The Space In Between(52)

“It could be worse.” I smirked.
“How so?”
I opened my mouth to speak and closed it. My shoulders shrugged. “No. You’re right. You’re a terrible person.” Ladasha laughed and nudged me in the arm. She rested her head on my shoulder.
“What are we going to do with our lives?”
I had been wondering the same thing. There was one thing I knew—I didn’t want to stay in this small town anymore. I had outgrown it. And I didn’t want to be far from Ladasha. We needed each other. “Let’s go back to New York.”
Her eyes lit up and she grinned ear to ear. “I’m so glad you said that because I kind of sort of applied to a summer program at New York Film Academy.” I was ecstatic for her! Film was the right road for her to take. It was her everything and I knew she would shine at it. “Eric pushed me to do it last night.”
“Dasha, that’s amazing!”
“That’s not all. I kind of sort of applied for a job at a dance studio in New York. Under your name.” She closed her eyes to avoid seeing my reaction, “I would need a roommate and I couldn’t think of anyone else I would want to live with. Please don’t kill me.”
I didn’t kill her. I hugged her.





THE WEEK FLEW by, and it was two days before the big Christmas party. I was actually pretty excited for it all, surprisingly; it seemed to be shaping up to be a good time. I sat in the coach house with Cooper as he stared at his laptop, going over emails. “Have you seen my cell phone?” he asked. “I swear I hate those damn things. If it’s not physically attached to my body, I lose it.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
His hands ran across his face. I watched him murmur something under his breath before he spoke loud enough for me to hear him. “Shit. My manager said he has been calling me all week. He said it’s urgent. I need to go back to New York for a day to meet with him.”
“Why?” I wondered. It seemed like he was holding back from telling me something, fighting the urge to let me into his head completely.
“I have to take care of some work. Figure out a few issues.”
The sound of his voice was filled with worry, which in turn made me feel extremely troubled. “Coop, is everything all right?”
He bit the tip of his thumb and smiled. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s fine. He didn’t say what the problem was. Kyle overreacts. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He closed his laptop, leaned over, and kissed my nose.
I felt a vibration under me and pulled his cell phone out from the couch cushion before handing it to him. My heart raced as I looked at him with hopeful eyes. “Let me come with you.”


Chapter Thirty-Four

WE SAT ON the airplane, and I was freaking the hell out as I thought of landing in New York City. I didn’t let Andrea know how worried Kyle actually was in his letters. Something was definitely not right, and I needed to find out what was going on as soon as possible.
“Did you bring sunglasses?”
“No, why?” she asked.
Damn. I knew the paparazzi would be waiting at the airport for photos. Kyle had already set it up for them to get their shots of me returning to the city. He said it may be needed down the line.
As we got off of the plane, I slid on my sunglasses. Andrea looked at me with questioning eyes. I took her hand into mine and rushed her out of the airport. There were a ton of people flashing their cameras in our faces. The look of horror on Andrea’s face made me cringe. I felt awful. I quickly pulled her into a taxi and slammed the door behind us.
“What the hell was that?!” she hollered, looking at me, shocked. My head hung low in embarrassment. I felt terrible.
“Welcome to my life.”
We arrived to the hotel, just to be tackled by more paparazzi there, and I raced her inside before any questions could be asked. As we finally made it to the room, I sighed heavily and fell onto the bed. Andrea stood with her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow.
“Cooper. What’s going on? Why are they following you?”
“Iris and I are filing for divorce. Ya know, they love their drama.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, “Oh my gosh. They are going to think I’m the other woman!”She paused before continuing, “How do you get used to that?”
I took off my shoes as she joined me on the bed. “You don’t.” I needed to warn her if she came across the paparazzi when I wasn’t around. “Andie…those people. They have a way of knowing things about us. Things we don’t know about ourselves. And they lie. It’s their f*cking jobs to lie. Just…don’t feed into any of it if you cross paths with them.” She nodded with understanding, but I knew it wasn’t something she could understand without experiencing it firsthand.
“When do you meet with your manager?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She removed her shoes, and climbed behind me, and started giving me a back massage. My eyes closed with satisfaction as her fingers rubbed me down.
“We should go to a world where there is no drama. No death. No cheating. No divorce. No one else but us. Back to where we started,” she said as she lightly kissed my earlobe. A slight moan escaped my mouth.
“Back to our space in between,” I agreed.
“Back to us.”
I turned towards her and rotated her body on top of mine. I brought her face close to mine and studied her beauty. She wasn’t the same girl I’d met that one Friday night. That girl was hardly there. But today, Andrea was staring back at me, her eyes sparkling. Her light had been found. My lips ran across hers and she slightly parted her mouth, before pulling back. Raising an eyebrow, I asked her what was wrong.