“The entire driving population.”
“So not you then?” I grinned, and Adam kicked a spray of snow at me. “Oh, come on.” I stretched up to sling my arm over his shoulder, loving the fact that I could touch him without feeling guilty about it. “I promise to drive you anywhere you want when I get my license. You won’t have to worry your pretty little head about anything.”
Adam was a whole two weeks younger than me. In less than a month, I’d be sixteen and free, relatively. Those weeks ate at him incessantly.
“So why are you cursing the winter again?” he asked.
I knew he was trying to pull the conversation away from his driver’s license-challenged state, and since I didn’t want him to get all moody, I let him. “Duh, because of your hat.”
Adam had this expression where he would curl one side of his mouth up and frown whenever something made no sense to him, as if he were questioning the intelligence of whoever had said it. He could be arrogant like that sometimes. I knew he was still chafing over the driving thing, so for once, I didn’t call him on it. I did, however, explain myself to him in a super patronizing way.
“When it’s cold out, your nose and cheeks turn red.” I tapped his nose. “But your ears are hidden under your knit cap.” I lifted it and lightly pinched his ear. “See? Nice and toasty.”
Adam leaned away and pulled his hat back down over his ear. “Right. ’Cause it’s cold.”
“But I can’t see your ears. How am I supposed to know when you’re embarrassed? The rest of your exposed skin is all rosy and—don’t scowl, Adam, it’s very fetching—but I feel like I can’t read you. It’s frustrating, hence the winter cursing.”
Adam’s scowl lingered for a second longer as he looked down at me, but it smoothed out. “You’re such a strange girl.”
“You’re still thinking about the fact that I said you were fetching, aren’t you?” Then, before he could stop me, I yanked off his cap and was rewarded with the sight of ears flushing bright red. “Ha! I knew it!” When Adam tried to reach for his cap, I held it above my head, which made him laugh.
“You know you’re only making it easier for me.”
I looked up. With my arm stretched up, the hat was well within his freakishly long grasp. I dropped my hand as he lunged. When I tried to step back, I sank into a drift that sent me sprawling, or would have if Adam hadn’t looped his arm around my waist and pulled me up.
“Gotcha.” Red ears and cheeks filled my vision. And his smile, too, 100 percent scowl-free. My heart whooped inside me and started pounding at the feel of being in his arms.
I thought about kissing him then. I hadn’t had a ton of kisses to compare it to, but apart from the cold, my wildly beating heart was betting that kissing Adam Moynihan would be rather nice. He smelled nice. Crisp, with that super clean, fresh-snow smell, but also a bit like the cologne he’d let me spray on him at the mall earlier. It had some fancy name, but it basically smelled like a Christmas tree.
I pulled away before I did something I’d regret, and then I was the one frowning. Not in his you-must-be-stupid way, but in a truly puzzled way.
“What just happened?” he asked out loud, just as I was posing the same question silently to myself.
“Nothing. I had a random thought.” I shook my head, trying to clear it from wondering how soft his lips would be.
We started walking again, him on the sidewalk, me in the snow. I kept glancing at him and not covertly either.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You look different to me.”
“You’re kind of making me uncomfortable.”
“Sorry.” I was, but I didn’t look away from him. When he stopped suddenly and sighed, I turned my head straight ahead. “Okay, okay. Eyes to the front.”
We walked another half a block. We were supposed to be heading to Wa-Wa for hot chocolate, but I would have walked right past the store if Adam hadn’t caught my sleeve.
“Don’t you want hot chocolate?”
“Yeah. Lead on.”
Adam was the one who liked hot chocolate. It was too sweet for me, but I enjoyed holding the cup to my nose and letting the steam and scent wrap around me. Back outside, I was doing just that when it finally hit me. “It’s because of Erica,” I said, relieved to realize where the impulse to kiss him had come from. “Well, and the fact that I watchedEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindlast night.”
Adam stopped walking. “Um, what’s because of Erica?”
“I had this impulse to kiss you a minute ago and I couldn’t figure out where—”
“Wait. You wanted to kiss me? Just now?”
