Prologue
EVA
When I was fifteen years old my New Year’s resolution was to choose one thing I was grateful for each day. Over the last twenty-four months I’ve been grateful for some interesting things, including Angry Birds, fidget spinners, Justin Bieber - still grateful for him really - my mum teaching me to bake, Pinterest boards, surviving high school, seeing a sunrise, my incredibly acute and stealthy eavesdropping skills, green tea and mint chocolate.
But today the thing I was most grateful for was bigger than all those things.
Today, I was grateful to Frederick Mellinger – the American superstar who invented the padded bra.
Spinning in front of my mirror, I admired my now seventeen-year-old body in my new emerald, green bikini and sent a silent prayer to Mellinger and the absolute God that he was, because honestly, my boobs looked incredible.
It was nowhere near the first time I’d worn a bikini and ensuring I both looked and felt good in my swimsuit was also nothing foreign – but today was different.
Today was important.
Today I needed to be memorable, because I was going to see Cooper.
The sexy, out of my league, best-friend of my older brother. The very same Cooper who I had harboured an unrequited, near obsessive crush on since Sebastian’s twelfth birthday when one of his other friends, Derek, called mefour-eyesand Cooper consequently tripped him over and told him to shut up.
I was a geeky seven-year-old with brand new glasses which were far too large for my face. At that age, the humiliation of Derek calling me four-eyes was the worst possible thing that could have ever happened.
I dreaded getting glasses. Crying in the optometrist, on the way home, and every time I looked in the mirror for the following week. So, to have someone who was supposed to be my brother’s friend, voice aloud the thing I was most worried about, made me want to smash them and suffer through life half-blind.
But Cooper Dane didn’t call me Mrs. Steve Urkel.
Cooper Dane didn’t tease me for having glasses as big as the world.
Cooper Dane fought for me.
When he intentionally tripped Derek over because of something he said tome, his best-friend's dorky younger sister, my memories of that day would only ever centre around him.
Because that was the day I’d fallen in love with him.
The cute, mysterious boy with the sandy blond hair and the clear blue eyes. The boy who every single girl in school was also in love with.
But they didn’t see the Cooper I saw.
I saw him when he came to our house and watched movies with Seb and I, his long legs hanging off the mattress we’d drag into the living room.
I saw him when he had dinner with us as often as he could, even though from everything Seb told Mum he had someone who cooked meals for him whenever he wanted.
I saw him when we laughed endlessly while we planned the best way to annoy my brother.
And I saw him when he wasn’t trying to impress everyone around him. When he was just like the rest of us.
And sometimes, when I was really lucky, when it was just him and I.
When I started high school, he and Seb had already been there a couple of years and like most middle schoolers, they were much too cool to talk to or even acknowledge a junior.
But I saw him.
I saw how he was always surrounded by girls vying for his attention. I saw how he often had his arm slung around a different one at lunch and how he and my brother began spending more time at his house because his parents were always at work and with that came freedom.
Mostly though, I saw that his smile was never as big as it was when he was at our house. His school laugh didn’t bounce off the walls like it did when they were teasing Mum about something, or we mocked Seb for his meticulous obsessions.
And above all else, I saw when he was in the playground and he thought no one was looking, he actually looked quite sad.
So, when Sebastian begged me to drive him to his house so he could have a few drinks, I initially said I was busy studying for my upcoming exams. This was only a half-lie, but I knew he was desperate because I overheard him on the phone when he said he would be able to organise a lift. He could have caught a bus but now he had a car he wouldn’t be caught dead on public transport. Plus, he was desperate for his friends to see his car.
