“Watch it, you’re talking about my people here!” Arik laughed. He stretched out his fur-lined arm for Rosemary. “I’m getting there myself. It’s my genetic destiny to turn into a werewolf.”

Rosemary resisted the temptation to stroke his arm like it was some sort of cute hairy pet. “An Ewok, maybe.”

They held their gaze for a moment, then Arik turned away, blushing.

“Hey, look, an old dude flirting with the male pharmacist,” he said. “Well, I suppose it does say pick-up window.”

Rosemary craned her neck to see the in-store pharmacy, and gasped. “Oh, my God, that’s my neighbor!”

“You’re kidding, right? The old dude or the pharmacist?”

“The old dude. He lives next door to me. He’s, like, a famous writer. Raymond Van Pelt.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I’ve never read his stuff either. He’s very early-nineties. Genre, but supposedly ironic.”

“I hate irony!”

“I know. Me too!”

They watched Raymond sign for his prescription, take the little paper bag, and bid goodbye to the young pharmacist. Rosemary hadn’t seen him in the wild—he actually looked kind of happy, kind of handsome, kind of youthful, a completely different person than the grump-a-lumps she knew, perpetually engaged in a muttering argument with himself. She’d never noticed his feet before either, and saw that he wore green loafers made of swank crocodile leather. He was possibly the only person in the history of Rite Aid who wasn’t shopping in footwear assembled by Indonesian child slaves.

“I bet it’s Viagra.” Arik crunched down on the last of his cake cone. His fuzzy arm brushed against Rosemary’s but neither of them budged.

“He’s too old to have sex, probably.” The little hairs on her arm stood up. Arik was so close. So close.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true.” Arik grabbed her hand and suddenly lunged forward and kissed her on the lips. His lips were cold and soft from the ice cream. She kissed him back, parting her lips slightly as she had done with Mr. Z. Their tongues clashed and he moved his body over hers, pressing her against the icy door of the freezer. Her hands reached instinctively for his lower back.

He forged ahead with the confidence of someone who’d spent hours practicing on his inner elbow. She felt her lips plump up and every touch from him became a shivery thrill. He moved one of his hands under her T-shirt to grab her waist. The freezing glass against her back and Arik’s burning body on her front put her in a contrapuntal dream state—cold, hot, cold, hot. She allowed herself to drown. Arik K., the guy she’d been secretly staring at for a whole year, was kissing her, for real.