I squint at him. “And what are you? Why did you humor me and come here tonight? To do it all over again? To tell me you’re not good enough for me and that I deserve better, but in person this time instead of letting the ghosting do the talking for you?”
My stomach turns over.
Hashtag meows and softly butts my belly with his head like he can protect me.
And Cooper doesn’t blink. “No,” he says softly. “Not gonna lie here. I’ve never—no, scratch that. For a long time, I haven’t been interested in relationships. I had a team to turn around, and I couldn’t have done what I needed to do professionally either if I had too many distractions. And I never—I’ve seen what my parents put into making a good marriage work. I’ve never had time for that, and I don’t want to half-ass the one thing that’s supposed to make life worthwhile.”
He clears his throat and shifts closer to me. “But we’re going all the way this year. The Fireballs are going all the fucking way. And then all my dreams will have come true, the dreams everyone told me were impossible, and as great as that feels, it’s fucking terrifying too. I have to find a new mission in life. Can’t play ball forever, and even if we—nope, not gonna say that. No matter what happens tomorrow, the day after, whatever, I was already there to help turn the Fireballs around. Winning the World Series? Yeah. That’s gonna feel fucking fantastic. But what the hell do you follow that with? What comes next?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve nevernothad a mission, and it’s always been to take the Fireballs all the way. The idea that I get to the top and find out it’s all downhill from there—it has me feeling like a little bit of a disaster. And I like you. I like you a lot. But I don’t want my disaster rubbing all over you.”
I drop my head to his shoulder. “We look like we have it all.”
“How do you do it? How do you find the next dream after you win seventeen Grammys and go platinum with every album?”
I freeze.
Oh my god.
That’s what’s wrong.
I’m in autopilot.Go go go. Do more. Get bigger. Grow. Be unstoppable.
What if I…stopped?
Am I living my life for me, or is my irritation with my aunt that I’ve never told her what I actually want, forcing her to bulldoze ahead, trying to find the next thing in my career to make me happy?
Do I have any idea what I need to be happy?
“Sorry,” Cooper mumbles. “Talking too much again.”
“No, you’re really not.”
“I am. You need sleep. And look, you have my number. You can call anytime. Or text. I give really good text. Especially when I copy-paste wrong. I sent Diego a GIF of Ares Berger lifting a Zamboni when I meant to send Luca a GIF of me shaking my butt, and poor Diego thought I was telling him that he’d never be as good at baseball as Ares is at hockey, and we almost lost him for a whole game. Never saw him not smile before that.”
My eyes get hot.
Cooper hasfun.
And the day all his dreams come true, he’ll get up the next morning, even not knowing what his new dream is, and he’ll still have fun.
I don’t have fun. I work. I have friends, and when we get together, we compare battle stories of who had the worst write-up on a gossip site and whose label or production company is trying to cut them the rawest deal and which of us had run-ins with stalkers. I have anxiety. I have stomach issues. I have insomnia.
What am I even doing?
“Can we be friends again?” I ask and then realize how lame that sounds.
Hi, I’m an internationally-known pop star on top of the world. Will you play dolls with me at recess?
“We’ve always been friends.”
“Cooper.”
“Friends who don’t talk and had a really awkward last parting because I was a dumbass chickenshit, but I’m older and wiser and better and cockier now. Now, I’d at least organize a flash mob under your hotel room to tell you that I was leaving because you deserve better friends than me.”
He takes the remote from my hand. “But we don’t have to worry about that tonight. Tonight, you’re going to sleep, and tomorrow, I’ll text you weird shit and you’ll pretend it’s normal, and maybe we’ll be in the same city again sometime.”
