Chapter 17 Are You Expecting an Edible Arrangement?
17
Are You Expecting an Edible Arrangement?
After the bare minimum amount of polite chitchat with Mrs.Lewis while Adam cooled down behind the fridge door, I fled the apartment and everything that happened on the kitchen counter.
I went to sleep thinking about the kiss. I woke up dreaming about it and imagined his lips the entire train ride and walk to Sam’s building.
Even now, I’m still thinking about it when I step into the apartment, currently overwhelmed by the smell of paint fumes and the jaunty notes of Charlie Brown’s “Christmas Time Is Here.” I look around to find that Adam has nearly finished painting.
“Whoa. Did you paint all night?” I plop the coffee on the counter while respectfully avoiding contact with it. If I return my eyes to the scene of the crime, I’ll only replay the kiss in my head to deconstruct it for clues.
“What?” He drops the paint roller in its tray to rub the back of his neck. He’s wearing basically what he always wears: a Henley, flannel, and jeans that fit perfectly but have seen better days.
Instead of my true painting clothes—a Pioneer High Robotics Team T-shirt and worn-out leggings with a hole in the crotch—I’m in what all women in rom-coms wear for the falling-in-love-by-way-of-home-improvement montage: a slouchy cropped tee and artfully distressed denim overalls.
He’s looking in my direction, but his eyes are darting around too much for me to be sure we’ve made eye contact. “Oh, because so much is painted. Right. I get it. That’s funny.”
I shrug my coat off slowly. So as not to spook him. “It’s really not.”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets and bounces on his heels.
“How much caffeine have you had today?”
He grimaces. “A lot. Too much. I have regrets.”
“Did you snort some cocaine too?”
“I had an extra-large coffee, two 5-hour Energy shots, and two Red Bulls. No, three. Two?” He counts on his fingers before he seems to lose interest and gestures in the direction of a wall that is primed, tarped, and taped. “So the paint only needs one coat, which is good. I have you all set up over there. I have my truck loaded with the last of Sam’s things. We’ll clean up, drop off his stuff, and be done by lunch. Maybe a little after lunch.”
“What’s the rush? You have big plans this afternoon?”
“Would you rather clean up while I paint?”
“What the hell is going on right now?” I ask, and his eyes double in size at my directness.
“We’re painting,” he says with infuriating simplicity.
“You kissed me. Twice. In the last week, you’ve kissed me two times.”
“That really was all this week, wasn’t it?” A playful glint touches the corners of his eyes. It brings me the tiniest shred of relief.
“Adam. I’m being serious. Do you regret what happened? Are we forgetting it, again? Are you expecting an Edible Arrangement? I don’t understand your energy.”
“I’m not a decorative melon guy,” he quips, but at my no doubt distressed expression, his aloofness falls away. He crosses the room, extracting his hands from his pockets to pull me into him. His hug unties me like a bow, every knotted-up muscle in my body releasing at once. I bury my face into his shoulder and allow his chin to find its place on my head. It’s a relief to know we fit like this, even if he’s vibrating with caffeine.
“I definitely don’t regret it,” he tells my scalp. “I want to talk about it, but it’s hard to wrap my head around everything when I’m still in an active text conversation with Sam’s mom.”
He squeezes my shoulders, pressing me so close that I can feel his racing heart thrum against my temple.
“I realized last night that we needed to close the book on the apartment before we could move forward.” He pulls his head back to meet my eyes as he speaks. “And I wanted to move forward as soon as possible. So, yes, I’ve been painting since four this morning.”
I look up at him. “You Billy Crystaled me.” His face registers zero comprehension. “It’s from a movie. With Meg Ryan. It’s a good thing. Don’t worry about it.”
He presses a kiss to my hair, squeezing me again before stepping out of the hug. “Should we paint?”
“We better. We have a very intense schedule to keep. First, why exactly were you listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas all alone?”
“You like Christmas music.”
“I wasn’t here.”
He bounces back to his side of the apartment and picks up his roller, slapping a perfect greige hue on the wall. “You’re here now,” he replies with a shrug.
In our rom-com-worthy falling-in-love-by-way-of-home-improvement montage, few scenes would make the cut. Sure, he holds me steady on the ladder as I paint near the ceiling, and the shock of his warm hand on my hip nearly topples me into a can of latex paint. And yes, at some point we flick paint across the tarp for no reason other than to prove the other wasn’t as good at flicking paint across the tarp. But mostly, we paint while Classic Christmas plays on shuffle.
When Spotify plays two different covers of “Santa Baby’’ back-to-back and Adam begs for death, I let him switch to an alt-rock playlist while I pour the rest of his Americano down the kitchen drain so his heart doesn’t explode.
Painting and cleaning up takes longer than Adam anticipated, so it’s nearly six when we climb into the truck for our final funereal duty. He’s crashing from the caffeine, so I let him nap while I drive and revel in the headiness of looming over the tiny cars below us in Adam’s truck.
He stirs when we exit the highway near Sam’s parents’, only to burrow his head into my shoulder. “You’re so snuggly,” he hums, and tiny butterflies flutter in my belly.
I pull into the empty driveway of the large, familiar house.
“You sleep,” I tell him, removing the keys from the ignition. “I’ll be quick.”
I hear the sharp knock at the window but Adam doesn’t.
“Kids.” Sam’s dad appears in the passenger door.
“Shit,” I whisper. I shove Adam awake, and he flings his body across the cab like I’m radioactive. After a slight delay, he recovers enough to roll down his window.
Dr.Lewis leans the elbow patches of his tweed jacket on the door frame. “Is that the last of it?” He points to the truck bed.
We nod.
“Good. Can you help me carry them to the garage?”
We fall all over ourselves piling out of the car. We carry the boxes to the garage, Adam stacking two effortlessly and me attempting the same inelegantly. Dr.Lewis grabs the last box, propping it on his knee while he punches in the garage code. “Judy wants a word,” he says ominously. He leads us through the garage door and into the mudroom, while we follow like prisoners to the gallows.
“JuJu, they’re here,” he calls out to his wife.
Mrs.Lewis putters in looking like a café au lait in head-to-toe cashmere that hangs off her body. She’s lost weight since the funeral, and I do everything short of pinching the skin of my wrist to keep my composure. “Alison, I didn’t know I’d be seeing you again so soon.” She wraps me in a hug and smooths my hair before releasing me.
Dr.Lewis clears his throat. “Judy mentioned running into you two yesterday, but she forgot to invite you to the Cookie Party.”
Pain flashes in her eyes before settling back into what is now her default expression: empty.
Adam stiffens at the edge of my eyeline. “You’re still having the Cookie Party?”
“Sam was looking forward to it this year, Adam,” he tells him. “More than any other year. Rachel’s flying in.” Mrs.Lewis releases a bemused snort that makes Dr.Lewis flinch. “It would be a betrayal to his memory to cancel.” He says it mechanically, like he’s repeated this defense verbatim to multiple people, including his wife, if her faraway stare is any indication.
Adam doesn’t respond, and silence descends on our quartet, huddled together in the spotless mudroom. I can’t take it.
“We’d love to come. I would. I don’t know about Adam’s schedule, of course,” I ramble. “Although I’d hate to impose if it’s more of a family thing.”
“You’re family, honey,” she tells me. “Sam would want you here. Both of you.”
I feel Adam’s rigidity radiating beside me, but I don’t look away from the woman in front of me.
“You don’t know what it means to me that Sam had you, Alison…” She wipes her blue eyes with her hand. “It’s such a comfort.”
I smile, wanting to be that comfort for her.
“Of course, we’ll be there. Both of us,” Adam answers, his voice unsteady.
“Yes. Of course,” I say, grateful he spoke. “It’s so generous of you to invite us.”
Mrs.Lewis rubs Adam’s arm in a distinctly maternal way, and the smallest bit of tension releases from his shoulders.
Sam’s father promises to send the Paperless Post invite, and Mrs.Lewis holds me close as we say our goodbyes. Then Adam and I walk up the long drive toward his truck.
I look over my shoulder at the perfect house on the lake and turn back to the truck window to take inventory of my splotchy face. Adam’s hand slips between me and my image and pulls up on the driver door handle.
“I’m awake now,” he says.
I don’t move right away. Instead, I stare at our watery reflections. “That’s not how Sam thought of me. Ever. We were never like that.”
He pulls the door open with a dejected nod. “I know, but knowing doesn’t make it easier. Why are you letting them think that you were?”
“I’m not.” I wait for him to climb into the cab, trying to meet his avoidant eyes. Emotion crawls up my throat. “It’s complicated. She’s…I want to be what she needs.”
He thrums the steering wheel with anxious fingers, squinting into the snow-covered road. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I thought today would be the end of it, but it’s like…you’ll always be a little bit Sam’s girlfriend, you know?”
His words burn a trail through my insides as he puts the truck in reverse.