She was sitting at her kitchen table surrounded by the constant presence of fresh cut flowers—azaleas today—when she realized she has Coop to thank for her life ending up how it did. It's Coop's fault that she found Luce, Coop's fault that she found the one person she loved more than she'd ever imagined she possibly could, Coop's fault that she'd been proven drastically wrong in her philosophy on love, and she'd never been so happy to be proven wrong.
Rachel had just started her years at university when she met Coop. He wasn't entirely as charming and debonair as he became over the years she knew him, still a bit gangly in his late teenage years, but charming and suave nonetheless. She had been sitting in the library, working fervently on a research paper for a class that she couldn't even remember now, convinced in her academic naiveté that how well she wrote this paper would determine her entire future career in anything related to the English language, when a tousled looking blonde boy her age dropped his bag down on her table and smiled roguishly at her, straddling a chair across the table.
He had, as was his nature, asked her out, and hadn't given up for weeks, despite every time she turned him down. It wasn't until she finally, somehow—she still didn't know how— proved to him that she wasn't going to sleep with him that she started enjoying hanging around with him. For all his perverted humor and nymphomania, he was a good guy and a good friend, and when he dragged her out of the library one Friday evening to a party at a friend's flat, she met Heck.
Looking back, she isn't surprised to realize that her first contact with Heck was so different from her first sighting of Luce. She saw Heck talking to Coop, his casually neat dark hair and wiry build contrasting sharply with Coop's tousled blond locks and obsessively sculpted physique, and her immediate assumption was that he was just like Coop—a slimmer, neater version of the blonde lothario. Begrudgingly she allowed herself to be introduced, and was unable to contain her surprise when she found that Coop's best mate was his polar opposite. Before she knew it, as the days melted into one another through her years at university, she, Heck, and Coop became a sort of unholy trinity, the trio that everyone loved to hate, partying hard at night and studying harder during the day, always at the top of the class and always at the center of attention at any party.
She remembers distinctly their first kiss. It was towards the end of their time at school, wrapping up classes and bumming around the school like they owned it. She had dragged the boys out on a Saturday night, even after they'd sworn that morning to never drink again after their impressive shenanigans at the pub the previous night. They were watching a football match at the same pub, a collection of beer bottles around them, and she and Heck were sloppy-happy drunk because their team was winning. Coop was sulking in his own beer, annoyed because his team was losing, and eventually diverted his attentions to the nearest pretty face, leaving Rachel and Heck to their devices. The match had ended with their team on top, and for some reason they were jumping around like maniacs to celebrate, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world for her to kiss him, and the most comfortable thing in the world for him to kiss her back.
They had endured weeks of teasing from Coop as they moved from friends to lovers; Heck had liked to joke that having survived that so early in their relationship had guaranteed said relationship's survival through any other trials. Their unholy trinity somehow stayed together, and relatively unchanged, as they shifted from being students to functioning members of society. The years following were a blur of contentment for Rachel, the three of them finding success in their respective realms of business like they hadn't imagined. Few things stuck out as extraordinary, because everything was going wonderfully. Heck proposed, and life was on its natural course of happiness.
Then she hit the aisle, and just happened to look to her left, and everything turned upside down. It wasn't like seeing Heck for the first time. She felt like someone had kicked her in the chest, stealing all the air out of her lungs and replacing it with a big muddy footprint on her pristine white dress. Even from twenty feet away she felt a surge of electricity between them, electricity she'd always been absolutely positive was confined the romance novels and bad poetry. But it had been there, too amazing and too painful and too there to ignore, no matter how hard she'd tried to brush it off in the following months.
When it all came apart, coming down to her clambering on top of her father's car to imagine her mouth was a cathedral she had to fill with sound, screaming her heart out across a traffic jam in desperate hopes that Luce would just hear her and come back, it had felt like it did with Heck. It felt comfortable, like when she'd been talking about looking into someone's eyes and seeing their soul. She was pouring her own soul out, knowing that Luce had already seen it but shoving it in her face anyways, along with her heart, in hopes of acceptance, and staring down Luce to see if there was just a shimmer of hope that they might work, and despite all the adrenaline and the crying and the pressure and the fear, it felt right. Like the first time she kissed Heck, and the first time she realized she loved him.
And that brought her to now, sitting at her kitchen table, surrounded by floral well-wishings for financial security and waiting for Luce to wake up, and she felt the sudden urge to call Coop up and promise him her firstborn son. Not that she would be having a son anytime soon, but that was beside the point. She fidgeted with the diamond ring hanging from a gold chain around her neck, the engagement ring Heck had proposed with that she refused to give up. She'd never stopped loving him, not really, but ordinary love could never hope to compete with the earth-shattering connection she felt with Luce. When she'd finally worked up the courage, she had sent him an email, after everything had quieted down, and was shocked to get a prompt reply from halfway across the globe where he was taking notes for his book and apparently shacked up in a luxury suite with the most charming young lady he'd met on the flight. That was two years ago, and neither she nor Coop had seen him since, as he hadn't exactly returned to jolly old England yet, instead staying joined at the hip with the most charming young lady (whose name was apparently Marie).
Every now and again, she and Coop would meet up for drinks, and eventually, after a few too many beers, both would admit to missing him. Neither would take it seriously, Coop mocking her about making the wrong choice—in the most brotherly and loving way possible—and her mocking him about missing his best mate so much. Then she would stumble home to the apartment she shared with Luce and fall into bed with her. Sometimes she would cry on Luce's shoulder about hurting so many people, about her guilt, and then she would cry because she was hurting Luce by expressing regrets. Sometimes she would jump Luce the moment she walked in the door, dragging her into bed and not letting her out until neither had the energy to go anywhere. Sometimes she would lie awake the rest of the night, legs intertwined with Luce's, arms wrapped possessively around the florist's stomach, pulling the other woman's back against her chest, breathing in the scent of her shampoo, and she would wonder what would have happened if she hadn't dropped her ring in the punch at her wedding, if she had looked right instead of left.
She started slightly, hearing the water starting to run in the bathroom, and mumbled a curse when she sloshed the remnants of her tea on the kitchen table. Luce was up, stumbling into the bathroom for her morning shower like she did every day. The other woman was far from a morning person, capable only of faint smiles and monosyllabic answers until after a shower and enough caffeine to power a nuclear submarine.
Taking a deep breath, she stood from the table, automatically taking her cup, now empty of the tea she'd been sipping for two hours, and deposited it in the sink, reaching blindly with one hand to the cupboard to her left and pulling out two plates, eyes roaming around the kitchen counter for a towel. She bobbed her head in time with the music Luce had put on, wafting out through the flat; without really thinking about it, she sang along quietly and off-key.
By the time Luce made it to the kitchen, a fresh pot of coffee had brewed and Rachel was halfway through cooking an omelet. Luce paused on her way to the coffeemaker, a hand on Rachel's hip as she brushed a kiss against her cheek and murmured "Morning, beautiful" in her ear. Rachel craned her head around to kiss her properly, hands not leaving her cooking.
Heck had always made breakfast when they were together. He couldn't cook real food, but the man could scramble eggs and make pancakes like no one's business; she had needed weeks to grow accustomed to the fact that if she didn't get up first and make breakfast, she would have to make do with the cold cereal or bagels that Luce had always eaten for breakfast.
Luce didn't make breakfast, but Heck didn't deliver flowers to her at work for no reason except to see her. Luce wasn't as loved by her mother, but for all the comfort she felt with Heck, he didn't make her heart flutter when he walked in the door, not more than a few months after they started dating. Luce couldn't give her the daughter she'd always dreamed of, but she loved Rachel with more passion and fire than Rachel had ever thought possible.
Luce wasn't Heck, and Heck could never give Rachel what she hadn't known she needed until she met Luce. As she slid the finished omelet onto a plate and handed it to Luce, Rachel smiled quietly to herself. She would always love Heck, and she would always miss him in some small part of her heart. But that didn't matter, because the life she was building with Luce outranked all the comfort and charming smiles and football matches she'd ever had with Heck.
Cracking two more eggs into the bowl, Rachel's smile widened, and she resolved to call Coop today and take him out to lunch.