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“No drug arrests.”
“Right.”
“The specificity is weighing on me, Coop.”
“That’s what you asked about. Specifically.”
“Has she broken any laws that matter?”
“She was into graffiti as a kid. Got picked up for vandalism and trespass
in 2007. Pled and took the fine. Then again in 2008. Community service
picking up garbage on the side of the 101.”
That was after I knew her. She’d left Wildwood School a few months
before I graduated, leaving Millie without spring production costumes.
Must have had a few downhill years after her father got remarried.
All of that was a long time ago. I had a few hours to decide if I could
live with it.
“Thanks,” I said. “Do you have an opinion? A gut reaction?”
“Depends what you want with her. Would I date her? Yeah.”
“Would you marry her?”
“If I loved her. Wouldn’t give her my bank account numbers right off.”
“Thanks, Coop.”
We hung up and I pulled back onto Beverly with a few minutes to ask
myself how desperate I really was. How important was getting married?
How much time did I have before Byron wedged himself in so deep I
couldn’t get rid of him? Every day for six months, he’d gotten more
comfortable. He kept his woman happy, played around on the floor with his
son, and ran a multinational business with me. Every day, he proved he
could handle Crowne and a personal life without breaking a sweat, and
every day I wasn’t married, I proved I couldn’t.
My father held the keys. He was in charge of succession and wanted a
Crowne to run the business. It had always been Byron, until his first fiancée
committed suicide and he left to flip real estate. Then my father turned to
me, and I jumped in with an exhilaration I’d never felt before, working at
his side for six years until he decided I wasn’t happy enough.
Byron was winning. He thought everything was about winning, but it
wasn’t. It was about getting in the ring and staying on your feet for every
round. Beaten bloody, aching from the battle, ears ringing so loudly you
could barely hear the last bell—that was the point.
Born two and a half years apart, we’d spent one season in the same
Little League division, but on different teams. He hated baseball, and I