“Well, that explains it.”
Cooper drank some water after that. And then he remembered to plug in his phone. And then he dug around in his suitcase for a while.
“Would you be asleep right now if I weren’t in your bed?” I asked.
“It’s three in the morning in London right now, so—yes.”
“I forgot you were jet-lagged.”
“I’m running on adrenaline.”
“I really appreciate you taking me in.”
“Well, we couldn’t leave you in Harmony’s sex dungeon.”
Cooper came back to bed and got in… and then we both lay there like a matching set again.
After a while, I said, “I have a fear, too. It might not be aphobia, exactly. But it’s something.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“What of?” Cooper asked.
I sighed. “Singing.”
“Singing?” Cooper said. “That can’t be right. You love to sing. You sing all the time!”
“Used to,” I corrected. “Iused tolove to sing. And only ever with you, by the way.”
“Only ever with me?”
“Did I never mention this? I never sang as a kid—not even in groups. And when I was forced to, like, say, the national anthem or ‘Happy Birthday,’ I’d just mouth the words and pretend. And if anyone ever asked me to sing—which fortunately doesn’t happen often in life—I’d make some excuse and get the hell out of there. It wasn’t until you brought your mom’s old record collection over that I ever sang at all.”
All true. In ninth grade, Cooper’s mom—who had wanted more than anything in life to be a singer but had never made it—set her entire vinyl collection out on the street for garbage collection. Cooper found stacks and stacks of records all piled up, along with her record player, just in time—and he rescued everything and brought it to my room for safekeeping.
After that, he had full permission to climb through my window anytime and play her records. And so he did. All the greats: Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mercer, Anita O’Day, Frank Sinatra. If it could be sung in a lounge, Cooper’s mom had collected it.
“But you and I—we sang all through high school. All the time. Every day.”
“Yes,” I said. “I sang all the time with you. But you were the only person I ever sang with,” I said.
Cooper stared in disbelief. “Is that why you used to be so quiet?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Until I got the hang of it.”
Singing with Cooper had been the exception in my life, not the rule.
Next, Cooper asked, “Why did you stop?”
Did he really need to ask this question? I thought about saying,Because you broke my heart when you left. But that felt a little on the nose. Instead, I just stated a fact. “You weren’t there to sing with,” I said.
“You don’t need me to sing.”
I sighed. “Yes, I do.”
After Cooper left for London without telling me, I never sang again. Even thinking about it now, I couldn’t imagine anything more lonely than singing by myself in my room, Cooper-less.
