Chapter 21
Olivia
how’s the date?
Me
ok
Olivia
only ok?! He’s definitely your type. I picked him specifically for you.
Me
he’s fine. I’m just distracted.
he really is a nice guy
Olivia
“fine” and “nice.” Sounds like a dream man.
why are you distracted?
Me
ahhhh I can’t talk about it right now
Olivia
shall I guess?
Me
no because I’m afraid you’ll guess right
Olivia
a tall, dark, and bespectacled man?
Irushed through my date like I was on my way to something else. My date, John, probably thought after our date I was on my way to another. By the end of the night, he’d given up, too.
We met at a nice Mexican restaurant. He offered to order appetizers, but my stomach was in knots, so I declined. I barely touched my entree. He asked me if it was too spicy, so I said I wasn’t feeling well. Because I wasn’t.
Adam’s words played on a loop in my mind like a background song for the whole evening. Why was I on a date with anyone other than him?
John asked me lots of questions about teaching, so much so it started to feel like a bad job interview. There was no flirting. I asked him the bare minimum that was required to be polite. He did not ask for my number or to see me again.
We both said, “It was nice to meet you,” and then I drove straight to Olivia’s.
“Adam said WHAT?” Olivia exclaimed after I told her everything that happened. I even filled her in on our late-night phone call that turned into a FaceTime. About all the thoughts and feelings that’d been swimming around in my head the past few weeks.
We sat together on her big, fluffy white duvet-covered bed.
“Wait, wait,” Olivia said before I could reply, both palms raised. “He told you he is jealous you’re being set up with other guys. He obviously wants to be the one on the dates with you.”
“Maybe,” I said, even though I knew it already. I’d known it for a while.
“Lucy, really? Come on. There is no other way to take what he said.” She grabbed my arms, shaking them. “He was telling you he’s into you. He put it out there.”
I buried my face into a pillow. “Liv. What do I do?”
“No. Not what do you do. I want to hear, what do you feel?”
“I feel a lot of feelings,” I moaned. “One being a deep feeling of…” I moaned again. Olivia waited. “A deep feeling of like. I really like him. He is constantly proving my worst assumptions wrong. He’s surprisingly sweet. He’s also really hot. Like, let’s face it. His hotness has confused me since the very beginning.”
“I remember well.” Olivia nodded along.
“The other feeling is foreboding. Like there is a big sign flashing overhead saying, DO NOT ENTER. A sign I hung up with my own bare hands. How can I ignore my own good judgment?”
Olivia took in a deep breath that was always a precursor for a big sister speech. “Luce, you based your judgments on the perception he was stealing the festival from you and going to sell out Grandma’s legacy—he’s proven that wrong. He hired you, paid you for your work unlike in the past, and he holds your opinion in great esteem. I think he would make Grandma proud with the choices he’s made. She’d love the children’s museum being involved. She’d love the new concert, all of it.”
I wrapped my arms around a soft pillow and held it close.
“You were wrong about Adam. That’s a good thing,” Olivia said gently.
“You’re right. I’ve known that for a while. But what if it’s based on more than that?” I rustled the pillowcase in between my fingers.
“What else would it be based on?”
I shrugged. She scooted closer to me on the bed. “What?”
“I’ve seen what’s happened in the past. Our lives have been littered with heartache and disappointment that maybe we could’ve avoided…if only we’d known. I don’t want to ignore the signals and signs that someone might hurt me, or leave me, or…”
“Break you?” she whispered.
“I feel like heartbreak is a trap. There had to be signs or something giving it a way that people just miss.” My voice was crushed under the weight of tears. “All my life, I’ve tried to be smart about relationships and my heart. To have good judgment and avoid…my whole life getting turned upside down.”
“Sure, sometimes love might turn your life upside down in a bad way. But sometimes love turns your life upside down in a good way,” Olivia said. “Sometimes, a little shake up is what our lives need.”
I thought of Olivia’s own shake up. Her tears and shock when Ryan walked out of her life. “What about…” I stopped myself.
“Luce, are you thinking about my breakup with Ryan? Because Ryan wasn’t a trap. There wouldn’t have been signs or signals. Ryan was a great man. Maybe there were signs we weren’t going to last forever, that we weren’t on the same page anymore, but I eventually saw those when I was meant to see them.”
I took a jagged breath. “You don’t regret Ryan?”
“I could never regret Ryan. I loved what we had while we had it. I do regret that you only trust your feelings on what could be wrong or bad. What about all the feelings telling you that Adam might be right for you?”
I thought of the ache in my gut to be close to him. How my heart seemed to inherently trust him like a wave lapping at the shore, over and over, even when I was trying to build walls in the sand.
I mean, this man said my art made him feel at home. He had a piece of my heart hanging on his dining room wall and treated it like his most prized possession. If I wasn’t careful, he’d have the whole thing in the palm of his hand.
Maybe I didn’t want to be careful anymore.
“You think I should…” I couldn’t even verbalize any of it. It was all so tangled up and stuck in my throat.
But Olivia knew. I didn’t have to say anything. She nodded at me. “I think you should.”
The next morning my hands were shaking as I poured my coffee. I almost left the house without my phone when I left for a meeting. A knot of excitement and fear in my belly.
I was going to see Adam today. I had no plans for what I wanted to do but, I wouldn’t deny my feelings anymore. I had to acknowledge there was something between us. There had been from the start and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. From there, we’d see what happened. The knot tightened. A vulnerable, terrified flicker of hope burned in my chest as I walked into Adam’s office.
His face was a storm. Arms angrily crossed over his chest. His eyes landed on me and they softened a little. Just a little.
“Hi.” I gave a hesitant wave. “Is everything okay?”
“Hey.” His voice was tense as he stood behind his desk. “Did you see my email?”
I shook my head, pulling out my phone immediately to find the email.
“The Lims pulled out of the festival.”
My heart sank. The Lims were the backbone of the festival. One of our largest sponsors, one of our biggest draws, one of our oldest relationships. Mr. Lim called me Little Lucy Goosie. Mrs. Lim tried to set me up with one of her sons.
I couldn’t imagine the festival without the Lims. “What happened?” My voice was high with shock.
“He said he doesn’t have the money this year. I tried to negotiate something smaller, but it was a big no. They don’t want to be part of it in any way.”
“What exactly did you say to him?” Maybe my voice was harsh. But there had to be some trigger that was set off.
“What we’ve been saying to all our longtime donors. Everything you told me to say.” Adam sounded defensive. And exhausted.
“Did you mention any of the changes to the festival?” I tried to steady my voice, even though I worried he had scared them away somehow.
“I mentioned the ones he asked about, yeah. I bragged on the choir, too.”
“Adam.” My voice fell. I squeezed my eyes.
“What?” He looked hurt. “You think he’s pulling out because I mentioned two minor changes to a summer festival? There’s no way.”
“I know this family, Adam. They could be scared off. Especially if they think we’re ruining a tradition of theirs.” I dropped down in the seat across from his desk and fell back. “I was scared of this happening with so many changes.”
“Don’t act like you aren’t a part of these changes, too, Lucy.” Adam sat down.
I sat up straight. “Should I call him?”
“You already spoke with him. You were the first one to talk to him, remember? He chose to do this after talking to you. I doubt he decided to withdraw during my call with him. He stated it as if it was a decision that he and the team had come to together prior to our conversation.”
“Wait.” I put up a hand. “Are you trying to imply that I’m the reason he dropped?”
“Stings to get the blame thrown your way, huh?” He leaned forward on his elbows.
“I wasn’t blaming you,” I spit out. I wasn’t blaming him per se. I was merely investigating.
“Yeah, yeah, you were just blaming my ideas.” Adam rubbed his temples.
“They’re some of our longest supporters. Of course, I’m trying to figure out what pushed them away.”
“And it’s got to be me. Adam has got to be what pushed them away, right? I have to be the reason we lost Lucy’s favorite donors. I have to be the reason we lost the funding everyone thought we could rely on.” He pointed to himself dramatically.
“Money. Of course. That’s what hurts—the loss of funding,” I said under my breath. I was trying to grapple with losing this familiar family, their delicious food, their banter, and their entire presence from the festival…and Adam was reeling from the loss of funds. I knew he cared about me and the festival, I did, but he didn’t know the Lims like I did.
“Well, do you know where we can make up for that loss?” His eyes went wide with hurt. “Because managing the financial side of this is my job. I’m supposed to worry about it. Remember? That’s part of my 50 percent of the work,” he said gruffly.
He was mad now and he had every right to be. I could get frustrated with his financial perspective, but he was right. I had happily left that burden on his shoulders. It wasn’t fair for me to use it against him now as if it was a moral failing.
“I’m sure I can get some of our current donors to give a little more,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.
“Tell them how much bigger the festival is going to be. Sometimes change can be a positive spin, you know? If you’re not apologizing for it the whole time. It could be phrased as a good thing—a great thing.” His eyes were on his desk, not me. This was not how I imagined this morning unfolding.
“I do phrase it as a good thing,” I said. “But come on, you know some people are freaked out.” I had been feeling excited and proud of the festival’s growth. He’d heard me bragging.
“I’m just tired of this narrative about me being the bad guy coming in and ruining everything.”
“You’re projecting.” My heart was racing now. Skin sweating. How could Adam, after these past few weeks, still think I was pushing that narrative?
“How am I projecting? I know how it’s been. You think I don’t remember what Olivia said when she first met me? Working with the enemy.”
I scooted to the edge of my chair. “I don’t think you’re the enemy, Adam. You’ve got to know that.” This conversation was about more than losing the Lims. It was about our conversation outside the museum, too. About the past few weeks.
“You’re so much more than that to me,” I said quietly. I wasn’t even sure he could hear me.
We were both breathing, like coming up for air. There were too many feelings in one room, too many feelings between two people.
“Let’s cool off,” he finally said. “We need to come up with a game plan. We can separate, brainstorm, and connect later. You can call the Lims, but I think we should move forward as if they’re not part of the festival.”
“Yeah, okay.” I stood up, grabbed my bag, and quietly walked to the door. Adam had turned to his computer and was typing quickly.
I could hear the sounds of the office all around me. Victor was on a phone call. The elevator doors pinged. Adam was still facing his computer. His jaw was tense, his breathing stressed.
I felt stressed, too.
But I didn’t want to go. There was more to say between us.
“I guess I’ll go then?” I broke the silence.
He turned to me. “It’s probably better if you do. We have a way of…distracting each other.”
The tension in the room, his phone ringing on his desk, probably meant it wasn’t a good time for me to say, “By the way, I really like you and want to kiss your face,” so I nodded in agreement and left for home.