“I’m angry I was played…jilted,” I tell her. “But I’m actually kind of relieved it’s over. Now that it is, I can look back and admit to myself that it just wasn’t exactly right for me, you know?”
“Honey, you’ve yet to meet my ex-husband,” she quips. “Trust me…I know. But here’s my point. Coop was not in a relationship with Ashley. Pardon me for being crude, but he was just getting his rocks off. And you weren’t really in love with the man that betrayed you.”
“Not getting your point.”
“My point is that neither you nor Coop are rebounding from anything,” she says, and the force of those words practically punches me in the stomach. “Y’all are doing something else, but it ain’t rebound sex.”
My jaw drops open, my eyes slide to Coop, and he tilts his head, wondering at the look on my face right now. In fact, he starts to stand up from his stool, but I shake my head at him and he sits back down.
I look back to Missy, completely on the verge of an anxiety attack. “If it’s not rebound sex, then what is it?”
Missy shrugs. “I am not the best person for this type of advice. I picked an asshole to father my kids.”
My eyes light up. “Wait a minute. Maybe we’re rebounding from the first time we broke up. That could be the rebound sex.”
Laughing, Missy reaches across the table and playfully pats my arm. “If that’s what you want to believe, then you do it. No judgment here.”
I let out a sigh. At least she’s not overtly pointing out anything else that could screw with my carefully constructed world I’ve built around this thing with Coop and me. I can’t afford to let my heart get tied up with him, and so I need to make sure that there’s always that dividing line that will eventually send us back to our respective lives.
“What happened with you and Coop?” Missy asks as she picks up her wineglass and sits back into the padded booth seat. “I was up north going to school and didn’t really have anyone to stay in touch with. I’d just heard through the grapevine you’d moved to New York and y’all broke up.”
My heart squeezes as I think about how drastically my life changed so fast. One minute I’m young and in love. Safe, secure, and happy. The next minute I’m on a lonely adventure that eventually brought me more success than I ever could have dreamed of, but at the sacrifice of something important to me.
“I don’t think we were meant to be together,” I tell her sadly. “I dropped out of school after the first semester and did move to New York. I was given a huge contract to model. Coop supported my decision and we tried to make it work long distance. We had it all figured out. I could fly in to visit, and he could come see me sometimes. I figured the modeling thing was just a flash in the pan, and it would be temporary. I had no clue how big it could get…how big it did get.”
“That’s tough,” Missy observes. “Particularly on two people barely adults.”
I nod. “We couldn’t cope with it. Coop started resenting that I couldn’t break away. We went months without seeing each other. It took months for us both to admit it was over.”
That squeezing sensation gets even stronger as I remember that last phone call. We’d held on for so long and neither one of us knew how to give up.
“We can’t keep on like this,” Coop had told me on the phone. I had been a blubbering mess for hours during that conversation, full of doubts alternating with confidence that all would be well.
“Are you giving me an ultimatum?” I’d asked with a sob.
“I’m not sure,” he’d said quietly. “But maybe we both need to move on.”
“No,” I’d cried out. “No, that’s not what we need.”
“I can’t take it anymore Eden,” he’d told me with frustration, and I’ve never heard his voice sound so lost. “I miss you too fucking much to keep this up anymore. I’m asking you to get your ass back to Georgia or fucking cut me loose. One or the other.”
After another hour of conversation, the tears finally dried up and I chose “the other.”
I cut Coop loose and I went on.
He went on.
Now we were having rebound sex fourteen years later and I had no clue what any of it meant.
“I hate to be all philosophical and shit, and I don’t really believe in fate or destiny, but what if it just wasn’t your time then. What if you two were meant to be together now? Older and wiser and all that.”
“I don’t believe in fate either.” I brush off her comment with that thought and take another sip of wine.
“Come on, Eden,” she says with excitement, leaning forward. “Think about it. Your fiancé screws around on you and you choose to come back to your hometown that you haven’t really visited for fourteen years? And within a few days, you and Coop are back in bed together? If that’s not some wonky mojo shit working in the universe, I don’t know what is.”
I chuckle because I can see that, but I point out to her, “Doesn’t matter if we were brought back together. Our lives are way too different to sustain.”
“How?” she demands.
“Because Coop’s life is in Newberry and mine is not,” I state simply. “It’s the same exact problem we had fourteen years ago and we couldn’t make it work then. Long-distance relationships just aren’t meant to be.”
I know this better now than I ever knew it then.
Missy scoffs. “True love always finds a way.”
I smile at her sadly. “I believe in that. The problem is, we’re not in love. We’re in lust right now.”
“Potatoes, po-tah-toes,” she returns with a shrug.
“Excuse me, Miss Goodnight.” I look up and our waitress is standing there. She’s young, probably just barely twenty-one, and has been extremely nervous all night serving us.
I smile at her. “Yes?”
“Um…the gentleman at the bar…Mr. Mayfield…he’s paid for your dinners,” she says, and I lean over to look past her at Coop. For once he’s not even looking at me but is in deep discussion with Clay. Damn he’s sweet.
Pulling my gaze back up to the waitress, I tell her, “Thank Mr. Mayfield for us and relay to him that he’s going to get very, very lucky tonight.”
Missy snorts into her wineglass and the waitress turns beet red, staring at me in astonishment.
I quickly let her off the hook as I laugh. “I’m just kidding. But can you let me know the total so I can leave you a tip?”
“He handled that as well,” the waitress says.
“Rebound sex my ass,” Missy mutters, thankfully so low I don’t think the waitress heard her. Because she also still stands there, just staring at me.
I recognize the look of someone wanting to ask for an autograph or talk about one of my movies, but is too terrified to impose. I try to put her at ease.
Looking at her name tag, I give her a bright smile and say, “Lindsey, your service tonight was great. I really appreciate it.”
“Oh, thank you,” she says, and blushes. “Well…it was an honor to serve you tonight.”
I wonder if she knew the gossip about me before and after my arrival, but I don’t worry about it too much. I do my humble brush-off. “That’s very sweet of you to say, but tonight I’m just a hometown girl hanging out.”