The Shippers(26)

Yeah. Well. That’s not what happened.

What did happen … was something Cooper and I had never talked about again—not once—since the actual moment.

It was all over in an instant: I grabbed him by the collar, planted a kiss on him, released him, saw the shock on his face …

And then I watched him throw up corn dog all over the kissing booth.

No need to quantify: It was a lot of corn dog. They had to call out the hazmat team and shut down the booth for the rest of the carnival. Come to think of it, I don’t think the school ever attempted a kissing booth again.

I was mortified then, and I was still mortified now—and I had no doubt I’d continue to be mortified well into the afterlife.

Of course we never talked about it. What would there even be to say? The next time I saw Cooper, we just pretended nothing happened. Other people talked about it, of course. I became the girl who had kissed Cooper and made him throw up. Cooper, to at least a few delightful people, became Corn Dog Guy. The school newspaper even featured it as a bullet point under the main headline THE KISS-OFF in their reportage on the carnival.

So, yeah. That settled any questions I might’ve had about whether Cooper found me attractive. I don’t think you can get more rejected than that.

Right? Case closed.

Here on the dock, all these years later, I wasn’t sure how Cooper could even imagine being a candidate for Operation Conquest. If kissing a guy makes him throw up, he’s not going to top your list of potential true loves.

Apparently, though, Cooper had not intuited this. “‘Of course not’?” he asked. “Why ‘of course’?”

I would not be rehashing any of this with him today. “Because you’re Cooper.”

“That’s your whole reason?”

“That’s the only reason I need.”

“Who is it, then?”

Now we were back on track. But I suddenly felt weird about saying it. “It’s someone else,” I answered.

“Who?”

“Just—someone.”

“Am I supposed to guess?” Cooper asked. Then, lowering his voice like it might be a secret: “Is it the captain of the ship?”

“Cut it out, Cooper. This is serious.”

“I’m being serious,” he said—unseriously.

“It’s someone viable. It’s someone who might be able to break this curse I’ve been living under my entire dumb life.”

Cooper shook his head. “What curse is that?”

I looked him dead in the eye. Then I said, “Only loving men who don’t love me back.”

Once again, Cooper’s reaction was no reaction.

Was he holding his breath?

Something about his face made what I’d said seem even sadder. I felt the truth of it in a way that pressed at my throat. My eyes stung with uninvited tears, but I squeezed down to get rid of them.

When I opened my eyes, after all that, we weren’t really fighting anymore.

The tone of everything shifted.

Now I was saying something true to one of the only people on earth who might have a shot at understanding it. “Right?” I said, meeting his eyes, my voice softer. “It’s bad. It’s really bad. I called off my wedding—and even though Pearce wasn’t the right person for me—”

Cooper jumped in: “Pearce was a total douchebag.”

“Exactly,” I said. “But I picked him. I picked him, and I fixated on him, and I demanded that we get married. Why did I do that, Cooper? I’m really worried something’s wrong with me. I’m really scared I’m going to spend my whole life…” I thought back to what it had felt like to be with Pearce, and then I finished with: “lonely.”

Cooper let out a long breath at that word. I had his attention now.

“This is not a joke to me,” I said. “I’ve spent the last six weeks feeling incomprehensibly disappointed in myself. I think I might really be cursed. And I’m working like hell here to change my life. I need to get this solved. And I just really need you on my team. Can you be on my team, Cooper?”

He held my gaze for a second before saying, “I’ve always been on your team, Joey. Since day one.”

“Great,” I said. “Perfect. Because Ashley’s a little busy right now, and I can’t do this alone.”

Cooper was looking at me like he was still on the fence. But his voice sounded like he’d given in. “So what is the plan, exactly?”

“I need to make an unsuspecting man fall in love with me before this cruise is over.”

Cooper dropped his shoulders, like Of course you do. “You want me to help you seduce one of the other passengers.”

I lifted a finger to take issue with seduce. “I prefer conquer. Or maybe even woo.”

“Nobody says woo,” Cooper said.

“Conquer it is, then.”

Then, like he already knew he was going to hate the answer, he closed his eyes and said, “Spit it out. Who are we conquering?”

He was going to hate the answer. But that didn’t change anything.

So I took a breath and just said it: “Finn Turner.”

At the name, Cooper’s head fell forward in exasperation.

And when he lifted it again, he looked right into my eyes and said, “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.”