“Rome, come on, dude. You’re gonna wake your momma up, and she needs her rest, buddy.” The sound of Cooper’s voice draws me from a peaceful sleep, and I slowly crack my eyes open. I’m still on the couch, with a pillow now under my head and the same blanket covering me. Through half shut eyes, I see Cooper laying on his side in front of some blow up structure that Rome is currently sitting inside. It’s filled with those plastic pit balls, and my sweet boy is tossing them everywhere he can manage while giggling loudly.
Covering my mouth with my hand, I pull the blanket up over most of my face so I can sneakily watch the two of them while also feigning being asleep. Cooper keeps trying to wrangle all the balls to one location, but he’s never met my child before when he’s got fistfuls of weapons. Cooper lays down on his back and reaches for a ball that rolled away, but Rome takes advantage and begins pelting Cooper in the face. Cooper is sadly at the mercy of my son as he goes all MLB pitcher on this poor man.
My façade is blown almost immediately when I begin snort laughing under the blanket, and both of my guys turn to see me awake. Wait, my guys? No way, Jacobs. Shut that down immediately.
“Mama!” Rome shouts, and he crawls out of his mini ball pit and comes hauling for me. Reaching over the edge of the couch, I lift him in the air and roll to my back, settling him on my lap.
“Hi, bub. Were you being mean to poor Cooper?”
“Poopa.”
Giggling, I try to keep a straight face when both myself and Coop discover he’s learned the full version of his newfound name. “No, baby. It’s Cooper. Coooper.”
“Cooopoop.”
“You’re making it worse, Mama. Knock it off. I’m Pooper March. I can learn to live with it.” Laughing even harder, Pooper drops down onto the couch next to me and tickles Rome’s belly, causing him to shriek with laughter. “Besides, he’ll eventually learn to say it right.”
“You better hope anyway,” I tease, and he feigns hurt.
“Well, now that you’re up, I’m gonna go order us a pizza for dinner. You must be starving, huh?”
“Wait, what? Dinner? I fell asleep at like ten, didn’t I?”
“Yes, ma’am. You did. It’s almost six in the evening, and while I was able to make Rome some macaroni and cheese for lunch, I don’t have anything kid friendly for dinner. We’ll have to go grocery shopping tomorrow.”
With Rome in my lap, I sit up and look at him as I wipe sleep from my eyes. “Geez. You should have woken me up. I didn’t need to sleep all day long.”
“You were wiped, so clearly you needed the rest.”
“Yeah, I guess. Well, would you mind if we got cheese pizza? Rome will only eat that. Unless the pizza place has spaghetti. That’s his favorite.”
Cooper smiles. “I know for a fact that my usual pizza place makes some kickass spaghetti, so I can do that. Anything else you’d like?” he asks.
You.
“No, that should be good. Thank you. If you have any pancake mix and some cinnamon, I’ll make you breakfast in the morning.”
“You know, I think this roomie situation is gonna work out just fine, my friend,” he jokes, and I laugh as he moves into the kitchen. Rome and I sit in silence, before he wiggles to be let down, and moments later I join him to play on the floor.
The idea of how domestic this all is becoming is not lost on me, but I can’t let myself sit and think about that for too long. Cooper is just my friend, and he’s helping us out more than I can ever thank him for.
But we’re just friends. That’s all.
He’d never want to tie himself down to a young single mom and her baby.
No matter how much that baby is beginning to fall in love with him.
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