“You’re going to stick to the sheets a little,” he said, “but there’s no way around it.”
Once I was positioned, it was time to do my front side.
Cooper pulled up a chair to get to work.
I closed my eyes and said, “Tell me about the worst sunburn you ever got.”
But Cooper just sucked air through his teeth like nobody would benefit from that. “How about I sing to you instead?”
“That works.”
And that’s how we spent the evening. Cooper took requests—“Rocky Raccoon,” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and the Kermit the Frog classic “Rainbow Connection”—while covering me, face to feet, in goo.
Despite everything, it was fun.
The aloe was so smooth and cool. Favorite areas included my cheeks, my collarbones, my knees, and the tops of my feet. “You’re good at this,” I said, when Cooper was midway through “American Pie.”
In response, he switched out one of thebye-byes withthank you.
Anyway: I had no trouble falling asleep that night.
Apparently, all I needed to get comfortable in bed with Cooper was a pampering serenade and a touch of sun poisoning.
But it worked. No fidgeting tonight. I conked out effortlessly and slept four hours straight—only waking later and peeling myself off the sheets to go pee. It’s a bit of a blur, but I know at some point, Cooper made me take more Tylenol and drink more water. And he did at least two reapplications of aloe in the middle of the night.
After the second bathroom run, though—maybe around four in the morning?—I couldn’t get back to sleep.
I lay in the bed with my skin hot and irritated, wide awake, unable to get comfortable and endlessly adjusting positions—as quietly as possible, hoping not to wake Cooper.
After about twenty minutes, Cooper said, “You probably need more aloe.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Just go back to sleep.”
“Too late,” Cooper said, sitting up.
He came around to my side of the bed. Then we went through all the same sunburn-care steps again, silently, sleepily—until the final section, when he was sitting on a chair next to the bed and working the gel all over the front half of my body.
“Cooper?” I asked, my eyes closed in the dark as he slid the pads of his fingers across my collarbones.
“What?”
“I’ve been wanting to ask you a question for a long time.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“But I keep not asking.”
The question I wanted to ask, of course, was why he had disappeared four years ago.
But once I knew, I couldn’t unknow.
And what if the answer ruined everything?
I’d chickened out of asking him about it on the night of my non-wedding. And tonight, with nothing else to do and nothing else to talk about… I would chicken out again.
“What’s the question?” Cooper asked.
It was right there—just sitting in my mouth like a butterscotch candy: Why did you disappear?
