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down the stairs in her Stephane Kelian brown suede boots and navy blue Les Best pea coat, and stepped out onto the snowy sidewalk. Her whole face glowed with angelic excitement when she caught sight of Aaron and Mookie.
    “Hi, pup!” she squealed as Mookie wriggled up to her and nuzzled her cashmere-gloved hands. She squatted down and let the dog lick her face as she stroked his head. “You look
so
handsome today.”
    Aaron watched them with a lazy sense of pride.
Yep, that’s my girlfriend. Yep, isn’t she gorgeous?
    Serena stood up and threw her arms around his neck. The air around them filled with the heady, sandalwood-and-patchouli–based scent of the custom-blended essential oil mixture she always wore. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all day?” she gushed, planting a kiss on Aaron’s thin, dark red lips with her full, peach-glossed ones.
    Aaron splayed his feet to keep from stumbling backward and spilling the lattes.
“Me?”
he guessed. Serena was the type of girl who gave herself
entirely
to whatever she was into at the moment, and for the time being she just happened to be into Aaron. It had kind of gone to his head.
    She closed her eyes and they kissed again, deeply this time. Behind them, girls in neat wool coats and tall leather boots spilled out of the school doors, shouting giddily. A few of them huddled together to watch in awe as Serena and Aaron continued to kiss.
    “Oh my God,” whispered one eighth grader, swooning in the presence of such coolness. “Do you see what I see?”
    Mookie pawed at the snow and whined impatiently. Serena rubbed her cheek against the scratchy alpaca wool of the gray-and-purple sherpa hat she’d bought for Aaron last weekend at Kirna Zabete in Soho. She loved the way his cute dark brown dreadlocks poked out from beneath the earflaps.
    Everything about Aaron was so adorable, she just wanted to eat him up with a spoon!
    “
Of course
I was thinking about you,” she said, taking her latte. She cracked open the lid and blew on the sweet, steaming liquid. “I was thinking we should get tattoos.” She paused, waiting for Aaron to respond, but his soft brown eyes looked puzzled, so she went on. “You know, like of our names. To show our commitment to each other.” She took a sip of her coffee and licked her lovely, luscious lips. “I’ve always wanted a tattoo that only I knew about. You know, somewhere
private
.”
    Aaron smiled hesitantly. He liked Serena a lot. She was intoxicatingly beautiful, a total sweetheart, and completely undemanding. She was above and beyond any girl he’d ever met. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to tattoo her name all over his body. In fact, he’d always thought tattoos were kind of violent, like brands on cattle, and as a vegan and a Rastafarian, he was morally opposed to any type of violence.
    “Tattoos are against my religion,” he stated, but when he saw Serena’s gorgeous face crumple in dismay he took her hand and added quickly, “But I’ll think about it, okay?”
    Serena wasn’t one to hold grudges, certainly not against the cutest boy in the universe. Already over it, she tugged on his hand and they started walking toward Fifth Avenue. The sky was a sullen gray, and a chilly wind bit at their faces. In an hour it would be dark.
    “So what should we do?” she asked. “I was thinking it might be kind of crazy to go up to the top of the Empire State Building. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never even been up there. And it’s
so cold
. I bet no one even thinks of going up there at this time of year. It’ll be totally empty and romantic, like in a old movie or something.”
    Aaron laughed. “You’ve been hanging out with Blair too much.” His stepsister always turned everything into a romantic black-and-white movie from the fifties, trying to make her life even more glamorous than it already was. As they turned down Fifth, Mookie scampered ahead of them, tugging on the leash looped loosely around