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her with a quizzical look, like even he couldn’t believe she said it.
    “I don’t drink,” he said.
    That was a lie. I drank with him twice in the carriage house. Once, playing Truth or Dare, he dared me to kiss him and I chickened out. I wished he would dare me now.
    Unfazed and completely fearless, Mercy walked away. Oh, to have her confidence.
    Adam turned his attention to me, searching my face like he was looking for something he’d lost. He looked away. Then back to me. Like he didn’t know how to talk to me anymore. The feeling was mutual.
    “Is it what you expected?” he finally asked.
    I was keenly aware of his hand, inches from mine. He might have been asking about the club, but it almost felt like he was asking about us.
    “It may be just the teeniest bit more intense than I imagined,” I admitted.
    He started laughing, and for the first time since he’d disappeared, his smile was genuinely for me.
    “No joke. This is insane,” he said.
    “Right?” I laughed as kids bounced by like pogo sticks right in front of us. It felt good to let go a little.
    Suddenly the entire room seemed more vibrant, more alive than it had been only moments before. My anxiety and fear were replaced with the slamming bass of possibility, which vibrated through my bones.
    Adam’s eyes scanned the crowd. He was taller than pretty much everyone in here.
    “So, Japanese guys have an art form that’s, like, based on using cheesy pickup lines to snag cute girls,” he commented.
    As us ual, it felt like we were talking about something more than what we were talking about.
    “It’s called nampa .” He looked down at me, waiting for my reaction. There was a playful tilt to his shoulders.
    “Maybe you’re nampa -ing me right now,” I teased.
    Out of nowhere, it was like old Adam and old Harlow were back.
    “Using nampa to pull a nampa .” He paused, as if considering it. “ That would be so meta of me.”
    There was an exhilarating undercurrent to this exchange. Talking to him had always been like sticking my finger into a light socket, but this was different—more intense. My world was being rocked right now, and it wasn’t the roiling beat of the music that was doing it. I tried my best to keep my voice even. We were in uncharted territory in the best possible way.
    “You are the master of meta,” I said.
    He moved closer, his bare arm pressing into me ever so slightly but with absolute intention. He bobbed his head to the slamming music. He looked over at me and I did a double take, looking away and then looking back again. He held my gaze and raised an eyebrow, then leaned closer to speak into my ear.
    “You have really smoky eyes,” he said.
    “Oh, the eyeliner? I told Dora it was too much.”
    “No, your eyes.” He pointed to his own eyes. “The color. It’s like seafoam with clouds of smoke blowing through it. Mysterious. Your mystery’s always been one of my favorite things about you.”
    His words made me feel special in a way that had nothing to do with whose daughter I was. Adam had always made me feel that way. I looked at the tattoos swirling over his skin and the strange runes embedded there like a code.
    “So what’s the story with the tattoos?” I asked. I was afraid of fracturing the fragile shell he’d built around himself, but I wanted to understand this new version of him.
    Adam shifted back to the stage, his shoulders stiffening. “It’s just ink.”
    “It doesn’t look like just ink,” I said. I wanted him to feel me reaching out for him. I wanted him to reach back.
    Instead, he kept his stare steadily on the band. This was a risky subject. It wasn’t like he’d been banished, like Romeo gone to Mantua; his family had been abducted. But I wanted to understand who this new person was. And I didn’t see any way around it. Only through it.
    “This band is awesomely terrible.” He tried to change the subject, his voice strained.
    I examined his face, searching for some clue as to