Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Thank you so much, Elle,” Liss gushes in my ear. “I don’t pay you enough.”
This morning, like yesterday, I slipped on my running shoes bright and early, up before the rest of the house, and when I came back there was another green smoothie waiting for me on the counter.
There was also a frantic voicemail/text message chain from Liss on my phone, asking if I remembered the password for her website software, because one of the links broke.
“You don’t pay me at all,” I remind her, draining the dregs of my smoothie. Adam sure can … blend them, I guess.
I’m still suspicious of the ingredients.
He left for his own run about thirty minutes ago, making sure I was good to check in on Lovie during her midmorning nap. I hardly looked up from my computer when I said I had it handled, waving him away while deep in the flow of HTML and user interface.
I didn’t just fix the broken link. I updated the entire site, including a rotating live feed from the bakery’s Instagram, a new graphic that shows average order turnaround times, and an updated “About Me,” complete with Liss’s most recent headshots.
“Oh. Well, I definitely should.” She squeals again over the speakerphone, the sound echoing through the otherwise quiet house. I thought about wearing my headphones while I worked but wanted to hear in case something happened with Lovie. “This is amazing. Truly. I would be lost without you.”
“We both know that’s not true.” I stretch my shoulders and neck after hunching over so long. “I never would have made it out of that corn maze in ninth grade if you hadn’t come in and found me.”
The front door opens on the other side of the dividing wall. The heavy footsteps clue me in that Adam has returned.
Liss snorts, and a mixer starts up somewhere in her kitchen. “You and I both know the reason you got ‘lost’ in the first place is so you could make out with Eli Kowalski.”
“Hey, you leave Eli out of this. He’s like a priest or something these days.” I save the website one more time for good measure, then check as a guest to make sure the changes carried over correctly. “Aren’t you supposed to be making wonderful, orgasmic cakes right now?”
“We’ve made at least four orgasmic cakes this morning already. Want me to ship you one?”
“I do love a good orgasm.”
Someone coughs violently, and I startle. Adam is frozen in the front hall, exactly halfway between the living room and kitchen.
Well, not quite frozen . It’s not hot outside, so I can only imagine how hard he had to work to get this result: toned calves, peeking out from the bottom of his athletic shorts. Sweat gleams on his arms and neck, and his hair is so weighed down it falls over his forehead. His faded gray T-shirt is soaked through around the collar, down to his sternum. His chest heaves. Hints of his scent waft to me from across the room, warm with sun and endorphins.
“What did you just say?” His voice must have gotten a workout also, because it sounds just as toned. Tense. It rasps across my skin, even with an entire room stretching between us. His eyes blaze trails across me, dipping from my face to my neck, where I pressed a hand after he startled me. Dips lower, to the neckline of my tank top. “I can come back if you need a few more minutes to …” He wets his lip slowly. “ Finish .”
What was that about orgasmic? My own exercise was over hours ago, but my heart rate picks up again with no issue. “Finish what?” I breathe.
Adam’s eyes drop again, to my phone on the table, still on speaker. “Your conversation.” He shakes his head and turns for the hallway. “Why? What did you think I meant?”
My mouth falls open, a scoff escaping.
“Who was that?” Liss prompts. “Lovie’s nurse?”
My head falls forward on a groan, slamming into the keys. I really hope I saved all that work. “My newest archnemesis.”
Aside from my call with Liss—and related awkward encounter with Adam—the day is almost a perfect mirror of yesterday. Lovie avoids me like the plague and throws me dirty glances whenever Adam can’t see. She does her puzzle books, I desperately try to keep her attention, and Adam is caught in the middle. He beats me to the kitchen for dinner again.
“Remember,” he murmurs along my temple during a Wheel of Fortune commercial break. It immediately sensitizes my skin, sending cold chills skittering down my neck. “Starting tomorrow, I work another job. Angie is sending someone to cover me. They should be here at six in the morning.”
“You have two jobs?”
Adam throws a weary half smile in my direction. “We can’t all be Jeopardy! famous.”
I have the distinct feeling he’s never going to let me live that down. “Do you know who Angie’s sending?”
He shrugs, jostling me. “Call her, if you’re curious.”
Accepting his help was one thing. Having another stranger come in and prove my incompetence for Lovie’s care is something else. It doesn’t sit well in my gut.
Or maybe Adam really did put laxatives in my smoothie. The delayed-release kind.
Adam’s thigh pressed to mine loosens my burning thought, and his touch on my neck knocks it free: “I don’t think I need extra help.”
His fingers freeze on the base of my skull. He looks down his body, exaggerating the movement, and back up to me.
I—politely—jam my elbow into his ribs. “Any more extra help. I was never supposed to be here in the first place. This is a one-person job, right? I was just auxiliary.”
Adam’s eyes flare. “I wouldn’t exactly say—”
“ The Rio Grande! ” Lovie shouts in my ear. I couldn’t even tell you the clue.
“Logic would say that I can do this job as well as anyone else. And besides, I’m looking forward to getting some time with her,” I continue, “without any grumpy, overbearing, bed-stealing nurses.”
A frown pulls at his mouth. “You think I’m grumpy?”
He must love how my elbow fits in those ribs. “Seriously. I can do this.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Lovie blurts two more incorrect answers. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell Angie. And we’ll go over her meds schedule and dosages.”
As if they haven’t been taped to the fridge for days. I can spell all the medications in my sleep—their scientific names, even. “Adam, I’ve got —”
“For my peace of mind.” He stands and extends a hand to me.
Like during our dance yesterday, I rest my palm in his, and am surprised at his warmth; his fingers curl around mine in something awfully close to an embrace. I could probably attribute the heat to the thermostat, which Lovie keeps at a brisk seventy-eight. Something, though, tells me his warmth is all self-made.
Lovie is engrossed in a commercial and hardly notices us leave. He goes over the instructions, and I confirm I’ve got a handle on it.
“And if I don’t,” I tell him in conclusion, “I will fake it till I make it.”
He winces. “Please call AngelCare before it ever gets to that point.”
Lovie is staring at us from the living room, if the hairs on the back of my neck are anything to go by. I entwine our fingers and swing them between us. Bat my lashes. “Don’t you trust me?”
Adam’s gaze turns teasing, his eyes narrowing into dark-blue slits. “With your grandmother? Yes.” Accepting my challenge, he lifts our joined hands to his mouth and presses a slow kiss to my knuckles. “With absolutely anything else? No.”
My stomach dips. We should have drawn clearer boundaries.
Then his words register. “ Hey! ” I choke on my disbelief, squeezing his hand until it hurts and poking him in the ribs with my other one. “Careful. I know where you sleep sometimes.”
His eyebrow rises slowly, the same way his eyes search my face. Snag somewhere below my nose and above my chin before locking on mine, pinning me in place.
“If you’re okay with the med list,” he says, “I’ve got to get Lovie to bed soon so I can go myself. I’m due at work at seven.” Fatigue sags the skin under his eyes, pulling his mouth, his eyelashes, his shoulders down.
When did we get close enough for me to see those details?
“We’ll be fine.”
And Lovie and I are … something.
But it’s more faking it than making it.
Lovie doesn’t attack me with her shoe helper again as I guide her into hot-pink sweatpants and a Lake Michigan crew neck the next morning, but she does shove me away so forcefully my hip hits the dresser. It bruises almost instantly. And she makes so many comments about the way my body looks in my own clothes, I end up changing after breakfast.
To set things straight: I’m perfectly within American body standards (the societal ones, not the ones doctors made fifty years ago and perpetuated with magazine diets of cigarettes and wine). What extra pounds I do have, I carry it well. Boobs, ass, thighs. A lot in the thighs.
Which is why when Lovie’s first jab at my cellulite, clearly visible in the day’s choice of leggings, happens right before lunch, it hits a little harder than it might have otherwise. Hearing it from her makes it ten times worse.
The space I allow her after that is for both of us. I follow at a safe distance as she gardens (it’s “Monday” again; it’s always Monday), does her word searches and crosswords, and drinks enough caffeinated tea that if it were me, I’d be up until next century.
It’s 8:01, promptly after Jeopardy! when all hell breaks loose.