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ventured, trying to sound vaguely normal.
    Vanessa shrugged her shoulders without moving away from him. “I’m having a major déjà vu,” she confessed with a bemused smile. Wasn’t this how they’d gotten together again the last time? He’d come over and then they’d basically ripped each other’s clothes off.
    “Me too,” he admitted, secretly hoping that history would repeat itself.
    “Blair and I just discovered a door to the roof of the building. All this time I thought it was padlocked, but the lock is totally broken. It’s pretty cool up there—want to check it out?”
    So was Vanessa into sunbathing now too? “Sure,” Dan agreed.
    To his surprise, she collected a quart of Absolut and a bottle of tonic water from the fridge, tucking them into a paper bag with two plastic Scooby-Doo glasses, which she filled with ice. “I’ve kind of developed a taste for this stuff,” she admitted with a wicked grin.
    Dan stared at her in amazement, his whole body trembling with anticipation. Vanessa never could hold her liquor; neither could he.
    He followed her out of the apartment, down the dirty, cement-floored hall, and up the building’s cruddy stairs, which were painted black and smelled of turpentine. Two flights up, Vanessa pushed open a black metal door marked DO NOT ENTER and stepped out into the bright hot light of the rooftop. Suddenly the city was all around them, and the Williamsburg Bridge seemed close enough to touch. Off to the right, the East River looked glassy and cool as a sailing yacht glided past a barge pulling a load of Porta Johns, its white sails luffing in the thick afternoon air. To their left was the sugar factory, billowing smoke out of great smokestacks and adding to the smog. Across the bridge, Manhattan loomed large and full of promises. A born Manhattanite, Dan could never get over the feeling when he was in Brooklyn that something exciting was going on across the water, and that he was missing out.
    “Over here,” Vanessa called over the roar of interborough traffic. She ducked under a metal beam supporting the giant wooden water tower that dominated the roof. “We’re totally protected from the sun and rain under here. And see, the condensation from the water tower even keeps the air kind of cool.”
    Dan went over and ducked under the water tower. A black futon was spread out on the ground, complete with an assortment of black fake fur throw pillows. Vanessa seemed to have her own outdoor love den.
    “You and Aaron must spend a lot of time up here,” he commented awkwardly.
    She sat down on the futon and began pouring vodka into the plastic Scooby-Doo glasses. “Actually, I promised Blair not to hog it. We only just discovered it on Saturday, and yesterday it was raining, so actually Aaron’s never even been up here.”
    Meaning she and Aaron had never done it up there, which kind of made Dan feel better about sitting down on the futon. Vanessa handed him a vodka tonic. “Sorry, no limes.”
    He sat down and lit a cigarette. A helicopter motored loudly by. He had to admit, this was kind of a cool place to be.
    “So, graduation speaker, huh? I was even thinking about maybe skipping my graduation.” Vanessa clicked her glass against his and then took a big, long sip. “To us.”
    Dan squinted at her as he drank, holding the plastic glass with his cigarette hand, his pale face to the sun. There was something different about Vanessa this time. Something lazy and dangerous and sexy.
    Cobra curled on hot cement, his mind began writing furiously, because it couldn’t help itself.
    Vanessa grinned, returning his intense stare with a self-conscious chuckle. “I don’t know why I’m doing this but …” she began. Then she put down her glass, leaned slowly toward him, and shoved her tongue down his throat.
    Whoa!
    Dan’s dreamy brown eyes grew huge. He wondered if maybe Vanessa had been drinking all day and had somehow confused him with Aaron. Or maybe he and Aaron had