Page 67 of The Love of My Afterlife
I raise an eyebrow. “Tell that to the queue of women outside your flat.”
Cooper shakes his head. “Humans need company.”
“Sure,” I say with an eye roll. “Company.”
He looks at me then, serious. “I assume you’ve never felt lonely then. If you had, you wouldn’t be so judgy about people doing whatever they can to avoid that particular feeling.” He sighs lightly. “Even if it doesn’t work.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my gaze flicking up to meet his. “I didn’t know.”
He tears a bit of cardboard from the corner of the beer mat. I watch him fiddle with it, feeling ignorant for making such assumptions. Surely I know him better than that now.
“So then…” I start to ask, and then clamp my mouth shut.
“What? Go on?”
“Why not one woman? If you’re lonely, surely sticking with one person—regularly—would be better?”
Cooper puts down his scrap of beer mat. “I don’t date because I’ve never met anyone that made me feel like—”
“Oh fuck,” I yell, my heart suddenly lurching as I remember. “I won’t be there tonight to check on Mr. Yoon.”
“Why do you need to check on Mr. Yoon?”
I shrug. “I check he’s put his cigarettes out at night and turns off his gas, you know.”
“Has he left his cigarettes lit before?”
“Well, no. But his memory is foggy. He’s become pretty forgetful this past year.”
“Mr. Yoon will be fine,” Cooper says, taking a sip of his drink. “He might be getting older, but that man is sharper than the pair of us.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I’ve yet to beat him at a game of poker.”
I frown. “You play cards with Mr. Yoon?”
Cooper nods, flipping his beer mat between his hands. “Three weekday afternoons a week. We have lunch and a game.”
“You make him lunch?”
“I buy him lunch. He would not like my cooking.”
“Wait, are you the one who got him hooked on those fizzy cola bottle sweets?”
Cooper laughs. “I brought them once. He wolfed them down, so I brought them again.”
I exhale. “You can’t keep buying them. They’re not good for him.”
“Delphie, he’s eightysomething. Let him have some joy.”
“I just want him to be okay,” I say. I bite my lip as I think about what the hell is going to happen to him when I’m gone.
“Listen.” I lean closer to Cooper. “Mr. Yoon is waiting for a council assessment. He needs extra care. But the waiting list is long.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. And I was going to take over his care until they sorted it but…if for some reason I’m, you know…”
