Two
OTHER REASONS THISperson just couldn’t be Cooper:
Cooper lived in London.
Cooper didn’t talk to me anymore.
This dude was much more—um—strappingthan any known version of Cooper.
Cooper knew better than to stress out my mom by crashing a wedding she was hosting.
Unlike this mountain man, Cooper could not grow a full beard.
At least—not the last time I’d seen him. Which, granted, was four years ago—right after college graduation. But we’d been across-the-street neighbors from ages eight to twenty-two. I was pretty sure I could pick out Cooper in any lineup anywhere.
Which is why I was so stumped to be stumped.
Wasit Cooper?
Let’s revisit the new physique for a second: The Cooper I knew didnot have big, solid, pommel-horse-Olympian-style shoulders. He did not have the kind of muscles you could see through a T-shirt andunder a rucksack. He didn’t have forearms that seemed to be looking for something to squeeze, or a way of standing on the floor like he owned it, or a manly look that would make anybody—least of all me—stop in her tracks.
The Cooper I knew—the Cooper I’d hung out with every day for ten-plus formative years—was aboy. This French Alps hiker crashing my wedding was…
A man.
Impossible.
And yet.
My brain was sayingNo, it can’t bewhile every other part of me was sayingUm—hello?—it definitely is. I was like a hunting dog on point—frozen in his direction. There was something to see here. Something important. For a minute, the rest of the world blurred away and left only the two of us there.
The organ music quieted. Mrs. Allen faded. The itching stopped.
All I could see was this total stranger—who I already knew.
I stepped closer. “Cooper?” I said, peering at him.
It couldn’t be.
“Hey, Joey,” he said. “Happy wedding day.”
Holy shit!
Itwas.
Cooper’s normal greeting was to grab me around the neck and clamp me into a headlock. But he wasn’t doing that now—yet.
I shook my head. “You were boycotting! You put it in writing.”
Cooper shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
“You’re going to be in so much trouble when my mom finds out,” I said, uttering our childhood catchphrase.
But Cooper shook his head. “I emailed her. She approved.”
“She didn’t approvethat,” I said, gesturing at his mountain-man ensemble. “You look like hell.”
It’s possible I was lying.
