Free Tomorrow Is Today by Julie Cross Page B

anyone coming.”
    Her eyes darted around the hall. “Alright…guess we’re not going for coffee or…something normal…?”
    My hands froze on the lock attached to the roof access door. Did Holly want to go get coffee with me? Should I have asked that instead? Boyfriend . I shook my head and focused on unscrewing the stupid lock without breaking it. Considering the door was right next to our room, the blame for any damage would fall on me and my roommates.
    “The roof? That’s where we’re going?” she asked, already opening the door to the stairwell, the second I had the lock stowed in my pocket. She took off her tall shoes and cradled them in her arms.
    I grinned at her, loving her unashamed enthusiasm and headed up the steps. “It’s a New York experience you can not write about. Mostly because it’s completely illegal…you’re not feeling suicidal, are you?”
    “Not today.” She charged up all five flights effortlessly, like she’d been ready for this adventure for a long time. “Do you think we’ll get caught?”
    I opened the door for her and both of us were hit with a wave of cool night air. “If we do get caught, we can just say I was talking you out of jumping…it’ll be just like Titanic …except the opposite…”
    Holly laughed at me and then walked right over to the ledge, taking in the view. “Wow…it’s beautiful…Now tell me what I’m looking at?”
    I stood next to her, averting my eyes from the scary ground below and pointed out buildings and parks for as far as we could see. I mentioned favorite restaurants and coffee shops. Holly listened so intently it almost made me nervous… almost . This wasn’t my typical conversation with a girl, but then again, I didn’t usually talk to girls like Holly.
    The kind with long term boyfriends .
    Then I remembered why she might be so interested in the details of this part of the city. She was starting at NYU in a couple of months. “Wait…have you gotten your housing assignment yet?”
    She smiled at me, blushing a little. “Yeah…Rubin.”
    “Those rooms are microscopic…I hope you have a single?”
    “Triple.” She glanced out at the building across the street. “It’s a thousand dollars cheaper per semester than the double…I can survive the lack of AC and bunk beds piled on top of each other just as long as my address no longer ends with NJ and there’s more to do at night than hang out in a park or field somewhere, sitting on our cars, drinking warm beer and smoking low quality home grown weed.”
    I smirked at her, calling her bluff. “You do not smoke pot.”
    “It sounded better with that part added in, didn’t it?” She laughed a little and then started walking toward the other side to take a look at the city from a new angle.
    This gave me a chance to take in Holly from a totally different perspective. After talking to her tonight, I realized she wasn’t really all that hard to figure out, but it scared me that I even wanted to. And yet, I couldn’t think about any of that right now. All I could do was watch her hair blowing behind her, tangled and loose…and the way she stood, barefoot on the tips of her toes, trying to get a better look at the ground below us, the muscles in her calves flexing in response. Nothing about Holly was fake. Of course, all this made me desperate to see a little more of her skin…
    Nope…don’t go there . She’s Adam’s friend.
    “Is it scary?” Holly asked.
    “What? Looking down?” I gave the ground a half-second glance, which was all I could manage. “Hell yeah…freaks me out. I prefer to look straight ahead…or up.”
    “No, not that…I mean, leaving home. Living with strangers, some stranger than others. Being on your own. Responsibility.”
    “Right. That .” I rested my arms on the ledge beside her. “You know, I’m probably not the best person to ask. I can almost see my dad’s apartment building from here. It hardly counts as leaving. And my roommates pay