Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
LET’S JUST SKIP the kayaking, okay?
Did I go?
Yes.
Did Finn wear his helmet?
No. But he was clearly disappointed about that.
And was I so nervous all morning before going that I fully forgot to put on any sunscreen—at all—and came back from that five-hour excursion broiled like a lobster?
I’m sorry to say: Yes.
But sunburns can take a while to set in. I didn’t really notice what I’d done to myself until I got back to the room and Cooper, who was practicing his mini banjo, looked up and said, “That’s a hell of a sunburn.”
“Is it?” I asked, suddenly getting the shivers.
“Didn’t you put on sunscreen?”
I shook my head. “I was so nervous, I forgot.”
Cooper came closer to look me over. “No hat? Nothing?” he asked, hoping for a different answer.
“Nothing,” I said.
I turned toward the mirror. I did look a little pink. And, now that we were noticing it, I felt a little pink, too.
Then Cooper nodded like a doctor with a diagnosis. “First,” he said, “Tylenol. Then take a lukewarm shower to get the salt water off before it starts stinging too bad. Did you bring aloe?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll check the gift shop. And I’ll get water bottles. You have to hydrate like crazy.”
“Sounds like you’ve had a few sunburns yourself.”
“A few,” he said.
This was the real result of my date with Finn. Not a post-excursion glass of champagne with the man I was trying to turn into my destiny … but conking out afterward for twelve hours in Cooper’s bed.
Before I fell asleep, though, Cooper made me drink a full bottle of water while he covered me with aloe—as I wore only a bra and a pair of short shorts.
My most sensible bra, though, if that helps. Cotton—not lacy. It could almost have been a bikini top.
“Sorry not to have a shirt on,” I said to Cooper.
“We’re in a medical situation,” he said, like It’s fine.
“Pretend it’s a bikini,” I said.
And then, I guess for a comedy callback, he said, “You don’t want me to do that.”
It had been a long time since I’d had a sunburn. Childhood, maybe?
But Cooper insisted the aloe would solve everything.
All he had to do was apply it all over every burned inch of my body.
But as I sat on my side of the bed, looking at the glob of gel in his hand, I shook my head. “I think I’m fine,” I said.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Cooper said. “But you’re not.”
“I just—don’t want to be touched. Even fingertips seem like sandpaper.”
“That’s why you put the aloe on really thick,” Cooper explained.
My worst areas were my shoulders and the tops of my thighs. Cooper took a scoop of the gel on his fingers and moved toward my knee. “Let’s do one square inch,” he said, “and if you hate it, we’ll stop.”
One square inch. I didn’t stop him.
And it actually felt fine. Cool and smooth and soothing.
“How’s that?” Cooper asked.
“It’s good, actually.”
“Permission to do the rest?”
I nodded.
And so Cooper spent the next half hour slathering my back side with half the bottle—though he had to pause a few minutes in to put my hair up in a ponytail.
He did my shoulders first—gliding cool strokes down to my bathing suit line and up to my hair.
Then he blew on my back for a while to dry it before sending me to the bathroom for one last pee and then helping me lie back on the bed.
“You’re going to stick to the sheets a little,” he said, “but there’s no way around it.”
Once I was positioned, it was time to do my front side.
Cooper pulled up a chair to get to work.
I closed my eyes and said, “Tell me about the worst sunburn you ever got.”
But Cooper just sucked air through his teeth like nobody would benefit from that. “How about I sing to you instead?”
“That works.”
And that’s how we spent the evening. Cooper took requests—“Rocky Raccoon,” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and the Kermit the Frog classic “Rainbow Connection”—while covering me, face to feet, in goo.
Despite everything, it was fun.
The aloe was so smooth and cool. Favorite areas included my cheeks, my collarbones, my knees, and the tops of my feet. “You’re good at this,” I said, when Cooper was midway through “American Pie.”
In response, he switched out one of the bye-byes with thank you.
Anyway: I had no trouble falling asleep that night.
Apparently, all I needed to get comfortable in bed with Cooper was a pampering serenade and a touch of sun poisoning.
But it worked. No fidgeting tonight. I conked out effortlessly and slept four hours straight—only waking later and peeling myself off the sheets to go pee.
It’s a bit of a blur, but I know at some point, Cooper made me take more Tylenol and drink more water.
And he did at least two reapplications of aloe in the middle of the night.
After the second bathroom run, though—maybe around four in the morning?—I couldn’t get back to sleep.
I lay in the bed with my skin hot and irritated, wide awake, unable to get comfortable and endlessly adjusting positions—as quietly as possible, hoping not to wake Cooper.
After about twenty minutes, Cooper said, “You probably need more aloe.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Just go back to sleep.”
“Too late,” Cooper said, sitting up.
He came around to my side of the bed. Then we went through all the same sunburn-care steps again, silently, sleepily—until the final section, when he was sitting on a chair next to the bed and working the gel all over the front half of my body.
“Cooper?” I asked, my eyes closed in the dark as he slid the pads of his fingers across my collarbones.
“What?”
“I’ve been wanting to ask you a question for a long time.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“But I keep not asking.”
The question I wanted to ask, of course, was why he had disappeared four years ago.
But once I knew, I couldn’t unknow.
And what if the answer ruined everything?
I’d chickened out of asking him about it on the night of my non-wedding. And tonight, with nothing else to do and nothing else to talk about … I would chicken out again.
“What’s the question?” Cooper asked.
It was right there—just sitting in my mouth like a butterscotch candy: Why did you disappear?
But at the very last second, I shifted.
I reached up instead and touched the scar on his upper lip. “How did you get this?” I asked.
The gel stopped. But then it started again.
I breathed in and out.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Cooper said, coating a thick layer of aloe down into an area that in any nonmedical situation we would call cleavage.
“I’ve got time,” I said.
“Shouldn’t you be going back to sleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
Cooper sighed. Then he said, “You remember when my mom and I moved to our street, yes?”
“Of course,” I said.
I fully remembered. Our gang of kids were all out riding bikes in the street … and I suddenly noticed this new kid in a red T-shirt with a cut on his lip and a cast on his arm, standing in the Hickses’ old driveway, watching us.
I rode over to him. “What happened to your face?”
“A fencing accident,” Cooper had said.
Looking back, it was such an odd thing to say. But I never questioned it. I just assumed that this brand-new child in my life had been brandishing a sword a little too roughly.
“Do you want to ride bikes with us?” I asked him next.
“I don’t have a bike,” Cooper had said. “We had to leave it at my old house.”
At that, I climbed off my bike and pushed the handlebars toward him. “Take mine,” I said.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’ll go get my brother’s skateboard.”
Inside, as I hunted in Pete’s messy room for the skateboard, I saw a pack of markers, and I grabbed it and brought it outside with me. Back in the street, I called all the kids over, and then I pointed at Cooper. “What’s your name, new kid?”
“Cooper Watts,” Cooper announced, quite formally.
“Can we sign your cast, Cooper Watts?” I asked.
At that, all the kids noticed the pristine white cast on his forearm and dropped their bikes right there in the street to run over and grab markers.
I’m still not sure what was so enrapturing about signing a cast, but by the time we were done with him, there was no expanse of white left.
I myself signed it, in my prettiest cursive: Welcome to the neighborhood!
Your friend, JoJo. And I dotted the i in friend with a flower.
Cooper had thanked me many times for that welcome, as if my declaring him to be our friend had made it happen. I’d tried to explain that it would’ve happened no matter what—but he persisted with the idea that I had somehow done something vital and life-changing for him that day.
Now, all these years later, as he applied aloe along my collarbones, he thanked me again. “When we moved onto our street,” Cooper said, “I was recovering from—a thing that had happened.”
He was? “What was the thing?”
“That’s why I had the cast, and the cut lip. It was the reason my mom and I moved, actually,” Cooper said.
I waited.
“Wow,” Cooper said then. “I guess I don’t talk about this much.”
“What happened?” I prompted.
“So…” Cooper said. “In our old town, while my parents were in the middle of getting divorced … there was an incident where my dad came by after school one day before my mom was home from work … and he took me to his apartment for a sleepover—without actually telling her.”
“Wait—what?”
“Yeah. So that was rough. She got home, and I wasn’t there, and she couldn’t find me anywhere … and then she called the police.”
“Why didn’t your dad tell her he’d picked you up?” I asked, hoping maybe he’d just forgotten.
“Apparently,” Cooper said, “he was trying to scare her.”
“Hold on,” I said, sitting up straighter—sunburn forgotten. “Are you saying your dad kidnapped you?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘kidnapped.’ He just … took me. Without asking. And didn’t tell my mom.”
“Cooper,” I said. “That’s kidnapping.”
“Not if it’s your dad.”
But I couldn’t let that stand. “Even if it’s your dad.”
Cooper shrugged. “I guess, technically—fine. You could call it kidnapping.”
“Technically?”
“I didn’t feel kidnapped, if that makes it better.”
“Not sure it does.”