Page 72 of The Do-Over

He tilted his head and his eyes crinkled at the corners, so I let go and started walking again, happy that he was smirking. Any time that I could be responsible forthatlook on his face, I was thrilled. “What if we, um, zip the scooters over to the Joslyn like you guys did on the Fourth of July? Or maybe we could ride bikes to the park and go down the big slides. Feed the ducks the way you guys did when your mom brought you down here in grade school. I don’t want to overstep, but it’d be kind of cool if you were able to feel like Eric is somehow with us on the DONC.”

“Hornby.”

“Please don’t be mad that I’m butting my—”

“Emilie.”

“—nose in. I just want—”

“For the love of God, Em, stop talking.” He stepped over to me, grinning, and puthishand overmymouth. “If you don’t shut up, I can’t tell you that I think it’s a great idea. Christ.”

I looked up at him, giving me teasing eyes from such close proximity, and I realized that I was actually feeling kind of big things for him. I mean, yes, we hadn’t known each other long, but I felt like I knew more about him than so many people who were important parts of my life.

I felt like he knew me.

And I rarely felt that from anyone.

He lifted his hand from my face and said, “Shall we embark upon the next part of our journey, then?”

CONFESSION #16

When I was little and my mother made me apologize, I silently added, “… though I really am not” to the end of every single apology.

“So that’s why you don’t date?” I stopped chewing my pizza and gave Nick the most screwed-up face I could come up with. “You don’t havetimefor it?”

It was starting to get dark outside, so Nick and I had wandered into Zio’s Pizza for a few slices to fill our bellies and warm us up. After hanging on the rooftop, we’d ridden scooters to the Joslyn Museum (Nick still had Eric’s admin code from his brief stint working as a “scooter-jockey,” so he’d been able to override the Bluetooth so we could leave the zone), where he’d taught me five things I’d never known about Van Gogh as we’d explored the art museum.

Some people theorize that the artist Gauguin was actually the one who cut Van Gogh’s ear and it wasn’t self-inflicted at all.

Van Gogh painted a portrait of himself with a bandaged ear after the cutting.

He only sold one painting in his lifetime.

He shot himself in the chest in a field where he was painting,but managed to walk back to his house afterward and didn’t die until two days later.

His last words were “The sadness will last forever.”

I might’ve been depressed, because that was wildly depressing information, but then Nick taught me two more things about Van Gogh that were obviously untrue and made me feel much better:

His friends actually called him Van, and when he stuck around too long and became annoying, they tormented him with their cries of, “Van, go!”

The woman who received Van Gogh’s ear sold it on eBay and made so much money that she started lopping off her own body parts and selling them. One of her toes went for a million dollars so she lived happily ever after and named all seven of her sons Vinnie.

After that, we ditched the scooters and rented bikes, which we rode over snowbanks (very difficult) and through slushy puddles (very messy) until we reached the big slides in the park. Nick with the great ideas ran into a convenience store and bought wax paper to slide upon, so we shot down the slides so fast that our only option had been to get big air and then land in a huge drift of snow.

While, of course, screaming at the top of our lungs.

After that we fed birdseed to the ducks—Nick had purchased that, as well—until our toes were too frozen to do anything else outside. I was a little afraid that after sitting in the heated pizzeria for well over an hour, we were going to freeze to death when we finally had to leave.

“Don’t say it like that—it’s smart.” He picked up his soda with one hand and pointed at me with the other. “I don’t have time for all of the emotional bullshit a person has to put out in order to make another person happy. It’d be worse if I dated people and then just pissed them off by being a cold, distant asshole, wouldn’t it?”

I rolled my eyes and set down my pizza. “There’s a backward logic to what you’re saying, I suppose, but I really think you’re overestimating the actual number of minutes required to emote your feelings properly. A text that says ‘I love the sound of your laugh’ takes, like, fifteen seconds to send, and it’d mean everything to someone who really cared about you.”

He said, “You’re being obtuse on purpose.”

“No,you’rebeing obtuse on purpose. Your excuses are vague and overgeneralized and quite frankly—pathetic.”

“So I’m pathetic now.” His face was serious and intense and I was infatuated with the way he teased.

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