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Of course I don’t say that. She was only ten days old when her mother died. She has no idea nor would we ever say anything bad about mother. There are things she doesn’t need to know. When I think about what she put Haven through—what she put Mack through, I feel sick. So sick that she would have been so selfish to keep shooting up when she was pregnant. The angry person that I have become over these past months makes me glad she’s dead. She wasn’t worthy of life. She hurt the two people I love the most in this world, and I hope hell has no ice water for her. I hope her soul is burning. She used Mack for her gain. For her selfish, whorish ways. She trapped him. She got him drunk and stoned, and she got him to sleep with her without protection.

The outcome of their relationship is sitting next to me right now, and my heart has so much love for her that all the good, which is her, outweighs the bad. If it didn’t happen, if that whore hadn't sunk her claws in him, she wouldn’t be here. I have to forgive and forget. It’s hard to forgive a dead person. Haven should have been mine. Mack wouldn’t have to be drunk and stoned to make love to me. We would have been older, and not only more mature in our relationship, but in life as well. But some things don’t work out the way you want. This I had to learn the hard way.

Haven is the only thing that worked out in the situation, and I thank God for that every day.

MACK & CORRINE ~ MAY 2003

“R
inny, work with me here, please. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

I stick another shirt and tie inside the dressing room door with only my hand. Frustrated, I shake it at him as my head is still on the outside.

“Jesus, Mack. Just try it on. I’m doing the best I can.”

He groans, and I go sit in the chair across from the door where he’s hidden. It’s only the second dress shirt and tie he’s tried on for prom, and the first one he didn’t even let me see.

He yells from inside.

“Really? Seafoam green? What are you trying to do to me?”

I know exactly what I’m doing. I want him to look like crap. Why? 'Cause he’s going to prom with crap. Said crap is Veronica Matthews. I hate her. She’s not right for Mack. I know his type and she’s not it. I’m not even sure what he sees in her. He doesn't go for the girly-girls. He goes for either the smart or athletic ones. Veronica Matthews is neither.

Dumb as a rock, she wears way too much lipstick, and she shakes her pom poms like they’re an appendage. She fawns all over him like some tramp. She has since the seventh grade. She makes me sick. Flipping that hair off her shoulder at his locker and laughing over-enthusiastically at his unfunny jokes.

“You think Veronica is going to like me in this color, Rinny? She only wears pink. She may not like it.”

I don’t fucking care if the bitch likes it or not, Mack. She’ll hate it and I’ll love that she hates it.

“Oh, please. You could wear a burlap sack and she’d love it.”

She’s going to hate that color. Ha! Take that, bitch.

I toss my hair over my shoulder and mimic Veronica’s high-pitched squeaky voice quietly so Mack doesn’t hear.

“Oh, yes, Mack. You look so hot, Mack. You’re so funny, Mack. No one is as funny as you, Mack. The way you swing a bat, Mack. No one swings like you, Mack.”

He’s not that funny, and I swing better than he does.

I stick my finger into my mouth and pretend to gag.

I still can’t believe it’s our senior prom.

Our junior prom last spring was downgraded to casual dress and was just in our school’s cafeteria because of 9/11. People in our school voted on it. The reason was that it was morally irresponsible for our student body to celebrate prom when three thousand people died and the city was in turmoil.

Since we live so close to New York City, you could see and smell the smoke in the sky. The skies were bluer than blue but the odor of death and destruction lingered in the air. Wherever you went, people were crying. Driving around, you saw children on every street corner crying and holding their father’s fire helmet—hanging onto some kind of hope they'd come home. Many local people never did. We spent days upon days going to churches and masses for the missing or the dead. Everyone knew someone affected by the tragedy. A turn of a head and you knew someone who knew someone. This included us.

Mack’s dad, John, died in the South Tower.

We were in school when we heard screaming. TVs were turned on in the classrooms that had them and I knew John worked there. As soon as I saw, I ran from my classroom to Mack’s. I knew what class he was in, and I knew I needed to get to him. When I reached his classroom, I threw open the door and scanned the room for him. The students knew why I was there and some just cried and pointed to the hallway. I figured that meant he was at his locker. I ran as fast as my legs could take me—around the corner past the gym and the workout room. I saw him at his open locker, but he wasn’t moving. His hand was on the top of it, and his body leaned into the open door. I couldn’t see his face. I stood there for what felt like forever. I was frozen as I waited to see some kind of movement. I unsteadily walked towards him. When I reached his locker, I placed my hand on top of his. Despite not seeing my face, Mack knew it was me.

“Rinny, do you think he’s dead?” That’s all he said to me. I told him I didn’t know, but we needed to get to his mom. Jocelyn was home. Hopefully Mom was with her. I prayed she was.

When Mack raised his head out of the confines of his locker, there was nothing there. No emotion. His eyes were empty at the prospect of his father being dead. When I saw this, I raised my hand and stroked his scar. I’m saying sorry, even if I wasn’t sure I needed a reason to be sorry. His face fell into my hand, and then his body fell into my arms. He didn’t cry, he didn’t say a word. I held him as the cries of people inside their classrooms and offices filled the empty hallways.

We left Mack’s car at school, neither of us having the strength to drive, and we ran the mile and a half home. Amongst the sirens and screams coming from the streets, our feet took us to where we needed to be. Hand in hand it felt as though we flew to Mack’s house.

When we arrived it was 10:01 a.m. The South Tower fell at 9:59.

Hope hung in our hearts for a few hours. We settled in front of the TV like every other person in America that night. The phone sat in Jocelyn’s lap like it was part of her body. Minutes felt like hours. The heaviness of dread filled The Cooper’s home. Mack held Jocelyn, my dad held me and my mom.

John Cooper died on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

I slept in Mack’s room for a week. Refusing to let me sleep on the floor, he made me sleep in his bed while he took to the small sofa across from his bed. Every night we lay there before sleep and talked about John and how fun he was. How handsome he was. What a great dad he was. How in love Jocelyn and him still were after many years of marriage. We laughed about the fishing trips he and my dad would take on the sound and how they would either come back drunk or vomiting from the roughness of the waters. Or the combination of both.

Every night of that week turned into us talking till dawn. In between that time, we both heard the cries of Jocelyn as she mourned her husband. Mack would hear her cry, and as he did every night, he attempted to console her, but she said she needed that time to herself to grieve. Mack understood to a certain extent. I couldn’t imagine losing the love of my life. I had never been in love, but I could empathize with her. When she cried, Mack would tell me to talk to him about anything and everything so he could concentrate on my voice and my words and escape hearing the pain his mother was going through. We lay on his bed looking up at the fading glow-in-the-dark stars he and I put on his ceiling years ago. I did as he asked, relieving him from his own pain. I’d do anything for Mack. My words were his escape and his refuge.

He ran the election for the casual junior prom since he was student body president. I agreed with it wholeheartedly; he got a big fat yes from me.

Mack walks out of the dressing room, and in that instantaneous moment my world is turned right side up, upside down, in a circle of confusion and delirium.

He stands there dressed head to toe in a tuxedo. I’ve never seen him dressed like this. His longish, light coppery brown hair is in messy waves. I want to fix it for him. A seafoam green tie and monochromatic shirt adorn his lean body fitting his physique like a glove. He adjusts his tie in the mirror, and I’m not in my body. I’m not me right now. I’m not sure who I am and what I’m thinking.

This is Mack. My best friend. My brother. My closest confidant. I certainly should not be taking notice of the things I am. I’ve seen this boy . . . or this man in his undies. He showed me his penis in my parents shed when we were eight. I showed him my boobs. I think Mack called them fried eggs or something like that.

A funny feeling takes over my body, and I suddenly feel a little sick when my gaze goes to Mack’s full lips as he continues to adjust the bowtie. For a split second, my mind wanders to a place it hasn’t gone to in years.

I know what Mack Cooper’s lips felt like on mine when I was almost a twelve-year-old girl, but what would they feel like now as an almost eighteen-year-old . . . woman?

Whipping off the tie in frustration and throwing it to the floor, Mack smacks me back to reality.

Thank God.

“Damn tie.” I get up off my seat and clear my throat. I grab the tie from the floor and turn him around towards me. I pull the tie over his head and adjust it onto his neck. My fingers wrap around the smooth fabric, and he squirms and flinches like he has ants in his pants, and I’m brought back to the fact that this is my annoying friend. My annoying guy friend who is a royal pain in my ass.

“Hold still, Mack. Jesus.”

He rolls his eyes then glances down as he watches my handiwork. Mack towers over me when just a few years ago we were the same height.

I can smell him and feel his breath on me as I fix his tie. My eyes flash to his, and suddenly my fingers have no control. They shake a bit and fumble as my attempt to tie this right escapes me. I divert my eyes from his and try to concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing. Trying not to take in his features is a losing battle.

His naturally tanned skin, his minuscule freckles, his broad, strong chin and the slight slope of his nose are all hard not to notice. Mentally, I talk myself out of my impromptu attraction to him.

This is Mack, you stupid ass. Mack. Remember. Stop looking at him that way. This. Is. Mack.

My internal self-help works as he sighs and moans, because I’m obviously taking too long, and I’m back where I was five minutes ago.

I’m Corinne. I’m Rinny, and this is Mack.

I finish with the tie and turn him towards the mirror. With my hands on his shoulders, I peek around him to look at him looking in the mirror.

“Voila. Done.”

He smugly looks himself over; quite pleased with the way he looks.

Handsome is what he looks like.

“Not bad, Rinny. How do I look?”

Telling him he looks gorgeous would be an understatement of epic proportions. It would also be wrong. It wouldn’t be right. It would be . . . awkward.

“Eh . . . you’re fine.”

“Think Veronica will like it?”

Stifling a laugh since I know she’ll hate it, because it’s the most hideous combination of gray and green I have ever seen, I lie. I lie so well I scare myself.

Convincingly I tell him, “Oh, trust me, Mack. Veronica is going to love it. She’ll be on you like white on rice in this get-up. You look like a true stud in every sense of the word.”

Still checking himself out and smoothing the fabric down his chest with his hands, he turns to me.

“Yeah, ya think?” I wink at him and grin.

He begins to undo the tie and the top few buttons on the shirt.

“You still going with what’s his name?”

I grab the suit jacket off of his shoulders and yank it down. Placing it on a hanger and not looking in his direction, I answer.

“Yes. And what’s his name is Mark. Don’t pretend you don’t know him just because he scored the winning run last year against you guys and you’re all bitter because of it. That scout from BU still wants you.”

Mack lets out an aggravated sound. “Oh, please. He doesn’t bother me. I’m still confused why you like him, though. I mean, what’s he got to offer?”

I come right back at him. “I could say the same for you and Miss Pom Pom. She is so not your type, Mack. I’ve been wondering the same thing for about . . . oh, eight months now.”

He shrugs. “She’s cool. She talks a lot. I mean a lot, but I have fun with her.” He wiggles his brows.

He’s gross. I grab my bag from off the chair and swing it across my body. I cross my arms in front of my chest.

“If we’re done here, I’ll go tell the guy to ring you up while you're getting undressed.”

Mack starts to take off his shirt, and I see his bare, smooth skin. My fingers want to run across his back.

What the hell is wrong with me?

He turns around to find me staring at his strong, muscular back.