When former beauty pageant queen, Ellie Wilde, hears of her grandmother's sickness, she's the first to offer to drive her to her chemotherapy. What she didn't know she was agreeing to was an obnoxiously cheerful blond boy somehow nudging his way int...
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Ellie tries not to laugh through her hand as she watches the look of disgust that takes over Cooper's face when he takes a sip from her coffee. She grabs it back gently before bringing it up to her lips and letting the warmth of the liquid travel down her own throat.
"God. Maybe it's just the hospital's coffee. It tastes like someone went outside, grabbed a pile of dirt, and added it to a cup with some hot water. That can't be coffee. People can't seriously like that," Cooper complains.
She shakes her head as a teasing smile tugs at her lips. "This is coffee, my friend. Some people's taste buds just aren't sophisticated enough to handle it I guess."
He leans back in his seat as a grin spreads across his face. Pulling his knees up onto the seat and wrapping his arms around them for stability, he turns to face her once more. "If my taste buds don't enjoy dirt, I don't mind the idea of being unsophisticated. Sophisticated taste buds also like fish semen and snails. So I'll pass. I'm cool being a commoner."
"Suit yourself," she says, raising her eyebrows before going in for another sip of her sophisticated dirt.
"Hey, El. I've been meaning to ask you something," Cooper says quietly after a long moment of silence.
She glances over at him to see his head resting back along the wall, his now-brown locks falling slightly to his right as he tilts his head in her direction. Taking note of the dark circles under his eyes, she hesitantly asks, "Okay. What's up?"
"Why haven't I met your friends?"
Ellie's lips pull down into an embarrassed frown. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you know. You've met my friends. A couple times actually. Why haven't I met yours?"
She looks down at her hands that sit wrapped around her cup of coffee, hoping and wishing that she could somehow disappear from this moment and be somewhere else, anywhere else. Biting the inside of her cheek, she looks over to Cooper. "I don't have any friends."
His eyebrows furrow in confusion as he stares back at her, his gaze unwavering. Though even through his firm stare, she can see there's no judgment. Just the need for her to further elaborate, but still she says nothing.
"What do you mean you don't have any friends?" Cooper asks, an even softer edge to his already soft voice.
"I mean that I don't have any friends."
"Everyone has friends. You've got to have at least one."
She shakes her head slowly. "Not really. I used to have friends, back in high school. But then I realized I didn't like them, so I stopped hanging out with them. At my community college, I'm never around long enough to really meet anyone. I go to class and go home. I have friends I've met online though."
"Friends you've met online?" He asks, shifting in his seat just the slightest bit so he can look at her more comfortably.
"Yeah. People I've met online who have similar interests to me. They're all really great but we're scattered across the globe. My closest internet friend lives in Las Vegas, which is a seventeen-hour drive from here."
