Make a Wish || Rhett and Link

Chapter 28 - Ice Cream

"Cooper?" I asked, knocking on her door softly a few times. No reply.

"Are you in there Coop?" I asked again.

I pressed my ear against the door, and I could hear a few muffled sobs. I gently pushed open the door. Cooper was sitting on her bed, her face red and puffy. She had obviously been crying.

"What's wrong Cooper?" I asked, sitting down next to her on the bed. "Is it Shep? I've talked to him about it."

"No, it's not him." she sniffled.

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"My head." She mumbled.

"What? Cooper, you can't be upset about that. It's not your fault!" I told her.

"Yeah, but it's the one thing that really makes me different from everyone else." She said. "It's the thing that's killing me slowly."

"Well, technically, we're all dying slowly..."

Cooper let out a sad chuckle.

"That doesn't help Rhett."

I smiled. "I know."

"I'm just...a little upset about all the things that I won't get to do, you know?" Cooper said. "I guess I put on a brave face and say I'm okay with it...but it still hurts."

"I have no doubt in that fact." I told her.

"I'm scared." She whimpered.

I wrapped her in a tight hug. "I'll protect you."

"8 and a half months." She whispered. "That's it."

"Cooper, you can't let yourself think like that." I said.

"Well how else am I supposed to think?" She asked.

An idea popped into my mind. "I'll tell you what. You make me a list of things you want to do in this break. 6 things, 6 weeks. You know what, make it 7. We can do 7 things in 6 weeks."

"Really? A bucket list? That's a little cliche, don't you think?" Cooper asked with a smile.

"We'll call it something else. The cheese sandwich list." I told her, referring to the joke we made when we first met her.

Cooper laughed. "Okay. I'll make a cheese sandwich list."

I smiled. "Link's coming over for dinner, by the way. And his family."

"Awesome." Cooper said. "I might get started on the list."

"Okay." I told her. "I'll call you when Link arrives."

I left the room with a smile. I successfully cheered her up.

()()() A few hours later ()()()

*****Cooper's Point of View*****

"Cooper! Link's here!" Rhett called. I took a last glance at my cheese sandwich list and ran out of the room to the kitchen.

"Hey Super-Cooper!"

I turned around and smiled. "Hey Link!"

We hugged for a little bit and I smiled and waved at the rest of the Neal family.

Jessie had made dinner so we all sat down and began to eat. It was pretty good. I guess I was feeling a little more comfortable with their families, and their families were more comfortable with me. That was nice, I guess.

"Did you hear that somebody got attacked by a shark over at our surf beach?" Link asked Rhett.

"Really?" Rhett asked nervously.

I remembered that Rhett and Link paddle board together.

"You know guys, your chances of being killed by a vending machine are twice as high as getting killed by a shark." I suddenly blurted out.

Link looked at me. He raised one eyebrow. "Is that true? It sounds like you made that up."

"You can look it up. It's true."

"You wanna bet?" Link asked.

"Sure." I said. "If it's fake, I'll buy you ice-cream. If it's true, you buy me ice-cream."

Link cocked his eyebrows and fished his phone out of his pocket, before typing it in and going through the search results.

"It looks like I'm buying you some ice-cream, Cooper." he laughed.

I laughed too. "Yay!"

I helped Jessie with the dishes (even though she told me not to) before heading to join the kids on the couch.

"Come on Coop, we better head off before it gets too late." Link said, grabbing his car keys.

"Huh?"

"I owe you ice-cream, don't I?" He said.

"So right now?" I asked, a little confused.

"Yeah, why not?" Link said cheekily.

"Okay. Let's go!" I said.

Link and I got in his car and he drove me to an ice cream parlour a little while down the road. I had just plain vanilla, while Link had peanut butter flavour. We sat out by the road and played I-spy.

"I spy with my little eye...something that begins with R" Link said.

"Road." I said, not even needing to think about it.

Link laughed. "Yep. Your turn."

"Hmm. I spy with my little eye, something that begins with S"

Link looked around for a while, but he couldn't spot it. I had to contain my laughter.

"I give up. What is it?" he asked me.

"The spider on your left pants leg."

Link looked down, and indeed there was a spider. He screamed and jumped up, shaking his leg and getting rid of it. He dropped his ice-cream onto the ground in the process.

"Aww" He sighed once he had finished freaking out. The spider was dead. Link crushed it.

"It's okay Linkypoo, you can have another ice-cream next time." I said, patting his shoulder.

"Linkypoo?"

"Do you not like nicknames? I can stop if you want..."

"No, it's cool." Link said. "You can be Super-Cooper and I'll be Linkypoo."

I laughed. "Okay. It's settled."

"And we can get Ice-Cream every Wednesday night."

I raised one eyebrow and looked at Link.

"What?! I like ice-cream!"

I laughed again. Link is the best. We got back in the car and headed home. My home. I smiled at the thought of it. Home.