Chapter Twenty #2
“Isn’t doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result the definition of insanity? Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
I gave Cooper a look. “We’d need a semester-long college seminar to answer that question.”
“I’m begging you to wear sneakers.”
“And that,” I said, “is why you’d flunk my seminar.”
I stood up and admired my look in the mirror.
Maybe shoes like these were the definition of insanity. But I just didn’t care.
For a second, I hoped we were done with the Finn conversation.
But Cooper wasn’t. He revved back up. “Look,” he said.
“I see your eyes glazing over when he talks to you. I see the boredom rising off you like steam. You’re so focused on what you think you’re supposed to want that you can’t feel what’s real.
Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life—bored into a coma by a man who can’t appreciate you?
Stop selling yourself short, JoJo. Raise your standards! ”
But that just made me mad. “My standards were just fine when I was about to marry Pearce Richmond. But you had to fly across an ocean to shut that down, didn’t you?”
“Pearce Richmond was a total wanker,” Cooper said. “Not one cell in his body was good enough for you.”
“But that’s true of everybody, Cooper. According to you!
Nobody’s ever good enough for me! Have you ever liked even one person that I’ve dated?
” Asking the question made me realize how true the answer was.
“No. You’ve hated them all. You’ve mocked them and you’ve picked on them and you’ve fixated on what was wrong with them until I fixated on what was wrong with them. ”
“Only because—” Cooper started. Then he regrouped: “Only because you were too good for any of those guys. You need to be with somebody who gets you, and who admires you, and who makes you laugh, and who looks after you. That’s what you deserve, JoJo—and you shouldn’t ever settle for anything less.”
But I’d just made a really good point. Cooper had torn down every guy I’d ever tried to date.
I might have spent my life as a dumper, and maybe that was on me, but Cooper certainly hadn’t been helping.
I felt a surge of indignation as a flash montage of all the men I’d rejected churned through my head.
Next, I leaned toward Cooper until we were eye to eye, and I lifted my brows like a challenge, and I said, “Got any suggestions?”
Cooper looked away.
“I’m serious. Name one person—anybody—who fits your standards. I’ll marry him right now. I’ll marry him tonight.”
Cooper turned to meet my eyes, and there was a funny pause where I had the weirdest feeling like Cooper might nominate … himself.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he just said, in a much quieter voice, “Don’t go tonight. Stay here.”
But I walked toward the door. “I’m going.”
“Why?” Cooper asked as I pulled the door open.
And then I suddenly had this feeling like I needed to give Cooper a real reason.
I wanted him to understand.
And so I took a breath, and, standing right there in the half-open doorway, I turned back to him and said, “One afternoon, when we were kids, we were playing truth or dare after school on the playground. And Finn got dared to go kiss me while I was blindfolded. And so I went off behind the shed, and I dutifully tied on my blindfold, and then I waited for Finn to show up. I waited so long, I thought he might not show up at all. But then he did. And I was so relieved. Because I’d been thinking that whole time that I might get stood up for the first kiss of my life.
Minutes went by that felt like hours. The playground got quieter and quieter as kids got picked up for car pool and went home.
But I kept waiting. I refused to lose hope.
And then … he showed up. I heard his sneakers on the gravel, and I felt like my whole body was just filling up with gratitude.
And then he put his hands on my shoulders, and he leaned down, and he gave me—honestly—the sweetest kiss in the history of kisses. ”
I had Cooper’s attention now.
“There are lots of reasons why that particular day was important in my life—and Ashley and I have used her psychology training to examine every one of them. But the main reason is just—the kiss. The kiss itself. I can still remember it like it just happened. I can feel the pressure of his hands on my shoulders, and hear the sound of his breathing. I could tell you every detail. I could go all night. It’s like that one moment cast a spell over my life that I’ve lived under ever since.
It’s like the sweetness of that kiss set the standard that no other kiss could ever meet.
” My voice felt shaky, and I hoped like hell Cooper couldn’t hear it as I went on.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen tonight—but I know I need to go and find out.
I need to go and confront that kiss, and everything it’s come to mean, and the guy who gave it to me. ”
I don’t know what I was hoping for from Cooper. A nod of sympathy, maybe? A little validation that what I was trying to do wasn’t ridiculous?
But instead, I got … clarifying questions.
“That was your first kiss you’ve been talking about all this time?” Cooper asked. “During that game of truth or dare?”
I nodded.
“That was the kiss you imprinted on so hard that it ruined you for all other kisses?”
I nodded again.
“That’s the kiss you think is your destiny?”
“Yes, okay? Yes. So I’m going. And you don’t have to help me—you really don’t. But kindly do me a favor—and don’t try to stop me, either.”
With that, I stepped out into the hallway.
And I slammed Cooper’s door behind me.