Page 14 of Cooper & Jake
“Yeah,” I answer quietly. “We knew you were leaving the next day, and we didn’t know when we would see each other again, so we came up here for one last night. We were talking about the future, and you said something about preserving a memory, so we emptied my water bottle and filled it up with an item we had on us.”
“It feels like so long ago.”
“Twenty years.”
“Well, duh, smartass. But I mean, we’ve both lived so much life since then. We’re completely different people. Hell, I have so many damn wrinkles and my hair is graying,” he tells me, running his fingers through his hair.
Reaching over, I grab a lock, twirling it around my fingertips. “It makes you look sophisticated. Which is a nice way of saying old.”
Jake drops the water bottle and lunges toward me, tickling my side. “You’re the same age, old man.”
“Tonight is making me feel young,” I say, still laughing when he finally lets me go.
“Same. Now let’s see what we’ve got stored in here.”
7
JAKE
God,it’s like no time at all has passed between us. The easy flow of conversation the entire time, the way he still makes my heartbeat faster, the way I want to take his hand with mine, or place a soft kiss on his lips.
Fuck Jake, get it together.
“Open it,” he tells me, scooting closer to me and tapping the water bottle.
“Do you remember what you put in here?” He shakes his head no, and I add on, “Me either. Hell, I had forgotten about the bottle at all until you brought it up.” His face falls, his eyes cast down, and I quickly tack on, “I mean, I didn’t forget. I’ve thought about it over the years, but I was too preoccupied with other things today that it wasn’t at the front of my mind. All right, let’s look what’s in this bad boy.” I twist the top open, Cooper leaving his flashlight right on the bottle so we can both see.
“Oh damn, is that a watch?” he inquires excitedly as I pull out the first item and place it in front of the light.
“Fuck, I forgot about this. Remember, we took the batteries out so that it would keep the time of when we buried it?”
“What time does it say?”
I flip the watch around in my hand, then put it right under the light. “2:16. Damn, what the hell were we doing out here so late?” I glance up to see Cooper’s eyes widen, and I laugh loudly. “Besides the obvious.”
“Okay, what else is in there?” he chokes out, trying to look into the water bottle.
God, I love seeing that he’s still affected by me. Or, hell, even just by the memory of me.
I reach my hands in, pulling out two bracelets. “Damn, do you remember these?”
“They were our version of a promise ring,” he whispers, grabbing the two bracelets from my grasp and looking at them under the light.
“Put mine on?” I ask him.
“Okay.” He puts one bracelet on my wrist before putting the other one on himself. They’re a little tight, but that’s to be expected when you’re not the same size you were back then. I grab the last thing in the water bottle and hand it over to Cooper.
“Oh my god,” he whispers, tears forming in his eyes. “I forgot I put this in there.”
In his hand is a picture he took out of his wallet to put in the bottle. It’s an image from when we went to prom together, but it’s not just the two of us in the photo. It’s the two of us plus our parents. They loved each other, and I know my parents loved Cooper as though he were one of their own.
“How are your parents doing? I feel like we’ve talked about everything but them.”
“Oh, um.” He looks up at me, a tear sliding down his cheek. “They both passed away.”
“What? Oh my god, Cooper. I’m so sorry. How? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Dad passed away right after graduation. A few weeks before I was supposed to head off to college, he had a stroke. It came out of nowhere. My mom was a mess. I couldn’t leave her.”
