I probably should have stopped shouting when I felt all those emotions seep into my lungs. But I had some rhetorical momentum, youknow? So I tried for one last zinger. “Are you really going to walk out of my life and forget all about me—again?”
At the end of that question, my voice broke.
And I just stopped walking.
Stopped chasing, stopped begging.
It was all too much.
He didn’t want to help me? Fine. I’d find somebody else. There were plenty of other people on this ship with—with—mouths. If this was such an offensive chore for Cooper, if that’s how utterly dismissive he wanted to be about getting anywhere near me for any reason—even a really, really good one… Fine.
Half the men on this boat would be drunk by lunchtime, anyway.
But underneath all that defiance, there was genuine heartache.
He’d thrown up at the touch of my lips back in high school—and now he was fleeing at the sight of my neck? Just exactly how repulsive did this guy think I was?
Maybe he wasn’t on my team after all—and maybe he never had been.
Cooper had always been my person. But I guess I just… wasn’t his.
My breath got shaky at that idea. And then there were tears on my face.
I’d never known why Cooper left, but I’d always held on to hope that he had some kind of really good explanation.
But maybe there was no good explanation.
Maybe he just didn’t really care.
And I’d learned a lesson from my dad a long time ago: You can’t force people to care about you. If you didn’t matter to someone, you didn’t matter.
Maybe I didn’t matter to Cooper.
Maybe I should let him go.
Or—actually—maybe I should’ve let him go four years ago. Instead of holding out all that stupid, embarrassing hope.
That’s where I was landing with it all… when Cooper stopped walking, too.
I wiped the tears off my cheeks fast with my shirtsleeve.
Then Cooper turned around, and he took a breath like he was gathering his strength, and then, step after step, he walked back until he reached me.
“Have you been crying?” he asked, leaning in to look.
“No,” I said defiantly.
I clearly had.
Then Cooper looked all around my blotchy face, from my eyes to my mouth and back again, with that signature affectionate look of his. I’d always felt, from that look alone, like I was special to him. But maybe that was just his face. Maybe that was how he looked at everyone.
But that’s when Cooper sighed and said, “Where do you want it?”
“Want what?”
He gave me a look. “The hickey.”
But believe it or not, I had a shred of pride to salvage.
