Page 17 of Kiss Me Tonight

It sounds like thousand-dollar paint jobs and the joyous,pay-upapplause of car insurance companies all around the world.

“Topher!”

My car skids alongside the truck’s profile, dragging and whining, as Topher panics and accelerates instead of hitting the brakes. More squealing. More dollar signs flashing before my eyes. The truck emits a murderousbeeeeeeeeep!and I give up all pretense of not gripping the oh-shit handle.

The forward momentum dies a second later, as does my soul.

“Mike—Driver’s Ed Mike—he likes to tell us stories about how he did a whole lot of drugs when he was younger and once ran from the cops through a forest of marijuana.”

Aforestof marijuana?

I blink.

Refocus on the Tom Brady bobblehead thrashing around on my dashboard.

Open my mouth and mutter, “Now’s not the time for a confessional.”

“I thought I was gonna die.”

“Sorry to disappoint, bud, but you’re still kicking.”

And long enough to promise the owner of that truck that you’re going to repay all the damage you just caused.

Abandoning my Dunkin’s in the cupholder, I crack open the passenger door and round the hood of my car. With firm resolution, I keep my eyes rooted to the concrete instead of checking out the probable mutilation of my poor Honda.

I hear a door slam shut, followed by clipped footfalls that are way too heavy to belong to Topher.

Deep breath in. Deep exhale out.

My lungs give a shallow,eff-youpump.

Looks like all the meditation I do every morning isn’t going to help me in a real-world crisis.

Figures.

Hands on my hips, I raise my gaze from my hot-pink sneakers to the massive feet encased in black running shoes. No socks that I can see. I trail my eyes up, over strong calf muscles dusted with dark springs of hair to black mesh shorts clinging to thick, tree-trunk thighs. Up some more, to the familiar red-and-white London High polo I’m also wearing, and oh, boy, but there goes my breakfast.

My stomach churns uneasily, a sick, foreboding sensation tumbling through me.

Fight or flight.

Since my kid just wreaked havoc on this guy’s truck, fight it is.

Recognition spears me like a two-pronged fork, right in the jugular, as I take in that familiar jawline and that equally familiar cleft chin.

The Hulk.

Whose crotch I face-planted on.

Who called me “cute.”

Who I swear, in my drunkenness, I saw waltz into the house next door to mine, late on Friday night. In the three days that have passed since, there have been no U-Haul trucks or other vehicles parked out front for me to inspect.

I gulp, audibly, and finally look all the way up.

Firm lips are flat and unamused as they part to growl, “Is this what you had in mind when you said, ‘See you when I see you?’”

I’m not prepared for what happens next.

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