We stood there a second, averting our eyes fromeverything, before Cooper finally said, “Sounds like it might be a while.”
I closed my eyes, fully defeated.
Then Cooper asked, earnestly, “Would you like to… wait here?”
I kept my eyes closed and shook my head.
“Come on, then,” Cooper said, like that was that.
He grabbed my suitcase and walked it back the way we’d just come.
And as I watched him go down the hall, I saw the future clearly.
The immediate future, anyway.
Maybe Cooper had mysteriously stopped talking to me for four years and never told me why. And maybe he’d RSVPednoto my weddingandto this one before showing up last minute to both. And maybe teaming up with him felt exactly like old times—but better. And maybe he was being far too nice to me. And maybe this whole day with Cooper had made me miss himworse, somehow, now that we were together again. And maybe he’d brought a whole steamer trunk of gabardine vests.
And maybe I had more questions about Cooper now than answers.
But one thing was clear.
He was rescuing me from the underworld right now.
He was rescuing me, and taking me back to his room—and we were going to share his balcony, and hisonebed, and all the contents of his mini-fridge, until he kicked me out. And I really didn’t have any other options.
And it was actually okay.
Because after this long, mortifying, soul-crushing day… Cooper’s cabin turned out to be the only place I wanted to go.
And so when he turned, saw I hadn’t moved, and said, “Hey! Let’s rock! Those stairs aren’t going to climb themselves!”—what happened next was easy.
I just did exactly what I wanted, and I followed him home.
Thirteen
THAT’S HOW COOPERand I became roommates.
I got sexiled by Harmony—and had nowhere else to turn.
“This is really not that bad,” Cooper kept saying on the walk back to his cabin, making it sound worse.
“Let’s just not tell anyone, okay?”
I’d eaten nothing but desserts at the welcome lunch, so Cooper’s first order of business was to get us club sandwiches from room service. Then we sat on his balcony and ate them as the ship started at last to move away from the dock.
It was oddly thrilling to set out to sea.
We watched the harbor slide by, and the flying fish skittering over the water’s surface in zigzags, and we drank Cooper’s champagne, and he tried to steal my fries, and before I knew it, we’d left the Port of Galveston behind and were surrounded by the wide blue Gulf… and I was feeling better.
Like maybe rooming with Cooper wouldn’t be so weird after all.
Until it was time for bed.
I showered, and put on my PJs, and brushed my teeth, and flossed…and then, when the only logical thing left to do was claim a side of the bed and pull back the covers, I hesitated.
Cooper, for his part, had done all the same things and then stood next to me in a gray T-shirt and navy sweatpants—and watched me hesitate.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
