The Shippers(15)

I looked out at the ocean. “I’m not sure how I feel about it. But one thing’s pretty clear. Throwing that woman’s wedding dress away just now didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse.”



* * *



ANYWAY—THAT’S HOW COOPER ruined my wedding.

Classic Cooper.

As we sat on the steps of the Seawall, eating my pile of snacks and watching the whitecaps breaking on the black ocean, I assumed he’d be back home now for a few days. For a little visit, at least. That he’d see his mom, and binge eat some Tex-Mex while the getting was good, and hang out with me—as penance for dismantling my life, if nothing else.

But I was wrong.

His visit to Texas lasted less than twenty-four hours.

His flight back to London left at six AM—that morning.

“What were you thinking?” I asked, staring baldly at him when he told me that. “Everything about this is completely crazy.”

Cooper nodded, like he agreed.

Then he handed me the chocolate bar I was reaching for.

Then he said, “I had something to say to you. And I wanted to say it in person.”

I studied him. “What? What could you possibly have had to say that required a transatlantic voyage?”

But he scrunched his face and shook his head. “I think now’s not the time.”

“What!”

He shrugged. “I’m not ready. Or maybe you’re not.”

“You cannot fly all the way here for less than twenty-four hours to say something that major—and then just not say it!”

But he could. And he did.

No amount of begging, arguing, threatening, or guilt-tripping changed his mind.

He took off for London at six AM, as scheduled, without ever saying the thing he’d flown to Texas to say.

And all I could do was go home. And wonder what it was.





Six


THERE WERE SO—SO—MANY things to dread about my sister’s wedding. The next wedding on the family agenda.

Not that I was making a list.

Did I mention that it was happening on a cruise ship?

No joke. An eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel.

My big sister, Ashley, worked as a marketing manager for a cruise line called Escapes, and one of her many perks was discounted group fares. It was part of the reason she took the job. So when her boyfriend, Brody, popped the question, a cruise wedding was, as they both loved to say, “a no-brainer.”

I wasn’t much of a cruise ship person myself.

I wasn’t much of a weddings person lately, either.

But here we were.

Six weeks to the day after I left my perfect fiancé at the altar, my whole family would set sail from Galveston, Texas, for eight endless days at sea—accompanied by eighty of our dearest friends, lifelong neighbors, and weirdest relatives.

Twice the number of takers we’d had for my wedding, by the way.

Can’t beat a discount cruise.

And some—maybe not all, but plenty—of those people were going to be asking about, puzzling over, or teasing me about my wedding debacle for far too many of those eight days.

I should also mention that Brody, my sister’s groom, was actually a guy I had dated briefly in high school—for like a week—before I’d dumped him, like all the others.

That’s how he and Ashley met, in fact.

After the breakup, Brody had showed up on our front walk with flowers and stood there, Say Anything style, refusing to leave. So Ashley dragged him to a coffee shop—out of pity—to explain how hopeless I was. “He just seemed so lovelorn,” she explained, “clutching those sad carnations.” She also thought he was “kind of cute.” And it wasn’t his fault, she liked to say, that he was “collateral damage” from my “issues with intimacy.”

She was just picking up the pieces.

In the end, he gave her the carnations. They became friends, and then more than friends, and now, after dating pleasantly for almost ten years, they were getting married. And it was great.

He was a perfectly nice guy.

Not to me, exactly—but in general.

He was good for Ashley. I was happy they were happy.

But was old Brody still a smidge bitter about me dumping him a decade ago?

Weirdly, yes.

I wasn’t going to be his favorite new in-law, that was for sure.

So add that to the list I wasn’t making of things to dread on the cruise.

How many was that now?

Trapped on a ship for eight solid days as a self-inflicted spinster while celebrating my sister’s marriage to a groom who didn’t like me?

Not good.

Not to mention, I had promised Ashley when we were children that I would serenade her at her wedding. Apparently she was going to hold me to that.

But that’s a whole digression.

The point is: It was a lot.

I wish I could tell you that something wonderful happened in the six weeks between my aborted wedding and the start of Ashley’s cruise. I wish one of the jobs I’d applied to had panned out, or I’d had a romantic dalliance, or I’d even just found a fantastic new pair of shoes. Anything, right?

Good things happen all the time.

People make new friends, and discover great little Italian restaurants, and buy fuzzy socks they wish they could never take off.