The Shippers(4)

Was I old at twenty-six?

No matter. I wouldn’t dare fight with Mrs. Richmond on her wedding day.

Sorry—my wedding day.

And now here I was, in a beige church bathroom with a bouffant hairdo, pausing to take in the sight of myself as a bride. And all I could see was … eyebrows.

Was the organ music getting louder?

Time to go. Everyone was waiting for me.

The bridesmaids were all lined up near the altar by now. My mom—who had stayed up until two in the morning assembling gift bags—was already seated in the front row with her wrist corsage on. My Grandma Dodie was wearing pearls and kitten heels. And my dad—my former-marine, workaholic dad (always an elusive get for any family event) was about to walk me down the aisle.

This was happening. Time to take my eyebrows to the sanctuary.

It’s just normal, ordinary, everyday cold feet, I told myself as I hustled back along the hallway. That slight feeling of nausea? That was a good sign. It meant I knew what I was doing, and I was taking it seriously, and I was stepping boldly into my future.

Who doesn’t feel nauseous in big life moments?

It wasn’t a red flag. It was an homage to my upcoming best life.

And so was this itchy-ass frigging dress.

That’s exactly what I was thinking as I reached the vestibule: This was a life-changing moment in every way. In twenty minutes, the whole thing would be over, and I’d be transformed—and I don’t just mean covered head to toe in contact dermatitis. This single event was going to change me from JoJo Burton, serial commitmentphobe and legendary boyfriend dumper, into Josephine Richmond: happily, legally, and incontrovertibly committed.

Twenty minutes total to change my whole personality. Easy.

We’d timed it beforehand with the reverend.

Or, actually—maybe a few minutes more than twenty.

Because just as I was about to give the giddyup signal to Mrs. Allen to fire up the processional at last … the vestibule double doors burst open at the same time with a swoosh, blasting out the beige room with golden-hued sunlight.

And into that sunlight walked a guy.

A guy who was not in a suit, like all the others.

A guy with a rucksack on his shoulders like he was just arriving from the French Alps.

A guy with an overgrown beard and shaggy hair … who looked a lot, I decided, as my eyes adjusted—an uncanny amount, even—like my childhood friend Cooper Watts. Who he most certainly could not be. Because my old friend Cooper had already, most definitely, most defiantly, RSVPed no to the wedding—circling Regrets ten times on the return card and adding a handwritten addendum that read, and I quote: “Don’t marry that douchebag. This is a boycott.”





Two


OTHER REASONS THIS person just couldn’t be Cooper:

Cooper lived in London.

Cooper didn’t talk to me anymore.

This dude was much more—um—strapping than any known version of Cooper.

Cooper knew better than to stress out my mom by crashing a wedding she was hosting.

Unlike this mountain man, Cooper could not grow a full beard.



At least—not the last time I’d seen him. Which, granted, was four years ago—right after college graduation. But we’d been across-the-street neighbors from ages eight to twenty-two. I was pretty sure I could pick out Cooper in any lineup anywhere.

Which is why I was so stumped to be stumped.

Was it Cooper?

Let’s revisit the new physique for a second: The Cooper I knew did not have big, solid, pommel-horse-Olympian-style shoulders. He did not have the kind of muscles you could see through a T-shirt and under a rucksack. He didn’t have forearms that seemed to be looking for something to squeeze, or a way of standing on the floor like he owned it, or a manly look that would make anybody—least of all me—stop in her tracks.

The Cooper I knew—the Cooper I’d hung out with every day for ten-plus formative years—was a boy. This French Alps hiker crashing my wedding was …

A man.

Impossible.

And yet.

My brain was saying No, it can’t be while every other part of me was saying Um—hello?—it definitely is. I was like a hunting dog on point—frozen in his direction. There was something to see here. Something important. For a minute, the rest of the world blurred away and left only the two of us there.

The organ music quieted. Mrs. Allen faded. The itching stopped.

All I could see was this total stranger—who I already knew.

I stepped closer. “Cooper?” I said, peering at him.

It couldn’t be.

“Hey, Joey,” he said. “Happy wedding day.”

Holy shit!

It was.

Cooper’s normal greeting was to grab me around the neck and clamp me into a headlock. But he wasn’t doing that now—yet.

I shook my head. “You were boycotting! You put it in writing.”

Cooper shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“You’re going to be in so much trouble when my mom finds out,” I said, uttering our childhood catchphrase.

But Cooper shook his head. “I emailed her. She approved.”

“She didn’t approve that,” I said, gesturing at his mountain-man ensemble. “You look like hell.”

It’s possible I was lying.