Games We Play (37 page)

“I like it the way it is. You’re the ones who should leave. The old Proctor boys, old dinosaurs, trying to hang on to the good old days.”

“You think Cooper’s done a lot for this town, but how well do you really know him?” Hugo said. His smile had disappeared with the word
dinosaur
.

“Well enough.”

“Not as well as you think.”

“So tell me all about this big bad Cooper,” Portia said. Then she set her coffeepot on the counter and listened.

Tuesday

“How are you and Cooper?” Celeste asked. She and Kendall were in the mobile home, cleaning up and decorating. Sandy was expected to move in later on that day, and they had a whole party planned.

“Fine,” Kendall said.

“You two are getting serious. I can tell.”

So she’d noticed…really, who hadn’t? “We’re good friends.”

“You’re more than that, but I’ll play along,” Celeste said. “You love him?”

“I think so.”

“Does he know?”

“I’m not telling him,” she said, scanning the mobile home to see what other chores needed to be done. “He has this really long list of attributes that make him a great guy. There’s this big but, though. That whole gold-digger misunderstanding means that he’ll have to be the one who moves us forward, regardless of what I feel. He has to say ‘I love you’ first.”

“I understand, and if I messed that up for you, I’m sorry. Maybe you should tell him how you feel at least once, give him room to respond.”

“Nope, don’t think so. It has to be him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. It may have been your fault, but he hasn’t moved past it either, so that’s the part he has to own. But enough about me. What’s up with you? Is your husband still calling you?” Kendall asked.

“Yes, at least once a week now, always telling me to come home. Fuck him, he can’t ask or even apologize?”

“Maybe it’s a start.”

“No. I’m not going back to that. Expecting things to be different would be stupid.” Celeste leaned against the sink, setting her towel down on the counter. “I married him for his money, same as I was going to do with Cooper. It was how I was back then,” she said.

“Oh,” Kendall said.
Celeste and my mother have that in common
, she thought. She sighed and sat in one of the kitchen chairs. “Did he know that was your reason for marrying him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“It is the thing I’ve most regretted, and the thing I’ve worked so hard to change about me.”

“How did you meet Cooper?” Kendall asked.

“I grew up just up the road in a small, one-stop-sign town. My momma grew up there and worked at the town’s only restaurant—really, it was more like a truck stop than anything. Trucks on the way to the Coopersville quarry stopped there. The quarry was big back then. I never met my daddy. He was someone my momma met at the restaurant one day, and he spent enough time to get her pregnant, then stopped coming after that.

“I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could after high school. I found a job at a strip club in Austin. I was a waitress, not a stripper. I didn’t want to be one of those, even though they made good money.

“One day I met this businessman who traveled all over the world, and he said he wanted to take me with him. The only catch was that he was already married. I didn’t mind. He helped me get my passport, and I traveled with him all over Europe. Sometimes I stayed behind, waiting until he came back from the States.

“Eventually, he met someone else who he wanted to accompany him on his travels, so I had to leave. Unfortunately I didn’t want to. I liked my life and didn’t want to give it up. He gave me some money, like a severance package, I guess. Fine, I took it and bummed around for a while. Then I met Cooper. He was nice enough, and he lived like he had money. So I started to hang out with him, and when he asked me to marry him, I said yes, even though I didn’t really love him, and I came back to the States with him. He had to return because his dad was sick, dying of cancer, and that’s when I found out about his family’s money.”

Kendall was quiet, listening, taking it all in.

“Cooper was different after we returned…It was like he regretted asking me. We lived in his daddy’s apartment in Austin, and he went back to Coopersville, sometimes spending weeks at a time there. He told me he was moving back to Coopersville permanently and that his daddy was dying. He was also started in about how he wanted to give his folks’ money away. All of it. Well, I hadn’t signed up for being poor again.

“It turned out to be a blessing, because while he was away in Coopersville one month, I met someone else. I finally met a man whom I could love. He was the one I lost my heart to. Like Cooper, he had money, not as much as Cooper, but he worked so hard. He was determined to be anything but poor. So I left with him. I told Cooper that I didn’t love him, that I certainly hadn’t signed up to live poor, and that I’d met someone who could take care of me like I wanted, like I deserved.”

“And did he take care of you?”

“He did, at least financially. He didn’t trust me, though. I think he tried, but he didn’t or couldn’t, and then it seemed like he went out of his way to make me feel like he’d bought and paid for me. So when I had enough, which was a few months ago, I left.”

“That’s quite a story,” Kendall said.

“I decided that I’d had enough of depending on men. I tried to make up for the way we’d started, but my husband never believed me, so what’s the point in continuing, right?” Celeste said, tears in her eyes. “It’s what I deserved. It’s what I did to Cooper, so this is payback and all, I guess.” She released a few watery chuckles.

Kendall didn’t know what to say.

“It is what it is,” Celeste added, wiping her eyes.

“Maybe
you
should call him. He has been calling you,” Kendall said.

“No. What’s the use? I can’t go back to him unless something changes. I don’t want to live like that anymore,” she said.

“Okay,” Kendall said. She sat and watched as Celeste cried a little more. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“I am,” Celeste said, wiping away her tears. She was waiting for a time when they would dry up altogether. She could see signs of improvement. Each day she spent on her own, taking care of herself, was a day she grew stronger.

“What do you think is going on with this Hank person?” Kendall asked, feeling that a change of subject was in order for both of their lovesick selves.

“What do you mean?” Celeste asked.

“You must have noticed the new customers that have been showing up lately at the bar. Some of them are plenty scary. He seems to be creating this split within the town.”

“You think this Hank is somehow involved?” Celeste asked.

“Where have you been? It’s his proposal that started this whole mess,” Kendall said, watching her friend grow pale.

“What proposal?” Celeste asked.

“Really? Where have you been?” Kendall repeated.

“Head down and working. Hank who?”

“I don’t know his last name. Are you okay?” Kendall said, watching Celeste sit suddenly.

“Yes, I’m fine. I didn’t know,” she said.

Hank was stirring up trouble, huh? Surely he wasn’t here for her…

When Cooper walked out from his office, he spotted Kendall in conversation with Old Man Simpson. It was their routine for her to arrive here at the end of her day. He smiled at the sight of her talking to his customers. They were a family of sorts for him, the people who stopped by to check on him and the business, the ones who’d purchased memberships and took the operation of the Brewpub seriously. He wasn’t the only one who loved beer or what the Brewpub had become to the town. Yes, they were a family of sorts…his family.

He admired many things about Kendall, and high up on that list was the ease with which she met and talked to people. He noticed she dropped her professor speak, his name for her typical word choices, depending on whom she was speaking to. It was her way of making the other person comfortable in her presence, and he liked that about her, that she thought more about others than of herself. Alex walked up beside him.

“I like her. Can we keep her?” his chef said, chuckling.

Cooper laughed.

“No, really, can we keep her?” Alex asked again, still laughing as he walked away, heading for his kitchen.

He had known her almost two months now. They were a couple if he was honest with himself. What had he been doing with Celeste? ’Cause it hadn’t been this. This was love, the Real-Deal-Holyfield, and it was the first time he’d felt this way. He needed to tell her soon.
She’s starting to suspect, anyway
, he thought. He caught her looking at him, as if he were a puzzle to solve. She smiled when he caught her watching, but she’d never asked him more questions about his past. Could she handle the answers? He gut said
yes
, but there were doubts too.

He’d have to tell her anyway. The odds were in his favor. She was so much like her aunt that she could have been Myra’s daughter. Both were made of some sturdy stuff. He’d fallen in love with a woman like his second mother. Celeste had been more like his first.

It wasn’t looking like Hank or his proposal would be leaving town anytime soon, and for the life of him, he still couldn’t understand why Hank, a big-time developer in Austin, hadn’t gotten past his need for revenge. Senior was long since dead, and he and Hank had once been like brothers. If it had been up to Cooper, they would have remained that way. Hank was the one who had pulled away.

He was this close to driving up to Austin, finding Hank, and either kicking his ass or thanking him for showing him what Coopersville stood for now. There was no doubt in his mind anymore. Things were changing, and it wasn’t all young people either. His hope was growing stronger as each day passed, and one person after another stopped by to offer their support. It was what he’d told Kendall he needed to see. A sign that he and Myra weren’t in this alone, that the town would fight with them, that the people wanted to move forward. And he knew without a doubt that they did.

Fourth week in July, Sunday morning

“Park anywhere you want,” Aunt Myra said.

They were at church early. Her aunt worked in the nursery here on Sundays.

Kendall nodded, smiled, and pulled into a spot near the church’s side door. It was a small church compared to the church she attended in Austin when she went to church. After the morning service, they would head over to the potluck lunch in the church’s fellowship hall. She’d made her aunt’s favorite cake last night for dessert, and it sat in her lap in its carrying container.

“You alright over there?” Myra asked, bringing Kendall’s thoughts back to the present.

“Yes, I am. I was thinking about how much I’ve grown to like this town, its people, and how much I’m going to miss it when I leave,” she said.

“We aren’t going to let you leave,” Aunt Myra said, smiling at Kendall. She reached over and squeezed her niece’s hand. “Vivian managed to raise a very kind young woman, one who I’m proud to call my niece.” She slid out of the SUV. “Don’t forget my box in the trunk, and I’ll see you inside.”

Kendall sat and watched her aunt make her way over to Mavis. She smiled, pleased that she was here, getting a peek into her aunt’s life, a peek into this small town. The closeness that was shared between her aunt’s friends, between most of the citizens of Coopersville had impressed her. If she had to live somewhere other than Austin, this could be a pretty good choice.
Yes, this could be home permanently if someone thought to ask me to live here
, she thought, which brought her mind back to Cooper.

He was golden in so many ways, particularly how he cared for her aunt and the people around him. He’d had an awful start. She’d heard some of what was being said about him, the things that had transpired at the Quarry golf course late at night.

She wished she could tell him that she understood, that she could handle the bad, all of it, whatever it was. But she couldn’t. He would have to trust her enough to tell her himself. She had been her mother’s daughter for too long to ask him for more, and maybe he’d spent too many hours with women who only saw the financial benefit to having him around to tell her.
Please let it work out
, her silent prayer.

Third week of July, Wednesday

Portia didn’t come to the pub too often, saving it for special date night. She and Alicia had those, although not as frequently as she would have liked. They had kids and work to maneuver around. She was worried tonight, her stomach a mess of churning nerves after the Proctor men’s visit a little over a week ago. A week of not being sure how best to approach Cooper to tell him some of the things that the brothers were spreading to anyone who would listen, as well as those who wouldn’t. Not-so-nice things about him, mostly about his past. What assholes and nothing to do about it. They were a part of this world as much as people wanted to wish them away.

What they’d told her hadn’t taken her by surprise, but it did help explain Cooper better. At any rate, she felt compelled to visit as his friend, to tell him what they’d said, to make plans to fight back against all the meanness that had reared its ugly head. She considered him a good friend, one of the few who had helped her and Alicia get started. He also spent some of his free time with their daughters. She didn’t know how he could have been the boy whom Proctor brothers had described, but even if he was, he was a much a different person now, and that was more than she could say for the old coots Hugo and Stanley.

She looked around the bar, no sign of Cooper. She looked over in the brewing area, the part that was visible from the restaurant, and spotted him. He was standing and looking into one of those big pots that she knew nothing about. She made her way over, opened the door, and stepped inside.

Cooper looked up and smiled.

“What brings you here? It’s too early in the day for date night.”

“Hugo and Stanley paid me a visit last week,” Portia said, and watched Cooper lose his smile.