Page 67 of The Do-Over

“Jesus, it’s cold,” Nick grumbled, zipping his jacket.

I hugged my own jacket—no,hisjacket—tighter to my body. “Have I thanked you for your delightful coat?”

“No problem.” He looked at me, and his eyes roamed downover the big coat before he got a funny expression on his face. He swallowed visibly and his jaw flexed, and he was quiet for a moment before finally clearing his throat and saying, “So where to next?”

I glanced to my left and pointed to the ladder beside us that ran up the side of a squatty brick building. My eyes followed its upward trajectory, and it looked like the building was only a few stories high. All I wanted was to distract Nick from whatever had just made his face look sad, and when you combined that goal with the fact that it was the DONC, climbing onto a rooftop seemed like a great idea.

“Nope,” Nick said.

“Because we were already up on a balcony?”

“Because if we’re going up on a roof, we’re taking something hot to drink.” He turned his attention from the ladder to me. “And I know a better spot. Come on.” Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me, tugging me closer as he started walking down the sidewalk. His legs were so much longer than mine that he was practically dragging me.

“Slow down,” I said, and laughed.

“It’s too cold for slow, Em.” He brought us to a stop, turned around, and gave me his back. “Get on.”

“Again?” I asked, a little breathless over the intimate use of my nickname. “Icanwalk faster—you don’t have to carry me like a small child.”

He looked at me over his shoulder. “Nah—I like it. Keeps me warm and I get buzzed on your perfume.”

We shared a funny smile before I climbed on, like we werewordlessly acknowledging this attraction. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he said, while grabbing my legs and holding them tighter against his body, “Let’s go.”

He took off, walking so fast that it was the speed of my run. Luckily there wasn’t much pedestrian traffic so it was easy for him to trudge down the street with a passenger clinging to his body.

“You okay back there, Hornby?”

“I’m getting heavy, aren’t I?”

“Getting?”

“Shut up.”

I could feel the vibration of his laugh through his back and I laughed too, tightening my legs around him and earning another laugh. He went another block, then put me down when we got to a small coffee cart on the corner.THRIVE COFFEEappeared to be a charmingly restored camper that was all shiny wood and contemporary finishes.

The person who was working looked at us through the ordering window and said to Nick, “I saw your parents yesterday, and your momstilllooks pissed at me.”

Nick grinned and said, “You wrecked her car—does this surprise you?”

The guy—his name tag said Tyler and he looked like he was probably in his early twenties—laughed and started telling me a story about the time Nick gave him a ride to work in his mother’s car and it got stuck in the snow. Apparently, Tyler was supposed to just give the car a little gas when Nick got behind it and pushed, butTyler thought it made more sense to gun it and “blow that bitch out of the snowbank,” which resulted in the car shooting forward, swerving and slamming into a parking meter.

Nick was full-on laughing. “Ty got out of the car, looked at the damage, and then seemed genuinely offended by what the parking meter had done.”

It was kind of amazing, witnessing Nick looking totally happy. I was almost overcome with the desperate need to do whatever necessary to make him like that all the time.

“This is Emilie, by the way,” Nick said to Ty, and we exchanged nice-to-meet-yous.

Then Tyler asked, “Shouldn’t you kids be in school right now?”

“We actually should,” Nick said, turning his smiling eyes on me. “This criminal convinced me to ditch with her. Now she wants to climb onto a roof in the cold like this is a goddamn movie.”

“Nice.” Tyler nodded his approval. “Taking her through T.J.’s, then?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, but we need hot drinks first.”

“The usual, Big Man?”

“Make it two.”

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