Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
COOPER TURNED OUT to be phenomenally good at fake flirting.
For a guy who’d never even imagined such a thing until today, he caught up fast.
By dinner, he had tickled me, rested his chin on his hands to gaze at me, stolen my hat and made me chase him all around the lido deck to get it back, and laughed uproariously at more jokes than I had actually told.
He also grabbed me while I was walking by and made me sit on his lap, threw me over his shoulder like some pillaging Viking, and gave me three new Josephine-based nicknames, including JJ, Jo-burg, and Pheenie.
“You are really good at this,” I told him as we changed for dinner back at our cabin—me, as always, in the bathroom with the door cracked, and him out in the room.
“I researched flirting on my phone,” he said.
“You’ve got a knack for it, buddy.”
“I do, don’t I?”
“I’m going to write you a kick-ass recommendation,” I declared, “for your next fake flirting job.”
We were supposed to dress up for dinner tonight.
Sneakers and tank tops were banned, and jackets and ties were required.
I was wearing another dress of Ashley’s, this one loose and silky and flowing—with spaghetti straps.
It slipped on easily—no zipper required.
I bent down to put on my most ridiculous pair of heels yet, and I heard Cooper say, “It physically hurts me to see you mutilating yourself in all these shoes.”
I’m sure I was about to say something deliciously witty, but when I lifted my head and saw him—it went blank.
Whoa. His hair was coiffed in that swooped-forward way he liked, and his tie was tied, and he looked neat and ironed and … truly handsome.
Ugh. I said it.
“What happened to you?” I demanded, looking him up and down.
Cooper eyed me. “What do you mean?”
“How did you turn into a Disney prince?”
“You think I look like a Disney prince?”
“I really do.”
“You think I look like a cartoon?”
“Not a cartoon like SpongeBob. A sexy cartoon.”
“Pretty sure there’s no such thing.”
“Of course there is. It’s like when you watch Lady and the Tramp, and you’re kind of attracted to the Tramp—”
Cooper squinted at me, like Please be kidding.
“—and you’re like, ‘Nothing about this is right, but the heart wants what it wants’?” I pushed on. “You’re that kind of cartoon.”
“I didn’t know you were attracted to cartoon dogs.”
His eyes were mocking, so I dug in harder. “Cartoon foxes, too. Remember Robin Hood?”
“That’s why you had that poster in your room?”
“Yep.”
“Of all the Robin Hoods, that’s your choice? Not Sean Connery, or Kevin Costner, or Russell Crowe?”
“I think I’m in the majority on this.”
He frowned doubtfully. “Live human men are losing out to cartoon dogs and foxes?”
“This has been going on for decades,” I said, like Try to catch up. “But that’s not a problem for you.”
“Because?”
“Because you’re in the same category. A cartoon prince ranks just as high.”
“As a dog?”
I gave him a look. “Count your blessings.”
“So. Which prince am I?”
“All of them,” I said.
“All of them?”
“If I had to pick, I’d say Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid.”
This was so clearly not a touchpoint for Cooper.
So I googled it for him. “It’s the hair. Look! It’s kind of the same. And the blue eyes. And the—I don’t know … general dreaminess.”
Cooper looked back and forth between the image on my phone and the mirror, like he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to agree.
“The resemblance really is uncanny,” I said.
“Maybe we’re related.”
I gave him a look. “This is a huge compliment,” I said. “Do you know how they draw those princes?”
Cooper shook his head.
“They do like thirty different versions, and then they invite focus groups of women to come in and choose the most attractive parts of all of them—and then they combine everything into one man.”
Cooper looked baffled. “Huh.”
“See?” I said, pointing at Cooper’s swoopy hair. “Hair shouldn’t look this good in real life. How do you get it to do that?”
“I dated a girl who worked as a barber.”
“And those shoulders,” I went on, like he was being unreasonable. “And those relentless blue eyes. And you have a nose that doesn’t even look real. It’s like an illustrator drew it.”
Cooper listened closely while I gestured at everything.
“I don’t know how I never saw it before,” I said.
“In your defense,” Cooper said, “back in high school … I was more like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But then you moved across the ocean,” I said, finishing out the story of his life, “and did some push-ups, and dated a barber—and boom! You got handsome.”
“You really think I’m handsome?”
“Haven’t you been listening? I think you could’ve been designed by a focus group. That’s the kind of handsome you are. You could have any woman on this ship. Just select one at your leisure.”
“Any woman?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. But then I had to backtrack: “Though—you don’t actually get to pick. Ashley has preselected a mate for you.”
Cooper frowned. “Can Ashley be overruled?”
“Not usually,” I said. “Why? Did you have someone else in mind?”
“No.”
“Because I support you,” I went on. “Fight back! Bridesmaid Two is the worst.”
Then I turned him back toward the mirror and gestured at his—everything. “All this,” I said, “should not be wasted on a basic bridesmaid.”
Cooper considered his new cartoon-based handsomeness.
I considered it, too. “You need to know this about yourself, Cooper,” I said. “Time has been good to you.”
“You really think I look like a Disney prince?”
“I don’t think it. It’s just a fact.”
“Except I’m better than a Disney prince,” Cooper said then.
“Wow. Bold statement. Okay. Why is that?”
Cooper shrugged. “Because I’m real.”
ON THE WALK to dinner, we ran into Finn, of all people, in the hallway.
Finn greeted Cooper with “Coooop!” and a loud slap on the shoulder. Then he turned to me and said, “Josephine, right?”
“JoJo,” I corrected while nodding, like Exactly right.
Then Finn went on like he was practicing for a quiz. “Maid of honor. Math genius. The girl who fell out of our oak tree.”
“Yes!” I said, raising my hand for a high five. “Nice job!”
May I just point out that we had lived across the street from each other since birth?
Why was I high-fiving him? These were basic details!
God, my bar was low.
On the other hand, these were basic details that Finn definitely hadn’t known yesterday. Nothing wrong with progress.
Next, the three of us stood there for an awkward second.
Then Finn said, “So. Who gave you that hickey?”
My eyes went wide.
Cooper and I glanced at each other, like What!
I lifted my hand to the place on my neck. Then I said, “I thought you thought it was eczema.”
“I was joking.”
“You were?” Then—because he’d apparently made a joke earlier that I hadn’t laughed at—I giggled as an apology.
“Was it this guy?” Finn asked, nodding toward Cooper.
“No,” Cooper and I said in unison, guilty as crows.
Next, I started panic-yammering: “No, no. We’re just—childhood friends. We would never, ya know, hickey each other. We just goof around and do friend stuff. This hickey came from another person. Who I met on the boat. Since I’m supersingle and open to adventure.”
Supersingle? Seriously?
Finn looked back and forth between us like he wasn’t sure he bought it. “Are you sure you’re just friends?” he asked me. “Because he seems genuinely into you.”
I was so flustered that Finn Turner was even talking to me, I almost—almost—answered, Oh, that? He was just faking.
But Cooper jumped in and saved me from myself. “I’ve had a thing for her since we were kids,” he said. “But she doesn’t like me back.”
Quick thinking, Cooper!
Finn nodded at that, like now it all worked. “So you guys aren’t—dating?”
“Us?” I asked in falsetto, like he was crazy. “No! No, no, no.”
I expected Cooper to join in, but he was examining something on his shoe.
And then, with that settled, we recommenced walking to dinner—now as a group of three, with me in the middle, flanked by the boys. Cooper—presumably to give me space to make a love connection—got quiet and put his hands in his pockets to stroll along beside us.
Finn leaned close and pulled me into conversation.
“I was hoping to run into you,” Finn said as we walked.
“You were?”
He bumped his shoulder against mine. “We arrive at Nassau tomorrow,” he said.
I nodded like that was interesting news.
He went on. “And I see there’s a kayaking excursion.”
I nodded some more.
“And I’m wondering,” Finn said as we reached the dining room, “if you might like to go with me.”
“Go … kayaking?” I asked.
Finn nodded. “On a date.”
I so badly wanted to take a moment to react to that. Not just react, but savor. Finn Turner was asking me on a date. I would’ve given anything to call up my teenage self right then and give her the news.
But, instead, just as we arrived at the dining room, I caught sight of my parents presiding over the block of wedding party tables. My mom was proudly gazing at Ashley and Brody, and my dad was proudly gazing at … my mom.
We never really know what other people are thinking, right? It’s all just guesswork, based on our own best interpretations of facial expressions, and body language, and tone of voice. Especially if we’re talking about people like my dad—who are, to put it mildly, deeply stoic.
But there was no doubt about this moment.
Whatever else you might say about my dad, and I’d probably said it all … there was no doubt that he loved my mom.
He just loved her.
And he wanted to be with her.
Maybe he wasn’t great at love. But something in his eyes right then made me think that he wanted to get better.
And that was all I needed. Right in that one second, I signed up for Team Dad.