“Why is that not helping?”
“My point is, if cavemen could do this, so can you.”
Cooper sighed, like all this talking was just making it worse.
“Okay,” he said, dead serious now, his eyes on the target.
“Okay.” I gave a thumbs-up.
He clutched my shoulders again and started to lower his head down—and as much as I had been insisting all along that everything about this wasthe oppositeof a big deal, as it actually started to really happen… as Cooper actually leaned down closer and closer… I felt the anticipation of it like electrical sparks in my body.
Cooper must have felt it, too, because he got about two inches from making contact, and then he just stopped and hovered there.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Cooper said, pulling back a bit.
“Look, if you hate this so much—”
“I don’t hate it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just—want to do a good job.”
“Any kind of job will do,” I said. “Seriously. I’m not picky.”
“Okay, okay. Got it,” Cooper said.
Then something occurred to me. “You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”
Cooper’s eyes snapped to mine. “You remember that?”
I looked at him like he was totally bananas. “Of course I remember it. It’s one of the top five most humiliating moments of my life. I think about it once a week, at least. Sometimes I remember it out of a dead sleep and wake up screaming.”
Cooper squinted. “You’re joking, right?”
“I am fifty percent joking.”
“I’m really sorry about that day. I was—”
“I tell myself you had food poisoning. I tell myself you couldn’tpossibly have been so repulsed by the touch of my lips that you had to barf up a corn dog. If I’m wrong, don’t tell me.”
Now Cooper looked right into my eyes. “I didn’t have food poisoning. And I wasn’t repulsed.”
I looked out at the ship’s wake again. What other option was there?
Cooper took a breath. Then he said, “I was nervous.”
“Nervous?” I frowned. Could being nervous make you throw up?
Cooper nodded.
“Are you nervous now?” I asked.
His eyes were steady. “Yes.”
I stepped back. “Do not barf on me, man.”
