The Lake Season ◆ 41
Iris shook her head emphatically. For all her long-distance, one-sided conversations about soil and fertilizer, couldn’t her mother have thought to mention that? Trish snorted. “Well, I guess he knows you’re back in town.” “That’s one way of putting it. What’s he doing back here anyway? Last I heard he’d moved out to Colorado after high school.” “He’s been back for about a year now. Runs a restoration business, preserving local buildings and that sort of thing. He comes in sometimes for a coffee. And he looks pretty damn good.” Iris couldn’t disagree. Unlike Cooper and Leah, Iris had been one of those kids who was friends with everyone and with no one in particular at the same time. The kind of girl who was pretty enough and smart enough. But also quiet enough to be overlooked, certainly by the group that Cooper hung out with. Cooper was one of those enigmatic kids who was charming enough to smooth the disapproval from even the strictest teachers’ foreheads when he made excuses for lost homework, but also nice enough to tell the other lacrosse players to lay off the freshmen, whom they routinely shoved into lockers. Iris could remember one incident when Cooper had whispered her name in chemistry class, asking to borrow a pencil. She’d been stunned that he knew her name. But Cooper dated the popular girls. Girls who roared up to keg parties in their Jeep Wranglers, a bevy of backup blondes packed in the backseat. Not red-faced girls who stupidly surrendered their only pencil and spent the rest of class gawking at the back of his head. Trish grinned wickedly. “Maybe we’ve found you a date for Leah’s wedding after all.” “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I’m still married, remember?” “A technicality. What’s a spin on the dance floor, even if it is twenty years late?” On her way out the door, with a loaf of warm sourdough bread tucked under her arm, Iris gazed over her shoulder. Trish