I looked at him, wishing I could see his face properly. He shrugged.
“I didn’t want to move back here, at first,” Cooper went on. “Because if I moved back, if I made a permanent change… my big sister wasreallygone, y’know? It wasn’t temporary anymore. She really wasn’t coming back.”
I nodded slowly. Of course he understood. I’d been so focused on Benji that I hadn’t given nearly enough thought to the fact that Cooper had lost someone, too. Someone who’d been part of his life much longer than Benji had been alive.
“I must seem ridiculous to you,” I said as the thought occurred to me. I didn’t have a kid to take care of all of a sudden, and no one I loved had died.
“No, you don’t,” Cooper said. “And I know that’s what I’m supposed to say, but you really don’t. Grief is…” He gestured with his own ice cream. “Weird.”
Despite the subject, my lips twitched. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”
“What I mean is,” Cooper began again. “Your grief is real. You lost something that mattered to you. Something that was yourlife. I’ve been thinking about this. You,” he added. “And… I dunno. I think if you curled up under a blanket forever, that’d be understandable. I think it’s incredible that you’re not doing that.”
“I was, for a while.”
“So was I.” Cooper shrugged. “Is it okay if I ask…?”
“What happened?” I finished for him. Cooper gave a tiny nod, eyes glinting as he looked over my face.
I sighed, nodding to a bench a few paces ahead. “Can we sit?”
Cooper nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. When we reached the bench he sat on my bad side, close enough that our thighs pressed together. I wasn’t sure if he was intentionally offering me his warmth or if he hadn’t thought about it at all, but I appreciated it all the same.
“It’s a stupid story,” I said. “I was crossing the street late after a performance, running to catch up to Piotr. We’d just had a fight, can’t even remember what it was about. Anyway, apparently I should’ve failed preschool, because I didnotlook both ways before crossing the street. One second I was shouting after him, the next thing I knew I was splayed over the road and in more pain than I’d thoughtpossible. I remember seeing Avery’s face, how pale it was as they called my name. The rest is a blur until I woke up in the hospital.”
Cooper was silent. I could feel him staring at me, but I wasn’t quite ready to look at him. To see someone else looking at me in horror. Or worse, pity.
“I’d been hit by a car, and the middle of my right femur had taken more or less all of the impact. It completely shattered and some of the shards broke the skin from the inside. Avery tells me they could see bits of bone sticking out, which I’m glad I didn’t see.” I wrinkled my nose, genuinely grateful that I’d only just been hanging onto consciousness at the time. “I’m not sure if the surgeon who put me back together was joking when he said there was more titanium than bone in there now and I don’t think I want to know. There was a lot of surgery. Feels like he putit back together with lead, although I’m sure he did his best. I’m told he’s the best surgeon I could’ve had.”
I looked down at my feet, wiggling them to feel the movement of the wrecked muscle in my thigh. To remember Icouldfeel it. That after months and months of work, I could walk, I could sit and stand without aid, and that was more than they’d ever expected of me. That I’d madesuch incredible progress.
I was a model patient. I’d worked so hard to get back on my feet.
Nothing I could have done would have meant I could take the stage again.
I still couldn’t look at Cooper, but I liked being able to feel him next to me.
“You’re the first person I’ve had to actually tell,” I said when the silence stretched out far enough to make me squirm. “Everyone else knew what had happened before I did.”
“Shit,” Cooper said.
Despite everything, I laughed. It was a strange, startled sound, but as it escaped me it took a weight I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying with it. Not the whole weight of everything, but something.
That was the thing about Cooper. I knew from experience that he could take my weight physically. I was learning he could maybe take the other weight, too.
No one else had quite been able to do that for me. Or maybe I hadn’t trusted anyone enough to let them try.
“Do you want to tell me about your sister?” I asked.
Cooper sighed, crunching down on his ice cream cone. I took a bite out of mine, giving him space to decide. I wanted to know, I wanted tolisten, but I didn’t want to push.
“She was my hero,” he began, licking his lips. “She was only a couple of years older than me, so I had her to look up to my whole life. She was smart and funny and she loved me in a way only siblings can, y’know?”
“I don’t, actually,” I said. “Only child.”
Cooper smiled wryly. “Probably could’ve guessed that.”
I batted him lightly on the leg. “Rude.”
