Chapter 16
The long, oak dining table at Mom’s felt like a talk show with my mom and Olivia letting their curiosity spill out question after question.
“Lucy says you’ve moved around a lot. Where all have you lived?” Mom asked, melty cheese hanging off her slice of pizza.
“Oklahoma, Oregon, Ohio, Arizona, and now Texas,” Adam said, counting them off on his fingers.
“Do you date around a lot?” Olivia asked, both her feet on her chair with her knees against her chest.
“I think I date a regular amount,” Adam said.
“When was your last date?” Olivia asked, eyebrow arched.
“A striking woman invited me over for pizza tonight.” Adam nodded toward my mom.
Mom and Olivia both howled with laughter. I kept twirling my hair around my index finger.
“My last date was more than six months ago. I’m a relationship guy and I got out of a relationship a couple years ago. I haven’t had it in me to jump back out there. My job is also really, really time-consuming,” Adam answered Olivia, but his eyes kept landing on me.
“How serious was this last relationship?” Olivia pressed.
“Eh, well, we dated for several months but it kind of stagnated after a while. It never went very deep. That magic wasn’t there,” he explained.
“That was my last relationship, too,” I said without thinking. “It was in my early twenties and lasted for months, but it never went very deep. There was no magic.”
“Favorite vacation spot?” Mom tossed out another question.
Adam thought for a second then said, “Rent a car and drive around the East Coast in the fall.”
“If you could have any dinner guest, who would it be?” Olivia asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Clara Rhodes. I wish I could meet this big-hearted woman who got the respect of a pack like this one,” Adam said, tapping his hand against his chest.
“Are you close to your grandparents?” Olivia asked.
“I’m fairly close to my mom’s parents,” Adam answered after a beat.
“Do you have any secret talents?” Mom asked, pushing her plate away.
“I play the guitar for all my girlfriends. And my mom,” Adam said, his voice syrupy sweet.
“Did you leave behind a best friend when you moved here?” Olivia asked. I chewed on a bite of salty crust while I waited for his answer.
“I have a best friend who lives back in Tulsa. We’ve stayed in touch. I left behind some friends I made at work, but otherwise, where I last was in Ohio, I didn’t really make any friendships that hurt to leave. I sound like a loner, huh?”
“Not a loner, but maybe a little lonely,” Olivia said softly. The look in Adam’s eyes made my hands itch for his.
“How did you find the job as city manager here in Sweet River?” my mom asked.
“I was feeling that drive to keep moving along in my career, not to mention I was kind of ready to hit the road after being in the same place for a while, so I connected with a recruiter. And one of the people in Sweet River’s HR had worked with me previously back in Oklahoma, so they gave me a good reference.”
“Okay, let’s get back to a fun question. What movie do you watch over and over?” Mom asked, her arms folded on the table.
“I watch the Harry Potter movies over and over. Sometimes to really pay attention with popcorn, but then other times, I put it on in the background while I’m cooking dinner or working on a project. Just the sound of it makes me feel kind of peaceful.” I imagined laughing in the kitchen with Adam while scenes from a snowy, magical England flit across the screen in the background. I shook the image away.
“Okay, okay.” I leaned toward the table. “Interrogation time is over.” I stood up, gathering empty plates and carrying them to the sink.
“I quite enjoyed it.” Adam leaned back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head.
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t mind the attention, but I was getting bored,” I said, walking back to the table.
Mom and Olivia exchanged a loaded glance.
“As a community member, I wanted to know more about our city manager,” Olivia said primly.
“Well, I want to know more about all of you,” Adam said, looking around the table.
“What do you want to know?” Mom asked. It was dark out now and the dining room had a soft glow from the couple of lamps lit.
“I take it that you guys have always lived in Sweet River?” Adam cocked his head.
“We have since we were little.” I gestured between Olivia and I, still standing by the table instead of sitting at it. “But Mom moved here with the three of us when we were little. Olivia was seven, but Gracie was only months old.”
Mom nodded. “I needed a fresh start. I was on my own with my girls and a nursing degree I hadn’t used since I had graduated. I knew my mom was here. She’d gotten a job at this little bed and breakfast. I packed all of our things, grabbed the girls, and hoped for the best.”
“Wow.” Adam looked at my mom admiringly. “I see where Lucy gets some of that fierce strength of hers.”
“Oh, my girls got it in spades,” Mom said proudly. “My strength was there, but it often felt tiny, like a seed. But they were seeds I planted in my daughters and I’ve watched it bloom around me in awe.”
I sat down by Mom, tangling myself around her arm like I was still a little girl.
“Building our life here in Sweet River, our own little world, has been the best part of my life,” she said, so achingly honest. Olivia rested her head on my mom’s shoulder.
Adam watched the three of us tangled together with a look I hadn’t seen before. “That’s enviable. I’m happy you guys found that here.”
I felt his comments at the taco truck knotting up in my chest. How he’d felt like he was hanging on for the ride with his family, like his mom was waiting to have her life after him.
“It’s been happy, but dramatic,” I said jokingly, trying to somehow deflect.
“Oh, I think any drama was 50 percent Lucy, 45 percent Gracie, and then like five percent me,” Olivia clarified.
“How did I get five percent more than the baby of the family?” I demanded.
Mom shook her head at Adam. “How did Olivia only get five percent herself?”
“I’m the boring professor,” Olivia stated blandly.
“You’re the one who always dates the—” but then I stopped myself. Mom pressed her lips together.
“The what?” Olivia’s voice went high on the last word.
“You know.” I winced.
“The players, the bad boys; name it and Olivia dated it in high school,” Mom finished my sentence for me.
Olivia’s eyebrows shot up so high I thought she might lose them. I slapped my hand over my mouth to hide my laughter.
“I’m now seeing the drama,” Adam stage whispered to me. “I would guess it’s an even 25 percent from each woman in the family.”
“Fair guess.” I nodded to him.
“I don’t think I deserve to be on equal footing to these twenty-somethings,” Mom protested.
“I stand by my estimate. We can revisit after I’ve done more research,” Adam said, then took a sip of water.
“Oh great, more research projects. I can just see it now. You hanging around our house and planning brunches in the name of research,” I teased him. He had that devilish little gleam in his eye. It was fast becoming one of my favorite Adam expressions.
“I like that you gave your daughters your last name,” Adam said to Mom. “You Rhodes women, from Clara to Gracie, all sharing the same name.”
“Well, that was actually these girls doing.” Mom’s eyes sparkled as she let her eyes drift from me to Olivia. “See, when their dad was still in the picture we shared his last name, very traditional. But I changed my last name after the divorce—it felt healing and necessary. I left my daughter’s names the same, though. I wasn’t sure what their futures held. As the girls got older, they chose to change their last names.”
“We are undeniably the Rhodes girls.” Olivia shrugged with a pleased grin. “We just had to make it legal.”
“We claimed the name long before we made the official change,” I added, thrumming fingers across the table. “We asked Mom one Mother’s Day if she would consent. She said, ‘of course.’”
“A legacy was born,” Mom said cheekily.
“See, that’s a dramatic thing to say,” Olivia said, hands held wide open toward Mom as if to present her case. “You’re definitely a percentage of the drama!”
Mom and Olivia went back to bickering over drama percentages. A story about Olivia dating one of the public pool’s lifeguards and almost causing a drowning when the two of them were flirting at the snack stand was brought up as proof. Olivia brought up Mom’s book club drama when she and a few of the other members thought one of the other club members might’ve been a serial killer mentioned in that month’s book pick.
But Adam and I had our own thing going, a back and forth between us making little jokes about the conversation, just to see if we’d make each other laugh. Stealing glances, sharing reactions, like we’d never left our car bubble from earlier.
At 11:00 p.m., my mom announced she had to go to bed. Olivia said she didn’t want to drive home, so she was going to sleep in the guest bedroom.
Adam asked if I wanted to walk out with him since I had parked my car at Mom’s earlier before riding with her to the library.
I was torn. I knew there was everything here if I wanted to sleep over like Olivia. And normally, I would. But then for reasons I didn’t want to think about, everything in my body said walk out with Adam.
My body won the fight with my mind.
Adam and I waved goodbye to Olivia as she brewed herself a mug of chamomile tea in the kitchen. I ignored any insinuation or accusation in her smug expression. “Call me in the morning,” she said in a sing-songy voice as I closed the door behind me.
“Sorry again for the inquisition tonight,” I said to Adam as we walked down the front porch stairsteps. The sky was inky black, but streetlamps glowed around us. Crickets chirped in the grass.
“I happily agreed to it when your mom said she had a few questions for me.” Adam was grinning down at me and his glasses slid down his nose just a little. It was too adorable, I had to look away.
“Have you really not been on a date in six months?” I couldn’t resist fact-checking.
“Yes,” he said. “Why? You want to set me up?”
“Oh, dear. Who do I hate enough to torture like that?” A warm breeze tickled my skin.
“Ouch,” he whimpered playfully. “I’m a good date, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” We stopped in front of my car. He stepped closer to me. I could smell the delicious Adam scent I’d come to know and love from his borrowed sweatshirt.
“Yeah, I am. I’m a master of the goodnight kiss,” he said this in his playful, cocky Adam way, but there was a tenderness to his tone.
I looked up into his eyes. I could’ve put my hands on his chest, felt his heartbeat. My hands were itching, hanging there beside me.
It was just the two of us, hesitating, waiting, wondering. Always the competition with the two of us: I won’t if you won’t.
I stepped back and swallowed. “I don’t know if I trust your opinion on this.”
“Need to do your own research?” he asked, not stepping back, still close.
“I haven’t been on a date in years, so I’m not the expert on anything dating-related.” I could feel the heat in my cheeks. I touched them mindlessly.
“I literally saw you on a date,” he countered.
“Victor doesn’t count,” I exclaimed. A garage door hummed open a few houses down.
Adam leaned back against my car. “Poor Victor.”
“I think it was very mutual. He didn’t leave that night wanting anything to happen either. Trust me,” I assured him.
He squinted at me. “I don’t know.”
“Are you saying you think he liked me?” I didn’t believe this for a second.
“I can’t imagine someone leaving a date with you and not wanting something to happen,” he said almost too quickly, like he hadn’t thought before he spoke.
I was getting lightheaded. He didn’t make it easy to dislike him and now he wasn’t making it easy to be just friends.
We both leaned against my car facing one another. I tucked a piece of loose hair behind my ear.
He took a breath, like gearing up to say something.
I pushed off the car, startling us both. “I should go. Early morning tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay,” he said surprised, moving so I could get inside the driver’s seat.
Before I could close the door, he leaned down and whispered, “Thanks for sharing your family with me tonight.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said quietly, trying to muster up a bit of that familiar, playful spite.
He blew past what I said. “I know I was enemy number one with the Rhodes women at first. Now, you guys bringing me in, feeding me pizza, and sharing your stories…it means a lot. It felt…”
His own family stories were still knotted up in my chest. “I’m happy to share them with you,” I said with a vulnerability that made it difficult to say. I stared at my steering wheel. I felt a tug in my heart to do more than simply share my family with him. I wanted to open wide the door of my life and pull him in by his collar. I swallowed back this confession.
“Well, thank you, Lucy,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. Then he patted the top of the car frame, “I’ll be seeing you.”
“See you, Adam,” I said back, but he was already to his car by the time I found my voice again.