Teach Me (4 page)

             
“I wasn’t gone long, and you’re already sneaking off,” Cooper said as he came up from behind me. “If you’re looking for Sean, he isn’t out here.” I turned around and let out a hearty laugh, and Cooper joined me. He came closer and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, holding the
corners. He hesitated for a moment, then used them like reins and pulled me closer. I looked up and met his intense gaze.

It was like a dream. The waves crashing in the background paired with distant music, the fire giving off an orange glow that cast our faces into shadow. Even the stars overhead were twinkling through the coastal haze.

             
Cooper took both blanket corners into one hand and pulled me flat against his chest. With his free hand, he placed it under my already-elevated chin. His thumb traced my cheekbone, then over my bottom lip. My mouth parted under his touch. We both stood motionless, memorizing this moment. I let my eyes slowly close, and as I did this, Cooper’s soft lips pressed into mine.

             
We just stood there, not moving—not even breathing. Then the sensation of his lips to mine kicked in, double time. Every nerve in my body came alive. It felt like my body was awakening for the first time, feeling then how it should always feel. Everything felt new, and it felt good. I eased my arms around his neck and pulled myself as close as I could. Cooper let the hand under my chin glide to the back of my head and knotted it into my hair while his other hand released the blanket and held the small of my back.

I was hyperaware of him.
The scent of suntan lotion on his skin, the dark blue flecks of sapphire in his honest eyes, how his almost-blonde hair fell across his forehead.
How long Coop’s fingers were as he softly touched
the exposed skin of my back. He tasted like peppermint and summer, and I wanted more. When his tongue brushed against my lips, my mouth slowly opened.

             
World War III could have started, and neither of us would have noticed. The entire world as we knew it was gone. That kiss changed everything. I knew right then and there that I was no longer the girl I had been three minutes earlier—I was different now. I didn’t know what it was or how I knew, but I did. It was effortless to be with Cooper.  I had been drowning, and he was not only my life vest, but also my oxygen.

The strange thing was that I never realized these things were missing. I didn’t know that another person could fill these unknown voids, but he had. Without knowing it, Cooper was healing me, making me whole. I was no longer empty or lost. In one night, in one kiss, I felt it happen.

             
I fell head over heels—no turning back—in love with Cooper Ryan.

***

I will always look back on the weeks that followed that world-changing kiss as some of the best of my life. Cooper and I were inseparable. He still had to work most days, but only for a few hours. The rest of his time became our time. We would talk for hours about all kinds of things, and the more we discovered about each other, the more we fell into an unspoken love. I wanted to tell him how I felt, that I was falling in love with him, but the fear of rejection was much more powerful.

Cooper told me about his accelerated program and how it felt to graduate so much earlier than his friends. He confessed his love for books, all books. I told him how I have been the English tutor at Chino Preparatory Charter School for the past three years. This impressed him, but I told him I thought it made me a huge nerd.

“Well, from one nerd to another . . . I think a smart girl is sexy.” My cheeks burned as I pressed my lips to his. During some of this time, we would just lie on the beach and read. I never knew being with someone could feel this good. Cooper told me he had a hard time meeting new people because of his family, once they met him and found out his name.

“Well, what is your top-secret last name?” I challenged him. “Mine is Starr, Allison Starr.” I stuck out my hand for a corny shake. Cooper laughed and took my hand, pulling me closer.

“Perez. Cooper Ryan Perez,” he said,
then
kissed me softly.

“Perez? Nope. Got nothing,” I told him, then intensified the kiss. I wanted to tell him right then how I was feeling toward him, but I was a coward through and through.

I mean, come on, how often do summer loves last?

In the last week of my trip, Coop finally talked me into the water to experience surfing. The water was ice-cold even though the air around me was a balmy ninety-nine Southern California degrees. The thing that finally
got me in the water was that I knew the proximity of where our bodies would be. Though we both had felt the undeniable connection, we were keeping strict physical rules. The chance to hold him as the water kept our bodies weightless gave me a thrill just thinking about it.

“Now don’t get frustrated if you don’t get up on the board,” Coop was telling me as we bobbed up and down in the waves. I nodded and kept repeating what he had taught me; it became my mantra.
Paddle, push, balance, stand.
I was wearing a borrowed rash guard and lying on my stomach on the freshly waxed surfboard, keeping my eyes focused on the shoreline.

“You’ll tell me when to go?” I could hear the fear in my voice. I’m academic, not athletic. Cooper laughed, and I felt his hand touch my leg as he moved in front of the board. He pushed himself closer and dipped me further into the cold water and lightly kissed the tip of my nose. When he spoke, he looked directly into my eyes.

“I told you I would. What else did I say?” I lost focus staring into those amazingly blue eyes.

“That it was going to be fun and fine,” I repeated back to him like a good little parrot. He nodded and smiled.

“That’s my girl,” he said and floated off to my side. “Get ready,” he said above the sound of the coming wave. “Now, Ali!” Cooper shouted.
“Paddle!”

My arms pushed themselves deep into the water, and I moved them just as Cooper had shown me. After just a few seconds of paddling, it felt like I had been lifting weights in the gym for hours, but I kept going. I could feel the water raise the front of the board, and I readied myself to try to stand, focusing on my balance. I brought my legs up to tuck under my body, and I felt something tugging me back. As soon as my toes touched the board, the entire thing
came
shooting out from under me. Harsh cold water filled my nose and mouth. I couldn’t tell which way was up, and I felt like I was going to drown. Pressure built in my lungs. I felt disoriented. I wanted to fight my way to the surface but couldn’t find it.

Warm arms looped around my waist and eased me up. A moment later, my head broke the surface, and I coughed out seawater and gulped in air. Cooper was holding my back to his chest, and we were gliding toward the beach. My dark hair was covering my eyes, and I realized I was gripping his arms like they were my own personal life preserver.

“It’s okay,” Cooper’s voice said into my ear. “I’ve got you.”

I had hardly noticed that he was gliding the surfboard next to us until the ocean floor hit my feet. We’d made it. I put my feet down and tried to stand, but sometime during my near-death experience, someone must have replaced my legs with Jell-O because they could not hold my weight. Cooper’s arms shifted under mine, and he nearly dragged me to the place where we had left our towels, leaving the board behind us on the sand.

“What happened?” I asked once I knew I was safe. The words were rough and painful in my throat. I pushed my hair off my face and looked to Cooper and found him staring at my foot. He was touching it lightly and pressing the surrounding area.

“Does this hurt?” he asked as he moved his hand around my ankle.

“No,” I answered. “Should it?” He seemed satisfied with my answer and sat down next to me on his towel.

“It might later,” he said, drying off. “It all happened so fast. You started paddling, and your foot got tangled in the leash. I don’t think you realized that you were kicking your feet when you should have only been using your arms.” This last part he said a little sympathetic, like he had done it before himself.

I felt tears burn in my eyes. “I told you I wouldn’t be any good at this.” I pouted as the feeling of humiliation set in. Cooper laughed easily and pulled me into his arms.

“You did just fine. It was an accident.” He pressed his cold lips into my wet hair. “Next time will be much easier.”

“No next time,” I said defiantly. “If you want to off me, you better come up with a new way because I am not getting back into that liquid death trap.” Cooper lay back onto the sand and rolled with laughter. I didn’t know what he could possibly find so funny.

“Off you?” he managed to say in between gulps of breath. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to gain his composure. Instead he pulled me down next to him and held me to his side.

“I have no idea why you think this is so funny,” I demanded. “I almost died out there.” In saying this, a whole new round of laughter started, and I was unable to resist laughing along with him. Despite how stupid I felt, my embarrassment melted away in the warm summer sun, laughing with Cooper. A moment later, we both lay on our backs, facing the bright sun. Cooper took my hand in his, and nothing needed to be said. We had found we could both enjoy the comfortable silence between us.

After a while, he said, “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, didn’t I?”

I rolled up to my elbow to get a better look at him. “Yes, you did,” I admitted. I was alive, and the feeling that an elephant had stood on my chest had finally left. My back was aching, but it was nothing a hot bath couldn’t fix. Cooper now mirrored my position except he shaded his eyes from the sun.

“Can I ask you something?” His voice was low and serious.

“Of course,” I answered. He took pause, thinking before he spoke. Now
that
is a concept that I would love to master.

“Why would you say that?” he finally said. “About me wanting to off you, I mean?”

“Oh”—I shrugged with one shoulder—“in case you wanted to get rid of me without the messy breakup.” Even as I said it, I could hear how ridiculous and childish it sounded, and I couldn’t believe I had said it out loud. Cooper sat all the way up. He looked out into the water, his eyebrows pulled together in thought.
Think
, I told myself. There has to be some way to salvage this.

“I just thought that next week”—now was the time for honestly—“that this would be over for you,” I said in a small voice. “That you would just move on to the real world, and I would go back to school.” My stomach tied itself in knots as I spoke this truth. How was it possible that watching some cute local boy surf could turn into this? It had only been a few weeks, but I didn’t know how I had managed without him.

“Over for me?” he answered and turned to face me. “Will it be over for you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it will ever be over for me,” I admitted. Cooper’s features softened.

“I knew it,” he whispered. “You were just trying to throw me off.”

“Throw you off what?” I
asked,
which led me to wonder if it ever gets any less confusing trying to understand the male psyche.

“Allison Starr, don’t you see?” He cupped my face in his hands. “I love you.” Rocket ships soared inside me at his words. “You silly girl,” he said, lips brushing mine as he continued, “I fell in love with you, and I can’t tell my heart to stop just because summer is ending.”

Cooper had made it sound so perfect and easy. “You love me?” I questioned. “Like, real love?” He laughed. Maybe it was the near-death experience or too much sun, but I needed to know if I heard him right.

“The kind that all great poets write about,” he answered. Our noses bumped together, and I could feel my rational mind working in overdrive. It was now or never.

“Good, because I fell in love with you weeks ago.”
I rested my hands against his bare chest, pushing him back to see into his eyes. “Cooper Ryan Perez, I love you.” Finally, I had said it out loud. Cooper searched my face, and before I could think another thought, he pulled me back to him, our mouths coming together feverishly. We moved in such synchronization that it was like it had been staged, but it was just another sign of how in tune we were.

Too soon he pulled away. We were both breathing unevenly, and our faces were flushed. I didn’t want to say anything to undo this moment. His feelings were real—I hadn’t imagined it. I felt Cooper’s eyes on me, and I turned to meet them. He raised his hand and brushed my wild, damp hair from my face.

“You are still beautiful, even though the ocean tried to take you down,” he said, breaking the silence that hung between us. Neither one of us spoke about the future nor what it would bring us. Some things might be better left unsaid. We just sat there, holding each other close, not wanting time to pass as we watched the sun dip down into the now-orange water.

Time was passing whether we liked it or not, slipping though our fingers like the sand on the beach.

F o u r

Cooper

             
I told Allison that I loved her.
Which I do, more than I wanted to admit, even to myself.
I couldn’t think about not seeing her every day. She has become a part of who I am now. We had the discussion about age a few weeks ago. We are three years apart, but she will be eighteen in a few months, so things won’t seem so out of balance for us. Not that it feels unbalanced—I guess it will just be less frowned upon by society. I explained to her how it was that I was so much further along in school. Accelerated classes since my sophomore year paired with college classes since my junior. I’ll still need to take some classes for my master’s degree, but I can teach like I have always wanted to.