The Shippers(67)

I’d never noticed how unromantic shrugging was until just this moment.

Or maybe it depended on who was doing the shrugging. A montage suddenly flashed through my head of Cooper shrugging. Shrugging a jacket over his shoulders, shrugging into a vest, shrugging his answer to my question of why the hell he was crashing my wedding. Why was it sexy when Cooper did it?

Finn reached up to smooth his hair with his hands.

I’d spent years longing for a kiss from Finn, and now here we were.

But now that I had one for the taking, I wanted it to be … better than this. In my endless, persistent fantasies about getting a real kiss from him, the moment was always dreamy and swoony. It was always breathtaking and life-changing. It was always adrenaline-infused joy sprinkled with magic.

It was never like it was now: annoying.

Now Finn cleared his throat.

This was happening, I guess.

But why didn’t I feel anything good? Why did this feel like a chore I had to perform?

Maybe I was stalling—but next thing I knew, I was explaining it all to Finn like he might care. “You see,” I said, “you were my first kiss.” Before I lost my nerve, I kept going. “That truth-or-dare kiss on the playground that day was a big deal for me. My sister thinks that—for personal reasons of my own—I imprinted on that kiss. And that it’s become a kind of curse for me where no other kiss can compare. And so the theory goes that if I can get you to kiss me again, I can break the curse.”

“Huh,” Finn said.

“Yeah,” I said, thinking he was interested by the theory.

But then Finn said, “What truth-or-dare kiss on the playground?”

I looked at him, like Seriously? “At school?” I prompted. Then, waiting for something to ring a bell: “On the playground? I was ten and you were thirteen? All the dares that day were blindfolded ones—do a handstand blindfolded, climb the pear tree blindfolded? That kind of thing?”

“I was blindfolded?” Finn asked.

“No, I was blindfolded.”

“Huh,” he said, factoring that in.

“Nothing?” I asked.

More headshaking. “It’s not ringing any bells.”

“Think,” I demanded.

“I’m thinking,” Finn said. “But I really don’t remember kissing you.”

“How many people have you kissed in life for this to not even register?”

Finn gave a little shrug of apology. “Lots,” he confessed.

I looked around. Just exactly how forgettable was I? This was wildly insulting.

“Maybe,” Finn suggested next, “if we kiss now, it’ll jog my memory.”

Great. Now I wanted to kiss him even less. Did I want a second kiss from a guy who couldn’t remember the first one?

But maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.

I should probably do it. I should get closure, if nothing else. I should see if Ashley’s theory was right.

“What else is there to do, anyway?” Finn pressed.

I cannot stress enough how surreal this was. I was right here, on a moonlit deck, about to get exactly what I’d been working so hard for this whole time from Finn. My life’s biggest crush—the guy I’d longed for, fantasized about, and lightly stalked for so long—was standing in front of me on a moonlit ship’s deck, Cary Grant style, leaning in.

It was a personal triumph beyond description.

My inner teenager needed a fainting couch.

But as Finn’s face came at me like a fish-eye lens, his lips already puckered in a way that seemed premature, I realized something: I didn’t really want that kiss.

I was curious about it. I still thought it might turn out to be the closure I needed to fix my whole life. I was still determined to do it …

But those were all head decisions.

My heart? Wasn’t interested.

I didn’t stop him. I watched his face come in for a landing, and then I felt those puckered lips collide with mine. And then I stood very still and endured it.

I can’t say he was a bad kisser. I was the bad kisser.

But as he mopped my face with his mouth, slurping me like I was a plate of spaghetti, all I could do was wait for it to be over.

When he was finished at last, he pulled back with a self-satisfied expression.

“There,” he said. “How was that?”

I wiped my mouth with the hem of my dress and then gave him a thumbs-up. “I think we can check closure off the list.”

He took it like a compliment. “Did I just solve all your problems?”

“Maybe. I’ll report back.”

Then Finn said, “Want to go back to my cabin?”

I squinted. “Not really, no.”

Another unromantic shrug from him. “I should go find someone else, then.”

Another thumbs-up from me.

“And you,” Finn said, “should probably go find Cooper.”

“I should?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he really does have a thing for you,” Finn said. Then he gestured toward the staircase. “And he followed us here. And he just saw me kiss you.”



* * *



I TOOK OFF running toward the stairs—in my dumb heels: no easy feat.