Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
THAT’S HOW COOPER and I became roommates.
I got sexiled by Harmony—and had nowhere else to turn.
“This is really not that bad,” Cooper kept saying on the walk back to his cabin, making it sound worse.
“Let’s just not tell anyone, okay?”
I’d eaten nothing but desserts at the welcome lunch, so Cooper’s first order of business was to get us club sandwiches from room service. Then we sat on his balcony and ate them as the ship started at last to move away from the dock.
It was oddly thrilling to set out to sea.
We watched the harbor slide by, and the flying fish skittering over the water’s surface in zigzags, and we drank Cooper’s champagne, and he tried to steal my fries, and before I knew it, we’d left the Port of Galveston behind and were surrounded by the wide blue Gulf … and I was feeling better.
Like maybe rooming with Cooper wouldn’t be so weird after all.
Until it was time for bed.
I showered, and put on my PJs, and brushed my teeth, and flossed … and then, when the only logical thing left to do was claim a side of the bed and pull back the covers, I hesitated.
Cooper, for his part, had done all the same things and then stood next to me in a gray T-shirt and navy sweatpants—and watched me hesitate.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“I think we should build a barrier,” I said, turning to check the closet for spare pillows and triumphantly returning with two. With mathematical precision, I arranged them down the middle to bisect the surface, and then I measured with my arm to make sure both sides were even.
“Better,” I said.
“Is it?” Cooper asked.
“It’s nice and even,” I said.
“But there’s no room left for us.”
“Sure, there is,” I said. “It’s all mental.”
Cooper frowned at the setup.
“Now we won’t bother each other,” I said.
“If I wanted to bother you,” Cooper said, “those pillows wouldn’t stop me.”
I gave him a look. “But you’re not going to bother me, right? Because you know that today was the most humiliating day of my life, and all I really want to do is go to sleep and stay that way until this cruise is over.”
Cooper gave in. “I’m not going to bother you.”
And then carefully, deliberately, we each pulled back the comforter on our respective sides, and got ourselves settled, and clicked off our sconces.
And then, of course, I couldn’t sleep.
And neither could Cooper.
We just lay there, arms at our sides, looking up at the reflected moonlight on the ceiling—occasionally shifting position and rustling the sheets.
Finally, after what felt like at least an hour, I heard Cooper’s rustling get louder.
“What are you doing?” I said in a half whisper.
“I’m getting up to pee,” Cooper said. And then, at the bathroom door, he paused. “I’m not closing the door all the way.”
“Why?”
“Because of my cleithrophobia. I’m leaving it cracked.”
“I thought you said it was mild.”
“If it bothers you so much, go out on the balcony.”
“Nothing bothers me,” I said. “You can’t be worse than Pete.”
When Cooper came out, he said he’d forgotten to do his push-ups. So he dropped to the floor at the foot of the bed and did a bunch. So many, I lost count.
Not that I was counting.
I crawled down and watched him. After a while, I asked, “Why are you doing so many?”
“I’m just doing a normal number,” he said.
“It seems like more than normal.”
“How many push-ups do you normally do before bed?”
“Zero.”
“Well, that explains it.”
Cooper drank some water after that. And then he remembered to plug in his phone. And then he dug around in his suitcase for a while.
“Would you be asleep right now if I weren’t in your bed?” I asked.
“It’s three in the morning in London right now, so—yes.”
“I forgot you were jet-lagged.”
“I’m running on adrenaline.”
“I really appreciate you taking me in.”
“Well, we couldn’t leave you in Harmony’s sex dungeon.”
Cooper came back to bed and got in … and then we both lay there like a matching set again.
After a while, I said, “I have a fear, too. It might not be a phobia, exactly. But it’s something.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“What of?” Cooper asked.
I sighed. “Singing.”
“Singing?” Cooper said. “That can’t be right. You love to sing. You sing all the time!”
“Used to,” I corrected. “I used to love to sing. And only ever with you, by the way.”
“Only ever with me?”
“Did I never mention this? I never sang as a kid—not even in groups. And when I was forced to, like, say, the national anthem or ‘Happy Birthday,’ I’d just mouth the words and pretend.
And if anyone ever asked me to sing—which fortunately doesn’t happen often in life—I’d make some excuse and get the hell out of there.
It wasn’t until you brought your mom’s old record collection over that I ever sang at all. ”
All true. In ninth grade, Cooper’s mom—who had wanted more than anything in life to be a singer but had never made it—set her entire vinyl collection out on the street for garbage collection.
Cooper found stacks and stacks of records all piled up, along with her record player, just in time—and he rescued everything and brought it to my room for safekeeping.
After that, he had full permission to climb through my window anytime and play her records. And so he did. All the greats: Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mercer, Anita O’Day, Frank Sinatra. If it could be sung in a lounge, Cooper’s mom had collected it.
“But you and I—we sang all through high school. All the time. Every day.”
“Yes,” I said. “I sang all the time with you. But you were the only person I ever sang with,” I said.
Cooper stared in disbelief. “Is that why you used to be so quiet?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Until I got the hang of it.”
Singing with Cooper had been the exception in my life, not the rule.
Next, Cooper asked, “Why did you stop?”
Did he really need to ask this question? I thought about saying, Because you broke my heart when you left. But that felt a little on the nose. Instead, I just stated a fact. “You weren’t there to sing with,” I said.
“You don’t need me to sing.”
I sighed. “Yes, I do.”
After Cooper left for London without telling me, I never sang again. Even thinking about it now, I couldn’t imagine anything more lonely than singing by myself in my room, Cooper-less.
“Hearing that makes me want you to sing something,” Cooper said.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I told you. I don’t sing anymore.”
This really wasn’t computing. “But we used to sing all the time. We’d harmonize and everything. Your face would light up.”
“I remember.”
“You seemed like you were having fun.”
“I was having fun.”
“I just don’t see how you shifted from memorizing every lyric in my mom’s old vinyl collection to never singing at all.”
The answer was right there. But if he couldn’t see it, I wasn’t going to show him.
Moving on: “You’re missing the point, anyway.”
“What’s the point?”
I took a breath and said, “The point is, it gets worse. Because despite it all, I have to sing at this wedding.”
“This wedding? This week?”
“Ashley wants me to serenade her at the reception in lieu of a toast.”
“Why?”
“Because when we were little kids, we promised each other we would do serenades at our future weddings. And back when I was the one getting married, Ashley signed up for actual voice lessons so she could totally crush it at mine. But when I finked out, she was off the hook.”
“Why would you make a promise like that with Ashley if you had a fear of singing?”
“I didn’t know the contract was binding.”
“She can’t hold you to a promise you made as a child.”
“It’s Ashley. She can do what she wants.”
“Just tell her you can’t do it.”
“I did,” I said.
“And?”
“It didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, ‘It didn’t work’?”
“She thought I was lying so I could surprise her.”
No response from Cooper, like he was trying to imagine how that could happen.
I explained. “I told her, ‘Look, I’m not going to serenade you at your wedding after all. I’m just going to do a normal maid of honor speech.’ And then she said, ‘Okay,’ and then she winked at me.”
“She winked at you?”
“Yeah. So I said, ‘I mean it, though. For real. I’m really not going to sing.’ And she winked again and said, ‘I got it.’ So I said, ‘Ashley, I’m serious.’ And then she gave me a look like You adorable rascal and then said, ‘I know.’”
“She thought you were lying to her so she’d be expecting a speech but get a song instead?”
“Exactly. I just kept saying, ‘I mean it. For real. I’m serious,’ and she just kept agreeing with me—and winking.”
“So now, if you don’t sing, she’ll be disappointed.”
“As usual,” I said, “with Ashley, there’s no way to win.”
Cooper didn’t disagree.
Then I pointed out, “In a way, this is all your fault.”
“My fault?”
“If you hadn’t made me sing with you every day in high school,” I said, “Ashley wouldn’t think of me as a person who loves to sing, and I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I was only singing because you were singing,” Cooper said.
“Well, I was only singing because you were.”
We both sighed.
Then I went on. “And now I’m doomed. Because Ashley can’t imagine a version of me that doesn’t walk around the house singing nonstop.”
More than doomed, really. Because now it was worse than it had been before high school. I was still shy about singing in public, like always, but now I was also out of practice—four years out—on top of it. And! Singing in general now—even the idea of it—seemed to turn the whole world gray.
“I can’t imagine a version of you like that, either, honestly,” Cooper said.
“Well, that’s how it is.”
“Can’t you just seriously explain it all to her—like you just did for me?”
“I can. I should. But the thing is, a few weeks ago, she told my mom that the number-one thing she’s most excited for on this cruise—besides the getting married part, I guess—is that serenade. She’s been looking forward to it for weeks. Or decades, depending on how you count.”
Cooper rolled back on his pillow to contemplate all this.
Cooper knew about music. He was a composition major in college. He could play the piano, the drums, and the mini banjo. Oh, and he had perfect pitch, too.
I’m sure this was hard for him to relate to.
“The thing I can’t get past,” Cooper said then, “is that you’re great at singing. It’s not like you’re tone-deaf. Or you don’t have rhythm. Or you lack tonal memory. You have—really—a good voice.”
“Thank you,” I said, like you do when a compliment doesn’t penetrate.
“You don’t believe me?”
I thought for a second. “I guess it doesn’t really change anything. I’ve just always been … afraid to sing in public.”
“But why?”
“Does everything have to have a reason?”
“Probably.”
We were doing therapy now? Fine. “I had a mean music teacher.”
“Define mean.”
“She used to single me out and tell me I sounded like a yowling cat—in first grade!—and make me stand at the head of the class, repeating sections of songs in front of everybody until I got them right. But I never could get them right. It got so bad, I started faking stomachaches before class. Then she decided I was a troublemaker—and started doing it more.”
“Wow,” Cooper said.
“It kind of snowballed.”
“It sure did.”
“I’ll state for the record that I had many wonderful teachers in my life—most of them math teachers, by the way—which was lucky. But she was the only music teacher at our elementary school for years. So I had her three years, first grade through third, before she quit.”
“The year I moved to our street,” Cooper said, putting it together.
“By fourth grade, we had Mrs. Cantorna—who was, as I’m sure you remember, the epitome of loveliness.”
“But by then it was too late for you.”
I nodded. “By then it was too late for me.”
Cooper was quiet for a minute after that. Then he asked, “Are duets allowed?”
“Where?” I asked.
“At Ashley’s reception.”
I pulled in a breath. Was he asking what it sounded like he was asking?
Cooper went on. “What if I serenaded Ashley with you? What if we did it together?”
At those words, a rolling wave of relief cascaded over my body. I turned onto my side, ripping the pillow barrier away so I could check his face in the moonlight. “Really?”
He met my eyes. “That could work, maybe—right?”
I nodded. That could work, maybe.
“But do you think she’d mind an extra person?” Cooper asked.
“Not if it’s you.”
“We’re going to have to practice, okay?” he said. “And it has to be a song that’s easy for you. One you know really well.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Cooper shrugged, like What else? “‘Tonight, You Belong to Me.’”
What else, indeed.
That was our song.
Or, at least—if we’d had a song, it would’ve been that one.
Of all those songs—from “I’ll Be Seeing You” to “All of Me”—that one was our favorite.
We spent the whole summer after junior year up on the roof of my house, singing it over and over.
I took the melody, and Cooper took the harmony, the accompaniment, and the whistle solo.
It was just one of those songs that never got old.
“You could sing that song in your sleep,” Cooper said.
“You’re not wrong about that,” I said. I probably had.
“We’ll just pretend we’re in your bedroom,” Cooper said. “Easy.”
I was nodding now, liking this idea more and more. “If you’re going to do something terrifying, it should be something you already know by heart.”
“You should get that as a tattoo,” Cooper said.
“Maybe I will.”
Could it be that simple? Had we just solved it?
I rolled back to study the ceiling again.
It was like that glorious feeling—my favorite feeling in the world—with a problem set in math where you’d spent days, and weeks, and study sessions, trying to fit the pieces together … and then they clicked into place.
And then Cooper started singing, like we’d done so many times: the sweetest, saddest song, written to a love who now belonged to somebody else, leading up to his favorite line:
But tonight,
You belong to me.
He hadn’t even hit the word tonight before I jumped in, too, and by you belong to me, we were fully harmonizing like we’d never stopped.
He’d started with my part, the melody, so I just did his harmony—as easy as breathing.
I guess it really was that simple.
And that’s how we finally drifted off to sleep, at last.
We lay in Cooper’s bed, divided by a wall of pillows, as we churned across the moonlit surface of a deep ocean … and we sang ourselves to sleep.