I started walking again, and Adam hesitated before joining me. Visible ears or not, I could tell he was embarrassed based on the way he’d hunched his shoulders against a nonexistent breeze. “No, it’s fine. I mean, I obviously didn’t. And then I realized it’s probably because you broke up with your girlfriend yesterday, and then last night I was watching Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in this bizarrely surreal romance in the snow.” I gestured around us with my cocoa. “I can’t believe I told you that I thought about kissing you.”
When Adam didn’t respond, I was the one who sighed. “Okay, you have to tell me what you’re thinking, because I can’t see your ears and it’s like I’ve only got four senses.”
“It’s fine, Jo. I mean it’s not like I haven’t thought about kissing you.”
That time when he kept walking, I was the one who fell behind. I felt my face shift like someone had asked me explain the plot of a Darren Aronofsky movie. “When?”
“I don’t know. A few times, I guess.”
“Cryptic much? When?” When he didn’t answer, I relented. “Just the first time then.”
“When we took that first picture for my mom,” he said at last.
“That was like the first time we met.” I laughed, covering for the tingling heat blazing through me. “You didn’t even like me then and you wanted to kiss me?” I almost said,I don’t even want to know what you want to do with me now, but even I had enough self-control to hold that back.
“I thought you were pretty,” he said. “Youarepretty.”
My glance was covert that time. He hadn’t put his cap back on, and I could see his ears—not even the slightest bit pink.
Mine flushed hot.
Then his mouth lifted up on one side. “And there was a moment when you stopped talking—I mean, it was a tiny moment.” He held his thumb and index finger close together. “And I wondered what it’d be like to kiss you.” He dropped his hand. “But then you were talking about licking my face and...” He shrugged and made a face.
I pushed him, and he laughed. “At least my impulse came after I actually liked you as a person. I mean, talk about shallow.”
He chucked his empty cup into a nearby trash can and held his hand out for my full-but-no-longer-hot cocoa. “You know, it’s stupid to keep buying this if you aren’t going to drink it.”
“Like $0.65 is really going to kill me. Besides, it warms my hands.”
“So do gloves. Okay, your turn. Why’d you want to kiss me?” he asked.
I let my boots kick up clumps of snow as we walked. “It was just this idea. One second I was about to eat a face full of snow, and the next, you were catching me. And then you were right there, like inches from me with your arm still holding me. If we were in a movie, that would have been the perfect moment for a kiss.”
Next to me, Adam nodded, but he was fighting another frown.
“No, come on. Nobody kissed anybody. We’re just talking, sharing the random stuff that sometimes flies through our minds. That’s what friends do.”
Adam’s frown smoothed. “Well, what if I wan—” But his words kind strangled off as his gaze drifted past me and locked. I saw the blood drain from his face, and I turned to see a pale, black-haired guy with strikingly dark eyes walking toward a navy Jeep with a coffee in one hand and keys in the other. He looked to be a few years older than us, and he went still when he saw us.
“Adam?” I asked.
He didn’t respond, just started moving toward the guy, who had changed course and was heading directly toward Adam, too. I started to worry that they were going to charge each other, because neither appeared to be slowing down, but instead of colliding, they embraced, hands clapping on each other’s backs like brothers.
ADAM
It should have bothered me that I was about to cry in front of the girl who had my heart, but it didn’t. That had as much to do with Daniel as it did Jolene. He clapped me once more on the shoulder and then pulled back. And just as quickly as I’d been about to cry, I was laughing. It was so good to see him. It felt like going back in time, and I half expected to see Greg walk up behind him.
Daniel didn’t join in my laughter, but he did smile.
“What are you doing here?” I hadn’t seen my brother’s best friend since Greg’s funeral two years ago. My laughter faded with that realization.
“I’ve been gone some.” Daniel had tossed his coffee into a trash can before reaching me, and he shoved both hands into his pockets, but not before I noticed that the knuckles on his right hand were split.
He and Greg had been friends for as long as I could remember, and we all knew how messed up his home life had been. He was old enough now that he must have moved out, but things were apparently still bad. Growing up, my parents had called the police more than once when Daniel had shown up hurt on our doorstep. It had never gone anywhere, because Daniel’s mom refused to press charges even when it was clear that her husband was beating her, too, and Daniel cared too much about her to contradict whatever stories she invented to explain their injuries.
As he’d gotten older and bigger, Daniel’s injuries had become less frequent, but I doubted his mom had fared as well. I knew that, for Daniel, his mom getting hurt was worse than getting hit himself. But she wouldn’t let him help her, would even blame him for making her husband angry in the first place.
I think that was why he’d helped Greg rescue injured animals. He couldn’t help his mom, but he could help them.
