Page 5 of Courageous Hearts

“Yeah, Coop. That’s great,” I tell him sincerely, glad he found that again after his mom passed. I’ve made my own home here. Not only in this city, but at Gertie’s. With my friends and my coworkers.

All that’s missing is Mr. or Mx. Right.

“You’ll have to visit soon and come see the place in person,” Cooper says. When I don’t immediately answer, caught up in weighing the pros and cons of that particular idea, he goes on. “Or we could fly up and see you. It’s been a while.”

“Y’know I’d love to see you all,” I say, stressing the uncontracted words, and Cooper chuckles. “I’d love to see your place. I just…”

“Has Diesel still been hounding you?” Cooper asks seriously.

I blow out a breath. “You know our brother.”

“Not nearly as well as you, but I know enough,” he answers. “What’s he been saying?”

“The usual,” I reply. “That he misses his brother.”

Cooper practically growls, and that sound coming from the blonde goofball is enough to have me laughing again. Cooper is not the growling type.

“What an ass,” Cooper says vehemently. “Doesn’t he get it? You’re not his brother.”

“No, he doesn’t get it,” I say plainly. “He truly doesn’t, Coop. He can’t wrap his head around the fact that I’m not a boy. He doesn’t understand what it means to be outside the gender binary, and he has no inclination to open his head and his heart enough to learn. He’s just like our father in that way.”

Cooper is quiet for a moment. It’s true that he doesn’t know Diesel like I do. They’ve only interacted a couple times. First, when Cooper visited the house Diesel shares with our father. And, as far as I’m aware, a time or two after when they bumped into each other in town. Diesel has made no secret of the fact that he has zero desire to get to know Cooper, who he insulted for being queer during their first meeting.

What I don’t understand is why Diesel insists on keeping in contact with me. He hates what I stand for. That I’m queer, too. But he keeps calling, no matter how often I send him to voicemail.

“Sara stopped by a few days ago,” Cooper says, filling in our silence with something he knows is bound to buoy my spirits.

Sara was ecstatic when she learned she had another nephew. She quickly brought Coop and his men into the family fold, and now that they’re back in Plum Valley, I’ve heard she visits often.

“Yeah? How’d she look?” I ask, even though I talked to her just a few days back myself. She sounded good, but I miss seeing her face in person and feeling her sturdy arms wrapped around me.

“Great,” Coop answers. “She brought brownies, like we needed them.”

I chuckle at that. Cooper’s boyfriend Tru is a baker, and they’re always stocked in treats.

The train jolts to a stop, and I stand up, heading out the doors. “I’m at my stop,” I tell Coop.

“I’ll stay on the line until you’re in your apartment,” he says with a yawn.

I shake my head as I jog down the stairs to the sidewalk below. “It’s only a couple blocks.”

Cooper ignores me. “Tell me something new.”

I hum, thinking it over. “I got a new Little.”

He snickers. “You gotta stop calling them that.”

“It’s what they are,” I defend. “It’s the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. I’m their Big, not their…”

I pause, and Cooper does, too.

“Huh,” he says, mirroring my own thoughts. “Yeah, there’s no great genderless term for Daddy, is there?” His voice goes all low and throaty as he husks, “Spank me, parental unit.”

“Coop,” I groan, shaking my head as Cooper’s laughter rings in my ear. “Anyways, I meet him in a couple weeks. He’s fifteen.”

“Older than the last one,” Cooper notes. “You’ve graduated to high school. Congratulations.”

“Yeah, well. We’ll see what he thinks of me,” I mutter.

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