Chapter 20
Me
Last night I worked on my Etsy shop and even bought a domain under my name. It’s in part thanks to you. Thank you for that.
Adam
there are some lucky people out there about to discover their new favorite artist.
For research purposes, Adam and I were spending the afternoon at Sweet River’s children’s museum. After having trouble finding parking, I stumbled inside nearly fifteen minutes late, spotting Adam while checking in at the front desk. He was studying the giant treehouse in the middle of the front room. He spotted me, too, and waved me over.
Adam and I went outside to walk around the pretend farmer’s market with shiny plastic food and cattle ranches with fake cows the kids were crawling all over. There were hands-on exhibits geared toward introducing kids to science, art, and local history. Adam and I giggled over a toddler pretending to make smoothies at a pretend food truck and I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d never thought to invite the museum to the festival before.
I was fanning myself in the June heat when Adam led me over to the fake lake next.
“Ever go fishing?” he asked, grabbing a child-sized pretend fishing pole.
“Not with magnet bait.” I shook the small magnet hanging off the pole to aid toddlers in their pursuit of magnetized fish.
“Should I try or will I just make the kids feel bad?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“Go for it.” I swung my arm toward the lake where one tiny tot was trying to crawl into “shwim.”
“Maybe the children can learn from me,” he said, cockily casting his pole.
Minutes passed.
He kept brushing the magnet bait over different brightly-colored fake fish to no avail. He moved the fishing pole around the lake to different spots. He tried flinging it toward the fish. Kids started snickering.
One kid who was catching fish after fish eventually offered to help Adam with his technique. “I’m fine, man. I think the magnet is broken,” Adam said to him, trying to retain some pride. He finally dropped the fishing pole back into the water and gave up.
A few parents shook their heads in judgment.
“It’s probably broken.” I patted his shoulder.
The kid who offered to help earlier grabbed Adam’s discarded pole and started fishing with it, a pole in each hand. “Seems fine to me,” he called after us.
We strolled toward the arts and crafts area in the back. We passed by kid-sized crafts tables, a competition display, and a dress-up closet until we discovered a small plexiglass room for finger painting.
There were big tubs of different colored paint hanging by the entrance where you could dunk your hands in and then finger paint on the four plexiglass walls.
Adam and I threw on the plain, oversized white tee shirts they offered us to protect our clothes, fitting snugly on our adult-sized bodies, especially his. We giggled, checking each other out in the snug shirts as we wandered into the room.
It was just the two of us in there for now. I dipped my hands in red and he dunked his in orange. The paint was thick and cold.
I started painting little fireworks across the clear wall and Adam started making handprints. I followed behind him and made one of his handprints into a turkey, then another into a bouquet. He turned around finally noticing, walking backwards to see what I’d turned his creations into. A smile of appreciation spread across his face.
“I like this brain,” he said as he hovered his hands near both sides of my head.
“No! Do not get orange paint on my hair!” I squealed, backing up against one of the clean walls.
“Fine.” He grinned over me, settling for placing a dripping hand against the wall on either side of my head. I looked up at him with both our chests rising and falling a beat apart. “Better?” he asked.
There was that itch to be closer to him. My chest against his chest. His lips against my lips. “Better,” I breathed.
He took a step closer. The heat of his arms was around me, his biceps brushing against my cheek as his warm scent overwhelmed me.
His head hung low, close to mine, a kiss away. My body arched from the wall, closing in against his.
“Mommy! I want to make hand turkeys, too!”a little girl shouted as she ran inside. Her mom gazed questioningly at Adam and me as she followed behind her daughter.
Adam and I broke apart. Both our cheeks were redder than the paint on the walls.
We washed our hands and returned our tee shirts, then awkwardly wandered over to the stuffed animal making table.
Not even a kid’s museum could put out the flicker of whatever was between us. I chewed on my lip nervously as we picked our fabric and patterns. I chose a black and white cow while Adam opted for a pink mouse. When he rummaged around some of the additional (and somewhat advanced) options to find a squeaker, I said, “Wow, getting carried away?”
He just winked.
Surrounded by crafting children and their parents, who didn’t seem to like how much space we two adults were taking at the craft table, I was still flushed over Adam and his paint-covered hands. And now his stupid, sexy wink, too.
His glasses adorably slid low on his nose as he carefully constructed his stuffed animal following each direction meticulously.
I sloppily threw some stuffing into my cow, watching his hands. Had I noticed his hands before? A visceral memory of them on my wet clothes during our water fight flashed through my mind.
This was not the time. I tried to focus on my cow. I haphazardly tried to sew it together.
“Need some help?” Adam offered, eyeing my work judgmentally.
“I like Moonica just as she is,” I defended my work, continuing my sewing mess. My thread was all knotted, but at least it somewhat held the stuffing inside.
“Moonica, huh?” he asked, hard at work and hunched over. He barely fit at this table designed for five-year-olds. “I like the name.”
Moments later, I’d given up and was checking my emails on my phone next to my sort-of-finished-now-scary stuffed cow, when Adam reached across the table and set the cutest little plush mouse before me.
“Brag much?” I said in awe, grabbing hold of his perfectly crafted toy mouse.
“For Stevie,” he said. That was why he hunted for a squeaker. I melted entirely right there at the sticky, noisy craft table. They would need to clean me up with the rest of the mess.
“You sew?” was all I could muster from my puddle-state.
“I told you a little bit of how I really wanted a close family, kind of like yours, growing up? I tried to get that with my own grandmother. She loved to sew, so I asked her to teach me. I spent a lot of my time as a kid sewing with my grandma, watching her soap operas, and hearing stories about her childhood,” he explained, bashful and vulnerable.
I looked down at the mouse in my hands. “You’re kind of amazing at everything you do, aren’t you?”
“Eh, I do well with instructions,” he said, his blush spreading to his ears.
“Meanwhile,” I rolled Moonica across the table to him, “instructions are not my forte.”
He grinned at the jumble of fabric and thread I’d made. “I think she’s perfect.” He tucked her into his back pocket.
It was late afternoon as we walked back outside toward the parking lot. “You hungry?” he asked. “We could get dinner, you know, for research purposes.”
“Oh, well, research will have to wait. I can’t get dinner tonight,” I said. Because awkwardly, I had plans.
“Not another date with one of my friends, I hope,” he said, his voice trying for playful, but his eyes questioning.
I shook my head, looking down at my feet on the hot pavement as we walked.
“Not a date with anyone I know,” he said, then swallowed. “But a date?”
Why did answering him feel like I was erasing every sweet moment from today? Like I was ruining a perfectly good thing. A perfect and good thing.
“A date, yes. Another blind date. My mom had her turn and now Olivia’s having her turn,” I said, nervously tucking some of my messy curls behind my ear. “Some guy she knows from work. Her idea, not mine.”
“From the university,” he said, his voice bordering on miserable, like this information was a punch to the gut.
“Yeah,” I choked out apologetically. Wasn’t a date supposed to be fun? This date hadn’t even begun and it was far from fun.
We were at my Bug now. I glanced around the parking lot, looking for his car. Silence and awkward tension pulsed between us.
“Thanks for today,” I mumbled as I opened my door. “I like?—”
He shut my car door suddenly and his arm brushed against my back. I glanced up at him in surprise.
“Lucy,” he said frustratedly.
“What?”
He kept his hand against the car door, his arm next to my head. “Why are you always getting set up with guys who aren’t me?” he demanded, his voice in agony.
My stomach dropped. I wasn’t sure who was more agonized, him or me. “Because we don’t…” My voice broke. Was there even a reason anymore?
He yanked his hand off my car.
“Yeah, yeah, I know the script.” His voice was low. “Have a good date. I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
I watched him walk to his car, Moonica still in his back pocket.