I looked around the small ballroom. Had it gotten bigger?
“You agreed to practice,” Cooper urged.
“Fine. Yes. Okay,” I said. “I agreed to practice.”
And so we got arranged on an imaginary stage and stood in front of an imaginary mic stand—but then Cooper started strumming real music on that mini banjo, and after the intro, when he nodded a cue at me to jump in and start, I looked around at the cavernous room, and I felt a little squeeze in my chest, and I just… stood there.
Cooper stopped strumming. “That was your cue.”
“I know.”
“Try again,” Cooper said, and started over.
But the squeeze happened again.
“You know what?” Cooper said. “Let’s just do the melody together. No harmony.”
This time, Cooper jumped in at the cue, too—but instead of joining him, I just listened.
He did two verses, hoping he might get me in the mood, but then he petered out.
I looked over at him. “I think it’s the ballroom,” I said. “It’s so… big.”
“How about you close your eyes,” he suggested, “and pretend it’s ten years ago—and we’re up on your roof?”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“Just for now. Just until you get comfortable.”
So I did it. I closed my eyes, and I imagined that we were still in high school, that Cooper and I had never given up on each other, and that we were up on the roof just like we had been the night before, and the night before that… and that I was still a person who could stand under the moonlight with her best friend and just belt out a song without any hesitation.
And guess what? It worked pretty well.
Once I closed my eyes, there was nothing but imaginary moonlight, and Cooper’s familiar voice, and the mini banjo I’d heard him play a million times… and that lovely little song that I knew so well by heart.
I just fell into it.
We sang it three times, in the end, and it was easy.
“Next time, we’ll do it with your eyes open,” Cooper said as he walked me back to find my mother before I got in too much trouble. But as we passed the gift shop, Cooper stopped to examine something on a spinning rack.
When I turned back to look, Cooper had put on a pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think those look weirdly great on you.”
“Not for me,” he said. “For you. To wear onstage.”
“At the reception?”
He nodded. “So you can close your eyes if you need to.”
But I shook my head. “I’ll be okay.”
And then he nodded and said, “Yeah. You will.”
Seventeen
