The Shippers(99)

“Are you being serious?”

I knocked on Cooper’s forehead. “Haven’t you been listening? We’ve been talking about this all week.”

“But we were joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You can’t really think you are actually cursed.”

“Sure, I can. Why not?”

“You’re saying you can’t kiss me because of black magic?”

“I’m saying I can’t kiss you because I’ve dumped every guy I’ve ever dated!”

“But that was different. All those guys were different.”

I shook my head. “Why?”

Cooper looked straight into my eyes. “Because none of those guys were me.”

At those words, I could feel myself starting to lose this argument.

I mean, come on—right?

But I still had momentum. “You know what that is?” I demanded. “That’s wishful thinking! Let’s be practical.”

“I am being practical.”

“Not unless practical and wrong are the same thing.”

I didn’t want him to be wrong. I wanted him to be right.

But I’d known myself too long.

Cooper looked into my eyes, like You’ve got this. Then he said, “When Finn kissed you after all these years—and then you didn’t like it, even though you thought he was your destiny … Why was that?”

Easy. Simple. “Because the only person I wanted to kiss was you.”

“Guess what? The only person I want to do anything with is you.”

“I don’t want to break your heart,” I said.

“I’m not scared of that,” Cooper said. “You break my heart all the time.”

But now I had tears in my eyes.

Cooper cupped his hand against my jaw. “Did you forget? I was your first kiss. I’m the guy you imprinted on. You’re good to go.”

“That’s just a theory.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice soft with affection. “A theory you planned a whole cockamamie scheme around.”

“Okay—but I never really thought it would work!”

“This is going to work,” Cooper said.

“Nothing has ever worked before. Not for me.”

“This time it’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Cooper said. “I’m your loophole.”

I paused at that.

“Look,” Cooper said, “I lied to you before when I said, ‘I think I’m in love with you.’”

“You lied about that?”

“I don’t think I’m in love with you. I know.”

I took that in.

“I know,” Cooper went on. “And I’ve always known.”

He took a step closer.

“I’m your loophole,” Cooper said, “because I’ve loved you all along.”

I frowned.

Cooper had loved me all along.

“And the reason nothing ever worked for you with anybody else,” Cooper said, “is because you’ve loved me all along, too.”

I scanned back over all my Cooper memories. Cooper making me a tiny snowman. Cooper trying to teach me to drive stick shift. Cooper sleeping out in the backyard in a tent just because I wanted to. The two of us—over and over, my whole life long. Climbing up on the roof. Conking out on my bedroom floor. Sending each other new favorite songs.

“You’ve always known I loved you,” Cooper said then, like he’d already won. “And you’ve always loved me back anyway.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

Then he gave me a little wry smile, like he knew this terminology was wrong but he didn’t care. “It’s just algebraic topography,” he said with a shrug. “Can’t argue with math.”

I thought about the duet we’d just sung at the reception—how I’d loved that song since I first heard it. Something about the harmonies, and the shape of the notes, and the twists and turns, and the way it made me feel … the way everything about it came together just never got old.

Maybe Cooper was like that song.

I could’ve tried a hundred more counterarguments. I could’ve explained that wanting a thing doesn’t mean you can handle it. I could’ve quoted statistics and dire predictions. I could’ve insisted that humans are always our own worst enemies.

Not to mention: If we messed up this friendship, we’d never get another one this good as long as we lived.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t argue.

What can I say? I didn’t want to.

I didn’t argue when Cooper kissed me again. And I didn’t argue when he took my hand to lead me back to our cabin. And I didn’t argue when he threw all the pillows across the room and declared, “No walls allowed.”

The only time I argued, in fact, was after he’d kissed me down onto the bed, when he reached back with one hand to grab his T-shirt by the collar and start working it off over his head, and I stopped him and told him we would definitely not be doing anything that might pop his stitches.

“I don’t care about my stitches,” Cooper said.

“I do.”