Chapter 6

Cooper and Maxie were lying comfortably on her bed. Maxie had her head resting on Coopers shoulder as they watched another episode of Greys Anatomy since it was Thursday night. Cooper had been working at the Metro Court for almost a week and he and Maxie had already decided on a place they could meet without being caught, it was a suite that nobody ever used. Cooper smiled slightly as he remembered the conversation he and Maxie had his first day of work…

"Mr. Jax told me to keep the personal stuff out of the workplace."

"I'm just testing your concentration."

"You realize that every square inch of this place is going to be covered by surveillance cameras once they're installed?"

"Well, maybe we could break the rules and find a few secret places to meet."

"You always have a plan, don't you?"

"You provide excellent motivation, Cooper Barrett."

They had flirted back and forth all week avoiding the one subject that was Inevitable---him finding another place to live.

"If I had to work with a woman like that it would drive me insane," Maxie said referring to the resident that was taking Bailey's place.

"Why?" Cooper asked.

"Because, there is happy and then there's obnoxiously happy, that's obnoxiously happy,"

"Okay but that still doesn't explain how it would drive you insane,"

"Well as you have seen this week I'm not the perkiest person in the morning plus, I've had teachers like her before," Maxie explained.

"Well, I personally think your morning crankiness is cute, now what teachers have you had like that?"

Maxie smiled at the crankiness comment.

"My sophomore year at PC high, Ms. Crostone she was the social studies teacher and I ended up having her first period. She was obnoxiously happy and in the morning all I usually wanted to do was go home and stay in bed until at least nine o'clock,"

Cooper laughed.

"What's that?" Cooper asked seeing something on the floor next to the nightstand.

"I think it's one of the photo albums me and my friends put together," Maxie said picking it up.

"When was this?" Cooper asked referring to a picture of Maxie in a white dress with rhinestones on it.

"That was eighth grade formal; you wouldn't believe how much time it took for all of us to get ready for that,"

"How long?"

"Three hours, it might have not taken so much time if we hadn't talked so much, we always had a tendency to do that, talk instead of doing what we were supposed to be doing,"

Cooper laughed.

"So how did the dance go?"

"It was like all the other junior high dances we'd had, somebody did something they shouldn't have and somebody ended up getting their heart broken. The only difference was we all dressed nicer," Maxie said resisting the urge to cringe as she remembered the junior high dances she'd gone to.

"Which side of it were you on?"

"You mean was I the one that got my heart broken? Well in seventh grade yeah but after that I pretty much steered clear of the school dances,"

"Why did you go to the formal then?" Cooper asked.

"I thought it would be different, it was stupid but when we first started going to the mall together all the time we would look at the prom dresses and fantasize about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to wear for prom,"

"It doesn't sound stupid to me, what did you want to do for prom?" Cooper asked looking at Maxie.

"Well, I had decided early on I wanted the dress to be strapless and then the three of us decided we wanted to get our hair done professionally because we always thought we could never get our hair to look right, we also had decided we wanted to get our nails done," Maxie explained.

"Did you get any of it?"

"I got two out of the three, I got my hair done and I got the strapless dress,"

Cooper just smiled and they flipped through the album some more.

"Who's this?" Cooper asked seeing a picture of a little girl that looked to be the age of six.

"That's my cousin BJ; she died in a bus accident when I was six." Maxie explained.

Cooper stayed quiet because he knew Maxie had more to say.

"That's not all that happened though, at the time of the bus accident I was sick and needed a heart transplant and since BJ died in the crash there was a chance she could've been a match since we were related. She ended up being a match," Maxie said feeling a tear roll down her cheek.

Cooper gently brushed the tear away.

"Are you okay now?" Cooper asked concern etched in his voice.

"Pretty much yeah, I had some problems the summer before last when I came back to Port Charles for high school graduation but that's a different story,"

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I don't know, I guess I didn't see a need to at the time,"

Cooper nodded.

Without saying, a word Cooper and Maxie moved toward each other and their lips slowly connected. At first, the kiss was gentle but soon became more passionate. Maxie slowly wrapped her arms around Coopers neck. When they finally pulled away, they just looked at each other for a second.

"We should go to bed," Cooper said after a few seconds.

"Okay," Maxie said not taking her eyes off Cooper as she climbed into bed.

After a few minutes they were settled in but neither of them slept, they just stayed awake thinking about the kiss they had just shared.