The Shippers(68)

But it felt impossibly important to set Cooper straight right this instant.

Finn had gestured like Cooper might still be there, but when I got to the stairway, he was gone. Would he have gone back to the after-party in the side theater? Or one of the many bars? Or the casino?

Of course not.

He’d have gone back to our room.

I hobbled down the two flights to our floor as fast as I could, and then, defeated, I took my shoes off.

Cooper really wasn’t wrong about my footwear choices.

I resolved to start listening to him more often.

Barefoot, I doubled my speed. I wasn’t sprinting, exactly—but close. I passed a bar, and then a casino—all while slaloming through crowded passageways and around random passengers without slowing. Even when I passed a second bar and, out of the side of my eye, I spotted my dad, alone, perched on a stool under a tiki-style thatched bar hut—with a bourbon in one hand and his head in the other—I didn’t break stride.

At first.

Right? I mean, yes—that was my father looking like the dictionary definition of despair.

But I couldn’t stop! Right?! I was smack in the middle of the mad dash of a lifetime!

But then, my dad decided to get up from his barstool. And I guess that wasn’t his first bourbon of the night. I saw him rise, take a step—and then lose his balance and collapse to the floor.

Gah. Couldn’t not stop for that.

It’s a big thing when a large man falls to the floor. A collapsing human makes a thud sound that’s really unlike anything else. Despite the bar music and human chatter and ambient noise, the sound of the impact cut through it all.

“Dad!” I called out, stopping for just a second before rerouting over to him.

I kneeled over him as I arrived—expecting him to be choking, or unconscious, or mid–heart attack, at least. But as he rolled onto his back and I got a look at his face, he was laughing.

“You’re laughing?” I demanded.

“Mostly out of humiliation,” my dad said.

“Are you hurt?”

“Just drunk, I think.”

“Did you break anything?” I asked. “Did you hit your head?”

“I think my body broke my fall,” he said.

“Let’s get you up,” I said as the bartender came around to help.

We each took an arm and maneuvered my dad toward a captain’s chair at a low table nearby. Once we had him positioned, the bartender and I watched him for a minute, like he might tumble back out, but he didn’t.

“I’ve never seen you drunk before,” I said next, taking the chair across from him.

My dad met my eyes with a little wince before pulling it together enough to say, “She said no.”

“Mom?” I don’t know who else she would’ve been.

My dad nodded.

“To what? To taking you back?”

He nodded again.

“But…” I was so flabbergasted. “Did you tell her all that stuff you told me?”

The bartender showed up with some water in a pint glass, and my dad waited until he was gone.

“I tried to,” he said. “But I panicked.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You know that I’m a man of few words, right?”

“Yes,” I said. If there was one thing any of us knew about him, it was that.

“Well,” he said. “In that moment, I was a man of fewer words.”

“Did you panic?” I asked. “Or did you choke?”

My dad considered that and then said, “Both.”

Then he took a sip from the pint glass, realized it was water, and tried to order another bourbon. “Bartender!” he called, like a man who really didn’t spend a lot of time in bars. “Another bourbon, please!”

The bartender and I met eyes and then shook our heads at each other, like Nope.

My dad patted the table where my drink should be and said, “What are you drinking?”

“Nobody’s drinking anything,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Especially not you.”

“What are you doing?” my dad asked, watching my phone as I typed.

“I’m texting Mom.”

“Don’t text Mom,” my dad said. “She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” I corrected. “She’s given up on you. That’s different.”

“I don’t want her to see me like this.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I’m in the middle of my own personal crisis.”

To my mom, I typed: Dad is drunk at the tiki bar and just collapsed. Please get here ASAP. He needs to see the ship’s doc!

Was I allowing the situation to sound a bit more dire than it was? Of course. I wasn’t leaving my dad here alone. Not until I had a replacement. Which would’ve been nice like five minutes ago.

Next, I texted Cooper.

I need to talk to you, I typed—and hit Send.

Then I added, ASAP!!!

Then I sent one more: Come find me. I’m in the tiki bar with my drunk dad.

Then I set my phone on the table, face up, as I set about giving my dad some top-notch relationship advice while I waited for reinforcements. “Okay,” I said, like I’d had just about enough of this nonsense. “You need to pull it together. Mom didn’t reject you.”