Page 80 of Night Shift

Vincent’s face splits into a grin. “Are you serious?”

I bite down on my bottom lip and nod. I want to grab him by his shirt and kiss him until both our legs give out and we’re a tangle of limbs on the floor, fully desecrating this bookstore, but I think we’ve been pushed far enough out of our comfort zones today.

Instead, I say, “Take me home, Vincent.”

Thirty-one

Vincent is parked four blocks from the bookstore, which is unfortunate, because it’s still pouring rain when we make our walk of shame down to the first floor.

“You sure you don’t want me to bring the car around?” he asks as I follow him to the front of the shop, studiously avoiding eye contact with the woman behind the cash register (because despite the fact that there’s no way she heard what we were doing up in the attic, I have the horrible feeling that she’ll see our rumpled hair and just know).

“We’ll just walk fast,” I say.

Vincent hums. “Someone’s impatient.”

My cheeks are warm when I shoot him a warning glare. Then he offers me his jacket as we pause just inside the door to brace ourselves, and now I’m fully blushing, because five minutes ago I was kneeling on that jacket and doing unspeakable things.

“I’ll be fine,” I insist. “It’s just a little rain.”

We make it a solid ten steps down the sidewalk before a particularly fat and heavy drop rolls off a window awning and smacks me straight in the eye. I gasp, swear like a sailor, and then huff in resignation. Vincent refrains from saying I told you so as he hands me his sunflowers to hold, shrugs off his jacket, and pulls me close to his side so he can drape it over both our heads.

By the time we get to his car—an unpretentious but very large SUV—we’re both half soaked and breathless from giggling every time our hips bump.

Vincent holds the passenger door open until I’ve climbed in and folded my knees out of the way so he can shut it for me, then tucks his bouquet of sunflowers carefully on the back seat. While he waits for traffic to pass so he can duck around to the driver’s side, I rub my frozen hands up and down my thighs to try to get some feeling back in my fingers. I scan the interior of the car. It’s comfortably clean, just like Vincent’s room . . . and now I’m thinking about what we did in his bed, which makes me think about what we just did in the bookstore, and suddenly I’m not cold anymore.

Vincent gets into the car, starts the engine, taps the button to turn my seat-heater on, and meets my eyes over the center console.

“Don’t look at me like that, Holiday.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like you want me to fuck you in my back seat.”

I choke on a startled laugh. “I—that’s—”

Exactly what I was thinking about.

“Look, Holiday, you know I’m down,” he says, his smile just this side of cocky. “But do me a favor and let me make your first time a little more special than that.”

I could tell Vincent about my teenage obsession with Titanic, and that I’d be more than happy for him to play the young Leo DiCaprio to my Kate Winslet and fog up the windows of his car. I could tell him that my imagination can’t decide if I want to straddle his lap and use his shoulders and my knees for leverage, or if I want him to move his sunflowers out of the way so he can drape me over the length of the seats and slot himself between my open thighs to use his weight to pin me down.

Instead of saying any of that, I fold my hands neatly in my lap.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll behave.”

Vincent looks like he doesn’t believe me for a second, but he concedes by putting the car in Drive and pulling away from the curb.

Tragically, there’s no third-act montage to get us to our long-awaited denouement as quickly as I’d like to. It’s seven o’clock and pouring rain, so the downtown traffic is stop-and-go. It’s torture. But Vincent connects his phone to the speakers and tells me to open a Spotify playlist Jabari made for him as a joke (it’s just forty duplicates of “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid and one lone Frank Ocean song) and suddenly I don’t mind that we can’t cut right to the chase.

The worst thing about romance novels is that they always end.

There’s a declaration, a kiss or a sex scene, and maybe—if I’m lucky—an epilogue that doesn’t automatically relegate the female lead to the role of stay-at-home mom, even if she spent the whole novel pursuing other goals. Right now, it may feel like Vincent and I are driving off into the sunset, but there are no credits to roll and no curtains to close.

We still have so much ahead of us.

We have everything ahead of us.

It won’t always be big moments between us. It’ll be little ones, like this—the two of us in his car, passionately debating which route will get us to my apartment the quickest while Jabari’s joke of a playlist loops in the background. And I want them. All the little moments. All the unimportant stuff suddenly feels so important.

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