She laughs. “I don’t think I’ve heard you swear before.”

“What are you talking about? I had to swear every time I answered the phones for Mary, Fuck, Kill.”

“But you wouldn’t. You’d strategically swallow the middle. And now look at you, raining down f-bombs like a real-life New Yorker.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, quietly. “I can’t ask him.”

“Why not?”

“The thing is—it turns out—uggh! He’s different than I thought, and I can’t decide if I hate him or—the . . . opposite of . . . that. So even if I agreed with you, which I don’t, it’s way more complicated than that,” I say.

“Uncomplicate it. Go next door and ask him. And Zoey? Tick-tock. Unless you want to be called down to the precinct to answer for your crimes.”

She hangs up.

Panicked—I now have less than an hour to get to Brooklyn and intercept the package—I take a deep breath and shout, “COMING OUT!”

Pulse skyrocketing, I step into the hall. It seems longer than ever, as though I’ve already smoked the pot and everything’s slower and stretched out. Yet somehow my feet propel me forward until I’m outside Miles’s door. I grit my teeth and knock.

The music within cuts off. My shoulders tense, and my breath hitches.

He opens the door, his expression blank.

“What’s up?” he says, leaning against the doorframe.

“Code Green,” I gasp. “I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t an emergency. . . .”

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 27

MILES

“What’s the matter?” I ask, concerned. I’ve seen that look of panic in Zoey’s eyes a few times now and I have to admit I like it less and less every time.

She swallows. “I have to get to Brooklyn.”

“Your emergency is . . . Brooklyn?”

She thrusts an envelope at me. “I have to get here. ASAP.”

I read the return address. It just says:

Hotel the

Gowanus

Brooklyn

“I don’t know where that is and it’s unGoogleable!” She taps at the name of the hotel and . . . I can see where she might have a problem. “Why would anyone do that with a business name?!”

Based on the non-address address and the minimalist but also graphic-designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life aesthetic of the gift certificates inside, I have an idea why. “Ah. A hotel so hip, even the Internet can’t find it,” I explain. There, of course, isn’t a phone number or e-mail address either, just a social media handle. “Have you tried the social channels?”

“No address there either. And, um . . . it’s actually time sensitive I get there. Like, right now?”

“Emergency massage?” I ask her, peeking at the gift certificates inside the envelope.

“More like emergency Mary Clarkson sent a bag of weed to my name there and I really don’t need an arrest record right now on top of everything else,” she says.