Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
If Lovie notices anything different between us when I come into the living room , she doesn’t speak on it. And honestly, what would she say? Young man, did you have your hand down my granddaughter’s pants outside my bathroom ? She has spunk, but not that much.
Between questions, Lovie snorts. “You two look awfully cozy tonight. Finally get laid?”
I stand horribly, painfully corrected.
“ Lovie ,” I splutter, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll read me how she wants. And Adam’s not hiding that smug grin of his very well, is he? That’s not helpful. He hides it behind a fist to his mouth, but there’s no hope.
My grandmother thinks I’m a floozy.
Fabulous.
Part of me is jealous of Adam’s ability to separate personal feelings from professional ones. He can flip the switch so easily between flirting and caregiving, sparring and gentling.
I should be able to do that too. I’ve done hard episodes before. I’ve talked to people considered by modern society to be lowlifes, bums, dangerous . And while I am emotional, I’m usually able to distinguish my feelings from those of my guest, or the listener. Since starting Forget Me Not , digging up memories of my childhood in this house, in the brown kitchen and pink bathroom, on the flower sofa and in the garden outside, things have only become more tangled.
My growing attraction to Adam isn’t helping. Maybe that’s why I wanted to stay away from him at first. I don’t need another tether to get tangled in.
Adam offers to get Lovie ready for bed. Which is just as well, because I need time to prepare for the conversation I sense coming.
Why didn’t I notice the similarities between Adam and my grandfather? Now that I see it, it can’t be unseen. It’s like Jesus in the toast. Maybe it wasn’t something I wanted to see. But that’s not quite right either, because that would mean my brain assigned significance to it, enough to notice and then ignore.
After Adam confirms the security system is set for the night, he reclaims his spot on the couch and pats No-Man’s-Land.
“Just a second,” I say. I need a few more mind-numbing minutes to corral the thoughts ambling through my mind like sheep out to pasture.
He appeases me, flipping through TV channels while I proceed to dust the blinds and the ceiling fan.
Swiffer in hand, I cross the room, heading for the wooden slats cordoning the living room from the hallway, but he catches my wrist. “Elle.”
“Adam,” I parrot.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Because something is.”
“And you know me so well after six weeks?”
His brows slant downward. With just a few more degrees of slope, he’d be the physical embodiment of the angry emoji. “Don’t I?”
There’s so much emotion on his face, it unfurls something in my chest. I can’t tell whether it’s a good feeling or a bad one. I give in, laying the duster at the bottom of the television and reclaiming my seat on the couch.
Adam turns to me, sideways as I remain straight. “You want me to prove it? How well I know you?” He reaches for my hand, fingers wrapping around my wrist tenderly. He makes a loop, his thumb over his middle finger in some mindless, unconscious gesture. “For starters, you sleep like an actual dead person. This morning when I was trying to wake you up, I actually did check your pulse.” He squeezes my wrist, mimicking just that. “I worry for your safety not only in the face of house fires but also earthquakes and zombies.”
I grind my teeth to stop my grin. And he waits.
And waits.
With a groan and a poke to his rib cage, I turn to face him and tuck my leg under me. My other hand is in my lap, clenched into a fist, because if it isn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. Touch him, probably, just as affectionately as he’s touching me. “Everyone knows that,” I say. “Get deeper. Get real with me, Adam.” It’s a challenge to see how much he’s been paying attention.
He’s quiet for a long time, focused on how his hand wraps around my wrist. I am focused on the glide of his skin on mine, the electric pulses that radiate out. He relaxes his shoulder to the back of the couch and draws his knee up too, brushing mine, plus my thigh—he’s never expressed disgust with them the way Lovie has.
He’ll come up blank. I keep the real stuff deep down, locked away. It’s a challenge for people to get close because I create hoops for them to jump through.
And I set those hoops on fire.
I am fire, and anyone worthy of me should risk burning up to get closer.
“When you’re anxious,” he says, interrupting my thoughts, “especially about a new episode of either Elle on the L or Forget Me Not —especially Forget Me Not —you do laundry. That, along with tonight’s events, leads me to believe you’re a stress cleaner. But you also have respect for others’ belongings, so you only ever clean the communal spaces. Kitchen, bathroom, living room.”
My heart careens into my throat.
“The scar on your left knee is from when you were little, three or four.” He taps it through the fabric of my sweatpants. His hand stays there, curls around the bend of my leg, and my blood thickens to molasses, slow and thick. My pulse is sluggish. “I don’t know how you got it yet, but you picked and pulled at the stitches. That’s why it’s such an irregular shape. You were too young to know better.
“And I know you thought Lovie remembered you the last time we went to the grocery store, the day of the snow scare. You’re hoping she remembers.” He scrubs his jaw and licks his lips as he chooses his next words. Whatever he’s about to say must taste bitter. “You’re counting on it, I think. But this isn’t some 50 First Dates situation, Elle. Her remembering will only make you feel better, and only for a little while.”
Hot, indignant tears swell in my eyes, and my jaw loosens. “Fuck you.”
Adam does something completely unexpected. He smiles. Smiles , and my stomach does a free fall into a feeling I’m not ready to name.
“And,” he continues, “I know something happened with your parents that you don’t like to talk about. I know someone hurt you, and now you’d rather not bother with feelings in the first place. That when someone gets too close without your permission, you push them away, shut it down. You like to be in control. And I make you feel completely out of it.”
A single tear betrays me and slips down my cheek. “I don’t like it.”
He brushes the wetness away, the same way he traced the sleep lines on my face this morning. “I know that too.”
Even through the sting in my nose, the cloudiness of my eyes, I see how soft his face is. Now, and whenever he looks at me. He knows exactly where I’ve drawn boundaries, which ones are safe to cross and which aren’t worth the effort.
It’s all too much.
I bolt to my feet. I just remembered the open carton of milk expires tomorrow, and Lovie hates to waste money more than she hates my legs. I’ll just go drink a glass or four.
I try to ignore the part of my brain that tells me Adam is following, but it doesn’t listen. I know he’s right behind me, the way he always is. Close enough to reach over my shoulder and open the cupboard for me.
I grab a glass and spin the long way around to the fridge so I don’t rub against him. You are not a cat in heat, Elle.
I pull out the milk. “You can leave now.”
“I’m waiting for you to realize you don’t want me to.”
The carton falls from my grasp, splashing bright-white milk across our socks and the vinyl.
No.
No, no, no.
Messes make everything worse.
I’m a mess. I’m the mess.
Whipping the dishrag off the stove, I drop to my knees, attempting to sop up the liquid still gushing from the milk carton. It was fuller than I remember. Emotion clutches the base of my throat. I don’t want to break down right now, surrounded by a mess of my own making.
But the milk keeps spilling, slipping, gushing from the carton.
“It was almost empty,” I whisper. I don’t trust myself to speak louder.
Adam clears his throat and crouches beside me. His knees go straight into the spill. “I finished that carton yesterday. This was the new one.”
I just wasted a brand-new carton of milk, and now I’m crying over it. I can’t even appreciate the clich é come to life.
This is what pushes me over the edge, hot tears spilling out onto my already flaming cheeks.
“It’s just milk. I don’t even know why I’m crying.” I sob again, louder and harder, and it takes so much out of me I fall onto my butt, legs falling limply at my side. “It’s just milk .”
He pries the sopping rag from my clutches, throwing it aside. “It’s not just milk, Elle.”
And when he says it, I believe it.
This is more than wasting fresh dairy.
It’s everything .
My frustration with Lovie, how I can’t stand up for myself with her because it won’t make any difference. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference here. Seeing Liss and Dakota this morning made me realize how much of my regular life I’m missing out on, and not having an end date to this temporary situation makes it seem that much more permanent. Adam may do this for a living, but I don’t.
Guilt, for agreeing to take on this project and growing to resent it. I loved my life in Chicago. Being within walking distance to coffee bars, having my wax girl squeeze me in five minutes before close. Having my best friends an L ride away instead of two hours and a hundred miles.
The wrongness of calling my grandmother a project in the first place. She isn’t a project, but I’ve started seeing her that way. Let’s see if I can squeeze another episode out of this hurtful thing she said today. If I can’t get her to remember me, at least I can get a few thousand downloads, right?
With each thought, my tears flow heavier. They slide off my nose and chin and splash into the milk mess below me. I brace against the floor, nails biting into the linoleum until I’m sure I’ll leave ten half-moons behind. My chest heaves, and I can’t get enough oxygen. All the while, Adam is here. With me.
Adam, who looks like my grandfather, who has slipped past all my defenses. Who isn’t running away.
“You’re spiraling in there.” Adam taps my temple, then swipes his thumb under my eye. “Think out loud for me.”
“This is crazy. Everything is wrong. I’m not acting rationally. Definitely not”—I gasp for air, rest my cheek in his palm—“ thinking rationally. I don’t know what we are, but we look like my grandparents. I don’t know what that means. And you said you know me, but … I don’t know who I am if Lovie doesn’t.”
My voice breaks again, but Adam is still here. With me.
Even though I’m still sobbing, he arranges my limbs more comfortably, settles my butt in the cradle of his legs, and tucks my head under his chin. Rubs a path along my spine. It reaches in and realigns all my off-track pieces.
“I want to know these parts of you, Elle,” he murmurs. “The messy ones and the crazy ones. I’m not asking for forever. I’m not even asking for next week. All I’m asking for is right now. But if that’s too much, that’s okay too. I only want whatever you’re ready to give, even if it’s nothing at all.”
With one simple comment, he’s taken a sledgehammer to my heart, already cracked and crumbling. In its place is something tender. More fragile. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, feeling this way, but I do.
“So, what? I just tell you exactly what I’m thinking?” I rub my nose on my shoulder and leave a glossy smear of snot behind. I am the epitome of attractive. “And you …”
“Tell you what I’m thinking about what you’re thinking.” He throws me a lazy wink as he rises to his feet, offering a hand.
I wobble up behind him. “You make it sound so simple.” I move my foot, but it lands in some of the leftover milk and I slip.
Adam steadies me again.
All the time, he steadies me.
It’s wonderfully terrifying to realize someone else can help hold you up. For the first time, I wonder if maybe it doesn’t have to just be me.
“Come on.” He nods his head toward the laundry closet. “Let’s throw your socks in with my stuff.”