to see Cole’s arms wrapped around it instead.
“Come into my workshop, little girl,” Cole said.
I followed him into the house. It felt cooler than the outside, and smelled like something burnt. The howlingly loud music had a backbeat that vibrated in the soles of my shoes; I had to nearly shout to be heard over it. “Where are Sam and Grace?”
“Ringo left in his car a few hours ago. He must’ve taken Grace with him. I don’t know where they went.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“We’re not married,” Cole said, and added, in a humble tone, “yet.”
He kicked the door shut behind him, his arms full of the box, and said, “Kitchen.”
With the music providing a chaotic soundtrack, I led the way into the kitchen, where the burnt smell was most potent. It looked like a disaster zone. The counter was all glasses, markers, syringes, books, a bag of sugar ripped open and rolled down to show its contents. Every one of the cabinets was covered with photographs of the wolves of Mercy Falls in their human bodies. I tried not to touch anything.
“What’s burning?”
“My brain,” Cole replied. He used the last available counter space to shove the box next to the microwave. “Sorry about the mess. We’re having amitriptyline for dinner.”
“Does Sam know you’ve turned his kitchen into a drug lab?”
“It’s Sam Roth approved, yeah. Do you want coffee before we go set up this trap?”
Sugar gritted under the heels of my boots. I said, “I never said I was going to help you set it up.”
Cole examined the inside of a mug before setting it down on the island in front of me and filling it with coffee. “I read between the lines. Sugar? Milk?”
“Are you high? Why are you never wearing a shirt?”
“I sleep naked,” Cole said. He put both milk and sugar in my coffee. “As the day goes on, I put on more and more clothing. You should’ve come over an hour ago.”
I glared at him.
He said, “Also, I am not high. It offends me that you had to ask.” He didn’t look offended.
I took a sip of the coffee. It wasn’t horrible. “What are you really working on here?”
“Something to not kill Beck,” he said. He managed to seem both dismissive and possessive of the chemicals in the room. “Do you know what would be really excellent? If you helped me get into your high school’s lab this evening.”
“As in break in?”
“As in I need a microscope. I can only make so many scientific discoveries with a research lab built out of Legos and Play-Doh. I need real equipment.”
I regarded him. This Cole, electric and confident, was hard to resist. I scowled. “I’m not helping you break into my school.”
Cole held out his hand. “Fine. I would like my coffee back, then.”
I hadn’t realized how much I’d had to raise my voice to be heard over the music until there was a pause between tracks and I could lower it. “It’s mine now,” I said, echoing what he’d said to me back at the bookstore. “I might help you get into my mom’s clinic, though.”
“You’re a mensch,” he said.
“I have no idea what that means,” I replied.
“Me neither. Sam said it the other day. I liked the sound of it.”
That was pretty much all you needed to know about Cole, right there. He saw something he didn’t quite understand, liked it, and just took it to be his.
I dug in my tiny purse. “I brought you something else, too.”
I handed him a little die-cast Mustang, black and shiny.
Cole accepted it and set it in the open palm of his hand. He stood still; I hadn’t realized that he hadn’t been before that moment. After a pause, he said, “Bet this one gets better mileage than my real one.”
He drove it along the edge of the counter, making a soft, ascending sound for the engine note as he did. At the end of the island, he had it take off into the sky. He said, “I’m not letting you drive it, though.”
“I wouldn’t look good in a black car,” I said.
Cole suddenly snaked his arm out and grabbed my waist. My eyes widened. He said, “You’d look good in anything. Perfect ten, Isabel Culpeper.”
He started to dance. And all at once, because Cole was dancing, I was dancing. And this Cole was even more persuasive than the last one. This was everything about Cole’s smile made into a real thing, a physical object made out of his hands