the table at Tom and Steven. “Hi,” he says, as if seeing them for the first time, though they’d already had the conversation about the name of the place. “How you guys doing?”

“Better than you, evidently,” Tom says.

“Grant Cartwright,” Steven says, apparently attempting to clarify. “CEO of Cartwright Records, and . . . your father?”

“Correct,” Cooper says, the word almost a growl.

“What did he want?” I ask curiously. Cooper dislikes his family so much and speaks to them so rarely, I’m not surprised his father had to stoop to subterfuge to get him to have a conversation with him.

“To offer me a job,” Cooper says.

I am surprised to hear this. The last time Grant Cartwright offered Cooper a job, it was to sing in Easy Street. The offer had gone so poorly that the rift that started then had continued to this day.

“What kind of job?” I ask him. I have a sinking feeling, however, that I know.

Cooper’s drinks arrive, and the way he downs most of the whiskey, then half the beer, as Tom and Steven and I watch, confirms my suspicions. Cooper’s family is the one thing that never fails to discombobulate him. Well, that and a few other things, but those are private, between him and me, and I’m pretty sure he enjoys them.

“Feel better?” Tom asks Cooper when he slams down the shot glass.

“Not really,” Cooper says, and signals the waiter for another shot.

“A full-time job?” I ask him. “Like with his company? Or a private inquiry?”

“Oh,” he says. “It’ll be full-time all right.”

I swallow. “Does it have anything to do with Tania Trace Rock Camp being moved into Fischer Hall?” I ask, dreading the answer but at the same time almost certain I know what it is.

“As a matter of fact,” Cooper says, “it does. My dad wants me to be Tania’s new bodyguard.”

I laugh. I don’t know why. It’s so absurd. Not the idea of Cooper being someone’s bodyguard—I’m positive he’d be superb in that capacity. Just the idea of him being Tania Trace’s bodyguard, because Tania Trace is married to my ex-boyfriend, whom she stole from me. And now I’m engaged to that boyfriend’s brother.

I look at Tom and Steven, and they begin to laugh too. We’re all laughing at the idea of Cooper being Tania Trace’s bodyguard.

But when I glance at Cooper, I see that he’s frowning. He doesn’t seem to think the idea is funny at all.

“Wait,” I say, the laughter dying in my throat. “You didn’t say yes, did you?”

“Actually,” Cooper says as his second whiskey arrives, “I did.”

Chapter 10

Thank You
I gave you my heart
Thought you were all there could be
Instead you left me for her,
Said she was better than me
But I thank you now
For setting me free
I said thank you now
For choosing her over me
’Cause the man I have now
Is the best I’ve ever known
The love I have now is
The kind you’ll never know
You were awful in bed
Just thought you should know
So thanks for dumping me
’Cause otherwise I’d never have known
So I thank you now
For setting me free
I said thank you now
So please stop Facebooking me

“Thank You”
Written by Heather Wells
A few hours later, Cooper rolls away from me to lie panting on his back in my bed, beneath the watchful—yet to my mind, comforting—gazes of the dolls of many nations.

“Feel better?” I ask him. After getting home from the bar, I offered to give him some deep tissue massage therapy. I felt it was the least I could do to help him get over his stressful day.

“I’ve never had a massage quite like that,” he says.

“I don’t have any professional training in the art of massage,” I admit.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “But I’m a little worried about what they must be thinking of us.” He nods at the dolls.

Miss Mexico is the fanciest, in her hot-pink flamenco dress and elaborate pointy hair comb. Miss Ireland is the one for whom I feel worst. She’s made of cloth, and her legs, beneath her red skirt covered in green four-leaf clovers, are made out of black pipe cleaners. My mom apparently grabbed the first doll she saw on her way to the plane. I always treat Miss Ireland with extra care, fearful Miss Mexico’s fanciness might have given her a complex over the years.