We do pre-coffee coffee, get dressed, and shuffle out of the apartment. It feels like everything is fake, but in a good way. Like better than real. Happily ever after and kind of like a dream and then I get to work and Adam stands in line for his post-coffee coffee and I’m behind the counter and I feel this longing for him. I want everyone else to fade to black so it can just be me and Adam in his apartment and that’s all there is in the world.

When Adam gets his coffee and has to leave, I miss him. Like actually feel that tug in my chest, even though I know I’ll see him tonight. It’s Wednesday, so we’re ordering pizza from The Nines and watching 90210. I love the way we have different days for different things. But even knowing what I’m looking forward to doesn’t stop the tightness in my chest when I watch him walk out the door.

— Chapter 23 —

I remember Mark Conrad telling Matty how to chalk his license. I didn’t listen too carefully, because it was Mark Conrad, and he always had plans for ways to get booze, or get into a nightclub in Buffalo, or score weed from some guy who knows some guy who knows his cousin, but none of it ever actually happened. Mark always wussed out and blamed it on circumstance, like his cousin was scared straight, or they don’t sell the right colored pencils to chalk a license in Little River, or that nightclub was lame anyway. But I remember the basics of what he said—how you had to have white, black, and red colored pencils, and use a twisted-up piece of paper towel to blend things. Thankfully, since I’m only trying to be nineteen, I don’t have to worry about the UNDER 21 label on my license. For that, Mark claimed to have some cut and splice trick with special tape and melting the outside plastic, but I doubt it was something he’d actually tried.

When Bodie is outside smoking, I call out, “Break!” to Carly, swipe Bodie’s leather pencil case from the messenger bag he leaves on a hook in the kitchen, and run upstairs to the storage room.