The Shippers(40)

He’d started with my part, the melody, so I just did his harmony—as easy as breathing.

I guess it really was that simple.

And that’s how we finally drifted off to sleep, at last.

We lay in Cooper’s bed, divided by a wall of pillows, as we churned across the moonlit surface of a deep ocean … and we sang ourselves to sleep.





Fourteen


BREAKFAST THE NEXT morning wasn’t just breakfast, by the way. It was a matchmaking event with its own subsection on the spreadsheet.

That was my whole reason for going to breakfast: to get back on track and right my course with Finn.

But breakfast somehow wound up being about anybody—and everybody—but Finn.

Ashley had reserved a group of dining tables for the wedding guests, but she’d put place cards at only one: the hookup table for all the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and the one sister who needed love connections.

Should I have been seated next to Finn at breakfast?

One hundred percent.

Ashley had drawn a seating chart: with me flanked by Finn on one side and my wingman, Cooper, on the other. This was the backbone of Operation Conquest: proximity and charm. Ashley’s job was to make sure that Finn was seated next to me at everything, and my job was to be relentlessly delightful.

Foolproof, Ashley insisted.

Except that Finn decided to be late, leaving an opportunity for Grandma Dodie to show up in a turquoise pashmina, fully ignore all the place cards, and plunk right down in his seat.

Cooper looked at me, like What now?

And I looked at him back, like This lady can sit anywhere she wants.

At that, Cooper moved to Grandma Dodie’s other side, leaving his seat open for Finn, and charmed her so aggressively that, at one point, I heard her say, “I just don’t remember you being this handsome.”

To which Cooper replied, “Well, I’ve been working on it.”

Meanwhile, I restored order by switching Finn’s and Cooper’s place cards and draping a napkin over Finn’s new chairback—trying to emphasize how very taken that seat was.

As Cooper asked Grandma Dodie all about her Spanish lessons, and the pastry-making class she was taking, and her upcoming trip to Barcelona, I kept the hostess podium in my sights, waiting for Finn to appear.

But no luck.

Instead, our table filled up, and every time someone tried to sit next to me, I’d hover my hand over Finn’s seat, like Sorry, taken.

I must have turned away ten people.

Ashley’s place cards idea was a bit of a fudge. There weren’t really assigned seats in the dining room. And once Grandma Dodie had joined us, that gave license to other grown-ups to join. Before long, our neighbors the Vargases and the Dunns had also ignored the place cards and taken up spots once reserved for love connections.

Ashley saw what was happening and sent Brody over, trying to stem the tide. He added a bridesmaid to the table, a friend of Ashley’s from grad school whose name I could never remember—a person I just thought of as Bridesmaid Two.

Ugh. Bridesmaid Two. The worst of all the bridesmaids—and the one Ashley had just suggested setting up with Cooper.

“You can’t set up Cooper,” I’d protested. “He’s got his hands fully full with Operation Conquest.”

“After that’s over,” Ashley explained. “Once you’re happily together with Finn, and all that is mission accomplished. Then I’ll set them up.”

“Don’t you have somebody better?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t like her,” I said with a shrug. “Women that pretty never had to develop a personality.”

“Her personality is fine,” Ashley insisted.

But I disagreed. “She’s an interrupter. And whatever she interrupts you with is never as good as what you were saying.”

“You won’t care, anyway,” Ashley said. “You’ll be off on the Smooching Deck with Finn.”

God willing.

But the situation wasn’t good.

Bridesmaid Two settled in at our table like she belonged there, acting like the cruise director–hostess of the breakfast table—warmly chatting with the neighbors and even prodding Grandma Dodie about the gentleman friend she’d been canoodling with.

“What’s his name, Grandma Dodie?” Bridesmaid Two teased.

Hey! That was my grandmother. I was supposed to be doing the teasing!

Grandma Dodie made an innocent face. “Edward?” she asked.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Not yet,” Grandma Dodie said, looking mischievous.

“You’ve got this, Grandma Dodie,” Bridesmaid Two said, making a hand heart. “I’m shipping you.”

Grandma Dodie frowned. “Shipping me?”

“Both of you,” Bridesmaid Two explained, like that should clear things up.

Grandma Dodie looked around the table like that didn’t compute.

“She’s rooting for your relationship,” Cooper explained. “Ship comes from relationship.”

Cooper glanced over at Bridesmaid Two. What were they now—a team?

“Are you sure that’s a real word?” Grandma Dodie asked, pulling a tiny pencil and pad of paper from her purse to write down this newfangled term.