Chapter 30 Rachel
Currently Playing: The Way I Feel Inside by The Zombies
***
You know how sometimes you can have a bad day, then listen to happy music, and it helps? And how other days, you listen to sad music, and it helps even more? This was one of those days.
Sip ’n’ Spin had officially sold. Arthur said the new owners were cool. The guy and his wife were out of state and wouldn’t be in much, so I would have the place mostly to myself. They came by last week to say hello. The wife’s name was Poppi. She had green and purple hair and told me I could call her auntie, to which I politely declined. She was nice enough, and her husband seemed like a bit of an odd ball, which wasn’t too far off from our standard clientele. But still, they came in with a quick look around the place before discussing tearing it practically to shreds, ripping my heart out along with it.
It wasn’t my place to say that this building deserved more than plain gray laminate floors and a landlord specialized in a quickly done white spray paint job, so I kept my mouth closed. And with keeping my mouth closed came pent-up frustration that’s remained until today—closing day.
Arthur called me as soon as he left the attorney’s office, giving me a quick this isn’t goodbye, kiddo and reassuring me that I would still have a solid gig there. And all of that pent-up frustration, an overwhelming sorry, and that phone call came crashing down on me. Every weight I’d attempted to carry over the years sat on my chest as I lay flat on my back on my kitchen floor with Lionel Richie singing over me—a desperate concert for one.
It wasn’t lost on me that I’d known this was coming up. I’d had seven previous months to mentally prep myself for that. But instead, I’d shoved all of that deep down in hopes that I would suddenly have a great-great-aunt reach out and say I was like her long-lost daughter and she was in her last days so she had to give someone her five-million-dollar inheritance. Turns out I didn’t have that.
So, Lionel Richie it was. My newest best friend.
Three firm knocks beat outside my door, presumably my neighbor two doors down who liked to remind me regularly that my taste in music was, and I quote, “the gum underneath his shoe.” Although the last time I’d seen him in the hallway, he was wearing a wife beater with cut-off overalls and an iron-on patch of Waluigi on his chest. So who was the real gum here?
“I’m not turning it down!” I shouted at my door, giving my unwelcome visitor a choice finger. He couldn’t see it, but it was the thought that counted.
“I’d hope not.” A call came back that was most certainly not my Waluigi-loving, music-hating stick-in-the-mud neighbor.
Adam?
I sat up and took in the space around me. The kitchen wasn’t too bad. Probably because I had only eaten takeout for the last four days and didn’t own more than five actual dishes. But there were two piles of laundry in my living room that weren’t quite fold-worthy, yet weren’t considered dirty either. Not to mention I still had Lionel belting out and an array of pillows spread across my floor.
“Uh…one second.” I frantically crawled around, tossing all the laundry into the bathroom and sending up a quick prayer to the good Lord that the man wasn’t going to need to pee during this visit.
“You know I don’t care if it’s messy,” he rasped from the door, but it was a lie. He did care, he just wouldn’t say it out loud.
I picked up my pillow fort remains and lifted with my legs, bending my knees in a halfway crab walk to my bedroom before tossing them out onto the open floor. A mirror caught my eye, and I took in the look I was sporting.
A black Snuggie—to portray my mourning—blond hair in a giant clip that had been up a little too long and was going to be a nightmare to brush out, and a face that had once had makeup on it…was that yesterday? Either way, the bags were out and the lips were gone and there was nothing left except this shell of a broken girl. If Adam ever wanted me before, he was going to change his mind now. It was a shame to wash away this level of mystique I had managed to carry this far into our friendship. Fixing this train wreck would require at least twenty minutes, and judging by Adam’s hurried knocking, I had about twenty seconds before doors would be breaking down.
I sighed and reached for the door handle, locking my eyes on the floor as I opened it. “I know. Go ahead, spill it all. I look like Nanny McPhee before she gets all hot.”
Adam shook something in his hands, and the sound of a wrapper crinkling forcing my head to lift up like a dog hearing their treat bag open. He gave me this sad tilt of his lips, sympathy spreading across his handsome face. In his hands was a sharing-size package of my favorite Sour Straws.
I met his eyes and dipped my head at the candy. “What are you doing?”
He looked down at the package and up to me, his eyebrows dipped low. “It, uh, took me a while to find the right ones. The worker had to go check in the back. They had red, but you don’t like red. And even though blue raspberry still isn’t even a real flav—”
“No, like what are you doing here?”
“You didn’t answer my texts.”
Texts. As in plural. I looked back into my apartment as if they would appear before me. I’d completely forgotten that I’d turned my phone on do not disturb, and I usually called Adam when I left work.
Before I could answer, he pushed the straws my way. “I thought you could use…company.”
Was the candy supposed to be a bribe to let him in? As if he wasn’t exactly what I needed anyway?
With his arm stretched out, I used the movement to take advantage and lean in, wrapping my arms around his body and pulling him close, my nose against his neck, breathing him in. Familiar and cozy. Warmth bloomed in my chest, and I sighed. I still felt like crying. Still wanted to be mad at the world. Mad at Art for selling, and mad at my ten-year-old self for sitting around listening to John Mellencamp instead of investing in real estate so I could have saved up enough to buy the darn place. But Adam’s hug helped with most of that. His comfort washed over me like an internal Snuggie. How long could I potentially keep him here? He was like my emotional jumper cables embodied.
“It didn’t go well?” He rested his chin on my head.
“Not good, but not bad. Just…I don’t know. It feels like the end of an era.”
More than that, it felt like one more thing I was losing.
My dad was slipping. My mother was off in California trying to make her life more than it was here. My sister hasn’t so much as texted me a single hello in the last three years. My best friend got married to the love of her life and moved out, and now my favorite place in the world was being entirely taken over. How much longer until Adam left too?
“I get that. You have roots there.”
I sniffled and nodded against his chest, my stray hairs getting all staticky. He pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. “Let’s go inside, yeah?”
Adam settled on the floor next to me, staring at my ceiling fan circling around and around as the smooth, rich voice of Frank Sinatra blanketed over us. My sad girlhood playlist was really coming in handy. I finished up one sour straw, handed him one, and stole another for myself. This package wasn’t going to last us ten minutes. I could already hear the voice in my head saying I was going to regret filling up on sour candy on an empty stomach, but my heart was slowly filling back up, and that felt more vital at the moment.
Adam chewed his straw with a scowl. “I just—make up your mind, you know? Blueberries or raspberries? What’s with all of this concocted MSG BS?”
“You sound like the men at Dad’s complex.” I took on a lower, old-man voice. “They don’t make washers and dryers the way they used to.”
He shrugged a single shoulder. “It’s true. Everything is cheap now.”
I thought back to Poppi, the green and purple Barbie who waved her hand around Sip ’n’ Spin like it was a magic wand. White wall here. Gray LVP here. Cover the old brick wall there. Cheap was right. I was all for updates, but erasing history, erasing the stories in those walls, was a whole other thing.
A snort formed at the back of my throat. “You’ve got that right.”
I gestured with my half-eaten sour straw, brandishing it in the air. “Even people. Places. Food. Everything is just cheap. Where’s the authentic stuff? Where’s the…” I searched for the right words. “Like the steady thrum of a guitar? Or a simple piano ballad? Now the world is full of artificial-intelligence remixes of songs we all once loved. Can’t we make more originals?”
Adam sat up, his jaw flexing and his throat bobbing as he finished his own straw. “Are we actually talking about music?”
No. No, we weren’t. Why was it so hard to find something real and genuine that didn’t leave? That didn’t lie, didn’t steal or cheat. A real, tangible thing that wasn’t bound to eventually crumple up like a used napkin and go flying in the wind. But was there something, or someone, just consistently there for you until…forever? Did that even exist? You hear all these stories about married couples who have lasted fifty-plus years, and yet I look around me and don’t see a hint of that. Maybe for people like Layla and Luke or Adam’s parents, sure. But did people like me ever end up in situations like that?
I couldn’t help but have my mind immediately race to Adam. Adam, who was going to get married one day or get stationed in a foreign country thousands of miles away while I waited here for him, day by day. This fight-or-flight instinct in my mind shouted at me that he was like everyone else, that everyone, at some point or another, was going to leave. But then when I sat down and thought about it, truly thought about it, Adam wasn’t like any other person in my life. This was the man who brought blue raspberry sour straws and records from the store to make me smile. People like that…did they also leave people like me?
“I don’t know,” I mumbled and quietly tested the waters. “I think I just want to try dating again.”
“Oh?” His tone of voice gave me absolutely nothing. No hint of jealousy or shock.
I sniffed and raised my shoulders. “Yeah, I mean, don’t you?”
Adam shrugged silently. We sat side by side, and I wondered if he could somehow feel how fast my heart was racing.
I pushed once more. “I like the thought of someone taking me out to dinner, telling me I’m pretty, and dropping me off back home with a kiss. I just miss that giddy first-date feeling.”
“So…you’re wanting to, like, get back out there?” Adam tilted his chin at me. The way he said get back out there sounded like he actually meant you want to go get tetanus shots together? Like he was absolutely disgusted at the thought.
In hindsight, it shouldn’t have shocked me. The guy hadn’t once—well, unless I didn’t know about it—gone on a date in the two years we had been friends. And given how we met, I supposed it wasn’t unrealistic for me to assume he could be meeting up with other women that same way and…I shook my head. No, no. The thought alone of Adam in bed with another woman was enough to make me nauseous.
“I guess.” No. Not at all.
Almost worse than imaging him picking up a random woman to take home was the thought of me going on an actual date with anyone other than the man next to me. Thinking of someone taking me to the movies and not knowing how I liked my popcorn basically drenched in butter. Or going to dinner and having to explain to some random guy why I always order a sprite and a water—because I am thirsty when I am nervous. Worst of all, having another man’s lips on mine and his eyes checking me up and down made my skin crawl.
You.I wanted to say. I don’t just want to try dating again. I want to try dating again with you.I wanted to try hand-holding, opening-my-door, kissing-me-goodnight dates with Adam more than I wanted anything else. Because when I was with him, it was like all of those anxious little thoughts in my mind dissipated into thin air. He calmed my racing heart naturally, and finding someone else to do that for me was out of the question. There was no way.
“Stevie.” He only used that nickname if he was desperate enough to really grab my attention. “Is there…I dunno, something I’m missing?”
How was I supposed to even word that? Yes. I adore our friendship and everything about you, but I also crave more and yet am terrified of losing the last comfortable piece of my life.
With a shrug, I settled with a small “I’m just scared.”
He lay back on his side, facing me. His eyes trailed over me like a warm touch, yet I couldn’t convince myself to turn to him. Everything in me was desperate to turn his way, to get any clue of understanding in his eyes. But the fear of rejection stood higher than any other desire I had.
“As long as I’m here, there is nothing that you should be fearful of.”
That was true. Adam took care of me in a way no one else ever could. The fear wasn’t anything when he was here. The fear was about what would happen when he wasn’t. When he wasn’t just deployed for a month or two, but when he was stationed who knows where. Out saving lives while mine crumbles away. He only had so much to carry. At what point was he going to drop the heaviest weight of them all?
“You make it sound so easy.” I let out a humorless chuckle. His fingers reached for me, tilting my chin to face him.
Our eyes locked, and tiny fireflies lit up in my brain, like stardust dancing around us, or pieces of the city lights aligned together in one perfect art form. He had that effect on me. Probably on everyone. My silent giant. My loyal German Shepherd who was all bark and no bite.
“It could be that easy.”
I looked down at his lips, recalling our last kiss in that dark, crowded hallway.
A moment of vulnerability for the both of us, a moment of giving in to the one temptation that had settled in this friendship from day one. It was meant to be quick, a small peck that I would blame on the romantic ambience of a wedding. But here I was, weeks later, with it still consuming my mind. How he held me, so gentle at the mouth but with such a firm grip. Like the kiss itself, we could take it slow. There was no rush. But then his hands on my hips, in my hair, down my back all kept me from sliding away. As if I ever wanted to. He kissed me like I was fully his, and for a brief moment, it really felt like it. It felt like the kind of night where you could go home with your date, take out the millions of bobby pins in your hair, and jump right into bed with your pj’s on and fall asleep to reruns of The Office. For that brief moment, all I could imagine was the sense of comfort he brought me. He never once failed me, so how could I assume he would now?
“Adam,” I whispered.
He swallowed, eyes searching mine. I had to know. It was going to eat away at me. Even if he left, even if he was to completely fall from my life and leave a giant rotting hole in his wake, I would have comfort in knowing the truth, wouldn’t I? That if he didn’t leave now, wasn’t he at some point going to?
“Is…there something more here?” I kept my discreet tone, my eyes never leaving his.
He didn’t answer. Not with words anyway. His chin dipped in a nod, a quick, painless confirmation to what sat in my gut. Everything in me shouted to just take the jump and go all in, to tell the guy that I had been crushing on him for almost two years and I didn’t see that letting up anytime soon. But Adam never said a word he didn’t mean, and I didn’t know if I was ready to hear that answer if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
“Then,” I swallowed heavily, “what exactly is this?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if he was carefully choosing each word in his head. “I…don’t know. I like labels. I like to put things in boxes, and I can’t quite do that with you.”
Somehow that didn’t help. Knowing he felt something more here too, more than just a friendship kindled through late-night phone calls and this made me think of you texts. Discovering that he didn’t know what we were weighed me down even further.
But for now, it was an answer I was going to have to accept. I had no other choice. It wasn’t like I had a box to check for us either. More than friends. That was all I knew.