THE CRAZY GOOD SERIES - Rachel Robinson Page 0,371

outfit from yesterday and throw him a pair of jeans that I find hanging over a chair in his room. The huge plate glass window is a one-sided mirror. We can look over the crazy beautiful city, but no one can see in. It’s an ideal feature when your ass is pressed against the glass while you’re being screwed to perfection, if you ask me. I scroll on my cell phone, looking for the information I need, and quickly find it. “Good. They’re open.”

Cody pulls on his pants and leaves them unbuttoned in that fantastic way that super buff guys do. So nonchalant and effortless, but it drives women batshit crazy. He ruffles his hands through his hair. “If I’m not even showering, you’ll have to humor me and tell me where we’re going.” He’s right. I need to at least wash my face. I rush into the bathroom and tell him it’s a secret. He walks up behind me while my eyes are closed and my face covered in soap that smells like him. “I have one more thing for you,” Cody says, twining his hands around my waist and pulling me back against him.

“This is hardly fair. I’m blind right now,” I exclaim, trying and failing to rinse my face without splashing water all over the exquisite countertop.

“Finish here. I’ll go get it.”

I look in the huge mirror above his sink and find myself barefaced and…happy. So happy, that I want to scream it to the world. This is how I’m supposed to feel. In Cody’s world, wrapped in his sheets and arms for the rest of time.

When I exit the bathroom Cody’s entering the bedroom with something behind his back. He’s dressed, his blond hair is coifed with water, and he tells me to close my damn eyes again. “Hurry, hurry!” I say, closing my eyes and stomping one heeled foot. “We need to go!”

He says, “Open them.”

I do and I come face to face with the dog. The same one he gave me on our first Valentine’s Day together. The same one I soaked with tears when he died. The very same one I buried in his coffin when they couldn’t find his body. It’s a trivial, cheap, black dog that he picked up from a toy store on his way home from work that cold night in February. I, of course, loved it because even as an adult, getting a soft fuzzy animal lights you from the inside. “Dog,” I say, taking the mangy thing from his hands. His moniker is very original. I look up at Cody’s face. “Where did you get him?” I ask.

“They gave me my things back that were in my coffin. It was like the time capsules we buried in elementary school. When I saw Dog I knew I should keep him. I can’t believe you put him in there. How did he breathe?” Cody asks, chuckling. “The whole business of dying but not really is exhausting.”

How odd must that have been for him. To be able to look at the things given to a dead man. “I loved that dog. It was the one thing tangible that reminded me of you most. I figured if I couldn’t bury your body, this would have to do. Lame, I know.” Saying it out loud is embarrassing. I love you and I’m burying a stuffed animal in your place. Jesus save my horrid soul.

He cradles my face in his hand and brushes my hair behind both of my ears. Tilting my face up to his, he says, “It’s not lame at all. The memory stick of code you threw in there? Bought Dances like the Wind,” he says, ushering me out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator. I never thought much about putting that in there. It was his. What would I do with it? I don’t even know how to read code. Or open the encrypted data. To me it was just another memento that represented a facet of his personality.

“No shit?” I ask when we get on the elevator. “So basically my lack of knowledge about what was on that stick afforded the mansion in the Hamptons?” Cody nods, laughs at my expression, and tucks me to his side. I do a little dance in the lobby as we head out the door and into the cool morning. I know exactly where we need to go, so I hail a cab, raising one hand in the