Sense of Place

by N. R. Walker

“He puts the hours in,” I told her.

  “Cooper told me about your father,” she said with a kind smile. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Thanks. And I’m sorry Cooper had to leave Philly early,” I said. “He worked hard on that project.”

  “And it showed,” she said with a nod. “It was his work on that project that got him seen by Xavier, here,” she said, including him in our conversation.

  Cooper came back with two drinks and handed me one. He smiled and again slid his arm around my waist.

  He wasn’t being possessive. He was just showing Xavier, who quite possibly fancied him, that he was with me. Well, maybe just a little possessive.

  And while we talked, and mingled with his co-workers and with Xavier, it wasn’t lost on me that he’d not told any of them about me. Well, he’d told them about a ‘Tom’ but not who I was exactly. I was a little put out at first, thinking maybe he didn’t want them to know he was dating a man twice his age. But then it occurred to me that it was me who had insisted he work for Arlington so people wouldn’t mistake his talent for my reputation.

  So as much as I didn’t really like it, I had no right to complain.

  For most of the night, Cooper was with me. He either had his arm around my waist, or his hand on my back, my ass or my arm. But when Cooper got chatting with Ben, Skye and Tyson, it left me alone with Xavier.

  “He’s very talented,” Xavier said. He was looking over at Cooper, smiling as he sipped his drink. “I’ve worked with him a lot over these last few weeks, and he has a gift.”

  “He does.”

  “I just think it’s funny that in all that time, talking about architecture the way he does, he never mentioned you.”

  “He’s professional,” I agreed lightly.

  Xavier nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have pictured him to like older men,” he said casually. “Just with how vibrant he is, he has so much energy. Thought he’d be with someone his own age, that’s all.”

  The little fucking punk was giving me attitude! Implying he knew Cooper better than me and that Cooper would be better off with someone his own age. So I smiled at him. “Maybe he should be, maybe not. I’m sure there’s a lot you don’t know about him. One thing I will say, though, with all due respect”—which was minimal, I thought to myself—“is that what Cooper does outside of your project isn’t really your concern.”

  With that, I said, “Excuse me. It was nice meeting you,” and I left him there, and walked over to where Cooper was. I very deliberately slid my hand over his ass, so Xavier could see it, and offered to buy the next round of drinks.

  By the time I got back from the bar, Xavier was in my place. There was no doubt—he wanted Cooper. He was also a pompous little brat. When the group had decided they were headed to a nightclub, Louisa put up her hands and gracefully declined their offer.

  “You’ll come out with us, won’t you, Cooper?” Xavier asked loudly, so everyone could hear. “You’re not ready to call it a night yet, are you?”

  Cooper’s eyes darted to mine and I shrugged. “You can go,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed briefly at me, then he turned to Xavier. “No, I won’t. Thanks for the offer, but I have an early start tomorrow. I have your project details to finalize.”

  “But it’s the weekend!” Xavier said as though it was a foreign concept, and I wondered whether he’d ever worked a weekend in his life.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Cooper said with a smile, though it was hardly genuine. He glanced at me again, and it took me a second to recognise the look on his face. I’d never seen it before. Well, I’d seen it, but it was never directed at me.

  Cooper was pissed off at me.

  He announced that he should be going, did the rounds of smiling goodbyes, shook hands with Xavier and told him he’d see him Monday, and without our usual conversation, we went home.

  By the time we walked through the door and I’d pulled off my tie and shoes, Cooper was quiet, his anger was just bubbling under the surface. I had no idea what he was angry about, what I’d done wrong, but I knew with Cooper it would only be a matter of time before he told me.

  I asked him if he wanted a coffee as I set the machine and got two cups from the cupboard. His silence was unnerving. Cooper was never silent. So I figured I’d throw it out there. “Xavier is impressed by you. Though I didn’t realise he was gay.”

  “Does that matter?” Cooper asked.

  “Well, no,” I replied. “Of course not.” Then I shrugged.

  “Then why bring it up?”

  “Just that you never mentioned it.”

  “Because it’s not important,” he said curtly. “You should know that, Tom.”

  “I do know that, Cooper,” I said calmly. “But he basically told me he thought you should be with someone like him, not me.”

  “He said that?”

  “Not exactly,” I conceded. “But he alluded to it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Just smiled at him, told him maybe you should. But that it was none of his business, and that’s when I walked over to you.”

  “You said maybe I was better off with someone like him?” he asked like he couldn’t believe it.

  “I did tell him, very diplomatically, that who you’re with doesn’t affect how you do your job. But apart from that, what was I supposed to say?” I asked. “I’m just not sure how I feel about people like that.”

  “Feel about what?” Cooper asked incredulously. “What is there to feel about it?”

  “I don’t know…jealousy. Insecurity. Self-doubt.”

  Cooper’s mouth fell open. “Who? You?”

  “Yes, me!” I replied. “He’d be perfect for you! He’s brilliant, successful…younger.”

  Cooper groaned. “I don’t want him! I’ve never even thought of him like that! He’s an immature little brat whose daddy has handed him everything. And stop with the ‘I’m too old for you’ bullshit, okay? Because I’m sick of fucking hearing about it.”

  His outburst surprised me. “Okay,” I said.

  “Jesus, Tom,” he went on to say. “Your whole ‘I’ll set you free if it’s what you want’ mindset drives me insane! It’s so noble of you,” he added sarcastically.

  I’d obviously touched a nerve. “Well, it’s true. I love you enough to not stand in your way.”

  Cooper rolled his eyes and groaned loudly again. “That right there! Some people might find that sweet, Tom, but you know what? It pisses me off!”

  “Jesus Christ, Cooper,” I said back to him. “I will never win with you! What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “I want you to get all pissy,” he shot back at me. “I want you to show some asshole who might hit on me that I fucking belong to you, that’s what. When the likes of Xavier tell you they think I should be with them instead, I want you to tell them to back the fuck off. I want you to tell them I am yours. Tell them you’re the one I go home with, you’re the one I want.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I want you to show some emotion. I don’t want you to act like if I did leave with someone else that you wouldn’t give a shit. It’s not that hard, Tom.”

  “Wouldn’t give a shit?” I asked. “It would kill me, Cooper. Do you think by my wanting the best for you, if that means you moving on, that it wouldn’t fucking kill me? Jesus Cooper, you’re it for me. I want everything with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you—I’d fucking marry you, Cooper, in a fucking heartbeat. I want you to have it all, so how could I ever stand in your way?”

  Cooper’s mouth fell open and he slowly raised his hands so he could rub his forehead. “For the love of fucking God, Tom, please don’t tell me that was a proposal. Because fuck, that was the most woeful excuse for a marriage proposal ever.”

  I exhaled in a rush. The argument in me was gone. “No, it wasn’t. But I would marry you. And I do know you love me, that’s not what I’m insecure about,” I said. “I just want you to have everything. I don’t want you t
o choose anyone else, and it scares the shit out of me that one day you will.” I ran my hands through my hair. “To be honest, Cooper, I’m not even sure I know what we’re arguing about.”

  Cooper sighed and walked over to me. He fisted my shirt at my stomach. “We’re not arguing. It’s just when someone basically tells you they want me, it’d be nice if you acted like you cared.”

  I cupped his face. “I care, so fucking much,” I said before I kissed him. “Don’t ever think I don’t care. It’s just the likes of Xavier don’t deserve the reaction. He’s your first contract client, and as much as I’d have liked to tell him to fuck off, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize your work.”

  “Ugh,” Cooper groaned, and leaned his forehead on my collarbone.

  This whole outburst was just so not Cooper. I rubbed his back. “Now would you like to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  He lifted his face, and his eyes flickered with doubt. It wasn’t something I saw very often. He frowned. “I know he likes me, I’m not stupid.”

  “So?”

  “So what if he only picked my proposal because he thought he could have me with it?”

  “Oh, Cooper, sweetheart,” I said softly, running my hand down his face. “He picked yours because it was the best.”

  Cooper huffed. “The guy doesn’t even know his left from his right.”

  I smiled. “He’s a Baurhenn. His family has been in the real estate development field for decades. So his parents or grandparents might hold the purse strings, and he might not know the technical terms, but he knows good architecture when he sees it.”

  “I just thought, when he was trying to get me to go out with him, that that’s all he wanted me for,” Cooper said quietly. “That it wasn’t my work. I put hours into that project.”

  I shook my head. “Have you got a copy of your project blueprints here?”

  “On my laptop,” he said with a nod. “Why?”

  “Can you open it for me?” I asked. “I want to show you something. Just give me a sec.”

  I walked back out to the living room with a rolled set of blueprints that had yellowed with age.

  Cooper was waiting for the CAD programme to load on his laptop, and when his familiar plans came up on screen, he pushed his laptop out for me to look. That was when he noticed the old plans in my hand. “What are those?”

  “These are the blueprints to my first ever contract job,” I said, then I pointed to the laptop screen, “just like yours.”

  His eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I look at them?”

  “Please do,” I said, unrolling the delicate paper. “I want you to look at them. Actually, I want you to tell me what you see.”

  Cooper almost frowned, and as I laid the plans flat on the table, I used the corner of his laptop as a paperweight and held the other side with my hand. Cooper stood right up close to me and put his hand on my hip as his eyes scanned over the old plans.

  “These are incredible.”

  “Well, no,” I added. “Not compared to what I’ve done since, but these were my first project plans. Simple, residential, but mine.”

  Cooper traced his finger over the lines on the paper down to the bottom right-hand corner. He read the words out loud, almost reverently. “Drawn by Thomas Elkin. July thirtieth, 1991.” He looked at me and sighed. “That was the year I was born.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Don’t rub it in.”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I mean, I think that’s significant, don’t you?”

  Oh.

  “Oh, um…” I paused. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.” I smiled at the sentiment. “I actually wanted you to look at both of these plans, my very first, and yours, and tell me what you see.”

  There were huge differences between the two. Not that one was computer-generated on a laptop screen, and the other was a twenty-two-year-old, hand-drawn lithograph plan. The difference was in the complexity, in the inventiveness. Cooper’s plans were intricate, almost genius. And mine…were not.

  Cooper saw it, he knew exactly what I meant. “Of course they’re different. Technology from then to now is like night to day, Tom. Legal requirements, regulations, energy, it’s all so different. So while the plans look a world apart, they’re not really. Yours was a residential, mine’s a commercial-residential.”

  He was trying to justify why his looked so new and grand, and mine looked pale in comparison. I chuckled at him and ran my hand up over his back. “Cooper, sweetheart, you want to know why yours is so much better than mine?”

  He looked at me, but said nothing, waiting for me to continue.

  So I told him. “Because it is better than mine.”

  Cooper shook his head. “That’s like comparing a computer from 1991 to a computer released today. You just can’t.”

  “Look at them,” I said to him again. “The fundamentals are the same, yes. But see this?” I asked, pointing to the laptop screen. “See how you’ve used this space? See how you’ve used the positive flow you’ve created through the commercial floor area, and then the functionality of the apartments above it? How you’ve used the energy created by venting the window cavities to source the internal air flow…” I shook my head. “Cooper, I don’t think you understand just how talented you are.”

  He stared at me, and bit the inside of his lip. Then he shook his head.

  “Cooper,” I whispered. “You have more natural talent for this than I could have dreamed of at your age.”

  Still biting his lip, he still had disbelief in his eyes. “Really?”

  I gave him a smile and a kiss on the cheek. “Yes, really. So don’t let clients like Xavier bother you too much. There will always be clients who grate on you.”

  “I have to work with him pretty closely on this for the next few months.”

  “So you be your professional self, and if he’s still inappropriate towards you, go over his head. Ask Laura to speak to his supervisor, or his father, or whoever.” Then I smiled. “And failing all of that, tell him young and successful isn’t your thing. Tell him you like greying hair and sagging ass.”

  Cooper smiled and even managed a bit of a laugh, and he ran his hand over the curve of my ass and gave it a squeeze. “Greying hair, yes. Sagging ass, no.”

  Then he looked back over my paper blueprints and sighed. “I love these plans. I can’t believe you don’t have them framed or something.”

  I shrugged. “They’ve been up the top of the robe in Ryan’s room. Who knows?” I said. “Maybe one day I will.”

  Cooper looked into my eyes, and shook his head as though he couldn’t believe something. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Know exactly what to say,” he said. “Like showing me these.” He waved his hand at the plans on the table. “Knowing it was exactly what I needed to hear.” He smiled and sighed contentedly. He even leaned against me as he kept his gaze on the plans. But then he said, “And then you can completely balls something up as important as a move-in-with-me speech, or a marry-me speech.”

  I could have argued the whole point, that it technically wasn’t a proposal, but with Cooper there was no point in arguing. In fact, I was just happy he hadn’t freaked out when I’d even mentioned getting married. So instead of arguing, I playfully growled and pretended to bite his neck.

  “Come on,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me down the hallway.

  “What about the plans?”

  “Leave them,” he said. “You might not be able to show that dickhead Xavier that I belong to you, but you can damn well show me.”

  * * * *

  Monday morning at work was interesting, to say the least. We had our usual senior staff meeting, and all the usual things were discussed—portfolios, budgets, projections and schedules.

  Robert never looked at me, or even spoke to me, until we were walking out of the conference room.

&nbs
p; “Nice photo in yesterday’s paper,” he said coolly.

  I, of course, had no clue what he was talking about, but I replied with a cheery, “Thanks.” And as soon as I was in my office, I Googled New York Times and there on page six of the social pages were me, Cooper, and of all people, Xavier Baurhenn leaving the bar we were at on Friday night. I hadn’t even known Xavier had left the same time as us.

  But it was the story with the photo that made me both smile and cringe.

  Esteemed architect Thomas Elkin and his boyfriend, Cooper Jones, and development heir Xavier Baurhenn, was written underneath the photograph. But the story itself read, Thomas Elkin looks like the responsible dad driving the kids home after a night out, but he is in fact the live-in boyfriend of the much younger up-and-coming architect Cooper Jones.

  The article about us stopped at that, and went on to talk about who else was seen out and about.

  I picked up my phone and dialled Cooper’s number. He answered the call with, “Look, I’ve already told you, I like my men with grey hair and a saggy ass.”

  I snorted into the phone. “Just as well.”

  “I only left you a mere two hours ago,” he said brightly. “I know I’m amazing, but surely you don’t miss me that much.”

  I sighed into the phone. He really was incorrigible. “Have you seen page eighty-seven of yesterday’s New York Times? Well, page six of the social pages.”

  “No,” he replied. “We didn’t leave the apartment yesterday. Actually, we barely left the bedroom, remember?”

  “Did you want to look it up online?” I asked a little impatiently.

  “I already am,” he answered, just as impatiently. “Holy shit!”

  He’d just seen the picture, obviously. “That’s what I thought.”

  “I didn’t even see anyone with a camera when we left,” he said.

  “Neither did I.” Then I said, “What the freakin’ hell are we doing in the social pages?”

  “Well, I’m awesome, and you’re hot,” he replied casually. “What’s not to love? Well at any rate, I think it’s fantastic!” he cried. “The old and the new in New York.”

  “I’m being serious!” I cried. “It’s ludicrous.”