I Choose Us: Book 2 in the Crossing Midian Series - A Christian Romance

Chapter 10

-Coop-

The next morning when Coop woke up, Lottie was lying close beside him. Not close like she had been the morning after she'd slept in his arms, but close enough for Coop to reach over and brush the stray strands of blonde hair from her face. Closer than before.

Coop sighed. This was getting him nowhere. He needed to get ready for church.

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, letting his hands brace himself on the edge as he glanced around the room.

Coop groaned as he remembered the way he and Lottie had sat for hours on the floor, looking through all their old things and sorting them out. The mess had covered the floor, but now there was no evidence anywhere it had even happened. If it weren't for the boxes, he knew he'd carried into the hallway before they had finally called it a night, he would be sure it had been a dream. Something he had made up in his head while he slept.

Coop looked over his shoulder and took in the sight of Lottie still sleeping. She had one hand raised above her head and the other draped across her stomach. The shoebox lay open on the nightstand and Coop could see the magnet sitting beside it.

He sighed as he wondered why she bothered keeping it. As ready as she was to throw away everything else, why would she choose to keep an old shoebox filled with memories of a life that was clearly over? It wasn't as if their marriage was a broken magnet they could simply super glue back together. It didn't work that way.

Coop shook his head as he reached for his crutches. Maybe a hot shower would help clear his head of all the fog.

***

Coop came back into the bedroom, freshly showered and shaved, to find Lottie sitting in front of the vanity that sat in the corner of their room, putting on her makeup.

She looked up at him through the mirror. "Anna called while you were in the shower," she said. "She wants to know if we want to go out to eat with them after church?"

Coop sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed the silicone liner from the nightstand. "Do you want to?" he asked hesitantly as he rolled it up his bare leg.

Lottie shrugged. "It's been a while since we've all gone out together. I'm okay with it if you are."

Coop looked back over his shoulder and caught her eyes through the mirror. He held her gaze for a moment before nodding. "Sure. Sounds good to me."

"Okay," Lottie said as she stood up. She picked up the dress she had laid out to wear and walked toward the bathroom. "I'm gonna finish getting ready. Can you call Wes and let him know we're going?"

"No problem," Coop agreed. "I'll scramble us a couple eggs before we go, though."

Lottie only nodded before she disappeared into the bathroom.

He grabbed the cordless phone from where Lottie had left it at the foot of the bed and dialed Wesley's number.

While it rang, he picked out a pair of navy blue dress pants from the closet and balanced the phone between his shoulder and ear so he could put them on. Just as he was about to give up, he heard Wesley answer. "Hello?"

"Hey," Coop said, as he walked back to the closet. He picked out a shirt and tossed it over his shoulder to be put on after he cooked, then left the bedroom. "Lottie said Anna mentioned going out to eat after church."

"Yeah, she wants to go to Denny's." Wesley chuckled. "An entire city full of places to eat and she wants Denny's. Are y'all coming?"

Coop grabbed the eggs from the carton in the refrigerator and said, "Apparently."