Page 89 of Revelry

“You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think it’s best for everyone if you just fuck him.”

“You’re a nasty drunk, Cooper.”

“It’s true. It’s only fair. How are you ever going to know exactly how you feel if you don’t?”

“I have already fucked him. Several times.”

“Alone.”

Technically I’d already done that too, in Vegas. Before I’d slept with Coop. But it didn’t go over well last time I brought it up, so I say nothing about it. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s fucking wrong with me?” he asks, setting the bottle down on the side table. “What’s wrong with you, Ali? How can you spend last night with me, and say that shit to me and agree to spend tonight with him?”

“Jesus, Cooper, take a fucking look around. Where am I right now?”

“Here,” he says, dropping his head in his hands and massaging his temple. “You’re here, yelling at me.”

“Exactly. With you.”

Cooper snaps his head up. “For how long?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“How long are you planning on staying here, Ali?” he sneers. “How long before the temptation of him becomes too much?”

“Okay, stop,” I say. “Can we just for once stop pretending like this is even about me at all?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not fucking her,” I scream, and cover my face with my hands as I tilt my head back in exasperation. “I’m not Holly. She left you for another man. What you, Levi and I have is different. It was never meant to go this far, but it did. None of us were supposed to get hurt, but no matter where we go from here, one of us does. One of us winds up broken-hearted, Coop. Maybe even all of us. And that’s the bed we get to lie in. That’s the bed we made. But I’m not her. Stop confusing me with her, and stop fucking punishing me every time you get drunk for the things she did to you. I know that’s why this whole thing started—you wanted to get back at her.”

“That’s not true. I wanted you from the moment you came stumbling into that conference room.”

“Yes, but a part of you wanted me because it made it that much easier to pretend. You thought about how sweet it would be to have me on my knees before you, sucking your cock until you came, and you could wrap your fingers in my hair and pretend for a moment that I was the one that got away.”

“Stop talking,” he warns me.

“You told me as much in Vegas, when you called me by her fucking name. You broke my heart that night, Coop.”

“I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“That just makes it so much worse. You could have slept with any woman that night, and pretended that it was her, but you wound up with me, someone who looked like her, but didn’t matter—”

He launches himself at me, pushing me back against the wall and hisses, “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t ever think that you don’t matter to me, Ali. You do, but I’m … I’m fucking terrified of letting you in.”

“Why?” I whisper, gripping his wrists. “How could you possibly be afraid of me?”

“You have no fucking idea what you do to me. You have no idea what seeing the two of you together does to me.”

The sad thing is that I do. I know it hurts him, just like I know it hurts Levi when I’m with Coop. Any choice I make here affects both of them, but it’s so much more than that. It impacts their friendship, and the band.

“Why couldn’t it just be about sex with you? Why did you have to fall in love with him, and me? I already lost one girl to another man—I’ll be fucking dead before I do it again.”

“And there you go again, comparing me to her.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were. Levi isn’t the one coming between us here, Cooper. Holly is, because you can’t let her go.”