Page 56 of The Do-Over

“But youjustbought it.”

“Are we going to talk about my tea or are we going to find that door?”

I tossed my coffee into the trash can. “Let’s go find that door.”

We walked parallel to the building, intentionally behaving like two teenagers casually walking around downtown, just in case of cameras. He told me a ridiculous story as we cased the joint about the time he was working at a driving range and he got stuck inside the golf ball picker.

“I don’t even know what agolf ball pickeris,” I said, staring at the building’s stone facade.

“A machine that picks up golf balls.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, of course, but I can’t picture it.”

He said, “You don’t have to picture it. Just know I got stuck inside for an hour and almost died of heat exhaustion.”

“Couldn’t you have broken the window or something?”

Nick shook his head and said, “We were all scared to death of our boss, Matt—he was a total asshole. We never would’ve considered that.”

“You would’ve rather died in a ball picker?”

Instead of answering me, he said, “Look.” Nick pointed to a door that was at the back of the building, painted to match the brick and barely noticeable.

“Do you think people use it?”

“No idea,” he said.

The door opened.

I gasped and nearly got trampled by the three women who came out. The lady in the middle apologized while Nick stepped forwardand held the door for them like he was a total gentleman.

Not at all like the grumpy, quiet lab partner I’d had all year.

But the minute they turned away from us, he gave me an eyebrow-raise. “After you…?”

“Let’s go.”

We stepped inside, and the door slammed behind us.

We were in a stairwell. I started for the door to whatever lay beyond when he said, “Wait.”

I stopped. “Why?”

“We don’t know what it looks like on the other side of that door. But we know we have to go up to forty, so…”

And he gave the steps a chin-nod.

“So you want toclimbforty flights of stairs?” I didnotwant to flex my outta-shapeitude in front of him. Nope. “Not all of us run every morning.”

“We can go two flights at a time, and rest in between.”

“I don’t need your fitness pity.”

He raised an eyebrow again. “So you want to…?”

I let out a big sigh. And then I groaned before saying, “Let’s do this.”

The first two flights were pretty easy, but by the third my quads were starting to cramp and I felt sweat starting to form on my forehead.

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