4
Eight minutes later we sat at the aforementioned table in silence, the gunmetal grey sea stretching out all around us. The Long Island in my hand was sweet – too sweet to be good, really. I didn’t drink much alcohol, orally at least, but I’d dabbled enough to know that this tasted more like off-brand cough syrup from a gas station than a cocktail. In fact, something just seemed off about everything all of a sudden. The colors of the restaurant were too bright, I felt fugly in my top, and people kept staring at us and then catching themselves and looking away, because ICYMI, the world sucks and people are assholes. Even in the South sometimes. Cooper looked a little embarrassed about it, actually. It wasn’t hard to notice. Being around him after meeting him on a phone rather than, say, in a dog park or something, felt simultaneously way more intimate and way more impersonal – like when you get up close to a computer screen and notice the images are really just thousands of little pixels that together constructed a mocked-up visage. I felt like I’d gotten a projected image of him on the phone, all witty puns and virtual winks, but now that I was with Real Cooper instead of Spark Cooper, I knew things could go anywhere.
“So,” he finally said with a little smile, “let me just get the whole Spark awkwardness factor out of the way.”
“Okay?” I asked, wondering how he’d guessed what I’d been thinking about.
The smile spread into his dark eyes. “Although we met on a dating application that has basically transferred the human mating experience onto a plasma screen that you hold in your hand, that fact does not make us desperate, lonely, or insufficient in any way. We are just two normal twenty-somethings utilizing the unusual means of our times to reach out and connect with others in a world suddenly made lonely by hyper-connectivity. Sound good?”
For a long while I just stared at him again. Because I was the most embarrassing individual on the planet, I sort of awkwardly put my hands on the table and then fidgeted and placed them back in my lap – I guess I never did know what to do with those things.
“Well?” he asked. “How’s that?”
“Well, then,” I finally said. So there was truth in the virtual wink. “I think you just about summed it all up. Wasn’t really expecting that level of…well, um, that amount of…you’re just smart, that’s all.”
He leaned forward, suddenly looking fascinated by me for some reason. Honestly, it was hard returning his gaze. He was so intimidating. You know those people who just looked like they were somebody? Like they had either come from somewhere, or were going somewhere? He was one of those. In all the faded dilapidated-ness of my modest hometown, he looked as out of place as a dolphin in a desert.
“Ha,” he said again. “So, what did make you do it, anyway? The whole Spark thing, or whatever?”
“Um. Well. I’ve never really been good at dating, I guess. And this helped, since it makes things less awkward. In the beginning, at least.”
“Same,” he said, and I felt my eyes narrow.
“Somehow I don’t believe that.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He looked away, and I took a sip of my drink. I was a total lightweight since I never had anything solid in my stomach to absorb alcohol, which was what kept “normal” people from being waste cases every time they drank, but tonight I definitely needed the help. “And, like, what made you download the app and pick me?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Something different,” he said automatically. My shoulders fell, and he noticed. “Oh, no, I didn’t…I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant-”
A waitress arrived with a few waters just in time to rescue us. After she left, Cooper turned back to me.
“You look great tonight, by the way. Really.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I was a little annoyed that he’d said really, as if I didn’t already know I looked like this. “So do you,” I added quietly.
“Ha,” was his only response, once again. We heard some people talking about us, and we both looked over at the same time as two girls giggled pretty shamelessly and then cut their eyes and turned red. My pupils met Cooper’s for a moment and the next thing I knew, we were averting eye contact, too.
“Yeah,” I said as he looked down at the table. “So.”
Out of nowhere he looked up at me, a question in his eyes. “True or false,” he said. “Humans are inherently good.”
“Hmm. Heavy subject for a Spark date, but I’d say true and false.”
“Explain?”
“Well,” I began. “I mean, people are garbage, and the world is kinda shitty. But I think I’m pretty good on the inside, and so I’m fine with all that, because my goodness is a sort of a shield against a lot of that, I guess? I don’t know. What do you think?”
Cooper smiled again; a big, dazzling, goofy sort of thing. A dizzying whoosh of a feeling sank into me, pulling me under with it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s the best answer I’ve heard yet. I’m leaning towards the whole ‘people are good’ thing, or at least I’m trying to, but I’m not quite there yet.”
“Easy for you to say,” I whispered.
“What was that?”
“I said, that’s easy for you to say, that humans are good.” I motioned at his general glory.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, except the way he said it made it sound like a warning, as cheesy as that sounds.
“What do I need to know, then?”
“Nothing.” Something in his eyes changed. “Hey, your name. You definitely don’t meet a Summer every day. Where’s it come from?”
“Oh,” I said, shifting gears. “Um, I mean, the story is a little awkward, but whatever. I was actually, like, the fifth child my mom got pregnant with, but the first that actually survived through to birth, you know? And so when she found out she was pregnant with me it was the dead of summer and it was boiling outside and she was totally miserable and sick and all that, and so she made a deal with God or whatever that if she could just carry me through the summer, she’d name me after the season. And obviously I survived, so that’s why I’m Summer. And I mean, I don’t hate the name. I live for the summer. Like, for me the rest of the year is just a countdown to when I can spend my days in flip-flops again. I’m basically only happy when I’m under a palm tree with salt on my skin.”
“Don’t be so hesitant about sharing stuff like that,” he smiled after a minute. “Everyone has sad things in their past. Shit, I could write a novel about mine.”
“About your name?”
“That too.” Something on his face was kept secret, like an embarrassing middle name in middle school.
The waitress dropped by and asked us if we wanted anything to eat while we drank. I could tell she was pushing us to order food and spend money since we were taking up a table or whatever, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to dismiss her with a shake of my head like usual. I panicked a little and looked over at Cooper. This was it: the moment in every budding friendship (or whatever this was) when I had to reveal my Other-ness and see how hard the other person flinched.
“I’m fine, I think,” he said, and then he looked at me.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I, um, can’t eat solid foods, or whatever?”
Cooper looked back at the waitress, barely hesitating. “We’re good for now, then, thanks.”
“You’re not going to ask why I won’t eat?” I asked after the waitress rolled her eyes and left. He just sort of shrugged.
“It’s whatever. That’s your business.”
“Oh.” I was baffled that he wasn’t baffled. Where were the weird stares? The awkward pauses?
And then I realized what had been making me feel so weird: I didn’t want to believe that someone like Cooper was even being nice to me. (Another Scar of mine was that I was so afraid of people mocking me that I rejected anyone who was kind to me even if their intentions were as pure as Caribbean sand, but that was another Scar for another Scar Story.)
Cooper leaned forward again. I inched back, overwhelmed by the reaction his clean, crisp scent gave my body. Honestly, could he, like, not, for a minute? To give myself some time off from being dazzled by him, I opened up the good old First Date Line of Questioning.
“So, how come I’ve never seen you around?” I asked. “Not that I go out a lot or anything, but I know most people at the beach through mutual friends and stuff. Or I know of them, at least.”
He looked away. “Oh, um, I grew up in St. Augustine, actually,” he said, which was this touristy but gorgeous town forty minutes down the coast. “I haven’t lived up here for that long.”
“Ah! I love St. Aug. I used to go down there with my family all the time. Their bakeries are, like, beyond. Not that I could eat much of what I found at them – I just liked to stare.”
“Indeed they are, certainly stare-worthy,” he said with a smile that was more than a smile. “What about you?”
“Grew up in Neptune,” I said, pointing north. “Nothing too exciting.”
“Gotcha.”
He took out his phone, and because I was a mature, honest person, I refrained from checking to see if he had any texts from any other girls.
JK! Immediately I scanned the screen and saw an unreadable-from-my-viewpoint text from someone named Taryn, along with several starry-eyed emojis.
He swiped away the text and jumped a little. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
He returned his attention to me. “So, you know how people use that ‘I’ve gotta go feed my dog’ excuse to get out of a bad date?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Or, like, I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, my dog actually is sick, like in real life, and I really do have to go feed her and give her some medicine, since my mom can’t.”
“Oh.”
He was leaving. And why wouldn’t he be? I couldn’t believe I was stupid enough to think he’d actually been having fun with me.
He put a twenty on the table and got up to leave, just like that. But then he turned around, a little nervous for some reason. “Uh, you’re coming, right?”
I froze. “Um, I…I didn’t know that was an option?”
“Of course it is,” he said. “I just lost track of time when I invited you out, that’s all. Do you want to come?”
“I mean, yeah…if you want me to?”
He smiled, his face unfairly beautiful. “Don’t be silly – you’re coming. Just follow me, I live right around here. And I promise I don’t live in a murder shack.”
I laughed, but then my expression went slack, the word “murder” reminding me what this really was: a girl on her way to the grave, reaching out and calling this beautiful boy to accompany her. So I pumped the brakes.
“But we’re going to your totally-non-murder-shack as just friends, right?” I asked, and he frowned.
“Summer, if you’re trying to insinuate that this was all some elaborate date-rape scheme, you can breathe easy, because I’m not that kinda guy. And trust me, even if I was, I would’ve had way better style than Joe’s Crab Shack.” He motioned at our immensely tacky surroundings and then threw me an incredulous look. “I mean, really? Joe’s?”
“Shut up!” I laughed as I got up from the table with another rush of dizziness I hoped was Cooper-related and not death-related. (Dizziness and weight loss were mostly what had caused me to get checked out earlier this spring, setting into motion this whole stupid surgery thing.) “It was a momentary lapse of judgment, I don’t usually come here. And fine, I’ll follow you.”
As my sternum vibrated with some foreign and wonderful giddiness, I took out my phone and texted my mom:
Change of plans, Shelly. I’m gonna be home later. Maybe a lot later.