Bridesmaid Two was mostly asking Cooper all about his job like she was the first person to ever make vocational chitchat. It bugged me for many reasons, but I guess the biggest one was that she was getting answers even I didn’t have. And I’d always had all the answers about Cooper.
Yet somehow here I was, eavesdropping.
She forced Cooper to describe the studio where he worked, and list movies he’d done, and explain how he created all kinds of sounds. And dammit, it was fascinating. He snapped stalks of celery, for example, to make the sound of breaking bones. He recorded bacon frying to make the sound of rain. He whooshed a stalk of bamboo past the mic to make the sound of an arrow.
“What about kissing?” Bridesmaid Two dared to ask.
“That’s easy,” Cooper said, “you just kiss your forearm.”
I side-glanced over to see him roll back his shirtsleeve to reveal his naked forearm underneath—and then lean forward todemonstrate what he meant.
I meant to look away. I really did. But my eyes got stuck.
At the sight of him bending down, parting his lips, and then pressing them against his own skin… things seemed to shift into slo-mo for a second.
Was Cooper WattsFrenching his own forearmat the dinner table?
Whatever was going on, I’ll be honest: My hickey might’ve tingled a bit at the sight of it.
That is, until Finn returned to his seat, patted me on the hand, and said, “Where were we?”
Ripped back to reality, I turned and said, “You were telling me about how you review contracts.”
Was I jealous that I was listening to Finn use legal terms likemutual covenants and agreementswhile Bridesmaid Two got to watch Cooper passionately smooching his own arm?
Yes. Yes, I was.
Bridesmaid Two was having so much fun, she wasn’t even interrupting.
Which felt massively unfair.
Even though, technically, I was getting what I wanted.
I forced myself to notice that Operation Conquest was starting to work.
Wasn’t that what I was here for, after all?
I needed to refocus!
Whenever Finn was at the table, I doubled down on myHow to Make a Man Fall in Love with Youresearch and asked him all about himself. My plan was to launch endless searching questions about his interests and talents. According to the book, asking people about themselves makes them think thatyouare fascinating.
But now, inspired in part by Bridesmaid Two’s cleavage, I added some physicality to my conversation with Finn. When I asked him about his class ring, I made sure to reach out and brush his fingers with mine. When I laughed, I touched him on the shoulder. And once, when I stood up to go to the ladies’ room, I pretended to lose my balance so I could fall sideways onto his lap and let him catch me.
I won’t confirm or deny if I tried to use my own cleavage as a weapon, but let’s just say Bridesmaid Two wasn’t the only person in the dining room who could lean toward a man at a 45-degree angle.
I might have lost a pea or two myself.
I’d started out the meal intending to laugh uproariously at every funny thing Finn said. But then it turned out that Finn didn’t say funny things. Instead, he seriously told me about his life as a litigator. He seriously explained how golf had become a “real passion” for him. And then he seriously described his new BMW to me like he was doing a Consumer Reports performance review, including in-depth assessments of its turbo, torque, and thrust.
I listened intently, like we were discussing world affairs.
Like nothing on earth could be more fascinating.
Like my oldest friend wasn’t eighteen inches away,making out with his own arm.
I was just visualizing my soul-sucking boredom as a pinhole leak in a pool float, and I was feeling quite deflated, when Cooper rescued me again.
He interrupted a soliloquy of Finn’s on the perils of tax law to turn all attention to me and ask, “Tell us about your amazing job, JoJo.”
