“So?” Cooper asked.
“So,” I said, likeDuh, “I need you to get things rolling. Start the stampede!”
But Cooper’s head was shaking itself.
“I can’t just stand here until the end of my shifttotally unkissed. Gretchen Barnes had a line out the gate.”
But Cooper just stared at me, his corn dog at half-mast.
“Ten seconds—that’s all I need.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Five seconds! Three! A peck!”
“I really don’t feel well.”
“You were fine when you walked over here,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
“That was before you wanted a kiss.”
“Cooper, this is not hard. Pretend I’m your grandmother.”
“You’re theoppositeof my grandmother.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t.”
“Are you really going to leave me here like this?”
“I’m honestly feeling sick. I’m not joking.”
I let out a sigh that felt like the collapse of all my self-esteem. Then I said the only thing I could say: “Fine. I guess I can’t force you.”
“I’m sorry,” Cooper said.
“Yeah,” I said, with free-flowing bitterness. “So am I.”
That could have been the end of it. Itshouldhave been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Like a classic dummy, I took a bad situation—and made it worse.
What happened next resulted from a number of factors: One, I didn’t believe that Cooper really wasn’t feeling well. Two, my teenage ego really, desperately didn’t want to come away from a shift at a kissing booth without getting even one kiss. Three, I’d been ignoring a manageable but growing secret crush on Cooper ever since Finn had left for college. And four, I kept getting the feeling that Cooper had a secret crush on me, too.
All to say, once Cooper was off the hook, he told me he was going home.
And then he spotted a trash can behind me to lob his leftover corn dog into, and as he leaned forward across the booth to toss it in…
I did something deeply ill-advised.
Because as he leaned closer, he was right within grabbing distance.
There was no time to think better of it. You know how reflex actions never make it to your brain? Your hand just yanks itself back from the fire without waiting for permission?
That was me right then. My body acting without my brain: reaching up, grabbing the collar of his T-shirt, and pulling his face to mine.
