Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
“WHAT IS WRONG with people?” I demanded after breakfast as I dragged Cooper in circles around the promenade deck, not even noticing the lovely and vast ocean view all around us. “What exactly was the point of spending three hours telling humiliating stories about me at the table?”
Breakfast had lasted thirty minutes.
“Of all the available items,” I went on, “on the infinite menu of topics for human breakfast conversation, why me? Why my life? Why weren’t we talking about you?
I could watch a whole ten-part documentary about your off-the-charts amazing life!
Why does my diarrhea from fifteen years ago outrank your daily use of thunder metal? ”
“I thought the stories were cute,” Cooper said.
“Diarrhea?” I challenged. “You think diarrhea is cute?”
Cooper shrugged like he knew better than to answer.
“It’s like they want me to fail,” I said.
“They don’t even know you’re trying,” Cooper said.
“Are you defending them?”
“I’m just saying it’s not malicious.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“Mr. Dunn wasn’t sabotaging you. He’s just clueless.”
“That’s the point. Everybody’s clueless. This isn’t working.”
“It’s only day two,” Cooper pointed out.
But I was shaking my head. “Something has to change. These old neighbors need to stop seeing me as a nose-picking little kid with poopy pants.” My brain scanned its options frantically, and then, in a eureka moment of pure brilliance, it landed on something.
I stopped sprint-walking and turned to face Cooper—the wind whipping my loose hair all around.
“What?” Cooper asked warily.
“I’ve got it,” I said.
Why was Cooper so good at predicting my shenanigans? “I don’t like that look on your face,” he said.
“Yes,” I conceded. “It will require a small favor from you. But it’s absolutely no biggie in the grand scheme of things.”
Cooper narrowed his eyes. “What’s the favor?”
I pinched my fingers together to give him a visual of something tinier than tiny. “I just need sixty seconds of your time.”
“Sixty seconds of my time,” Cooper repeated, “doing what?”
But now I wasn’t sure how to frame it.
“Doing … something that’ll help me change my image.”
Cooper was already shaking his head.
I pushed on. “Something that’ll make it clear to the whole ship that I am a grown-ass adult.”
He closed his eyes and kept shaking.
“Something that could turn Operation Conquest around.”
At that, Cooper let out a long sigh, like he knew he was already doomed.
“What is it?” he asked, opening those ocean-blue eyes. “What do I have to do?”
I took both of his hands and clasped them in mine, stepping closer and angling underneath him so I could look pleading and puppyish.
And then I said, “I’m gonna need you … to give me one of Harmony’s love bites.”
AT THE TERM Harmony’s love bites, Cooper froze—like he could not have heard what he thought he’d just heard.
Then he just said, “No.”
I pressed up on my tiptoes. “Just hear me out.”
But he pulled his hands out of my grip. “I’m not giving you a hickey.”
“Love bite,” I corrected.
“Either one,” Cooper declared.
“I would do it for you,” I said. “I would do it for you in a heartbeat.”
“Bad idea,” Cooper said next.
“Genius idea,” I corrected. “Didn’t you hear Harmony saying how this one little change transformed her life?”
“You want Harmony’s advice on transforming your life?”
But I was liking this idea. “No wonder mini golf was a total fail. Slutty dresses are a dime a dozen! We need the semiotics of social signaling to make me a Person of Interest.”
“This is a terrible idea,” Cooper said.
“Maybe. But what if it works? Operation Conquest is already tanking. I can’t get any traction with this guy. He’s forgotten me twice in two days! I think Harmony’s onto something. Nobody’s forgetting her!”
“Yeah, but not in a good way.”
“I need to level up! The clock is ticking! I’ve only got seven days left.”
At that, I turned my head, leaned in, and pulled my collar aside, saying, “Just do it. Real quick.”
Cooper stared at my neck in horror.
“No,” he said again—and then he turned and strode away.
I chased after him. “Hey!”
But his legs were longer than mine. I had to jog.
“Cooper! I need you!” I called after him.
“Not for this, you don’t,” he called back.
“Hey!” I said again. “That’s all? Just a flat no? Are you refusing to help me right now?”
Cooper kept striding.
But I kept bobbing along behind him.
The wind was loud in my ears, and before I knew it, I was yelling.
“You said you were on my team, Cooper! You said, and I quote, ‘I’ve been on your team since day one.’ Is this the kind of team player you want to be?
Is this the kind of one-handed-golf-glove energy you want to cultivate in your life?
I’m telling you I need you—for real. My mom is totally preoccupied, and Ashley’s marrying the douchiest guy on the planet, and Pete’s an idiot—a sweet idiot, but still—and my dad has never, not once, given a shit about me.
So you’re it, Cooper. You’re all I’ve got.
I’m sorry, but that’s how it is! You’re not just on the team—you are the team. You’re the whole thing.”
Never mind that zero of those people were viable alternatives for this task. Saying all of this out loud—shouting it, really—forced me to feel it. The more I chased him, and the more I begged, and the more he didn’t turn around or even slow down … the more heartbreaking it all started to feel.
I heard my voice waver, but I kept going. “I don’t have anybody else I can turn to, Cooper! You promised to help me—and I trusted you! Are you really going to make me chase you like this? Are you really going to just walk off and leave me here?”
I know I’d been trying to pretend like the last four years of Cooper ignoring me hadn’t happened.
I know I’d been insisting to myself that our newly reactivated friendship was as solid and dependable and safe as ever.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. And pretending was harder than I thought.
I’d been talking about my family being disappointing—but I was also talking about Cooper.
My friend who had moved away without telling me. My friend who had gone radio silent for years. My friend who might just have been the worst heartbreak of my life.
I probably should have stopped shouting when I felt all those emotions seep into my lungs. But I had some rhetorical momentum, you know? So I tried for one last zinger. “Are you really going to walk out of my life and forget all about me—again?”
At the end of that question, my voice broke.
And I just stopped walking.
Stopped chasing, stopped begging.
It was all too much.
He didn’t want to help me? Fine. I’d find somebody else.
There were plenty of other people on this ship with—with—mouths.
If this was such an offensive chore for Cooper, if that’s how utterly dismissive he wanted to be about getting anywhere near me for any reason—even a really, really good one … Fine.
Half the men on this boat would be drunk by lunchtime, anyway.
But underneath all that defiance, there was genuine heartache.
He’d thrown up at the touch of my lips back in high school—and now he was fleeing at the sight of my neck? Just exactly how repulsive did this guy think I was?
Maybe he wasn’t on my team after all—and maybe he never had been.
Cooper had always been my person. But I guess I just … wasn’t his.
My breath got shaky at that idea. And then there were tears on my face.
I’d never known why Cooper left, but I’d always held on to hope that he had some kind of really good explanation.
But maybe there was no good explanation.
Maybe he just didn’t really care.
And I’d learned a lesson from my dad a long time ago: You can’t force people to care about you. If you didn’t matter to someone, you didn’t matter.
Maybe I didn’t matter to Cooper.
Maybe I should let him go.
Or—actually—maybe I should’ve let him go four years ago. Instead of holding out all that stupid, embarrassing hope.
That’s where I was landing with it all … when Cooper stopped walking, too.
I wiped the tears off my cheeks fast with my shirtsleeve.
Then Cooper turned around, and he took a breath like he was gathering his strength, and then, step after step, he walked back until he reached me.
“Have you been crying?” he asked, leaning in to look.
“No,” I said defiantly.
I clearly had.
Then Cooper looked all around my blotchy face, from my eyes to my mouth and back again, with that signature affectionate look of his. I’d always felt, from that look alone, like I was special to him. But maybe that was just his face. Maybe that was how he looked at everyone.
But that’s when Cooper sighed and said, “Where do you want it?”
“Want what?”
He gave me a look. “The hickey.”
But believe it or not, I had a shred of pride to salvage.
“I don’t want it,” I said. “Anymore.”
NOW IT WAS Cooper’s turn to beg. Which helped me recover my moxie.
“I’m fine with it,” he said. “I am.”
“You didn’t seem fine when you were sprinting away from me.”
“That was before I made you cry.”
“I don’t need a pity hickey, thanks.”
“You know, I just—” Cooper looked around and then rubbed his neck. “I wasn’t expecting that request. And I panicked.”
“I’ll say.”
“But I’ve had a minute to regroup,” he said. “And it’s fine.”
But I shook my head. “I’ll ask someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “I’ll go to the casino after dinner.”
“You are not going to the casino to solicit hickeys from random cruise dudes.”
“That’s not really up to you.”
“I said I’ll do it. It’s fine.”
“But it’s not fine. You hated this idea. You were horrified.”
“I was just—taken aback for a second. I’m good now.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, turning and starting to walk back the way we’d come.
Maybe he didn’t want to be a poor team player. Or maybe it was my heartfelt admission of how alone I was. Or maybe he just felt bad for making me cry.
But now Cooper was following me.
“Slow down!” Cooper called.