When I was little and my mother made me apologize, I silently added, “… though I really am not” to the end of every single apology.
“So that’s why you don’t date?” I stopped chewing my pizza and gave Nick the most screwed-up face I could come up with. “You don’t have time for it?”
It was starting to get dark outside, so Nick and I had wandered into Zio’s Pizza for a few slices to fill our bellies and warm us up. After hanging on the rooftop, we’d ridden scooters to the Joslyn Museum (Nick still had Eric’s admin code from his brief stint working as a “scooter-jockey,” so he’d been able to override the Bluetooth so we could leave the zone), where he’d taught me five things I’d never known about Van Gogh as we’d explored the art museum.
Some people theorize that the artist Gauguin was actually the one who cut Van Gogh’s ear and it wasn’t self-inflicted at all.
Van Gogh painted a portrait of himself with a bandaged ear after the cutting.
He only sold one painting in his lifetime.
He shot himself in the chest in a field where he was painting, but managed to walk back to his house afterward and didn’t die until two days later.
His last words were “The sadness will last forever.”
I might’ve been depressed, because that was wildly depressing information, but then Nick taught me two more things about Van Gogh that were obviously untrue and made me feel much better:
His friends actually called him Van, and when he stuck around too long and became annoying, they tormented him with their cries of, “Van, go!”
The woman who received Van Gogh’s ear sold it on eBay and made so much money that she started lopping off her own body parts and selling them. One of her toes went for a million dollars so she lived happily ever after and named all seven of her sons Vinnie.
After that, we ditched the scooters and rented bikes, which we rode over snowbanks (very difficult) and through slushy puddles (very messy) until we reached the big slides in the park. Nick with the great ideas ran into a convenience store and bought wax paper to slide upon, so we shot down the slides so fast that our only option had been to get big air and then land in a huge drift of snow.
While, of course, screaming at the top of our lungs.
After that we fed birdseed to the ducks—Nick had purchased that, as well—until our toes were too frozen to do anything else outside. I was a little afraid that after sitting in the heated pizzeria for well over an hour, we were going to freeze to death when we finally had to leave.
“Don’t say it like that—it’s smart.” He picked up his soda with one hand and pointed at me with the other. “I don’t have time for all of the emotional bullshit a person has to put out in order to make another person happy. It’d be worse if I dated people and then just pissed them off by being a cold, distant asshole, wouldn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes and set down my pizza. “There’s a backward logic to what you’re saying, I suppose, but I really think you’re overestimating the actual number of minutes required to emote your feelings properly. A text that says ‘I love the sound of your laugh’ takes, like, fifteen seconds to send, and it’d mean everything to someone who really cared about you.”
He said, “You’re being obtuse on purpose.”
“No, you’re being obtuse on purpose. Your excuses are vague and overgeneralized and quite frankly—pathetic.”
“So I’m pathetic now.” His face was serious and intense and I was infatuated with the way he teased.
I nodded. “Little bit.”
“Give me your crust. Now.”
He reached over and grabbed my crust. I was on my third piece of pizza, and we’d already established that my least-favorite part was his favorite, making him my cleanup crew. He lifted it toward his mouth and asked, “Is it so wrong that I like being single?”
“It’s not, but you don’t.”
He took a bite of the crust and said, “How do you know?”
“Because I know.” I wasn’t being delusional, convincing myself of what I wanted to believe. I wasn’t even talking about me in this scenario, to be honest. I was absolutely just talking about him. Nick Stark was warm and funny and caring, and his face lit up when he was with his friends and remembering his brother.
The Nick he was forcing himself to be at school, though, distant because he couldn’t work up the strength to take on any additional emotional lifting, was work for him. I think he truly believed that happiness was elusive and fluid because of what’d happened to Eric, and instead of reaching for it and risking being shattered, he was just no longer interested in reaching.
For love, or even for friendship.
“Well, let me ask you this, then,” he said, grabbing a napkin from the dispenser and wiping his hands. “If you know, how come you thought you were madly in love with someone this morning, and now you ‘forgot that he existed’?”
“Let’s not talk about that,” I said in a teasing voice, but I really didn’t want to talk about it. I was way more interested in Nick. “How about we move on.”
“Okay. But.” He narrowed his eyes. “First, tell me the thing he does that works on your last nerve.”
“Oh my Lord,” I laughed, “It has to be his ringtones.”
“Please explain.”
I lifted my cup and poured an ice cube into my mouth before saying, “He still thinks ringtones are hilarious. Y’know, like we all did in middle school? He actually takes the time to save a different one for every single person he knows, and he finds it funny to sneak into my phone and add them when I’m not paying attention.”
“He gets in your phone?” He shook his head.
“I don’t care about that—I have nothing to hide. But he assigned a neighing horse to his name in my contacts. He thinks it’s hilarious that every time he texts, I hear the sound of a stallion.”
“What a tool,” Nick said.
Nick looked a little jealous, and I wanted him to be. I said, “The funny thing is that it just bugs me. The sound of that horse makes me want to throw my phone through a window.”
“I bet.”
“But he thought he was being nice by adding it for me.” I grinned and said, “He beams every time he hears that stupid whinny.”
“So you pretend to love it?” he asked.
I just nodded, which made him make a face and shake his head like I was pathetic.
“Can we stop talking about relationships now?” He pushed his plate and cup into the center of the table before checking his phone. “We should probably head back to the truck, actually.”
After we bundled back up and went outside, Nick gave me another piggyback ride. I couldn’t stop laughing as he decided it would be funny to loudly hum “our theme music,” which sounded a lot like the “Thong Song” even though he denied it. My stomach hurt from laughing as I snuggled my face deep into the side of his neck for body heat.
“Jesus, your nose is cold,” he said, sounding like his teeth were close to chattering.
“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t. I full-on let my face absorb his warmth.
He coughed out a breathy laugh. “I’m not complaining.”
I realized that Nick was incredible. He was fun and beautiful and I’d never felt more comfortable around a boy. Like, ever (except for Chris).
Weird, right?
Because this no-holds-barred Em that I was being on the DONC wasn’t me at all, so my lovesick musings didn’t even make sense. The real Emilie Hornby would never get this close to someone she barely knew before today, so this person he was seeing wasn’t actually real at all.
Right?
Or was this actually maybe sort of me…?
As we walked by an apartment with the blinds wide-open, we saw it at the same time. On the TV in that stranger’s living room, Rose and Jack were standing on deck, watching steerage passengers kick around a ball of ice that had fallen from the iceberg the ship had hit.
Titanic was playing.
Nick didn’t believe in fate, and neither did I, but how weird was it that Titanic was playing at the exact moment we were walking by?
“Wow, you were so right, Hornby,” he said sarcastically, stopping in front of the window. “Playing soccer with iceberg chunks? That is obviously the best. Movie. Ever.”
“You’re a ghoul, Stark,” I replied, climbing off his back. “An absolute ghoul.”
We stood there for a minute, just watching the movie in the window, and when I glanced over at him, I was terrified at the thought of going home. Of ending the day.
He’d agreed to take me to my dad’s when we were done so I could sneak in and grab a key to my grandma’s house (wherein he could make fun of the boy-band posters that he knew adorned my bedroom walls) and then he was going to drop me at her place where I could sleep in peace with no parental third degree.
But he wasn’t going to remember it.
Not any of it.
The day had been unbelievably wonderful, yet when I woke up tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t have existed for anyone but me. For some reason, I had to clear my throat and blink fast to recover from the emotion that came with the realization.
He looked over at me. “You okay?”
I tried to sound light as I said, “I don’t want the DONC to end, Nicholas Stark.”
“Same.” He stepped closer, so his face was all I could see, and his voice went deeper and quieter. “And I’ve thought about it, and I really want my DONC to include kissing you, Em.”
“You do?” My voice was embarrassingly breathy.
“Yes.” He put his hands on my waist, one on each side, and leaned even closer. I could feel a hint of his breath on my ear as he said, “But I don’t want to if you’re still tied up about Sutton.”
My voice barely had sound when I said, “I meant it when I said I forgot that he existed.”
“So it’s okay, then?”
On a normal day, I probably would’ve given him a shaky Okay or maybe even a Yes, please. But it was the DONC. The second half of the DONC, to be exact.
I nodded and in one move, lifted onto my tiptoes, put my hands on his chest and my mouth on his.
His lips were warm, and he kissed me like he’d been dying to kiss me for the whole of his life. My fingers curled into the soft fabric of his jacket as he opened my mouth with his, making me a little dizzy while he wrapped his arms all the way around my waist and pulled me closer.
Just like that, I could feel every inch of his solid body against mine, knees to chest to lips, and it made me weak as I slid up my hands and grabbed on to his shoulders for support. It was heady, heady stuff, being kissed by Nick Stark. He kissed me like he was trying to prove something.
Everything disappeared except the feel of his stubble against my skin, his fingers flexing on my back. He finally lifted his head and pushed a piece of my hair behind my ear.
I felt almost shy as we looked at each other. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and said, “Don’t you think it’s weird that before today—”
“We didn’t really know each other, and now it feels like we’ve known each other for years?”
I nodded. “Yes. I mean, it’s kind of…”
“Bizarre? For sure.” His eyes moved over my face and I could feel the vibration of his voice in his chest against my chest when he said, “I didn’t know you this morning, and now I know the feel of your hand in mine, the sound of your voice when you’re trying not to cry, and the taste of your mouth. I know that you hate potato salad and love that video with the cat that dings the dinner bell.”
I grinned, feeling swept off my feet by his words. I said, “And I know that the scar above your eyebrow was from the time Eric chased you into a heating vent; I know that you scream obscenities when a cool girl is beating you in a scooter race; and I know that you kiss with teeth. In a good way.”
His lips turned up. “It’s really only been one day?”
“Hard to believe.” I was happy he hadn’t stepped back; I liked being pressed against his body, held there by his arms. I grinned up at him and said, “I have a confession, by the way.”
“Let me guess—you cheated. You had those answers written on your hand.”
I held up my hands. “Nope.”
“Then…”
“Then, um, I have to confess that I think I’m obsessed with you. With this.” I swallowed and said, “With us.”
A crease formed between his eyebrows. “Emilie.”
“Oh my gosh, don’t ruin it, Stark. I don’t care about anything but today, okay?” I rolled my eyes and poked him in the chest. “I’m talking about being obsessed with us on the DONC. I’m talking about being obsessed with the day we just had. I don’t care about the future, so quit looking like that.”
I leaned my face closer, like I was going in for another kiss, but I reached into his coat pocket instead, and wrapped my hand around his keys.
He groaned, and the sound of his disappointment made me feel victorious.
“Looks like Emmie’s driving home.” I pulled them out and held his keys over my head, giving them a quick shake before I turned and started running in the direction of the lot where we’d left Betty.
“Give me the keys, Hornby,” he called calmly, following me, still leisurely walking.
I looked over my shoulder as I jogged. “I don’t think so. I’m going to cruise in Betty and you’re going to ride bitch.”
His eyebrows went up and he said around a laugh, “You better give me the keys.”
“These?” I started giggling and jingled them again. “You want these keys?”
His face broke into a grin and he said, “That’s it.”
I screamed and started running faster, and I could hear him sprinting behind me.
“You’re gonna regret this.”
“I don’t think so—”
He caught me, wrapping his arms tightly around my body and lifting me off the ground. I screamed, and then I screamed again when he lowered his shoulder, lifted me higher, and then threw me over his shoulder.
“Nick!” I couldn’t stop laughing. “Put me down!”
He easily got the keys from my hand, and then he swatted my backside. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on!” I cried, laughing hysterically as we walked by an older couple taking their dog out.
“Not a chance.” He tightened his grip on me and said, “If you behave like a wild person, young lady, I’m going to treat you like one.”
“Good evening,” the parking attendant said as we passed the ticket booth.
“Good evening,” Nick said in a booming voice, as if he were the friendliest woman-toting person on the planet.
“Are we almost to the car?” I asked, staring down at his very-perfect butt.
“I can see her,” he said.
“So put me down—I’ll be good.”
“I think that’s impossible for you,” he said, but then a minute later he set me down beside his truck.
“Thank you,” I said, pushing back my hair and straightening my shirt. “For the ride to the car. It’s actually what I wanted when I stole your keys. Walking is for suckers.”
Nick’s entire face changed into a smile and he slowly shook his head as he looked down at me. “I like knowing you, Emilie Hornby.”
I swallowed and thought again as he grinned down at me that he wasn’t going to remember this. Any of this. He was going to wake up tomorrow and not know me again.
I hated that so much that I felt a pinch behind my eyes, but managed to sound casual when I said, “Same, Nick Stark. I had the best day with you today.”
His face grew serious, but he didn’t say anything. The moment just hung there, strung in between both of our gazes. His eyes roamed over my cheeks and forehead and chin, and it occurred to me that the two of us were seeing that moment in entirely different ways. I was desperately hopeful that he would remember it all the next day, and he was memorizing every moment to look back upon fondly.
Because the DONC, for him, meant forgetting today once the sun came up tomorrow.
“Ready to go home?” he asked, his voice quiet and a little gruff.
I nodded, incapable of speaking through the disappointment.
“Em. Wake up.”
“Hmm?” My eyes fluttered open and there was Nick, smiling at me as I awoke from the nap I’d apparently just taken while my head was resting on his shoulder.
That face—damn. He looked sweet and amused and hot, and I really wanted to go back to sleep. On him. Forever. He said, “We’re at your dad’s house.”
I looked through the windshield, a little disoriented, and was relieved when I realized he’d parked by the back of my house, instead of in the driveway.
“Oh. Yeah.” Please don’t let me be drooling. I sat up and reached for the door handle, a little sleep-drunk from the smell of Nick and the warmth of his truck. I stepped out, and he was right there beside me in the cold darkness.
“You sure you want to sneak in?” he asked, walking beside me after I closed the door and headed for the back of the house where my window was. “Seems risky.”
“It’s not.” I opened the gate and went into the backyard. The moon was high and bright as our feet crunched over the snow, and I was a little surprised he was coming with me and not waiting in the warm truck. “My room is in the basement, so my dad and Lisa sleep two floors above me. And he snores like a freight train.”
“Spoken like a criminal,” he said, and my laugh made a cloud in front of my face.
I unlocked the basement door and pushed it open, and I could feel Nick’s warmth as he followed me inside. He didn’t say anything as I opened the door to my bedroom, but as soon as I closed it behind us and we felt a little safe from getting caught, he full-on grinned in the dark—thank God for the bright moonlight shining through the window—and whispered, “You are a sociopath.”
I followed his gaze to my bookshelves, which were color-coded without a single book out of place, and I had to admit that my room looked a little… sterile. Even without the lights on. I just shrugged and smiled as I opened my nightstand drawer and grabbed the keys.
“Is that…?” He pointed to my closet with his eyebrows raised. “The closet? Where the infamous confession box lives?”
Something about the fact that he remembered made my heart flutter. I felt like Nick saw me—saw all of me—and it caused a warm pinch in my chest. I nodded, giving him an embarrassed smile, and then I said, “Wanna see?”
“Stop trying to get me to play ‘five minutes in the closet’ with you,” he whispered, his eyes playful. “And of course I want to see.”
I opened the door, flipped on the light, and pointed.
He stepped inside the walk-in closet, and I went in behind him. My mind immediately raced to intimate places as I quietly closed the door; we were so, so alone together in the quiet of my basement bedroom closet. Thankfully, before I could overthink too much and die of a heart attack, he gave me an open-mouthed grin of surprise and said, “Wow, your closet is color-coded, too. Are you a deviant?”
“No, I just like to know where everything is, and this system makes it simple.”
He whispered, “I might be a little afraid of you right now.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t pull out the confession box.”
“Please show me.” He crisscrossed his hand over his chest and said, “I’ll be good.”
A quiet giggle escaped as I reached behind him for the shoe box. He poked me in the ribs as I stood on my tiptoes, and I was so ticklish that I nearly fell on top of him as I grabbed it. I heard his deep, quiet chuckle in my ear—he was so close—and it occurred to me that my closet was a really nice place to be.
Especially when he said into my neck, “Your perfume is making me dizzy, swear to God. We need to hurry.”
That made me breathless as I spun around and held out the box. “This is it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Just a shoebox? Really? I pictured something much more interesting.”
“It’s undercover. Hiding in plain sight, and all that.”
He took the box in one hand and set the other hand on the lid. “Can I…?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded, nervous to let someone see all those past vulnerabilities but confident that Nick was safe to share it with.
He opened it and picked up a paper strip. Read the words, then raised his eyes to me. “You threw potatoes in your neighbor’s pool?”
“They were out of town and I was bored. I wanted to see if I could make it into their pool from our deck.”
“And?” He was looking at me like I was about to confess to murder.
“And I did. Chucked fifteen spuds in a row.”
His grin returned with a vengeance. “Did you get caught?”
“No one ever even suspected me.”
He reached into the box and grabbed another strip. He immediately started cracking up when he read it and I had to shush him as I laughed, too, and waited to see what he’d read.
He was still laughing as he asked, “You have a performance video on YouTube with a hundred thousand views?”
I nodded and bit my lip, trying to quiet my giggles. “I was in seventh grade at the time. It’s not under my name and I was wearing a disguise, so you’ll never find it.”
“But you’ll show me, right?”
“Maybe someday.” I shrugged, trying to be light and flirty but the awareness of his impending amnesia about all of this almost made it impossible. I said, “You have to earn that privilege.”
“Is that right?”
The way he said it, his voice quiet and his eyes hot, made breathing difficult.
I just nodded.
“At least tell me what song.” He put the strip back in the box and asked around a smile, “What song did the little bookworm deviant sing?”
I cleared my throat before whispering, “ ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem.”
He didn’t even blink. “You’re joking.”
I raised my chin and met his gaze, which made him smirk and shake his head.
We went through a few more confessions, but had to stop when Nick cracked up upon learning I’d used my dad’s credit card to send flowers to Justin Bieber’s hotel room, and we were afraid of waking up my dad. And just as I was tucking away the box, we heard footsteps upstairs and we both froze.
Waited.
Whoever was up there seemed to be pacing, or walking in circles, and finally after a few minutes I whispered, “Let’s just go.”
“You sure?” he whispered back.
I shrugged, remembering it was the DONC. There had been times that day when all I’d been focused on was the Day of No Consequences, yet at other times, I’d forgotten about it entirely.
But the bottom line was that tomorrow wouldn’t count, so tonight was all I had.
Tonight was my everything.
He grabbed my hand and we made it out of the house undetected. By the time we got to Grandma Max’s, I was glad I’d stopped for the key because the lights were all off like she was already asleep.
Nick looked down at me under the yellowy glow of the porch light as I stuck my keys in the lock. He opened his mouth and got out “Well” before I covered it with my hand for the second time that day. If he was never going to remember this, I was going to tell him how I felt.
“I love you, Nick Stark.” I blinked fast and was surprised by how emotional I felt. My throat was tight as I said, “It won’t count tomorrow and it’ll be like I never said it, but on this Valentine’s Day, I fell in love with you.”
His jaw clenched, flexing and unflexing, and I watched his throat move as he swallowed.
I whispered, “But only for today, I promise. Tomorrow it’s all gone.”
He looked at me like he was frustrated and confused and also completely into me in spite of himself, and I felt the gravitational pull of him leaning closer.
And then he looked down at his watch. Pressed a button.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me off the porch. He was nearly running as he pulled me over to the dark side of my grandma’s house where there were no porch or street lights shining. His feet crunching in the snow, he walked toward me until my back was against the cold siding of the house.
We were face-to-face. With a shaky breath, I said, “What are you doing?”
“There’s only seven more minutes.”
I felt dizzy as he looked down at me through the most intense gaze. “So?”
His body leaned into mine as he cupped my cheeks and breathed against my lips, “You only love me for seven more minutes.”
I raised my hands and set them on his jawline. He lowered his face, and I whispered, “Let’s make it a good seven, then.”
He couldn’t know that tomorrow none of this will have happened, but he kissed me like we had seven minutes before the world ended. I felt his fingers on my back and against my skin as they slipped under my sweater. This was Nick Stark—those were his confident hands—and my heart was absolutely his at that moment.
His heart was pounding under my fingers, and our bodies strained against each other. And then, in the blink of an eye, it changed. Our kiss didn’t get slower, but suddenly felt deeper. Or maybe that was just me, because I was hyperaware of how this moment would disappear with the morning, but things became rich, every movement meaningful and infused with emotion.
Nick kept kissing me lightly, but his eyes opened. I felt light-headed as we watched each other, his blue eyes making me dizzy with their intensity. His hands were still on my back, but his fingertips were softly stroking along my spine. He lifted his mouth the tiniest amount and whispered my name against my lips, and then—
“Dammit.”
He stepped back and his hands fell to his sides. It took me a second to hear the beeping and understand.
Our seven minutes were over.
The DONC was done.
He scrubbed his hands over his cheeks, looked down at my face like he was disoriented, and then he said, “Christ. I don’t want this, Hornby.”
“What?” I swallowed and shook my head. “Oh. I know. It was nothing.”
“Emilie!” My grandma’s voice rang out from the front yard. “Are you out here? Your keys are in the door and there’s a truck in my driveway. I’m calling the cops if I don’t hear—”
“I’m here, Grandma,” I yelled. Nick and I put even more space between ourselves and straightened our clothes.
“Listen, Nick—”
“Come on, before your grandmother calls the cops,” he said, cutting me off. He grabbed my hand, leading me around to the front yard. I followed, still processing what had happened, and when we reached the porch, my grandma looked a little ferocious as she scowled at us.
“Grandma, this is Nick Stark,” I said, hoping my lips weren’t swollen from the kissing. “Nick, this is my grandma Max.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Please get off my porch,” she replied.
He nodded and smiled like he appreciated her bluntness before he walked to his truck and drove away. I just stood there, watching, as my mind replayed every little thing we’d done on that incredible day.
“I’m going to kill you in the morning, dear,” my grandma said, opening the door and stepping inside. “But I need some sleep first.”
I stayed on the porch, wishing the night would never end. “I love you—g’night, Grandma.”
“G’night to you, you little pain in the ass.”
It wasn’t until I went inside and slid off my shoes that I realized I was still wearing Nick’s jacket.
