I started drinking coffee when I was eleven. My mom left for work when there was one cup left in the pot, every day, and since it seemed like a grown-up thing to do, I did it.
That snapped my attention back to the present. Why had I been worrying about insulting him when it was the DONC? I blinked and said, “I don’t really have a plan, per se, but we should check out the First Bank building.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have some investing to do?”
“No, I want to sneak up to the fortieth floor.” Now I grabbed his elbow and we started walking. “Listen to this.”
I started telling him what I knew and what I wanted to discover as we walked toward the skyscraper. The First Bank building was the tallest building in the city; forty-five stories, to be exact. My Auntie Ellen used to work there and told me that after it first opened, people made appointments to use the fortieth-floor balcony for marriage proposals.
I also knew this to be true because it was where my young, foolish father had proposed to my equally immature and impulsive mother.
But now, if you Googled it—nothing. No mention of a balcony, no reference to balconied proposals.
It was as if it had never existed.
I’d been obsessed with the missing balcony ever since Ellen had told me about it when I was ten, and I was fixated on the notion that the setting for the beginning of so many people’s happily-ever-afters was effectively erased. I’d found it sad, which had made my mother joke that perhaps it was the cosmos trying to right some wrongs. All those couples who’d trekked up there for the big moment could never revisit the spot.
Ever.
Precocious ten-year-old me had even called the building manager, but instead of explaining the closure, he told me I was mistaken. He denied there had ever been such a thing.
I knew better.
So I’d always wanted to sneak up and check it out. I expected Nick to think it was a bad idea, but he listened closely. He nodded and looked up at the towering building as we approached.
And instead of saying no, he said, “I’m sure we need badges to get past the lobby.”
My eyes shot to his, surprised that he was matter-of-factly considering going along with this. “Probably.”
“So what’s our plan?” he asked.
“Hmmm.” I bit my lip as we stopped by the fountains that sat in front of the building. Think, Em—think. “We could pull a fire alarm.”
“Nothing that will get us arrested, you criminal,” he said, and laughed, his eyes sweeping over me and making it impossible not to smile.
“Maybe we can bribe a security guard—do you have any money?”
He just looked at me.
“Well? I don’t hear you—”
“There has to be a side door.” He tossed his cup into a green trash can and said, “One of those exit-only doors that nearly every building has.”
“And…?”
“And we find it and lurk. As soon as someone comes out, we go in.”
I blinked. “That’s genius.”
“No, it’s common sense.”
“Fine. No compliment for you, then; I rescind the compliment.”
“You can’t rescind a compliment.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Nope. My ego knows you think I’m a genius now, regardless of how hard you might deny it.”
That made me laugh. “I do not think you’re a genius. I said that idea was genius.”
“Potato, po-tah-toe.”
I just rolled my eyes and took a sip of my coffee. Then: “Wait—how did you finish your tea already?”
“I didn’t. It sucked and I was sick of carrying it.”
“But you just bought it.”
“Are we going to talk about my tea or are we going to find that door?”
I tossed my coffee into the trash can. “Let’s go find that door.”
We walked parallel to the building, intentionally behaving like two teenagers casually walking around downtown, just in case of cameras. He told me a ridiculous story as we cased the joint about the time he was working at a driving range and he got stuck inside the golf ball picker.
“I don’t even know what a golf ball picker is,” I said, staring at the building’s stone facade.
“A machine that picks up golf balls.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, of course, but I can’t picture it.”
He said, “You don’t have to picture it. Just know I got stuck inside for an hour and almost died of heat exhaustion.”
“Couldn’t you have broken the window or something?”
Nick shook his head and said, “We were all scared to death of our boss, Matt—he was a total asshole. We never would’ve considered that.”
“You would’ve rather died in a ball picker?”
Instead of answering me, he said, “Look.” Nick pointed to a door that was at the back of the building, painted to match the brick and barely noticeable.
“Do you think people use it?”
“No idea,” he said.
The door opened.
I gasped and nearly got trampled by the three women who came out. The lady in the middle apologized while Nick stepped forward and held the door for them like he was a total gentleman.
Not at all like the grumpy, quiet lab partner I’d had all year.
But the minute they turned away from us, he gave me an eyebrow-raise. “After you…?”
“Let’s go.”
We stepped inside, and the door slammed behind us.
We were in a stairwell. I started for the door to whatever lay beyond when he said, “Wait.”
I stopped. “Why?”
“We don’t know what it looks like on the other side of that door. But we know we have to go up to forty, so…”
And he gave the steps a chin-nod.
“So you want to climb forty flights of stairs?” I did not want to flex my outta-shapeitude in front of him. Nope. “Not all of us run every morning.”
“We can go two flights at a time, and rest in between.”
“I don’t need your fitness pity.”
He raised an eyebrow again. “So you want to…?”
I let out a big sigh. And then I groaned before saying, “Let’s do this.”
The first two flights were pretty easy, but by the third my quads were starting to cramp and I felt sweat starting to form on my forehead.
“You okay?” Nick asked when we stopped for our first break.
“Are you?” I tried to keep myself from panting but sounded pretty out of breath when I said, “This is cake.” I noticed that he showed no sign of exertion, other than a slight flush to his cheeks.
“Is it?” He gave me a suspicious look and said, “I’m sorry—have I been holding you up? Do you want to run the next flight?”
OF COURSE NOT. No, thank you. What are you, insane? Those would all be appropriate responses, but my mouth couldn’t seem to form the words. Which was weird, because I didn’t consider myself to be particularly competitive, especially when it came to athletic endeavors.
But the fact that I could tell he knew I wouldn’t do it? It made me say the unspeakable.
“How about the next two?”
His mouth curled into a full-on grin and he took off. I started slow-jogging the stairs behind him, wanting to die in my leather pants, and he immediately slowed and kept pace with me. I looked to my left and there he was, grinning like he could run stairs all day.
I smiled back while my heart pounded and screamed obscenities and tried to remember what its job was.
We ran one flight, then another, but we both kept running after that. My legs started burning, and I was running the steps at a slower pace than if I were walking them, to be honest. My face must’ve looked pained, because when we reached the next landing, Nick took pity on me.
“Wait.” He stopped, and it made me happy to see that he was panting, too. He held up a finger while he caught his breath, which was fine by me because my ears felt too furry to hear out of.
“So,” he breathed, “every floor in this building has an elevator.”
“Yeah…?” I stacked my hands on top of my head as my lungs screamed.
“So let’s get out of the stairwell. Think about it. Odds are good that we can get to an elevator on a random floor of offices before anyone who cares notices us.”
“Are you sure?” I didn’t want to climb another step, but I didn’t want to get busted now that we were getting close, either.
“Positive. Do you trust me?”
I nodded, still trying to un-labor my breath, which made him smile. He said, “Let’s stay here for a couple minutes so we don’t burst out of the stairwell panting and sweating. People might talk.”
An image of Nick and me against the wall of the stairwell flashed in my head.
Whoa.
I was happy when he distracted me and said, “I think it’s my turn to ask you a question, anyway.”
“No—it’s mine.” I leaned my backside against the wall and asked, “Let’s go big. Have you ever been in love?”
He gave me a look, like he thought it was an absurd question. “That’s a hard no.”
“Not even close?” I don’t know why, but I was shocked by that.
“I’ve loved, of course, but I haven’t been in love. Not even close.” He looked down and started fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket. “You?”
“Hmmm.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and said, “When I woke up on Valentine’s Day, I thought I was in love. But here I am, a few hours later, wondering if I ever loved Josh at all.”
He raised his eyes. “Maybe that’s just because you’re mad at him.”
“That’s what’s so weird.” I paused to think for a moment, then I said, “Yes, I’m pissed that he kissed his ex-girlfriend, but only a little. Definitely not as much as I should be.”
It made me feel . . I don’t know… regretful. Had my feelings been something less than genuine?
He continued messing with his zipper. “So… why…?”
“This is a new realization, so I’m still working it all out.”
“Got it.” He abandoned his zipper, straightened, then walked over to the door and opened it a crack. His eye was pressed against the opening for a solid twenty seconds before he closed it again.
“All right—the coast is clear.” He looked at me over his shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”
“What’s our story if we—”
“I got it—no worries.” He looked at me with crinkly eyes and said, “You still trust me, right?”
It was weird how much I did. “Right.”
“Then let’s go. Just pretend we’re supposed to be here.”
“Got it.”
Nick pulled open the door and we walked out. In front of us was a carpeted hallway, with offices on each side of it.
Offices with glass walls.
We started down the corridor and he winked at me, which made me giggle. We hurried past office after office, and a woman in a suit gave us a closed-mouth smile as she came out of her office and walked past us.
After she went by, we grinned at each other because holy crap, it was actually working. We were going to make it to the elevators.
“Excuse me.”
Shit. We kept walking, our eyes looking straight ahead as we heard the deep voice of an older man repeat the words from behind us. “Excuse me. You two?”
Nick turned around, and his face transformed itself into that of a sweet, innocent high school boy. I watched in awe, my heart racing, as he said, “Yes?”
“Can I help you with something?”
“Actually, that would be great. Can you point us to the elevator? We’re here for an internship orientation and we clearly got off on the wrong floor.”
Wow—good one, Nick.
I turned around and the man was looking at both of us through narrowed eyes. I thought Nick was super believable, but the well-dressed old guy still looked suspicious.
I gave him my best good-student smile.
“It’s just over there,” he said, pointing past us, “but I didn’t even see you two get off the elevator the first time.”
“That’s because we took the stairs,” I said, smiling even harder. “I like to move, but my friend here is a little out of shape. I thought he was going to puke on the way up, which is why we ditched the stairs to look for an elevator.”
Finally—finally—the guy smiled. “Not everyone can handle those stairs.”
I reached out and poked Nick’s midsection (which was incredibly hard, for the record) with my finger and said, “Tell me about it. I thought I was going to have to carry this marshmallow.”
“Thank you so much for the help, sir.” Nick captured my finger in his hand while the guy laughed. Nick said to me, “Come on—we’ve got to run if we’re going to get there on time.”
We managed to calmly walk to the elevators, but the second the doors closed behind us, I was cackling. I looked at his wide grin and said, “Nick Stark, you are such a good liar!”
He laughed and moved a little closer. “And you are such an enormous brat with your ‘marshmallow’ shit.”
I felt breathless. He was right there, his face just above mine while his body kind of trapped mine between the elevator wall and him, and I realized that I wanted him to kiss me. Something about my stairwell epiphany about my feelings for Josh made me feel wildly free to explore Nick Stark.
“We should go to the thirty-ninth floor,” he said, his voice deep and quiet as his eyes stayed on mine, “and then take the stairs from there.”
I just nodded as the elevator whooshed us upward. I swore he was leaning closer when—
The elevator dinged.
We both jumped apart and looked up at the numbers. We were apparently on twelve, and more people were getting on. I pushed at my hair as the doors opened and a security guard joined us
What were the odds?
And what had almost happened between me and Nick?
I gave the guard a polite smile and he returned it, stepping inside and pressing the button for floor thirty-six as the doors closed behind him. I gave Nick a sideways glance and he was looking straight ahead, totally unaffected by this interloper’s presence.
The car started moving and I watched the illuminated display above the doors dutifully report each and every floor we passed. I cleared my throat and bit down on my lip as the silence very nearly killed me.
When we finally hit thirty-six and the elevator dinged, the tall security guard gave me another polite smile. As the doors opened, I said, “Have a good day.”
He gave me a head nod. “You too.”
Once the doors closed behind him, I glanced at Nick. He was looking at me with an unreadable expression on his face, and I was begging my brain not to overthink whatever was happening between us. The elevator dinged when we reached the thirty-ninth floor—of course—and he just said, “Ready to do this again?”
I smiled and muttered something in answer, but the truth was that I wasn’t capable of actual conversation. I needed a minute to calm my freaking-the-freak-out nerves.
The doors opened, and this floor had a foyer area with a reception desk. It was deathly quiet, and the stern-looking woman sitting behind the desk already looked irritated by our existence.
“Can I help you?”
Nick said, “Can you point us toward the stairwell? The guy in the orientation said we could take them down if we wanted the exercise, but then we got on the elevator and almost forgot. Is it over there?” He pointed toward the other end of the building, and I was in awe of his composure.
She nodded. “I’ll show you.”
My breath caught in my throat as she stood and came around the desk. Nick smiled at her and they started walking, so I followed.
“What orientation were you here for?” she asked.
“An internship orientation with HR. It’s for their new summer program.”
“Oh?” She looked at him with her eyebrows down. “I didn’t know they had something like that.”
“Trust me, we were a surprise to everyone today.”
The woman laughed and Nick added, “I’m excited to work in this building, though. Have you worked here long?”
She nodded. “Fifteen years.”
“Wow—that is a long time.”
“Only to you because you’re young.” She smiled and glanced back at me. “Trust me, fifteen years flies by.”
“So were you here when people used to do proposals upstairs?” He said it so casually, like it was common knowledge to everyone in the world. “Or had that already stopped when you started?”
“Oh, they still did it, but it was usually on evenings and weekends so it didn’t really affect those of us who worked here.”
“Do you know why it stopped?” Nick asked, sounding so super chill that I was extra impressed by him. “Why the balcony kind of went offline?”
“No idea. I heard a really uptight exec moved into the big office and shut it down, but that was just a rumor.” She stopped walking then, and gestured toward the door at the end of the hall. “There is the stairwell, but I warn you. Even though you’re going down, it’s still a lot of steps. Be careful.”
“We will.” I cleared my throat and said, “Thank you so much.”
“Of course.”
Nick opened the stairwell door and I walked through; he followed. For a second, when the door slammed behind us, I wondered if he was going to kiss me, but then he said, “We’re almost there—let’s do this, Hornby.”
We walked up the final flight of stairs, and I had no idea what to say. My hands were still a little trembly, and my head was full of a million questions.
When we got to the top, without a word, Nick opened the door. We stepped out and it was another very quiet floor. It seemed to be comprised of ultra-swanky offices—probably the executives—and apparently no one up there made noise.
Like, at all.
“I wonder where the balcony is,” I whispered.
“If I had to guess,” he whispered back, “I’d say the east side. Wouldn’t they want the balcony to look out over the heart of downtown?”
“Ooh—good point.”
We walked down the hallway, both of us scanning the area in all directions in an attempt to see something that intimated a balcony was awaiting us. We walked all over the entire floor, but couldn’t find anything.
And then Nick saw it.
“Look,” he said, and I looked in the direction he’d nodded his head.
“No way.”
One of the offices had its blinds open, and the balcony was on the other side. We’d have to go through an office to get on the balcony, because the bank of offices had doors which led directly out.
“Let’s keep walking—maybe there’s a common area.”
We started walking farther down the hall, but when we reached the end it was clear; the offices in that row were our only points of access.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” I said, irrationally sad to give up on the dream. “We should probably go before we get arrested.”
The bathroom door to our left opened and another security guard walked out. Of course. As he bent at the drinking fountain, I made bug-eyes at Nick. But instead of responding to me, Nick looked over my head. I was about to tell him that we should just forget about it when he said, “Excuse me, sir?”
I turned around to see who he was talking to as Nick walked past me and approached one of the fancy office doorways. The guy behind the desk looked busy and important—like a really cranky exec, with his perfect tie and expensive watch—as he raised his eyes to Nick. “Yes?”
“Can I talk to you for one second?” He glanced back at me, winked, then said to the guy, “I can see you’re busy—I swear it’ll only take a minute.”
I had no idea what was happening as he walked into the guy’s office and closed the door behind him. I giggled awkwardly as the security guard straightened and gave me a chin-nod, and I had no idea what I would say if he asked me where I was supposed to be or what I was doing.
“Jerome?” The guy in the office with Nick opened the door and yelled to the security guard. “Hey, can you come in here for a sec?”
We were so busted.
“No problem.” The guard went into the office and closed the door behind him. I looked around in the empty hallway and snorted out a little laugh, because life had gotten downright bizarre.
I could see Nick in the fancy office, talking to the two guys. A minute later, the security guard and the executive started laughing. What in the actual…? The door opened and Nick—looking like an incorrigible child as he beamed at me—said, “C’mon, Em.”
I blinked and walked over to the office, clueless as to what exactly was happening. When I reached his side, Nick grabbed my hand and said, “But now I owe Bill and Jerome a favor.”
“Who?”
“Hi, I’m Bill,” the executive said, smiling at me like we’d been invited for tea.
“Jerome. Nice to meet you,” said the guard, grinning at me like I was adorable.
“Nice to meet you both,” I muttered as Nick pulled me forward. He pulled me past Bill’s desk, turned the knob, and opened the door that led outside.
“I’m having Jerome lock the door in ten minutes,” Bill said as cold air rushed in.
“We’ll be done in five,” Nick said, linking his fingers tightly between mine and pulling me out on the balcony. The second the door closed behind us I gaped at him.
“Oh my gawwwwwd—how did you do this?” I gasped, dragging him closer toward the edge. “What did you tell them?”
He smirked. “Which one should I answer first?”
“Both of them. Wow.” We both walked a little farther out on the balcony, and the city below was breathtaking. It was quiet up there, even though I could hear the distant sounds of the streets, and I totally understood the whole good-place-for-a-proposal thing.
“I simply explained that we’d been on a mission to find the elusive balcony.” His face looked a little weird when he said, “I guess they’re just nice guys.”
I looked out at the view and breathed, “This is incredible.”
I tried picturing my parents up there, young and still in love. Had my dad been nervous? Worried my mom might say no? Had she cried tears of joy before shouting “a thousand times yes!”? Had she gritted her teeth, irritated that he’d employed such a big, overdramatic gesture?
It was silly, but I felt a little emotional, standing where it happened.
“Yeah.” Nick ran a hand over the top of his hair and said, “I hadn’t pictured it being this cool.”
“Forty stories is actually way higher than I envisioned,” I added, not courageous enough to walk to the edge, even though the railing would be nearly impossible to get over. “Thank you for making this happen.”
“It’s the DONC, Hornby—no consequences.”
Movement behind him caught my eye, and then I gasped. Because there were a bunch of people—like, a small crowd—gathering on that balcony just outside of Bill’s office. It looked like everyone and their assistants—and aw, geez, the security guard—had stepped out to congregate and… stare at us…?
“Nick, what did you tell Bill?” When I looked back at his face, his eyes were on my lips and I almost forgot what was happening, but I asked, “To get him to let us out here?”
He shrugged casually and said, “Don’t worry abou—”
“Because we have a crowd watching us.”
“What?” Nick glanced behind him. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit, what? Is there something—”
“I told him I wanted to come out here for a promposal.”
“A promposal?” I couldn’t believe he’d said that—of course they were out here. Adults loved that sappy crap. “Nick.”
He looked unfazed as he said, “We’ll just tell them I asked and you said yes.”
I waited for the rest, but apparently that was it. “That’s not a promposal.”
He looked surprised. “It’s not?”
“No.” I rolled my eyes and explained, “That is asking someone to the prom. A promposal is when someone does something huge in order to convince someone to say yes. Getting a celebrity to help, making a cake, singing a song, asking in three million rose petals, doing a dance—how do you not know this?”
To be fair, that was just what I knew—perhaps they did it differently elsewhere. But in my town, at our school, that’s what it meant. Next-level stuff the likes of an engagement proposal.
“Why would anyone do that for prom?” he asked, looking disgusted. “It’s just a dance.”
“Do you really want to discuss the merits of a promposal with me at this moment? That crowd—and the security guard—is waiting for a show.”
He didn’t say a word but got out his phone and started scrolling.
I glanced behind him at the spectators, who were still staring expectantly.
“Um, Nick…?”
“Hang on.” He scrolled for another minute, then looked at me and grinned.
“Nick—”
His phone started playing music—loudly. But before I could ask him what the hell he was doing—was that “Cupid Shuffle”?—he handed me the phone.
I took it, and then he backed up like five big steps and started doing the worst version of the Cupid Shuffle that I’d ever seen. He wore a cheesy smile while doing a rigid, absolutely pathetic rendition of the line dance.
“Seriously?” I yelled.
I started laughing—no, cackling—when he yelled over the music, “Emilie Hornby, will you Cupid Shuffle with me to the prom?”
“Um,” I yelled back through the uncontrollable giggles, “are you saying you’re my Cupid, shuffling to win my prom favor?”
“Yes!” He nodded while going to-the-left-to-the-left-to-the-left. “That is exactly what I’m saying!”
And then he did a spontaneous spin move.
“How do you know the Cupid Shuffle?” I asked, knowing without actually knowing that Nick Stark had never done a line dance in his entire life.
“I’ve been to a wedding before, and also, the song tells you what to do. Now please say yes.”
I couldn’t see through the tears, and my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. “First—tell me you love me.”
He shook his head. “I love your hair and your sensible shoes, you annoying pain in the ass. Please say you’ll prom me.”
“Yes!” I screamed dramatically, jumping up and down, making the people behind us burst into applause. “Yes, I will prom you so hard!”
Nick gave me a look and yelled, “Come join me, Emmie!”
“Nah, I’m goo—”
“Get out there,” Jerome shouted, giving me a dad-look. “Put that boy out of his misery.”
“Aren’t there drugs for that?”
Nick grabbed my hand, and I continued cackling for the entire rest of the song as we line-danced like we were at a wedding with a small team of corporate executives joining in behind us.
“This was a great idea, Hornby,” Nick teased as he went to-the-right-to-the-right.
I laughed, still dancing as I looked at the beautiful skyline and the boy next to me. “I know.”
