Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Things that take place during a double-bed sleepover with Adam Wheeler:
Discussions of my ex-boyfriends. Laughter. Secret-sharing.
Things that don’t take place during a sleepover with Adam Wheeler:
Sex.
Our backs against the headboard and his arms around me, we talk about The Rockstar (real name Ryan), how he used his music connections to sneak us backstage at House of Blues and scored Liss and I free passes to Lollapalooza. How she took too much of an edible and slept through the only band she was interested in seeing. How I found The Rockstar in bed with his manager, the woman he swore six ways from Sunday was “strictly business.” How, on the way out, I dumped my coffee into the body of his favorite guitar.
Adam has to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes as I tell him about my college flings. I call them the J Boys: Josh, Jeff, Jackson, and Jermaine. They were frat brothers who had a penchant for drinking Natty Ice out of a beer funnel and were late more often than me. If I’d gotten a hundred bucks for every time I heard “It’s not working out, but I think you’d hit it off with my friend,” I might not have had to charge the infamous Aruba trip to Lovie’s credit card. I tell Adam about that too.
I rest my chin on his chest, right over his tattoo. “In the spirit of honesty,” I say on a sigh, “I should probably also tell you about Grady.”
Adam’s hand pauses on my back. “I already hate him.”
“You don’t even know him.”
He studies my face. “I know how I’m supposed to feel about someone based on the way you say their name.”
And then I tell Adam things I’ve never told anyone, not even Liss or Dakota. How when I was with Grady, I only felt like myself when I was physically with him. I’d check my phone four times in one minute waiting to see if he’d texted me. If he called and I missed it, he wasn’t happy. How sometimes I’d go through his phone, like I knew he went through mine.
My voice grows scratchy in my throat, and I swallow a few times before I continue. Adam maneuvers me so my back is to his chest, as if sensing I need physical support in addition to emotional. I never did put my pants back on, but he doesn’t seem to care. He just holds me, his legs bracketing mine, as his fingertips draw shapes and letters on the skin of my upper thigh.
The safety of his embrace unlocks deeper memories, and before I question it, I tell him those too. “One day,” I whisper to him in the dim lamplight, “I needed to call Lovie for something, and I had to scroll for months just to find her in my recent calls.
“I sat on the floor, right there in our kitchen, and counted. In one day, Grady and I had called each other thirty-five times. We lived together. I saw him that morning,” I say, and Adam kisses my hair once, twice, again, leaves his lips there.
“That was the morning Lovie fell. Cracked her head. While I was busy worrying about whether or not my partner was the one, my grandmother was getting stitches, CT scans, a life-changing diagnosis. I should have been there.”
Adam’s pulse is a metronome on my cheek, keeping steady time. “You being here physically wouldn’t have stopped Lovie from getting Alzheimer’s.” He pulls back, eyes searching mine. “Tell me you know that.”
I shrug, chewing my lip. “I know that on an intellectual level. But … my brain conflated the two. Lovie’s diagnosis, the fallout with Grady. It was the one time in my life I didn’t run when I should have, and look what happened.” I lift my shoulder again. “I had one person and lost the other.”
“Lovie didn’t leave you, Elle.”
I blink back tears, not trusting myself to speak.
He fills in the gaps, the corner of his mouth dipping into a frown. “So you left Grady before he could do the same,” he realizes.
“We were on the way out anyway.” We worked out the logistics. He got to keep our apartment since it was close to his office, and I packed a bag and took the L across town to Liss’s place at four in the morning. I was the girl in my every episode, duffel bags on the sticky subway floor and tear tracks on my cheeks.
In the weeks that followed, I threw myself into helping Lovie prepare for the next phase of her life. Only to find out she’d done the heavy lifting, with picking Angie and AngelCare. With paperwork. There was nothing left for me to do besides feel, besides hurt .
“I think that’s the time I started throwing more effort into Elle on the L . Coming home less.” Shame burns bright flags onto my cheeks. “Meanwhile, Lovie was slipping away more and more. And Grady cared fuck all about fixing anything.”
I yawn, and Adam takes a moment to shift us down the mattress, my head on the pillow. When’s the last time I stayed up this late with a man, just talking?
“I don’t know Grady,” Adam says, his lips against my hair. “But I know you, and I’m being completely honest when I say it’s not you, it’s him. He should have fought for you. Fought with you, at your side.”
I chuckle, fatigue making it sound like I slid my laugh across sandpaper. “You’re just sucking up so I’ll suck you off.”
One eyebrow rises slowly. “Go to sleep, Elle.”
“No.” I yawn again, despite curling further into the mattress and Adam’s side. “Now it’s your turn. You tell me all about your toxic exes and embarrassing high school stories.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Be serious.”
“I am serious. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was nineteen or twenty.”
Jealousy loosens a playful growl in my throat. It’s garbled from leftover emotion. “Hey. We talked about that.”
He chuckles. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t lose the social construct of my virginity until I was nineteen or twenty.”
“What was her name?”
“Jenny,” he says after a second. I search in his tone, his expression, for how she makes him feel, so far removed. “We met in nursing school. Studied together. That sort of thing.”
“Did you love her?”
I hold my breath. All the while, his hands are on my body. I refuse to consider that as its own answer.
“As a person, sure. She was kind and funny. As a partner, we wouldn’t have worked. I was always focused on school, then supporting Ruth. She wanted more than I was capable of giving at the time.”
“That sounds so … mature.” I crinkle my nose.
He smiles, an eyebrow tipping up. “You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“Was she your ‘one’?” I’m toeing a dangerous line here. I can’t stop.
Adam shrugs. “She was my ‘once in a while.’ As in, once in a while, two people are right for each other at the right time. It doesn’t make what we shared any less real just because it ended.” His eyes search my face. “It also doesn’t mean that this … just because something doesn’t have a name— fuck , what am I saying?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, my stomach upside down in suspense, waiting, waiting .
“This isn’t …”
I let him sit in silence, find his own words. He’s so good at that with me; maybe it’s time I learned to do that with other people.
His thumb strokes my hip, the crease of my leg. “This sort of thing … it’s not something I normally do.”
I want to ask what this sort of thing is to him, but then I’d have to think about what it is to me. “How’d you get into nursing?” I ask instead, even though my heart is so loud in my ears I’m scared I won’t hear his answer.
“It’s sort of boring.”
“Helping people isn’t boring,” I argue. A small kiss, right to the words on his heart.
He adjusts us, pulling more of me on top of him. Arms around my waist. One of his palms stretches over my ass. It’s my new favorite way for him to touch me.
“It was an eighth-grade job fair. They had all the different career professionals come in, give a lecture about what it was like to work in that field.” There’s color high on his cheeks.
I poke it. “You’re blushing. Is it really embarrassing?”
“It’s—” He swallows. “I just really liked the idea of wearing glorified pajamas every day.”
I burst out laughing. Beneath me, Adam chuckles too, and we devolve into gasping, rocks and squeaks of the bed frame filling the silence as we try to rein it in and keep quiet. I can’t breathe. His joy slips down his cheeks, the tendons in his neck straining. The smile stretching his face is miles wide.
It fizzles out, our eyes locked as the moment shifts like quicksand, flippant one second and crucial the next. “If that’s what I have to tell you for you to laugh like that …” His throat bobs, eyes leaning black. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Tell me a secret,” I whisper.
He’s faster than I think he’s going to be, for someone who has such a “boring” life.
“Do you remember that day I came home early from work and all the smoke detectors were going off?”
I nod into his chest, stifling a yawn. I don’t want today to be over. I want to record it, replay it like I do my most favorite episodes of Elle on the L .
“I paid a guy a hundred bucks to cover the last two hours of my shift after I tried to put in an IV and missed three times. All I could think about was kissing you.”
His words unlock a new chamber of my heart, and all the extra blood rushes to my face. “ Adam .”
I think he’s going to flip me, kiss his way down my body. Undo me again, give me a run at undoing him. It’s the next logical step. His eyes search my face, though I don’t know what else could be hidden.
Instead, he leans over, flicks off the lamp, and plugs in his phone. I haven’t checked mine in hours. I don’t even know where it is. “That’s enough for one night. We have a busy day tomorrow.”
“No,” I protest again, feebler than before. My eyes won’t open. “Wanna talk. Tell me all the ways you watch me when I’m not looking.”
“If you already know,” he says, “why do I need to tell you?”
It’s my turn now to say something cheeky, continue our flirting until he has no choice but to screw me senseless.
But as he pulls up the covers, I lose the fight fast. I tuck into his side because the size of the bed necessitates it.
I’m already dreaming when Adam says good-night. Except when he says it, it sounds like, “Go to sleep, love.”
Forget Me Not
Transcript, Episode 04
Hello, everyone. This is Elle from Elle on the L —say that five times fast—with another episode of Forget Me Not . This podcast is an inside look at life with Alzheimer’s, from a caregiver’s perspective.
Before we dive into today’s episode, I’m so excited to announce the listeners have chosen two charities for donations. Because I believe in transparency, financial statements and documentation will be up on my website, and you can always leave questions on my social media or whichever platform you listen on.
The Alzheimer’s Association, based in Chicago, is the country’s leading organization for research, early detection, and support networks. They have a fantastic 24/7 hotline, financial and legal planning for caregivers, and even special resources dedicated to those in the LGBTQIA+ community. I’ve personally used their website dozens of times to help point me in the right direction.
We’ll also be supporting AngelCare, the caregiving organization that aids our very own Lovie. If the Alzheimer’s Association is the support network, AngelCare is the boots on the ground. Every person I’ve met has so much compassion and respect, both for the patients and for their loved ones. They see the person, not the disease. Which, coming from someone in the throes of the disease daily, is maybe the most important part.
Okay. Now on to the episode. I’ve got a comprehensive list of those financial and logistical steps to take at the beginning of a diagnosis. What I did wrong. What I did right. How [EXPLICIT] long it takes for health insurance changes to go through. You know. The usual. [Laughs]