And then he smiles. “You’ve changed everything for me, Rico.”
They stare into each other’s eyes.
“Does it ruin the moment if I say I need to think about it?” she says.
And he laughs. Loud. It ripples over me, and the tiny hairs on Rico’s neck and arms rise to attention.
He closes the space between him and us. Slips those arms back around our waists. “Take however long you need, m’lady.”
“You are such a cornball.”
And maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the crystal-strung ceiling and the scent of perfume-masked sweat in the air. Maybe it’s me…maybe it’s his tux. Maybe it’s the dancing.
He takes her face in his hands.
Looks at her eyes.
Her nose.
Her lips.
“Rico, may I kiss you, please?” he says.
Rico nods.
Their mouths meet and the world explodes.
Zan has no idea where we’re going, and I can tell he’s nervous.
Nervous, I’m sure, because I’m lit as a live wire.
He keeps sneaking peeks at me out of the corner of his eye when he thinks I’m not looking. I turn and smile at him when he does it again.
“Something I can help you with, sir?”
He narrows his eyes. “Something’s off with you.”
Crap. He noticed.
“You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yup!” I lie.
There’s a pause. Heavy. “You’re really not gonna tell me where we’re headed?” he says.
“Nope. Hang a left at the next light.”
He sighs. The knuckles of his left hand go white as he clenches the steering wheel.
“So how’s the J-Dude? Goes back to school tomorrow, right?”
I nod. “He’s anxious since he missed so much. Completed a lot of makeup work, but it’s hard for him, you know?”
“I can only imagine. Anything I can do to help?”
“You’ve done plenty, Zan. We’re all really grateful.”
“Okay!”
“Take the next right.”
“Aye, aye.”
My eyes latch on to the clock on Zan’s dash: 3:28.
I swear the universe hates me. I’ve seen that number everywhere the past week. License plates, billboards, the HOW AM I DRIVING? sticker from the back of a Home Depot semi…Everywhere, reminders of what I snuck and looked at while Mama’s back was turned seven days ago.
$328,002.76. That’s the cost of a monthlong hospital stay for an uninsured kid with meningitis who needed a tonsillectomy. 328 has become a massive, angry black elephant with poison-tipped tusks, glaring at me everywhere I turn. (Perhaps this is retribution?)
I gulp. Look back out my window. “Left at the stop sign, and then right into the first parking lot you see.”
“You sure do know these directions well, Danger.” Laced with suspicion.
“I might have scouted the place a few times.” The bus stop catches my eye as we pass. “It’s right here.”
Zan slows and turns into the driveway. Clears his throat. “Public Storage?”
“Yep!” I wiggle my eyebrows at him and point to the gate that’ll take us to the outdoor units. “Code is 5613.”
“Okay…” He punches it in and the gate opens.
“When you get to the end of the aisle, take a left.”
He does. My heart beats faster as we breeze along the rows of garagelike orange doors. “Third aisle on the left.”
“Hate to break it to you, but that’s a tight squeeze for the Tonka. I drive down there, we won’t be able to open the doors,” he says.
“Okay. Park here then. We’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Jeep stopped, parking brake up, engine cut, seat belts off.
I take his hand once we’re out and pull him into the row. We walk for thirty seconds or so. “Here,” I say, rotating to face an orange door on the left. It’s no wider than the front door of our apartment. “Unit six-oh-three.”
“Awesome.”
Standing here with him makes me feel electrified. I look up. Surely beaming. “This is Ethel Streeter’s storage unit,” I say.
“Ah. Cool, I guess?”
“Remember how I told you her son said all her stuff had been put in storage? Well, I called last week to ask about the estate sale, and he said it’d be at least another month before it happens.”
His caterpillars creep together. “Okay…”
“I think it’s some kinda sign that her unit’s at this location.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I made up a lie about needing to store something, and he ‘recommended’ this place and said her stuff was here. My mom’s got a unit here too with some of my granddad’s stuff in it. Took a bit of digging to get the right unit number for Ethel, but here we are, right? The final barrier!”
Why does he look so baffled?
“All her stuff is still inside, Zan,” I say. “Jackets, pants, purses—”
“You can’t possibly know that, Rico.”
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Her son said all her stuff was being held in storage.” I face the door again. “The ticket could totally be in there, you know? All that separates us is this silly orange thing!”
His eyebrows tug even lower. Which I didn’t think was possible. “Okay, hold on,” he says, taking a deep breath like he’s trying to stay patient or something.
It sets me on edge.
“For one,” he says, “pretty sure going into someone’s storage unit without their permission is trespassing. For two: how would you even get in there? It’s locked.” He gestures toward the heavy padlock with his chin.
I smile and remove a hairpin from my bun. “I’m pretty sure I can pick it.”
He pulls his hand from mine then. Steps back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rico.”
“What?”
“I mean, you said the estate sale is in a month, right? We can be the first customers.”