“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Did you ever wonder why I moved to London?”
I stopped walking.
Hey—that wasmyquestion!
“Is that a real question?”
Cooper shrugged. “Yeah.”
I couldn’t believe he was asking me this. The question I’d been chickening out from asking him since the day he showed up to ruin my wedding—and now Cooper was justcasually asking it like we were making chitchat?
I tilted my head. “You’re asking me if I ever wondered why you disappeared to London without a word and never contacted me again?”
Cooper nodded, like this might be a trap.
“You’re asking if,” I continued, “when my best friend for over ten years—the person I’d spent the most time with in my life, the only person who really got me and the only person I could truly say anything to—abruptly moved to another continent without telling me and thencompletely ghosted me in every possible way… if I ever wondered why that happened?”
“Okay. I see your point there.”
I wasn’t sure how to continue. Should I shrug it off? Act jokey and cool? Or should I just… be honest?
In a minute, we’d step back into the ballroom and back into the current of life. But right now, here, just outside the doors, on the quiet deck in the moonlight, it felt like we were just outside of our lives somehow. Like this was a little pause we shouldn’t take for granted.
And so I took a breath, looked up at Cooper, and said, with no pretense, “I’ve been wanting to ask you what happened every day for the past four years.” Then I said, “Hence, all the texts asking you what happened.”
Cooper nodded, likeOf course, and looked down.
Then I added, just to be clear: “You disappearing was the worst heartbreak of my life.”
Cooper met my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I shrugged.
“I know I owe you an explanation,” Cooper said.
I waited.
“But I keep chickening out.”
Of note: Chickening out wasalsomy thing.
“Are you going to chicken out now?” I asked.
Cooper shook his head. “This is what I’ve been trying to talk to you about.”
“Okay, so tell me. Why did you leave like that?”
“It was because I had to end things.”
“You had to end things?”
Cooper nodded. “With you.”
With me? “But—why?”
