The Shippers(43)

“Footsteps?” Mr. Vargas asked.

Cooper nodded. “You can create every possible human emotion with footsteps. We have a whole closet of prop shoes.”

Now this was a good topic. Why hadn’t we spent all of breakfast talking about this?

“So if you need to make the sound of thunder, would you go out and record some thunder?” Mr. Dunn asked.

“For thunder,” Cooper said, “I like to use a piece of aluminum sheet metal. You punch it and then ripple it.”

“Is that better than the real thing?” Mrs. Dunn wanted to know.

Cooper nodded. “The sound has to fit the visuals just right—plus, the pacing of the scene. So you watch the screen as you record the sound.”

We all nodded.

“That’s such a cool job,” Bridesmaid Two said, looking decidedly starry-eyed.

Okay, Bridesmaid Two. Settle down.

Though … it was a cool job. I couldn’t resist one-upping her. “That,” I corrected, “is the coolest job in the world.”

Cooper nodded at me. “It really is.”

“And you’re in London?” Mrs. Dunn asked.

Cooper looked at me. “I just got an offer to move back, actually.”

“To Los Angeles?” Mrs. Dunn inquired, like Cooper was still talking to her.

But he kept his eyes on me. “To Austin,” he answered. “They make a lot of movies there.”

Mrs. Vargas again: “But you couldn’t possibly leave London?”

Cooper’s gaze stayed fixed on mine. “I could be talked into coming home.”

It was really bothering me that I hadn’t known about Cooper’s job all this time. But that’s what his mom had told my mom after he left: that he’d gone to London to play in a band.

That’s what he’d been doing in my head for four years.

“Your mom said you were in a band,” I said accusingly.

“I was—at first,” Cooper said. “We still play sometimes.”

“In clubs?” Bridesmaid Two interrupted.

Cooper shook his head. “Mostly busking for money on the Tube.”

“There’s no Tube in Austin,” Mrs. Vargas cautioned.

“No,” Cooper agreed. “But there are lots of tacos.”

I processed it all.

Maybe I really hadn’t wanted to ask him about what he’d been up to all this time. Maybe I’d wanted to just act like those four years had never happened.

But I guess they had happened, after all. Days after we graduated college, after we’d returned home and formulated a plan to get summer jobs at the same bookstore together, Cooper ghosted me. Left without a word. One minute, I was showing him my new engagement ring, and telling him Pearce had an internship in DC, and making Cooper promise that we’d make the most of my last summer as an unmarried woman … and the next minute, Cooper was just—gone. Hardcore gone. Like not answering calls or texts gone.

His mom was always so apologetic when she saw me. “Maybe his phone doesn’t work over there,” she’d say. Like that might make me feel better.

It didn’t.

I’d been so absolutely wrecked by the way he left—and the question of how my oldest friend could do that to me—that the fact of it stayed centered in my mind like a wound that refused to heal.

But I guess Cooper had been doing fine.

Doing fine, and living his life. His cool life. Working for the BBC and busking in Tube stations. Without me.

At some point, I’d have to ask what the hell, exactly, had happened.

But the problem was, I wanted to know precisely as badly as I never wanted to know.

And, at least for now, that would have to be that.



* * *



I WAS RESENTING Bridesmaid Two for churning up all my emotions when my parents came up to our table to check on how everyone was doing.

“Is everyone settled in?” my dad asked the group, in full host mode.

Oh, yes, everyone confirmed.

“Today’s an ‘at-sea’ day,” my dad said, making air quotes like he might be starting a vocab lesson, “but there are activities planned from morning till midnight.” Then, and I’m not even kidding, he started handing out printed schedule pages to everyone at the table.

I squinted at him, like Where’s my real dad?

My real dad never knew anything about any family schedule.

My real dad wouldn’t even be here. He’d be stuck in a work meeting somewhere.

But this must have been part of trying to win my mom back. He must be trying to prove that he had at least the potential to participate. I looked him over as he worked the table with that big trying-too-hard smile—giving thumbs-ups to Mr. Dunn and slapping Brody on the back.

It had a real whiff of desperation about it.

And then it hit me.

My dad wanted us all to see him differently. He was attempting to rebrand, too.

And I got that. I so got that.

Too bad he missed Harmony’s TED Talk on the semiotics of love bites.

For maybe the first time in my life, I felt sympathy for my dad.

It’s not easy, is it, buddy? my heart wanted to say.

But that heart of mine was about to have bigger concerns.

Because, next … the guy I’d been waiting for all this time showed up at last.