I’d never been the type of guy who looked up at the sky and said Thank you, Jesus, but when Rosie opened the front door and I saw her all dressed up, I couldn’t fucking help it. Because Christ almighty, was she gorgeous—the dress was red and right above her knees. It fit her like it had been made for her. Sleeveless and with a low scooped neck that just showed off a hint of cleavage.

I put the truck in park. In one arm, I held Cupcake, and in the other, a bouquet of lilies, which were Rosie’s favorite. The ten steps from my truck to her felt like they took a goddamned eternity—the light was low, every millisecond a still frame I knew I’d never forget. There was wind in the trees, and it smelled like rain. She was standing in the doorway, with her hands clasped behind her back, so beautiful that I lost every single smooth line I had. “Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she answered.

“You look so beautiful,” I told her and gave her a kiss on her silk-soft cheek.

That’s when it hit me. The scent.

Ka-fucking-pow.

In one millisecond, I was sixteen years old again. I was standing at my locker talking to her. It was between biology and English. She was talking about a potluck her grandma was having. She was wearing a pink tank top with stars on it. I was there. It was happening all over again. Except, it was twenty years later, and it made no sense. It made me feel like I’d just taken a hit of weed and inhaled too long. “Holy shit, what is that?”

She blinked a few times like she was embarrassed. “Bath & Body Works. Freesia.”

“You used to wear that all the time.” Now I remembered getting snow cones on the beach with her and how the cherry syrup made her lips extra pretty.

“You always liked this one,” she said. I set Cupcake down inside, and she trotted over to the cereal bowl I’d filled with water.

I edged Rosie against the doorframe and inhaled again. “And I love it even more now.”

Her eyes glistened, and she smiled, almost shy. Speechless, maybe. “I’m so nervous, Max. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.” She held up her fingers, left hand, palm out, the way she might if she was looking at a ring—fuck me. Her hand trembled, every finger shaking, before she closed up her hand into a fist.

“So am I,” I told her. “But it’s a good kind of nervous, right?”

Rosie beamed and looked down at her shoes, red heels that were one part cute, nine parts bombshell. “Yeah. The best kind.” Between the smell of her perfume, the way she was looking at me, and just her, everything about her, I felt my desire welling up inside me, a solid thing, a real thing, right down in my soul.

I was the man for her. I fucking knew it; I believed it in the depths of my heart. I handed the lilies to her and closed the door behind me. “How about I put those in water, and we can get going?”

“I’ll find a vase.” She turned toward the kitchen. With every step, the edge of her skirt rippled, like petals or waves. Her hips swayed, the long, smooth curls of her hair bounced. She got a vase from the cabinet and put it in the sink, and she turned to me to smile as she turned on the faucet.

Of course, nothing happened at all. I’d turned the water off to the kitchen earlier. She braced herself against the edge of the sink and snickered. I watched her shoulders relax with the laughter, and I somehow knew she wasn’t nervous anymore. And neither was I.

“I’ll use the hose,” I told her, taking the vase from her hands and letting my fingers brush against hers. New nail polish. Red to match the dress. She couldn’t have been more gorgeous if she tried.

“Perfect,” she said, smiling so hard that her nostrils flared, and her eyes twinkled.

* * *

We pulled onto Boston Post Road, and I headed toward Portland. Fletcher was right—I hadn’t voluntarily gone to Portland in years. All those goddamned people, I couldn’t take it. But this was different. This was special. “Can I ask where we’re going?” Rosie asked. It was pretty hard to focus on the road, though, because she’d pushed her thighs together and had the fingers of one hand tucked in between, which made a shadow under her skirt, and that was just so fucking…

I refocused on driving. “You can ask, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“Mmm.” She played with the single pearl around her neck, pinching it between thumb and forefinger and running it back and forth along the delicate gold chain. “Okay. I’ll allow it.”

“Good girl.” I gave her thigh a squeeze—not quite a horse bite, but damned close, which made her gasp. I worked my fingers farther into that tight space between her legs, feeling the barest sheen of sweat. God bless summer. God fucking bless it. “I’ve got a surprise for you, though.”

“Oooh,” she said, squeezing her thighs tighter in anticipation and coming up on her tiptoes in her heels so that I got my hand even closer to where I needed so fucking badly for it to go. “I love surprises.”

Part of me wanted to pull the damned truck over right that second, skid to a stop on the gravel on the shoulder, and fucking ravage her right there. But she was too pretty to ruin…yet.

“Open the glove box,” I told her. She leaned forward, making a curtain of her hair between us. The ends tickled my forearm and passed over the top of her thigh, too. She knew the trick to the glove box without my telling her and turned the knob, jiggled it, whacked the door, and it popped open.

Inside, there they were. All the mixtapes I had.

“Oh. My. God,” she gasped as she pulled them out, one after the other, lining them up on her legs. “You kept them?” She picked up one that I’d made and traced her finger down over the plastic case, moving over the lines of my writing.

“We can play them on my state-of-the-art stereo.” I tapped the old tape deck in the dash.

She squealed. “I don’t even know where to… Oh, yes,” she said, picking up one that I’d made for her sixteenth birthday. “This one. I remember this one.”

Rosie took the old cassette out of its case and put it into the player, pushing it inside with her perfectly manicured cherry-red thumb. She hit the rewind button, and it made that noise, that high-pitched squeal I hadn’t heard for twenty years. She turned up the volume and grabbed my hand. Like that we blazed down the old Post Road, with its juts of granite and deep, dark parallel trees, while Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” played so loud that the doors thumped. And nothing about that moment, not one fucking thing, felt semi-charmed at all.