Page 62 of Save the Drama for your Mama
“What I want is for you to stick a sock in it and come here,” I said, pulling her close for a hug.
As I held her close, I became intensely aware of her body against mine. Her curves molded perfectly against me, soft in all the right places. Without thinking, I nuzzled my nose into her hair and closed my eyes, breathing in the subtle floral scent of her shampoo surrounding me. My hands gently slid around to the small of her back, keeping her tight against me. Her warmth radiated through me, my nerves tingling, my thoughts scattering.
Neither of us pulled away.
She felt too good in my arms, and I couldn’t remember the last time hugging someone had affected me this way.
I eased back, immediately missing her body against mine.
An awkward tension hovered in the air as we glanced at each other. A blush rose on her cheeks. I rubbed my neck, pulse racing. Clearly, this was more than just friendly affection developing between us.
Something unexpected was happening.
And, truth be told, I wanted a lot more of it.
ChapterFifteen
MELODY
That hug from Cooper hit me with a freight train of emotions.
Had someone spiked my morning coffee with a hypnotic love potion when I wasn’t looking? Or were the frequencies and cadences in his speech engineered to worm past my barriers and bewitch my soul?
It didn’t matter.
The problem was, thoughts of that embrace stuck to my brain like peanut butter on the roof of my mouth. Even as Cooper, James, and I were enjoying the most scrumptious feast of coconut shrimp and beer-battered fish and chips underneath a sun-bleached umbrella on the weathered San Clemente pier, my mind was scheming ways to get another one of those delicious hugs.
Pathetic, I know, like a junkie craving another hit.
Especially after my second Bahama Mama. What did they put in these drinks? They were yum, yum, yummy.
Or maybe I should say rum, rum, rummy.
I snorted at my silly joke.
James and Cooper looked my way.
I waved them off. “It just went down the wrong pipe.” I patted myself in the chest, then took another slurp of my Bahama Mama through the straw, continuing to listen to their conversation.
The seagulls cawed overhead, and the waves crashed below, but the most wonderful sound of all was the laughter coming from the two men sitting in front of me. I couldn’t put into words what it was like for a father and son to meet for the first times, but it was touching. The way they were mirror images, both physically and mentally. The way they finished each other’s sentences. The same laugh. The same smile.
The two of them chatted animatedly, making up for decades of lost time. They talked of Cooper’s childhood misadventures with his brother, his years as a lifeguard (which I did not know about), and his dog Romeo, for starters.
Cooper seemed to absorb every new detail about his father, his years as a shoe repairman, shooting photos at over sixty US National Parks, and my favorite, James’s profound love for his wife. You would never have known this was the first time they’d ever clapped eyes on each other.
James would have been an excellent dad had Cooper grown up with him. But life has a way of taking abrupt turns, and now Cooper could say he had the best of both worlds. Two fathers. The one who raised him and then his biological one. Watching their genuine delight warmed my heart.
“I never asked you,” James said. “How did you know I was still alive?”
“My mom had a bunch of your framed photos and they all had your gallery sticker on the back of them,” Cooper said. “Then we figured out that one of them was taken at least ten years after the newspaper article said you’d died.”
“Which photo?” James asked.
“The picture of the USS Midway docked at the Navy Pier.”
“Ah, yes, the one with the fireworks,” he said, nodding. “That was mighty good detective work on your part.”
“Thank you,” Cooper and I said at the same time.
