One Night That Changes Everything by Lauren Barnholdt Read Free Book Online Page B

walks in behind me, and so I quickly take the extra chair at my table and shove it under the table next to me, where a girl with braids is sipping a chai tea and talking to her friend about her yoga class.
    Cooper walks over and calmly removes the chair, puts it back at my table, and then sits down. Ugh. How annoying.
    I pull out my phone and text Marissa. “ WHERE. ARE. YOU ??”
    Cooper gets up and disappears for a second, then returns with two coffees.
    “I got yours with cinnamon hazelnut syrup,” he says.
    I shoot him a glare, but take a sip of the warm liquid. It’s so hot I almost burn my tongue, but it’s good going down, comforting and sweet. “I’m not sure what I should thank you for first,” I say. “Remembering how I take my coffee or turning me in to the dean because of what I wrote about you on Lanesboro Losers.” I think that’s a super-biting and witty remark that should totally put him in his place, but Cooper seems unfazed.
    “I didn’t turn you in,” Cooper says. “That was the 318s.” As he takes a sip of his coffee, one shirtsleeve slips down and I can see he’s wearing the watch I bought him. Seriously! That is so screwed up. He should have to give me back all the presents I gave him while we were together.
    “Give that back to me,” I say, holding my hand out.
    “Give what back to you?” Cooper asks. He sets his coffee cup down on the table.
    “The watch I gave you.”
    “This?” Cooper holds up his wrist.
    “Is that the watch I gave you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then yes.”
    “No,” he says. “I love this watch.”
    “When people break up,” I say, “they give back each other’s stuff.”
    “This isn’t each other’s stuff,” he says. “This was a gift.”
    “A gift given under false pretenses.” I hold my hand out. “Give it back.”
    “No,” he says. “I don’t want to. The person who gets dumped gets to keep the gifts that were given to him.”
    “I didn’t dump you,” I say.
    “Yes, you did,” he says. “You left me that night.”
    “After I found a list that basically showed you were dating me as a joke? Yes, of course I left.”
    “That wasn’t my list,” he says. “It was the 318s’ list.”
    “Isn’t that kind of one and the same?” I ask. “Like, aren’t you guys all supposed to be together, you know, brotherhood and one for all and all of that?” I roll my eyes so he can see just how stupid and ridiculous I think the whole thing is.
    “I guess,” he says. He pushes his cup back and forth between his fingers, sliding it on the table. Then he looks up at me, and he’s looking right at me, and it’s too intense and so I look away.
    “Whatever,” I say. “You can keep the dumb watch.” I look down at the table and hope he couldn’t hear the catch in my voice because, suddenly, I feel like I want to cry.
    “Thanks,” he says quietly. And then he doesn’t say anything else.
    “So what now?” I ask, blinking back the tears and forcing myself to look at him. “Am I supposed to strip down andflash everyone here or something?” I rack my brain for what I would have written in my notebook about the Spotted Frog, but I’m coming up blank. I haven’t been here enough for it to really deserve a place in my notebook.
    “What did that guy say?” Cooper asks suddenly, ignoring my comment about the flashing. And about what I’m supposed to do next.
    “What guy?” I ask, confused.
    “The one you were dancing with at Cure.”
    “You mean like what did we talk about when we were dancing?”
    “No,” Cooper says. “What did he say when you asked him to dance?”
    “Um, he said, ‘Sure.’” Cooper looks taken aback. “You don’t have to look so shocked, Cooper, not everyone judges people on how much skin they’re showing or how good they look in a bikini.”
    “I don’t judge people on those things.”
    “Is that why you’re hooking up with Isabella Royce?”
    “Isabella Royce?” Cooper sits up straight. “Who told