Sweat poured down my face as I pedaled my mountain bike toward my best friend Jake Cooper's house. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning, but it was already close to ninety degrees and humid, and I was looking forward to diving into the Coopers' pool. I was wearing a white tank top, tie-dyed board shorts, Oakley sunglasses and a pair of old Nikes. Jake and I had just graduated from high school and we were looking forward to a summer filled with parties before we went to Penn State.
My mother Bridget and her husband Walter left the house after breakfast to play tennis at their country club and have lunch with one of Walter's endless array of business contacts. Walter married my mother when I was twelve and he was never bothered by my refusal to refer to him as my stepfather. In fact, he seemed content to do as little parenting as possible.
My parents got divorced when I was ten. My dad Jay decided he liked vodka and twenty-one year old girls better than he liked being a husband and a father. I see him about once a month and we talk on the phone about once a week. Almost every time we talk, he brags about the latest "hottie" his combination of good looks and a healthy bank account nabbed him; sometimes, he even sends me pictures of some of his "conquests" asleep in his bed once the transaction was completed. It's disturbing to think you're more mature at eighteen than your father is at forty-two.
My mom Bridget was her daddy's little girl, a pampered princess who, as near as I could tell, was bred for two purposes: marrying a man who was almost as rich as Grampa and producing an heir for Grampa's money. When Dad left us, Mom went into a little tail spin. For weeks, she sat around the house, looking dazed while the housekeepers worked around her. Eventually, Mom shook off Dad's rejection and commenced auditions for "Husband 2.0." Bridget made my role in the audition process very clear - I was to look handsome, be on my best behavior and speak as little as possible as Bridget paraded a series of doctors, lawyers and Wall Street types through our house in search of a new and improved life partner, one who would put the original model to shame.
I felt sorry for Bridget. Instead of encouraging her to be independent and carve out her own place in the world, my grandparents raised her to believe she couldn't be complete unless there was a man at her side at all times. When Dad pulled his disappearing act, instead of going into therapy or "finding herself," she went all "American Idol," scouring the surrounding counties and states for the man who would make her feel whole again. I was happy for her when she found Walter, especially because he expressed no interest in insinuating himself into my life. He had a hedge fund to run, and no time for distractions like Little League, high school football or school plays. Walter had an apartment in the city where he spent most nights. When Walter came by the house, it was usually to whisk Bridget off to some black tie event or to weekends in the Hamptons or international vacations. Each time, before they left, she explained that it wasn't that they didn't want me to join them, they just didn't want to bore me with all of their "grown up" stuff.
Having an adolescent father, an absentee step-dad and a flighty mother might have screwed me up royally; instead, it made having the Coopers in my life pretty damn special. Hank Cooper and my dad were college roommates, and they started a very successful software company together. Jake and I were born in the same hospital a month apart and we basically grew up together. The Coopers' three story house is filled with photos that depict the growth of the family, and it seems like I'm in almost all of them, going back to when I was a baby. When my parents split, my dad also quit the company, but that didn't change my relationship with the Coopers. When Bridget started the audition process, I started spending more and more time with them. I would have dinner and sleep over in Jake's room four or five nights a week. I think Bridget was actually happy there were people so eager to look after me, allowing her to continue the hunt for "Husband 2.0" with minimal inconvenience.
Jake's mom, Cindy, is the warmest, most loving person I've ever known. Many of my earliest memories are of Cindy's warm blue eyes, her brilliant smile and her infectious laugh. As I grew up, Cindy was the person I always looked to when I had a question or needed advice. She was always there for me, at all of the biggest events of my young life. I spent much of my early life wishing that Cindy could have been my mother. As I entered adolescence, however, and the hormones started kicking in, I began appreciating her more for the beautiful woman she is, and I found myself wishing I could marry her.
If Cindy Cooper was the first love of my life, Jake's older sister Denise, or Dee Dee, as everyone called her, was definitely my first object of desire. I was responsible for her nickname. Dee Dee was two when Jake and I were born. According to her mother, Dee Dee loved playing with us, almost as if we were living dolls. As I was learning to speak, I couldn't say "Denise;" instead it came out as "Dee Dee." Jake quickly picked it up, and her parents found it so adorable the name stuck. Dee Dee never seemed to mind the name we'd given her. As we all grew up, she was Dee Dee to all her friends, family and even some of her teachers.
As it turned out, the nickname was apt. Dee Dee's breasts sprouted when Jake and I were eight and she was ten. As we got older, her breasts seemed to grow exponentially. It wasn't a complete surprise, as Mrs. Cooper was a 36 D herself (a fact I ascertained when I was twelve, by helping Mrs. Cooper with the laundry and sneaking peeks at the tags on some of her bras.) Dee Dee got a genetic second helping, however, and she fully lived up to her nickname by the time she turned seventeen.
At five feet eight inches and one hundred thirty pounds, Dee Dee made one hell of a package, with sunny blond hair she let grow down to the middle of her back and a butt she kept firm and round by cheerleading and playing softball and volleyball during high school. Though we'd basically grown up together, I'd always had feelings for Dee Dee that were more than brotherly. Jake loved slugging me in the gut and calling me a pervert whenever he caught me staring at his sister for more than three seconds.
Throughout my adolescence, Dee Dee was just out of reach, separated from me by a gap of two years, which felt more like two eternities to me. The older high school guys started noticing Dee Dee's body when she turned fifteen; if there had been any chance she might notice me before that, it was game over at that point. Dee Dee, Jake and I attended the same prep school for four years. I'd see her in the halls, but she never acknowledged my existence. She was always surrounded by jocks or chattering with her fellow cheerleaders.
I was limited to fantasies of Dee Dee, and I enjoyed plenty of them. I regularly relieved my aching libido with visions of her spectacular body, even on nights when I slept over at Jake's house. The family would sit down for dinner, then we'd hang out, watching T.V. or playing games. I'd sneak as many glances at Dee Dee as I could without getting called out. Eventually, I'd head to the bathroom and let my imagination run wild. After Dee Dee graduated and headed to the University of Michigan, I only saw her a handful of times, at Thanksgiving and on her winter breaks; she spent the summer after her freshman year of college living and working in New York City. I dated Becky Anderson, one of the smartest students in my class, during my last two years of prep school, but Dee Dee never completely disappeared from my thoughts, or my fantasies.
I reached six feet tall by the time I turned eighteen, just before my senior year of high school. I wore my brown hair down below the collar of my shirt. I was a pitcher and outfielder on the baseball team in high school, while Jake was an all-state wrestler. We spent loads of time in the weight room, so I carried one hundred ninety pounds on a muscular frame, while Jake was five-eight, just like his sister, and a rock solid one seventy-five. Jake earned a wrestling scholarship to Penn State, while I was going to try and walk on with the baseball team as a non-scholarship player. Bridget's head nearly exploded when I told her I was going to Penn State; she was sure I meant the University of Pennsylvania, but I had no interest in an Ivy League pedigree. When we were ten years old, Jake and I vowed that we'd stick together for life, and I was going to stand by that promise.
My dad and Hank Cooper took their company public when Jake and I were nine. As Jay still likes to say whenever he brings it up, "Wall Street ate it up like they were eating sushi off Kate Upton's naked body." My dad took the pile of money he made off the I.P.O. as a sign from God that it was time to fulfill his destiny as the playboy of the western world; within a year, he'd divorced Bridget and left the company.
Hank Cooper went in a different direction. Around the time my dad left the company, Mr. Cooper bought a three acre parcel of land five miles away from my house and built a three story house from the ground up. It was a majestic piece of architecture, with a slate gray exterior, six bedrooms (including one that was designated for me,) a computer lab and a library on the third floor, a fully automated kitchen and a media room the size of a small movie theater in the basement, with an eighty inch hi-def screen, surround sound, and enough leather couches and recliners to have a party of forty. Behind the house, there was a twenty-five yard swimming pool, a hot tub and a deck attached to the second floor, where the family held cookouts every other weekend in the summer. Gardening was one of Mrs. Cooper's passions; the grounds included flower and vegetable gardens and a greenhouse, where Mrs. Cooper grew orchids and tropical plants that she sold on line.
There was a half mile private access road leading from the main road to the house, and a small forest of pine and oak trees surrounding the grounds, creating a sense of intimacy. I rode my bike up the driveway and leaned it against the detached four car garage, which was about a hundred feet away from the house. I walked around to the back of the house. Jake was standing on the diving board, bouncing up and down with his back facing me.
"Yo, asshat!" I yelled as I dropped my backpack, bike helmet and Oakleys on one of the patio tables near the pool.
