Page 8 of A Very Gay Halloween
But there's another part of me—the part that wants to know what happens next.
So I push off from the wall I've been leaning against and start weaving through the crowd. Someone claps me on the shoulder as I pass—Mike, I think, though I barely register his face.
"Great job tonight, man," he shouts over the music.
I nod and keep walking, my focus entirely on Cooper, who's already settled at one of the small round tables in the corner. The table is lit by a single carved pumpkin with a candleinside, the warm, flickering light playing across his features and making his cheekbones look sharper than they have any right to be.
I hate how good he looks in candlelight. It's not fair that someone who's spent two years being a complete pain in my ass should look like he belongs on the cover of some gothic romance novel.
The chair across from him is waiting, and I drop into it with way too much force. The table is small enough that our knees almost touch underneath, and I scoot my chair back to put some distance between us.
Cooper notices. Of course he notices.
For a moment, we just stare at each other. The party continues around us—laughter, conversations, the clink of bottles against plastic cups—but our corner feels isolated, cut off from the rest of the world by shadows and candlelight and whatever the hell is happening between us.
"So," he says finally.
"So," I echo, because my brain apparently decided to take a vacation right when I need it most.
Cooper leans back in his chair, completely relaxed, like we're just two friends having a casual chat about the weather. "You gonna make me drag it out of you?"
I twist the cap on my water bottle again, the plastic clicking in a rhythm that probably makes me look nervous as hell. Which I am, but he doesn't need to know that.
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"How about starting with the truth?"
The truth. Right. Like that's something I can just pull out of my back pocket and hand over without it exploding in both our faces.
I take another sip of water, buying time, trying to organize my thoughts into something that resembles coherence. My leg bounces under the table, nervous energy that has nowhere else to go.
"Look, if this is about what happened back there—" I start.
"What happened back there," he interrupts, and there's something in his tone that makes it sound less like a question and more like a challenge.
"It was just... adrenaline or whatever. Stress. Doesn't mean anything."
"Bullshit."
The word lands between us like a slap. Cooper leans forward, elbows on the table, closing the distance I tried so hard to create. I can smell his cologne again. It makes me dizzy.
"I want to know why you started hating me," he says, his voice quieter now but no less intense. "The real reason."
"I don't—"
"We were friends, August. Good friends. And then one day you just... what? Decided I was the enemy?"
The way he says my name makes my stomach do something acrobatic. I forgot how it sounds in his voice when he's not pissed at me—like he actually gives a shit about the answer he's going to get.
"It's complicated," I manage.
"Try me."
His eyes are locked on mine, and I realize with a jolt that this is the longest we've looked directly at each other in two years. Really looked, not just glared across a room or thrown dirty looks during some group project.
Before everything went to shit, we could sit like this for hours. Just talking about anything—classes, frats, movies, stupid shit we saw on social media, plans for the weekend. Cooper was funny when he wasn't being an uptight control freak. Smart in ways that didn't make him sound like a textbook. Easy to be around.
When did I stop noticing that he has those little gold flecks in his eyes?
