Chapter Twenty
Twenty
I WOKE UP the next morning to the shocking sight of Cooper—texting.
With Bridesmaid Two!
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m canceling.”
“Canceling what?”
“My plans with Bridesmaid Two.”
Why was this information so appalling? “You had plans with Bridesmaid Two?”
“You had plans with Finn,” Cooper said in his own defense.
“That’s different,” I said. “I don’t have a choice about that.”
“It’s weird that you don’t know this,” Cooper said, “but you have all the choice in the world.”
But not today. Because at the end of our kayaking day yesterday, in Nassau, Finn had asked me to go out with him again today, once we docked at Freeport. This time, to go snorkeling.
I’d been too sunburned yesterday to celebrate that win.
In fact, I forgot all about it—until I woke up. Docked. In Freeport.
According to the spreadsheet, it was time to snorkel.
“You can’t be thinking of going?” Cooper demanded, reading my face.
“I’m feeling much better this morning.”
“Guess what?” Cooper said. “There is no shade in the ocean.”
“I’ll put sunscreen on this time,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll bring a hat.”
“No,” Cooper said.
“No?”
“You’re no stranger to dumb things. You’ve done some Guinness Book–level dumb things. But you’re not doing this.”
This really was a first. In my whole life, Cooper had never, ever, tried to tell me what I could or couldn’t do.
“Look,” he said. “I told you all about my dad last night.”
“I remember,” I said.
“So you know for sure that I make it a policy not to tell other people what to do.”
“That sounds like a great policy.”
“So it really takes a lot for me to say this to you…”
I waited.
Cooper crossed his arms over his chest. “But you’re not going anywhere.”
Wow.
“You need to stay here and drink water and rest. I did not stay up all night taking care of you just to watch you give yourself sun poisoning again today.”
“Did you stay up all night taking care of me?”
“Yes,” he said, his face grumpy. “I did.”
“Thank you,” I said—and I meant it.
It wasn’t a hard sell. If I had to stay in Cooper’s luxury cabin all day for health reasons, then I had to. And if Cooper had to stay, too, as my primary caregiver? Fine.
He opened his sliding glass doors to let the fresh breeze in. He kept me hydrated and slathered me with more aloe. We ordered room service grilled cheeses. We watched bad TV. We practiced our song. We talked about old times.
By midday, I felt better enough to slip on a light cotton cover-up and sit out on Cooper’s balcony in the shade.
The big excitement of the day was when we realized the cruise ship parked in the slip next to ours was the MS Decadence—the ship we’d been docked next to back in Galveston.
And as we stood on our balcony, looking at all the other folks across the way who were looking at us from their balconies, we spotted the cruise dudes from before.
The ones who had ogled me on the wharf.
“Look,” I said to Cooper. “It’s the ship-faced guys.”
“It can’t be,” Cooper said.
But then we read their T-shirts. One of them read BEER MODE ACTIVATED, another read POWERED BY BEER, and the third one kept it simple and just said BEER LIFE.
“Those guys really love beer,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Cooper agreed as we openly stared at them.
And then, I guess in that way that you can sometimes just sense when people are looking at you, the guys noticed us—and started elbowing each other.
And just as Cooper and I were about to wave hello like we were friendly acquaintances from across the Gulf, all three men turned around at once, pulled down their pants, and pressed their butts up against the glass of their balcony railing.
I TEXTED ASHLEY—WITH a selfie for proof—about my sunburn, and she gave me a pass for the day to recover, but she also replied that she fully expected me to be in attendance at tonight’s variety-show-slash-dance-contest, looking, and I quote, “gorgeous.”
She even sent Pete down with a baby-blue sundress she wanted me to wear to offset the “broiled neon” color of my skin.
“Bruh,” Pete said when he saw me. “You really messed yourself up.”
“I’m better now,” I said. And I was. Mostly.
But that evening, as I did my hair, and put on mascara, and stepped gingerly into the dress, Cooper paced around, refusing to get dressed.
“I’m not sure this is a great idea,” Cooper said, while I was putting on my lipstick.
“What?”
“I kind of think maybe you need to take one more night to recover.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “Ashley would never stand for that.”
“You still look pretty pink,” Cooper said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “The lights’ll be dimmed.”
“I’m not worried about what other people will see. I’m worried about how you’ll feel.”
I stepped out of the bathroom to frown at myself in the mirror.
“I’m serious,” Cooper said then.
“About what?” I asked, rotating to get a look at my profile.
“About how you should stay in tonight.”
I looked over. “I’m not staying in, Cooper. I wasted too much time today already.”
But I guess he was a little touchy. “You think today was a waste of time?”
“No,” I said. “But you have to admit I didn’t make any progress.”
Cooper was studying me. “I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but sometimes you get so focused on a goal that you kind of lose perspective on everything else.”
I did know that—but I hadn’t known that Cooper knew that.
“Like the time,” Cooper went on, “that you decided to paint your high school car hot pink—but you had the wrong kind of paint, and it wasn’t sticking, and it kept peeling off as it dried, but you just kept painting and painting and stayed up all night and then slept through your geometry test the next day? ”
“Yeah, that … wasn’t great.”
“It was a disaster. And it was a disaster from five minutes in, by the way. But you just kept painting. It was like you’d decided you were painting that car that night with that paint, and so you were locked in.”
He wasn’t wrong. This was kind of a thing with me.
“You have to be able to shift direction sometimes. It’s okay to change your mind.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to work in one of my earrings. “Great life advice. Thank you.”
“Are you listening?” Cooper asked.
“Of course,” I answered. I wasn’t, really.
“Then what am I saying?” Cooper asked.
“You’re saying,” I repeated back, “that if I’m too sunburned, I don’t have to go to this thing tonight.”
“Okay,” Cooper said.
“And also that it’s okay to change direction in life. And I don’t disagree.”
“Exactly,” Cooper said.
“But I’m fine,” I said.
“You don’t look fine,” Cooper said.
But I held out my pink arm and touched my fingers to it several times. “See? I’m fine. It looks way worse than it is. I’m ninety-five percent normal.”
“I think you should stay here.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I’m talking about this whole plan.”
I shook my head. “What whole plan?”
“Operation Conquest.”
But I still refused to take his meaning. “What about it?”
“You’re trying so hard to get Finn interested in you,” Cooper said. “But what’ll you do if it works?”
“Um, I’ll live happily ever after, thanks.”
“You can’t possibly think that.”
“I absolutely think that,” I said.
“JoJo,” Cooper said then. “Finn is absolutely one hundred percent wrong for you.”
What a hell of a thing to say.
I stared at Cooper in disbelief for a second before I said, “Well, I disagree.”
“Why?” Cooper demanded.
“What?”
“Name one thing about him that isn’t wrong for you.”
But I was so flummoxed. Weren’t we on the same team? Didn’t we have the same goals? Like a dummy, I tried to answer. “I can name plenty of things! He’s successful, he’s … tall, he’s got a very fancy car…”
“None of that counts. You don’t care about any of that. What about him is right for you?”
My brain seemed to freeze up. “Look,” I said. “Right or wrong isn’t the point.”
“It’s exactly the point.”
“No. I came here with a plan. And you agreed to help me execute the plan. And we’re doing great.
We’re crushing it! Why would you start questioning everything when we’re almost there?
Ashley has rigged a whole fake slow-dance contest tonight, and whatever couple wins the slow dance has to kiss!
Each other! And no matter what, Finn and I will be winning—and therefore kissing.
Which means tonight is a very big night for me—a poetic opportunity for me to confront some highly unresolved issues in my heart—and I’m not just going to stay in this cabin with you and order soft serve and watch reruns of Friends on your iPad.
Okay? I’m going to this lunatic parade that my sister has spent months planning, and I’m wearing this dress, and I’m doing whatever she tells me—sunburn or no.
And then I’m finally going to break this curse and start living my best damned life. Starting with kissing Finn.”
I felt like that was a pretty great explanation. But here was Cooper’s takeaway: “Why—why—would you want to kiss that guy?”
“Haven’t you ever read a fairy tale? That’s how all curses get broken.”
“But this is real life—not a fairy tale. And that dude is not a prince. He’s a frog.”
“Says you,” I said.
“Says anyone,” Cooper said. Then he started counting off on his fingers. “He’s prematurely middle-aged. He only cares about status and cars. He’s weirdly competitive about mini golf, he doesn’t care about you, he’s not funny, and he’s boring as hell!”
But that was enough. I was done arguing.
I didn’t need Cooper’s permission to get this done.
I looked through my suitcase for my strappy heels, and instead of holding on to Cooper’s shoulder while I pushed my feet into them, I held on to the wall.
Cooper watched me. “Those shoes look like torture devices.”
“That’s your guy privilege talking.”
“You will one hundred percent have blisters, a sprained ankle, or a missing toe by the end of the night.”
“But high heels are all about beginnings.”