Page 35 of Falling Like Leaves (Bramble Falls #1)

Over the next week, I keep my head down at school. When Jake texts me at lunch, asking where I am, I tell him I’m meeting with my guidance counselor about college stuff or tutoring freshmen who have study hall during that time. Really, I skip eating and do homework in the library.

I do not once look in Cooper’s direction.

When he asked me to forget the kiss happened, I’m sure he meant he still wanted to be friends. But I don’t know how . I don’t want to axe him from my life, but things are different now, no matter how much he wants to pretend like they’re not.

It’s easier to avoid him until I go back to the city.

But Jake is nothing if not persistent, and by Friday—after four days of incessant begging and complaining—I’m back at our lunch table.

“You’re coming tonight, right?” he asks on Friday as he slides into the seat next to me with his food. Cooper eases onto the bench across from us, sitting next to Slug.

“To the drive-in movies?” I shrug. “Maybe. I haven’t been to one since…” My eyes meet Cooper’s, and I wonder if he’s also remembering Free Willy . “Well, since middle school.”

“We always put a mattress in the bed of Cooper’s truck and load it up with blankets and pillows. It’s a good time,” Jake says, throwing his arm over my shoulder. “Think of it as more time to hang out with your favorite person.”

I glance at Cooper. He looks at his tray and says, “You should come.”

“Okay,” I say because I don’t have a good excuse not to. At least not without screaming from the rooftops that it’ll be too hard to sit there with Cooper, knowing what it’s like to kiss him and knowing it won’t happen again.

Jake grins at me. “Perfect. We’ll swing by and pick you up then.”

At the end of the day, Sloane meets me at my locker instead of the flagpole out front, excited to tell me that she and Asher are going to the Pumpkin Prom together. “As friends, of course,” she’s sure to add.

I grin at her, genuinely thrilled to see her happy, even if I’m a miserable sack of potatoes. But then I spot Cooper walking down the hall behind her, and my smile quickly disappears as I duck my head behind my open locker door.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Sloane asks once I’m practically inside my locker.

“Is he gone?” I whisper, sinking farther in.

“Who—”

“No, he’s not gone,” Cooper’s voice says. “He’s hoping you two can talk.”

“I’ll, uh… leave you two to it,” Sloane says. I close my eyes and sigh. Then I pull myself out of my locker and face Cooper. Behind him my cousin backs away with a grimace and mouths, Sorry!

I close my locker, swing my backpack over my shoulder, and turn my attention to Cooper. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “About the fact that I hate how awkward things are between us now. About the fact you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I mean, same, but can we maybe figure it out? Because not talking—not being friends—it kind of really sucks.”

I look up at him, and the earnestness on his face tugs at my heart.

“It’s not like I’m having fun avoiding you, Coop.

And it’s definitely not easy. But being around you is even harder.

” He drops his head, and guilt pulses through me, despite him being the one who said we can’t be anything.

I sigh. “ But I suppose, like you said last month, avoiding each other isn’t really possible, especially since we have mutual friends, and this town is Polly Pocket–sized.

” The slightest grin appears on Cooper’s face.

“So I’ll stop dodging you and try to pretend like everything’s fine, okay? ”

He stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets and looks at the floor, his smile falling. “I really wish you didn’t have to pretend.”

“So do I.” I shrug. “Maybe one day I won’t—once I get over you the way you got over me.”

Cooper stares at me like he wants to say something. But he doesn’t. Instead the tick-tick-ticking of the clock hanging on the wall over our heads fills the empty space between us in the now otherwise-silent hall.

He finally nods. “I better let you get back to Sloane.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tonight.”

My whole chest hurts when his eyes meet mine and he forces a smile. “Yeah.” He turns to go. “See you, Mitchell.”

I spend the next few hours at home dreading tonight.

“You need to chill out,” Sloane says, lying on my bed. “It’s going to be fine. You’re going to ignore Cooper. If Chloe’s there, you won’t even look in their vicinity.”

“Shoot. Do you think she’ll be there?” Of course she’ll be there. “How am I supposed to watch them cuddling during a movie?”

“You’re not. Like I said, you’ll ignore them,” she says.

“You’ll focus on having fun with Jake. Even if you don’t like like him, he’s a fun guy.

Worst-case scenario, you’ll tell him the back of the truck is cramped and suggest you guys grab a blanket and sit together outside the truck—where you won’t be able to see Cooper. ”

“Yeah. Okay. You’re right,” I say. “You have to come with us. I need you there.”

“I already have plans with Asher, sorry.”

I throw on my low-rise Agolde jeans and toss her a look. “Right. And when are you going to spill the tea about what’s going on there ?”

Sloane’s face turns pink. “Nothing is going on. We’ve been best friends my whole life.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Please shut up,” she says.

I pretend to zip my lips. If she’s not ready to tell me, I can wait. I have my own problems right now anyway.

Like the fact that Jake’s voice is carrying up the stairs. “Let’s go, Ellis!”

“If I text you nine-one-one, you better come save me,” I tell my cousin.

“You got it,” she says.

Jake and I hop in the back of the truck, and he informs me that due to space, it’s just the four of us tonight—him and me, Chloe and Cooper.

Fantastic.

Five minutes later, we pull into the drive-in theater for double-feature horror-movie night, where Scream will play first, followed by Hereditary , neither of which I’ve seen.

Cooper backs the truck into a parking spot so the bed is facing the movie screen.

After he and Chloe hop out of the front seat, Jake scoots as far over as he can, so he’s jammed against the side, and I sit next to him.

Cooper hooks the speaker to the truck, then avoids eye contact as he sits next to me. Chloe squeezes in next to him, forcing me to be mashed between him and Jake. “Sorry,” he says.

Jake lifts his arm to make space, setting it over my shoulder and pulling me closer. The fact that Cooper doesn’t do the same—put his arm around Chloe to make space—isn’t lost on me. With my arm pressed to Cooper’s, my whole body tingles, wanting more .

I hate this so much. Why on earth did I agree to this torture?

“Everyone comfy enough?” Jake asks, throwing blankets over all of us.

“Yeah,” Cooper and I mutter in unison.

“No. I’m too squished,” Chloe says. I can’t decide if she’s actually suffering over there, or if she just wants Cooper’s arm around her. Either way, he only inches closer to me. By the time we’re all situated and the movie starts, Chloe has more space than any of us.

I lean my head back on Jake’s arm and replay Sloane’s words in my head. Ignore Cooper and Chloe.

Which is harder than I thought it’d be, considering we’re all smashed together.

A while later, the cold air cuts through my striped cashmere sweater, and I shiver. Cooper doesn’t look at me and he says nothing, but he pulls the blanket up so it’s covering more of our top halves, then he lowers his arm.

But beneath the blankets, in the nearly nonexistent space between our legs, his knuckles graze mine before he settles his hand there.

And he doesn’t move it.

I close my eyes. The touch is subtle, the backs of our hands pressed to each other, but it’s something .

I should pull my hand away. I should tell Jake I want to move a blanket to the ground, outside the truck where I can’t see Cooper, but I can’t.

Because it hurts to get mere crumbs, but it also feels so right .

So, we watch the rest of Scream like that.

When the movie ends, Jake announces he needs to stretch. Cooper’s hand slips away as he pushes the blanket off us, and we all pile out of the bed.

I use the bathroom and wait in a mile-long line for popcorn for the next movie, then head back to the truck, where Cooper, Chloe, and Jake are waiting—and a mini pumpkin is sitting on the opened tailgate.

I stop short of the truck and look at them. Cooper is staring at the blank movie screen, gnawing at his lip, Chloe’s eyes are flitting between the three of us, and Jake is watching me as he nervously cracks his knuckles.

I slowly approach. “What, um, is happening?”

“Open it,” Jake says, gesturing at the pumpkin.

“That’s… for me?” I ask. I glance at Cooper, who seems to be avoiding looking at me.

“It is,” Jake says, now grinning.

Oh no.

Now would be a great time for the ground to open up and swallow me.

I set my popcorn on the tailgate, and it topples over and spills. But I don’t even care.

My hands are shaking as I pull the top off the mini pumpkin. I reach in, grab the note, and unfold it.

Dear New Girl,

Roses are red,

And you’re really pretty.

Will you be my date for the Pumpkin Prom

If you’re not back in New York City?

Jake

Written on a piece of purple-lined paper in purple ink.

My brow furrows. I know for a fact I only let him borrow paper once, and I definitely saw him writing on it that day.

Holy shit. “Did you write this on the first day of school? After you asked for a pen?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I’m a mastermind. I knew the first time I saw you that nothing was going to stop me from asking.”

I can’t help but laugh. Taylor Swift would adore Jake Keller. “But I worked at the table all day. You never came to get a pumpkin.”

He nods at Cooper. “I sent my boy to get it for me so you wouldn’t suspect anything.”

Oh. My. God. The day after we kissed, Cooper had to get a pumpkin so Jake could ask me to the Pumpkin Prom.

This whole thing is so messed up.

“Well?” Jake says. “I’m sort of dying over here.”

Oh. “Um…” Cooper finally looks at me as he and Chloe wait for my response.

I want to go to the Pumpkin Prom with Cooper. I want to wear a cute couple costume and dance the night away with him. I want to kiss him and laugh with him and hold his hand while he walks me home.

But he made it clear that isn’t going to happen. Ever.

I swallow and look at Jake. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go to the Pumpkin Prom together.”

“Hell yes!” he shouts, a huge smile spreading across his handsome face. “Now pick up your popcorn and get your ass up here.”

Cooper slides over, making space for me, and the movie starts.

But this time there are no small, kind gestures or hidden touches beneath the blanket.

The only thing between us now is the knowledge of what might have been if I hadn’t stopped talking to him three years ago.