Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
“OH, HEY,” FINN said, giving a wave.
My heart clenched at the sight of Cooper: wearing his suit from last night, too, wrinkled and disheveled like the rest of us, his ice-blue tie hanging open against his chest.
We all took in the unmistakable morning-after vibes.
Just as I, in my walk-of-shame dress, said to Cooper, “It’s not what it looks like.”
Cooper shook his head. “I don’t care.”
I felt a flash of guilt. But I pushed back. If anyone should be guilty, it was Cooper. For his disloyalty, if nothing else! And his bad taste in women! And his sock.
“We’re headed to breakfast,” Finn said then, pleasantly, “if you’d like to join us.”
But Cooper didn’t respond. He just turned, all high-and-mighty, to walk the other way down the hall.
Read the room, Finn.
“Hey,” I said, launching into a high-heeled jog after Cooper. “You never texted me back!”
Cooper just kept walking.
“I needed to talk to you!” I went on, gaining on him. He didn’t just get to make a wrong assumption about me and then walk away.
“I was busy,” Cooper said, not slowing.
Finn didn’t follow us. “Does this mean you’re not having breakfast?” he called.
But he was already forgotten.
Cooper kept walking, and I kept following.
Where were we even going? This direction didn’t lead anywhere but out to a deck.
Next, I said, “You needed to talk to me, too, by the way.”
“Not really,” Cooper said.
“Yes,” I insisted. “You said that twice at the variety show.”
Cooper paused to push open the doors that led outside, slowing to look my way and then glance back at Finn—who was now walking off to breakfast on his own. “It’s not relevant,” Cooper said. “Anymore.”
“What was it, though?” I asked, as he resumed his pace. “What did you need to say?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe it does.”
“Why are you even here?” Cooper said. “You should be having a postcoital breakfast with Gear Guy.”
“That’s what I was texting you about!”
“Don’t text me about that,” Cooper said. Then he added, “Or anything.”
We emerged into the full sunshine of the deck now. And when Cooper realized it, he stopped abruptly, let out a dropped-shoulders sigh, and then did a one-eighty to come back toward me.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as he grabbed me by the waist and rotated me around, too.
“There’s no shade out here,” he said, steering me back toward the interior hallway.
Even mid-fight, he was protecting my sunburn.
But he wasn’t softening. As soon as we were back inside, he was striding ahead again, and I was trotting after him.
“I’m trying to talk to you, Cooper,” I said, in a tone like Slow down.
“I don’t feel like talking.”
“What is your problem?”
“Maybe it’s ’cause I didn’t sleep last night. At all. Even for one minute.”
Didn’t sleep at all—with Bridesmaid Two? My body clamped down at the thought.
“And it’s your fault,” Cooper added.
“Pretty sure that was all you, dude,” I said. How dare he?
But Cooper just kept walking.
“I don’t get what we’re fighting about,” I said.
“We’re not fighting about anything,” Cooper declared.
We reached our cabin door.
“I also don’t get why you’re so mad about seeing me with Finn just now”—I gestured at the knob where the sock had been—“when you clearly had quite an evening yourself!”
For the first time all morning, Cooper met my eyes.
But he wasn’t looking at me. He was glaring.
Not fair. “How,” I demanded, “can you possibly be mad at me for anything right now, when you clearly spent the night in our cabin with the shallowest, ickiest bridesmaid on this ship?”
But Cooper didn’t respond. Just unlocked the door and pushed his way into the cabin.
I followed.
“No response to that, huh?” I prodded. “Too embarrassed to reply?”
“I’m not embarrassed about anything,” he said, charging toward the balcony doors—like now that he’d entered our cabin he wanted nothing more than to get back out.
“I’m not embarrassed about anything,” I countered.
But again—no response. Now Cooper was working the latch on the sliding doors—which shouldn’t have been that challenging—flipping it up and down, pushing and pulling, throwing every single shoulder muscle into it, all to no avail.
“If anyone should be embarrassed,” I went on, pressing my advantage, “it’s the person who spent all night desecrating our beloved cabin with Sock Girl!”
“Don’t call her Sock Girl,” Cooper said as the latch gave way and the door slid open. “Her name is Bridesmaid Two!”
We both paused at that as the wind rushed in.
“What is her name?” I asked then.
But Cooper just growled like I was driving him insane and escaped out onto the balcony.
And so, of course, I followed.
I’ve been over the memory of this moment so many times. How could things have gone so far off the rails? How could we have been right there together, just the two of us, surrounded by all the real facts of the situation—and not managed to clear up even one meaningful thing with each other?
Maybe it was sleep deprivation. Or too many emotions all at once. Or the way time can shift into fast-forward without permission. We hurtled through that moment at warp speed, and I never could get my bearings. It was too much too fast to even start.
Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing yesterday’s clothes, and maybe if Cooper weren’t so shockingly, nothing-like-I’d-ever-imagined angry, and maybe if I hadn’t stayed up half the night desperately not thinking about what appalling things Cooper might be up to …
maybe I could have navigated this moment better.
If I’d been thinking even a tiny bit more clearly, maybe things could’ve sorted themselves out.
But I couldn’t think clearly. My brain was wobbling off its axis. Things were all out of order. I hadn’t even sorted out yesterday, much less gotten clear on this morning.
What I should have done was calmly explain to him the most important thing: I had not just slept with Finn. I’d only let him kiss me.
It wouldn’t be news to Cooper, of course, if he’d watched it happen.
But what might be news to Cooper—what might be really vital information right now—was that enduring a kiss that I did not want from Finn only clarified to me what, and who, I did want.
Looking back: It was so obviously crucial to say that—ASAP.
That was just basic triage.
But that’s not what I did in the blur of it all.
I guess I was trying to start at the beginning? Trying to create order by going chronologically? Without considering that I might never make it to the end?
“Look,” I said, “I need you to understand that we should have won that dance contest last night. It was totally unfair for Finn to just strut in at the end and take a prize he hadn’t even competed for.”
Cooper just turned and leaned out over the balcony like he was longing to take flight. “You think I care about winning a fake dance contest?”
“And I never should have let him drag me out of there like that,” I went on, talking to Cooper’s profile.
“He just—did it. And, true—I didn’t stop him.
I didn’t want to go with him, but I also didn’t fight him.
But”—how to explain?—“I have unfinished business with that guy! You have to understand how big that first kiss was in my life. It meant much more to me than it should have, yes—but I can’t change that.
I mean, I could replay the whole thing for you second-by-second in slo-mo and include every detail—from the ambulance siren in the distance to the sound of girls jump-roping twenty feet away.
That whole three-minute segment of my life is indelibly tattooed on my brain.
I remember the exact weight of his hands on my shoulders.
The precise rhythm of his breathing. The scent of his grape-flavored bubble gum.
Not to mention the tragic spasms of joy that my heart lapsed into as soon as he got close.
I could pick that kiss out of a lineup. I’d know that kiss anywhere. ”
“Really?” Cooper said, now turning to face me. “You’d know that kiss anywhere?”
Why was this making Cooper madder?
His chest rose and fell. His neck pulsed. His shoulders rounded, like an ape or something. And he was, I think any witness would agree, positively glowering.
“What?” I said. “I’m just trying to explain to you that the kiss he gave me was a huge, massive big deal in my life.
I know I haven’t been making the best decisions, and maybe I’ve been giving Finn more benefits of more doubts than he ever deserved, but I wasn’t just being stubborn—or stupid.
I wasn’t just being a pain in the ass for no reason.
We’re talking about life-defining stuff here. ”
Cooper took a step closer.
I reread his face. Was it anger? Or just—intensity?
“That,” Cooper said, “is what I wanted to tell you yesterday.”
“What?” I asked.
“That kiss? That life-defining kiss?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“That kiss that you can’t let go of—or forget?”
“Yeah?”
“The kiss that ruined your life? The one that’s had us trailing around after that dumb douchebag this whole week? The one you imprinted on so hard that you’ll never be able to love anybody in your whole life other than the one guy who gave it to you?”
This felt like a lot of buildup. I waved my hands, like Hurry up. “Yeah?”
Cooper looked straight into my eyes. “That was me.”