Under the Radar
Levi
Getting your sea.
I get the text on my trek back to my truck from a post office outside of town. I had to fetch a shipment for the shop that got lost in tracking, and now I have to drop it by there on my way to pick up Summer.
So I was going to be near the dock anyway, where Adam’s waiting for me—he wouldn’t make off with my boat—using my words as a pass in itself to his bad headspace.
I hear his huffing tone in the message, and not in the kidding way of the past. More curses at the town, releasing all possession like he’s never leased a life here, a jab at what centers me because he can’t center himself.
I deposit the box with layers upon layers of tape that’ll be fun to tear through to the passenger seat as I climb in, juggling two possibilities. He either wants to talk to me about the concert with Summer—which I’m doubting he knows since she told me to pick her up at her dad’s and not at Griffin’s and I, too, chose not to tell him—or the call I made on his behalf to my mom’s doctor after I was out by the batting cages last week and drove past and saw him parked on a bench outside. I was in a hurry so I didn’t stop; instead taking his word to not worry, although it was that feeling that had me dialing Pamela’s number.
It’s more than likely the latter, but the defenses that start in my head as I start for the road are for the former, arguing that Summer and I are friends, and we’re allowed to be friends, and we’re just seeing a show.
When I know how I also argued with myself over which outfit to wear like I’m picking her up for our first date instead of a loud too-many-people-around concert.
The fight was between my fancier dark jeans and a button down, and my regular shorts and shirt, which was the winner because it’s hot.
This concert’s not even really for me. It’s for her. It’s for her smiles.
That I’ll be the one soaking up and not Adam, so I shake that one from my head.
It’s harder to shake knowing every moment Summer and I have together feels like more than what it’s supposed to be, because we’re supposed to be more.
Enough pain.
We’re not more, but I want her in my life and I’m going to keep proving it, as she asked me to. Both of us surviving with each other. We’re moving the mountains and climbing the hills.
I stop the defenses as I turn into the shop and drop off the box. Then I hustle to the Gilligan with a spike of mistrust for my best friend’s impulses, the feeling waning to a more normal peg when I’m on the dock and see my boat.
Adam’s on board, my eyes meeting the back of his head as he stares toward the sea, his hands on the wheel like he did consider moving under the radar, where his mind tells him he needs to be now, for a sailing trip.
But it only takes a single sweep examination to know the boat hadn’t left the dock.
“I kept the wheel warm for you,” he calls back to me before turning around, stretching his arm toward the bay with his pissed off smile, and I fill my chest with salt air for the blows that are coming. “Day’s young.”
“I can’t today,” I tell him, normally cranky when I can’t take out my boat, but today, I’m taking out something better.
“Saying no to sailing?” Adam’s smile now shows a mistrust in me, with a tinge of mirth, as he climbs to meet me. “So what’d you say yes to?”
Before I can lie, moving under the radar, too, one forming as easily as if I already thought about it, he goes on with his own answer.
“I know one. You called a doctor on me,” he says, like I snitched on him.
“I think you could use one,” I argue with an advantage step into his space, two tones in my voice showing it’s as hard to not care about him as it is to not be frustrated with him.
“So don’t think.”
“Adam,” I sigh out, forcing my hands to remain relaxed in my pockets as they try to roll into fists. “I’m trying to help.” He still needs it, and so does Summer.
“That won’t help me,” he repeats, a rough push on each word, a last warning for me to back off this.
“Then tell me what will,” I prod to that undertow of gloom in his eyes. “And Summer. You have both of us. We’ll do it with you.”
He shakes his head like he’s had a war with that and found just himself in the smoke, his features screwed up like I’ve either punched him in the gut or he wants to take a swing at me. But I don’t move, because Adam uses his words, and if he swings, he could further injure himself.
“That’s what I need. My best friend. My girlfriend,” he says, a pressure on what Summer and I are to him that makes me feel between two fires again. “Being with people who care about me. Summer’s given that shit up and you should too. I just need you both to be there.”
“There, when?” I ask, because it’s hard to know with each attempt being thrown overboard.
He sighs, shaking his head again with a rephrase. “Just be here.”
I sigh now, unable to help thinking, who’s here for Summer ?
It should be him. Her boyfriend.
But I don’t fish for those words and hand him our already half opened can of worms.
“A little longer,” he implores me. “This will all go away soon.”
I trust he believes that, as I trust he wants to believe he’s heading somewhere, although he appears to be in another pattern of stasis, so I’m not seeing how any of this is going away. I know him. If Adam loses something, he has to replace it with something better. Losing his dream to hook himself to his anti-dream isn’t in his makeup.
And I also can’t help thinking of the times he’s said that to Summer and soon never came.
“The plan?” I ask, done with the cryptics. Knowing him is knowing any plan made from a rock bottom place like with his father doesn’t include going up from here. “That’s gonna make it all go away? What is the plan, Adam?” I prod, the hardest pull at each word to get it out of him. “Summer doesn’t even know—”
He cuts over me with a huff of impatience. “You don’t know what Summer knows.”
“I think she’d be acting differently if she knew.”
“How would she be acting?”
“Like there’s still hope.”
We’re sparring one after the other, my voice raising with his, vaulted words flying without thought, a fight for where we both stand.
And it’s me who buckles as he takes his own advantage step, because he still has it. “She’s with me every morning and night. I kiss her every morning and night. She knows it’ll be better soon.” He says this like he has the faith but not the evidence.
In a parallel timeline, where I make a different choice, I’m with Summer each morning and each night. I’m kissing her every moment of every day, whenever I lay my eyes on her, and I’m not taking my grief out on her and I’m not staying at the bottom and I’m not dragging her there with me.
Fuck.
There’s so much thought to these words that I don’t say them, as I feel them in each tense of my body and in the heat on my face and in the ties like ropes in my gut, because I’m not better than him. I’m not where he is, but my own decisions have a part in where we are.
I hold his stare, mine widening in warning, with a faint shake of my head, reminding him, you’re going to lose her .
The boards creak as he shifts his feet to hold a stable stance, confidence in his chin, one hard look of, I’m not .
I smooth out my features like I’m not thinking anything as I think, neither am I .
My ears pound—more shifting feet on the dock, coming toward us.
“Adam Cobalt—”
“Keep walking,” Adam mutters out, a low but forceful snap at who I’m now seeing is Stuart, one of my dad’s old friends. The happy surprise on his face changes to a slackened jaw at the snub, and he looks at me like he’s expecting me to offer up an apology.
“Keep walking,” I repeat, firm, for my best friend, as I study him with his head turned away toward the bay, trying to shield his face from unwanted eyes, a squint of a plea in the corners of his and a flinch in his mouth.
Stuart’s feet pound off down the dock and Adam meets my stare through his lashes. Thanks.
Looking in his eyes at this moment, I don’t see the guy I used to know.
And maybe that’s all I need to know.
“Just be here,” he tells me again, backing up, and I hear, just be my friend .
Just let me.
When Adam walks, I let him go, watching his back as I always try to have it, with that sort of pressure ache in my bones I feel before a storm.
I’m Summer’s friend, too, so I’m also going to have hers. I can’t let us float around each other’s lives anymore.
And of all my own faults, I can’t be guilty of taking away that smile I’ve finally put on her face.
Hustling back to my truck, I text her that I’m on my way, then add about her being right about Adam, how he didn’t budge. I let my mom know that too.
Yeah, Summer sends back.
You didn’t tell him about tonight? It’s typed out and sent before I can rethink asking. Adam would’ve asked me anyway if he knew, but I just need inside Summer’s head with this.
I don’t really know what he’s doing anymore so why should he know what I’m doing, she sends.
And now I’m sending, Yeah , as the truck door springs against my back, a ricocheting pang through my chest for all my knowing more and seeing more and feeling more.
Fuck. I shouldn’t have let her go.