“Can I ask y’all a question?” I kept my voice barely above a whisper as I started to help them with their sandbags.
“Anything,” Cooper answered.
“As many questions as you want,” Nolan added.
Okay.
Time to take a trip down memory lane.
Bad memory lane.
“I didn’t ever ask why y’all were trying to steal those SAT answers in the first place.” I looked from Cooper to Nolan and back again. “All through high school, you both told me you didn’t have any interest in college, so... why?”
They looked at each other, and Cooper cleared his throat. “Because we were idiots,” he said, his voice a little more gruff than usual.
Nolan simply nodded and kept his head down as he continued to work.
“But...” I sighed, shaking my head. “There has to be more to it. First of all, you aren’t idiots. Neither of you. Second, I can’t imagine you decided to steal those test papers on impulse for fun. There had to be some kind of reason behind it. But I can’t fathom it.”
They exchanged another knowing look. “Just tell her,” Nolan said.
Cooper inhaled a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he nodded. “Fine. I’ll tell.” He looked at me again and gave me a wry smile. “You’re too smart for your own good sometimes.”
“Doesn’t usually seem that way.” I waited a moment, then nudged him. “Come on, Cooper. Please tell me.”
“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up in surrender. “You’re right that we weren’t interested in going to college. We wanted to work on ranches. The stuff we needed to know wasn’t taught in school. And so we messed around too much all through school. We passed all of our classes, but we didn’t get the best of grades—that won’t come as a surprise to you or anyone else.”
He was right about that. They were both smart guys and always had been brighter than most people gave them credit for. But good, straight-A students?
Not so much.
They always managed to do enough to coast by, though, and I helped them out whenever possible. In the end, they always knew they’d work on Cooper’s ranch together. That was their dream, and our high school curriculum didn’t do much to prepare them for the day-in, day-out practicalities of that life.
Because of that, they just weren’t interested.
Their future was there in Georgia, and mine was far away in L.A., which was why I always made sure to bust my ass and make good grades so I could follow my dreams and get into design school in Atlanta after we graduated.
“Go on,” I nodded, pushing my other thoughts aside. “You still haven’t explained anything new to me.”
“Well...” Cooper hung his head and chuckled to himself. “Damn, this is gonna sound stupid now, but I swear it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Nolan grunted. “Jesus, just tell her, Coop.” He looked from Cooper to me. “We did it because we wanted to be with you. End of story.”
I blinked.
That didn’t sound like the end of the story. Not a very satisfying end, anyway, since I still had a ton of unanswered questions—even more than before.
“I don’t understand.” I tried to work out how in the world cheating on their SATs would’ve meant us staying together.
“That’s because Nolan sucks at explaining shit,” Cooper said, giving his friend a healthy dose of side-eye. “But I’ll admit that is the gist of it. We had a fantasy about achieving good scores on the SAT, and getting a scholarship to your college in Atlanta. We would’ve ended up with some bullshit degree, but at least we would have had four more years together with you. And by then...”
“You would’ve been too much in love to resist a life with choosing us,” Nolan grinned. “That was what we were hoping for, anyway.”
I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again as a wave of emotion hit me. Yes, it had been a harebrained idea to cheat on the SAT, but they’d done it for me. To be with me.
Then, when they’d gotten caught, and I’d been caught up in it with them, they hadn’t been able to tell the truth because of me.
God, they might have been the ones with a bad idea, but I had truly been the idiot. It hurt my heart to weigh up all the time—all the years—I’d wasted being hurt and angry with them, and all because I never took the time to ask or to understand why any of it had happened.
They both watched me, waiting for me to say something, but I feared I might start crying if I dared to open my mouth again.
So instead, I pulled both of them into a hug. A long, tight hug that didn’t even begin to convey how sorry I was for cutting them out of my life all those years ago.