My dad considered that.
“Once you love somebody,” I said, “once you’ve decided to let yourself love somebody… it’s hard to turn that off.”
My dad nodded, but then he said, “She’s just been so unhappy for so long.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“No?”
“Cooper didn’t talk to me for four years, did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“We both came home after college graduation, and I thought we were going to spend the whole summer hanging out. But Cooper went radio silent for a few days, and then, when I went to find him at his house, his mom told me he’d moved to London to play in a band. And when I asked her when he was coming back, she said, ‘He’s not.’”
My dad frowned.
“He just disappeared. He didn’t return my calls or my texts. He completely ghosted me—for four years.”
My dad said, “IthoughtI hadn’t seen that kid around for a while.”
“Yeah. And then he showed up at my wedding out of nowhere. And then he showed up atthiswedding out of nowhere. And he never explained to me anything about why he disappeared from my life. But—you know what?”
“What?”
“It didn’t matter.”
“What didn’t matter?”
“Any of it! His disappearing. His lack of apologies—or explanations, or RSVPs. He just showed up at the front door of my life like he had his own key—and let himself back in.”
“Are you saying that once you love people, it’s hard to unlove them?”
“I’m saying you still have Mom’s key. And if you really want her back, you’d better hurry up and use it.”
Then I demanded he give me his phone and made him take a selfie with me so we could send it to the family group chat with the messageGreatest dad in the world.
When my dad saw it, he got all bashful. “Who’s gonna believe that?” he wondered aloud.
But I just raised my hand like I was volunteering. “I do.”
At that, my dad reached over and ruffled my hair—and it felt exactly like we were close, and, more than that, like we always had been. And then, before I even realized what I was doing, I was crying. My throat was thick, and my breaths were shaky, and my face was wet.
“Sweetheart,” my dad said, frowning and scooting closer. “What is it?”
And then everything came tumbling out. All of it. Operation Conquest, and sharing Cooper’s cabin, and my wild hatred for Bridesmaid Two, and Finn Turner turning out not to be the one. Even the whole first-kiss situation.
And I guess I got so caught up in the telling of the story, and trying to connect all the pieces together just right, that I kind of shared some of Ashley’s theories about my father issues without thinking. “And Ashley says,” I concluded, not even fighting the tears now, “that because you never made it to school to pick me up that day, and then I had to walk home in the rain, and then I got pneumonia, that that whole first-kiss thing is melded in with all my abandonment issues, and it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life—but now it’s even worse because it’s not some random dude on our street I’m forever bonded to, it’sCooper. Who just quit. And left the ship. I never got to explain the truth. I never got to clear anything up. And now he’s given up on me for good.”
My dad looked totally baffled.
“It’s a lot of details, I know,” I said, blowing my nose with a cocktail napkin.
But my dad shook his head. “What was the part about me not showing up to get you at school?”
Kind of a side detail, but okay. “You know,” I said, wiping my face with a fresh napkin. “That day you forgot to get me at school? So I tried to walk home under the freeway? And then the scraped knees… the rain… the pneumonia… blah-blah-blah?”
But he was still shaking his head. “I didn’t forget to pick you up that day.”
