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 watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last 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?”
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. “You are pretty.”
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.