The Space In Between (7 page)

I promise to love you without reservation. Comfort you in
times of distress. Encourage you to achieve all of your goals.

No…

I scrubbed more intensely, watching my skin turn red, trying
to make the guilt that had somehow sunk into my soul disappear. My tears began
to mix with the water droplets. There was no way to tell the liquid streams
apart from one another. I let my body fall to the tub and sat there. I sobbed
into my hands, allowing the water crystals to slap me with the reality I was
now facing.

MICHELLE WAS FORCEFULLY dragging
a kid over with her as she came to visit Eric and me. The kid looked a few
years older than me, maybe nine or ten.

“You guys! This is my cousin Cooper. He’s spending the
summer here because his dad is crazy.” Michelle sang, bouncing up and down. He
had a camera hanging around his neck and shifted his feet on the ground, not
looking up at us.

“What’s with the camera?” I asked, watching as his eyes
rose up to meet mine. My tummy started swirling around as I watched his lips
curve into a nice grin and his dimples appeared.

“My mama gave it to me, before I left. What’s your name?”

“Andie Evans. This is my brother Eric.” Cooper didn’t
look over to acknowledge Eric, he just kept smiling at me, making me feel a bit
weird. “Why are ya looking at me like that?”

His cheeks reddened and he went back to looking to the
ground, kicking around dirt. “Just never seen anything like you before, that’s
all.” His eyebrows frowned as he slapped his face. “I meant that in a good way.
It came out wrong.”

Michelle rolled her eyes and began walking near Eric.
“Come on you guys, let’s go to the park. Last one there buys everyone ice
cream!” Eric and she went running off down the street.

Cooper cleared his throat and held up his camera in my
direction. “Can I take your picture?”

I ran my fingers through my hair, and prepped myself for
my first ever photo shoot. Placing my hands on my hips, I turned to Cooper,
begging him to only capture my good side.

His hand ran over his face and his green eyes smiled my
way. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I can miss it.”

I SAT IN Kyle’s office watching him
grin ear to ear at me like a proud papa. “Hell yeah! See! What did I tell you?
A one-night stand has a way of changing a dude’s perspective on an issue. Now
we can move on, and I got a few papers for you to sign. Which magazine do you
want to reach out to first? Star? Us Weekly? I can get the cover on People.”
Kyle went searching on his computer, with his pleased grin still framing his
face.

I had to admit, I couldn’t stop smiling either. “Listen,
Ky.”

He snorted and nodded his head as he kept at his computer. “Oh
I’m listenin’. Tell me all about it. Was she good? Did she use the feathers?
Jasmine uses the feathers.”

“No. Listen, Kyle. I mean really listen.” I slammed my hands
on his keyboard, which made him whine like a puppy dog in pain. He fell back in
his chair and tossed his hands up in defeat.

“Okay. What?”

Clasping my hands together, I leaned in closer to him. “I
like her. I like her a lot.”

The sudden shift of character in Kyle’s eyes was drastic; he
knew where this was going, “Shut up.”

“She's different, Kyle.” My heart started pounding as I
thought of the night before. Andrea was mysterious and different from anything
I had ever felt with Iris. There were parts of her that were the same Andrea I
knew when I was younger, but there was so much more depth to her nowadays that
I found so fucking attractive. “And the way she kissed me…” Her lips... Andrea
Evans’s lips could make any man daydream of kissing her for the rest of their
lives.

“One. Night. Stand. That’s it, Cooper. One night! None of
this instant love bullshit again. You know where instant love put you last
time? In the damn psych ward!” Kyle hollered at me, but I wasn’t interested in
his opinion.

“She's beautiful. Not the type of beautiful most people see.
But a sad type of beautiful, the type of beauty that changes people. And…” I
chuckled, thinking of how insane what I was going to say next sounded. “You’re
going to think I’m crazy.”

“I already do. Tell me anyway.”

“But Jesus...in the mental health clinic… he told me I would
meet someone. And a few weeks after I got out of the clinic, POOF! I’ll be
damned, there she was. And I have
you
to thank for that! If it weren’t
for you sending me to that club, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Kyle sat there, stunned for quite a bit of time. “Get the
hell out of my office. And take your damn pills!”

As my cell phone went off from a text message, my eyes
widened when I saw the name ‘Andie’ displayed. She finally got back to me after
the few text messages she seemed determined to ignore. I stood up and nodded,
walking near the door. “I’m going to see her.”

A firecracker was lit under Kyle’s seat, sending him
skyrocketing from his chair. “What! No. Noooo. She’s a stripper, Coop. You
can’t actually be
seen
with her!”

“I'll see you later, Ky.”

I glanced back into Kyle’s office in time to see him tossing
his paperwork into the air and kicking the side of his desk.

He was so dramatic sometimes.

SHE LOOKED PERFECT. She was wearing
a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and somehow she managed to look fucking
great. Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, and I instantly stood up
from the table at the café when she walked in. She quickly raised her hand to
stop me from greeting her. She took the seat across from me and I lowered
myself back down.

What was there to be said? I figured I should take a stab at
it.

“Andie last night was—”

“Call me Andrea, Cooper. And last night was a mistake.” She
removed her sunglasses and roughly rubbed her hands across her tired face.

Sitting back in my chair, I looked at her, taking note of
the puffiness of her eyes. I had a small feeling I was the cause of her
suffering. I didn’t know what to do or how to make it better. I laid my hand
across the table to give her comfort, but she refused it. I felt like such an
ass. She’d opened up to me last night, and I took advantage of her.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say.

Lowering her head she shrugged. “It’s not your fault. But if
you could do me a big favor and pretend this never happened? Please? I’m not
the same girl I was back then when you knew me.”

“And I’m not that same guy, Andrea.” The fact was that I
didn’t want her to be that same girl that I knew. I was so deeply engrossed
with the broken creature before me and I wanted to capture her out-of-order
smile in my mind forever. A beautiful mess she was. She was everything my
soon-to-be-ex wife wasn’t. And I wanted to know more. I asked her to give me a
chance.

She wouldn’t. She explained once again how she had already
broken one too many rules.

“Please. Cooper, trust me. You’re better off. Don’t text me
anymore. Don’t show up at the club. Don’t reach out to me. I’m sorry about all
that is going on in your life, but that’s not my problem. And to be honest, my
issues aren’t yours.”

Andrea stood up from the table, placed her sunglasses back
on, and walked out of the café. I wanted to follow after her, but hell, what
right did I have to do such a thing?

UGH.
I FELT terrible for how
harsh I’d had to be with Cooper, yet I knew if I hadn’t been he would still
show up. And I’d needed to make it clear to him that I wasn’t interested in
getting to know him, or anyone else for that matter, anytime soon. I stood
outside of the café and literally counted the beats of my heart. One hundred
and twenty beats per minute. I turned back to look through the glass window at
Cooper and pounded my fist against my waist.

“We need rules,” I insisted as I barged back into the café
and sat across from him.

“
Pretty Woman
rules?”

I smirked at his sarcastic tone and took off my sunglasses.
“I’m serious, Cooper. Listen, I’m messed up. I really am. And you’re…” I
stopped, not wanting to offend him. He sipped at his coffee and kept his eyes
on me. “You’re going through some stuff, too.”

“This is true.”

“But for the first time in a long time…last night...for a
small bit of a moment, I didn’t feel like constantly dying.” I rubbed my eyes,
and cussed under my breath, realizing there was eyeliner on my fingers, which
meant it was smeared all across my face. Without hesitation, Coop took a napkin
and wiped the hot mess that had attacked me and turned me into raccoon eyes. A
rush of heat ran through my body from his touch, a feeling I would beat myself
up for later on.

He sat the napkin down and held up his index finger on his
left hand. “Andrea. Over here is Chaos. Which we both know pretty well. And
over here…” The right hand index finger flew up. “Over here is Order. I’m gonna
assume both of us are pretty damn far from Order, yet we’ve already hit rock
bottom Chaos. So how about we just explore the space in between the two?”

The space in between. The place where we wouldn’t have to
talk about the past or worry about the future. The place where we didn’t get
personal or talk about our dreams and fears. The place where any level of
affection and tenderness was simply a way to forget about past hurts. A type of
drug that drowned out the rest of the world. I could do the space in between.

“We can have a code word so we don’t have to call or text
each other asking for…”

“Sex?” He smiled as he raised an eyebrow. I could feel my
cheeks redden as I nodded.

His eyes shifted towards the table next to us, where a woman
was holding her drink. “Soda pop.”

“Soda pop?”

As he lowered his voice, his eyes narrowed and zoned in on
me. “Soda pop has a way of always being wet and with the right amount of
pressure…with the right amount of constant shaking, it will suddenly…”

“—Explode…” I softly sighed. He was being overtly sexual. He
sat back in his chair and sipped at his coffee. Crap, now I knew my whole face
was the color of a freaking tomato. Back to the topic at hand and not how I was
suddenly in need of a Coca-Cola.

“And when one wants out?” I asked.

“One walks away. It’s that simple. No strings. No
commitment. No sitting by the telephone waiting for a call. If person A finds
Order in their life first, then person B must respect that and move on.” He
leaned across the table closer to me and his sexy southern sounds made my
insides twist. “We need another safe word. If it gets too serious.”

“Panda,” I said.

With one eyebrow raised, he questioned my word choice.
“Panda?”

“It’s my favorite animal.” I leaned closer to him as he
moved a piece of my hair from my face.

“That sounds personal.”

Crap. He is right.
Before I could respond, his lips
were traveling over mine and I let him explore my palate awhile before pulling
back. Somehow overnight I had grown quite addicted to his kisses. Perhaps it
was his kisses alone that dragged me back into the café. He picked up a
toothpick from the table as he stood up and placed it between his lips.

“Panda works for me.” He winked at me and walked out of the
café leaving me sitting there, biting my bottom lip. I wanted to chase after
him, push him up against a wall, and slide my tongue against his neck. I wanted
to moan his name softly as his hands traveled to my butt and lightly squeezed
it. I wanted him to lift me up. I wanted to wrap myself around him as I
whispered the words soda pop into his ear over and over again.

But I figured I should play it cool. I didn’t want to seem
needy. I’d wait for him to text me. There was no way I’d text him.

Crap, crap, crap. Panda, panda, panda.