The Space In Between

Chapter Eighteen

THE SUN WAS shining brightly, but the winter breeze made coats necessary. I sat across from Iris outside the coffee shop, wishing I could be anywhere but there. We were wearing sunglasses, smiling at each other as the paparazzi stood back and took our photos. The trip to South Carolina had come to an end, and instead of sitting across from Andrea, I was stuck with my wife.
Iris was about six months pregnant, sporting heels that looked to be cutting off all blood flow to her feet. How could she be so damn stupid?
Through a grin I whispered, “You’re a bitch.” And she grinned and took my hand into hers.
“When are you coming home?” she softly asked. I wanted to pull my hand away and walk off, never to see her again, but what she had on me was big.
“Why were you talking about revealing information about Ken?” Turning to my father’s past to get back to me was as low as one could get. I asked her what I had done that was so dirty that she would turn to these crazy measures.
“You left me.” Her tone was so sincere and filled with sorrow that I almost felt sorry for the woman sitting in front of me. Almost. She saw the paparazzi and knew we wouldn’t be able to hold the real conversation we needed to have, so she offered walking to our apartment—her apartment—so we could figure out where to go from here.
As we walked, Iris made sure to have me wrap my arms around her waist. Andrea was floating through my mind. I secretly wished she were the one my arms were wrapped around. I wished she were the one taking me home.
Right as we stepped into the apartment, I released my hold on her and started to holler. “What the hell are you trying to do to me, Iris?!”
“You left me, Cooper. You walked away and didn’t look back. What was I suppose to do? You wouldn’t talk to me.” She cried as she took off her high heels and her jacket. “Tom doesn’t want anything to do with the child. He’s expecting his own with his wife…”
Tom Reed. The man who got my wife pregnant was ready to deny his own child to keep a lie going on for his wife. What a piece of shit. But there was one main issue I had to know. “What does that have to do with me?”
I wasn’t the one who cheated. I wasn’t the one who got knocked up by Tom. I wasn’t the one who took our vows and threw them into a closet at the rehearsal dinner of our last episode of The Davidson’s Weddings.
Iris walked over to me and placed her hands in mine. She led my hands to her stomach, making me raise an eyebrow. “We can raise her together.”
Her. It was a girl. I would be lying if I said for a split moment I didn’t consider it. That poor baby girl had walked into a crazy life, and it wasn’t her fault. She deserved a dad. Not a father who would deny her existence for the rest of his life. She deserved a mom. Not a mother who wanted to lie about who her real father was. She deserved to have someone treat her like a princess. She deserved to be a princess. She deserved a dad.
But that wasn’t me.
“You’ve lost your mind.” I pushed her hands away from me and shook my head in disappointment. She was desperate. I could see it in her face.
“I’ll give you a month. If you don’t come back to me, I will expose everything. Your stay in the mental hospital. You breaking glass frames in your house. You leaving your pregnant wife. You leaving your mom to film a reality show…”
“Go to hell!” I hissed. She’d crossed the line. She had no right to bring my mom into this topic.
“I’m already there, Cooper!” she cried into the air.
“You cheated on me, Iris! You cheated. Not me!” What was wrong with this creature I used to love? I didn’t know the person standing before me, and she was f*cking making me sick.
Iris disappeared into the kitchen and returned with an envelope. She handed it to me. “Well, that’s not what these photos say.” She crossed her arms and rested them on her growing belly, “Those are just copies. I have more.”
I opened the envelope and ran my hand over my mouth, sighing. Shit. I scanned the pictures and looked back to Iris. “You had me followed?”
“Hell yes I had you followed, Cooper. Who is she?”
Unbelievable. I stared at the different photos of Andrea and me in my hands and I didn’t know what to think. It was all there, from the moment we first walked out of the strip club, to our café meeting, to the hotel hallway when I tried to give her taxi money. Even photos of us going to the airport.
“I can’t believe you right now.”
“Me?! I can’t believe you stooped so low to go for prostitutes!” she yelled as my hand formed a fist and slammed against the wall; the veins were popping out of my neck. How dare she.
“Dammit, she’s not a prostitute!”
Iris’s brown eyes softened from her anger. As if she had any right to be angry with me. She let out a small chuckle and a giggling fit happened. “Don’t tell me you like her. Holy crap, you like a prostitute.”
The blood was boiling inside me and I knew I had to leave before I did or said something I would regret. The memories of the last time I stood in this apartment were floating back to my mind. It was cursed. This f*cking place had to be cursed.
“I’ll give you until New Years. To come back to me. Or I go to the tabloids,” Iris said before I left.
“Get one thing straight, Iris. I am never coming back to you. Never.” I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what to do. As I walked out, the paparazzi were still there, hammering me with questions about the rumors between Iris and me. The child’s gender. The next season of the show. I tried my best to ignore them as I slid on my sunglasses and walked faster. It was all too much to ignore when a small girl, around the age of six, was walking with her mom and was pushed by one of the paparazzi.
“Jesus! Come on! Y’all are knocking over kids!” I hissed as I helped the girl up.
The man who made her tumble over gave me a devilish grin and said, “What are you talking about, Cooper? You kicked her over, not us. Have you been drinking? You should be more careful.”
I wanted to kick his ass. I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck, shake him, and scream at him to wake the hell up. To get a real f*cking job instead of finding a way to be a stalker and get paid for it. They were sick creatures who made a living off of destroying lives, just to sell a photo.
But I couldn’t. I walked off and tried to figure out what the hell to do about Iris and Andrea.





I WALKED AROUND Central Park with my camera, taking photos. Shit, it was cold. I pulled my winter coat tighter and wrapped my scarf around my mouth to shield off the chill. I always felt at ease when I was doing what I loved. What I really loved. Unlike the garbage reality shows I had somehow gotten sucked into doing with Iris. She said it would make us grow closer. I told her couples who did reality shows were doomed to fail. She disagreed.
I was right.
I was avoiding Andrea. She had texted me a few times earlier that week calling for Soda Pop, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be seen with her in the city with the paparazzi covering my every move. It was to protect her. I should have told her about the photos. But if I did, I would lose her for sure. I had to work this through my head, figure out the best way to handle it without pushing her away.
The sunlight had faded for the night. I made my way to a bench and let out a heavy sigh. I needed more time to figure things out. More time to find a way to keep Andrea’s name out of the tabloids. The first moment I’d seen her, I’d promised her I wouldn’t say a word about her stripping, and now Iris was threatening to tell the whole wide world she was a damn prostitute.
My phone went off as I read the newest text message that slapped me with guilt.
Did I do something wrong?
I stared at all of the former text messages before this one, and they only read ‘soda pop’ between her and me.
She’d never written anything more than that, so to read those words stung me. Did she do something wrong? No. But I couldn’t tell her. Not yet.