Chapter Eighteen
M y bad mood follows me to the university library. Who does Adam think he is, going off on me for no reason?
I didn’t creep over to the couch in the middle of the night and remove his kidney while he was sleeping.
I wasn’t snooping in a private journal. I read a book (not mine, not the library’s, his !) and I dared to do it while sitting on his “bed.” Arrest me.
Lock me up and throw away the key. Hang me from the gallows!
I’m thankfully able to put it aside just long enough to work on my group presentation on adolescent literacy and why analog instruction is still relevant in an increasingly digital society.
But the minute I say goodbye to my classmates and head home, the knots in my body tighten to the point it would take a twenty-four-hour massage to loosen me up.
I hope Adam isn’t home when I get back because I refuse to make the first move, but he’s roughhousing with Rocket on the living room floor.
Since I’m not ready for the awkwardness of our first words post whatever the hell that was this morning, I grab Rocket’s leash from the hook near the front door and call out, “Rocket Man! C’mere, boy. ”
At his name, Rocket abandons Adam and races over to me. Take that! I bend and love him up for a few seconds before hooking him to the leash.
“I just took him out an hour ago.”
Still focusing on Rocket, I say, “I need some puppy time.” I clench my fists.
Why am I justifying myself to Adam? I knew Rocket first, and based on the way the dog is frantically running around me, he might not need to go out, but he wants to.
That’s enough for me. Without further explanation or details (because I’m under no more obligation to keep Adam updated on my whereabouts than he is to me about his), I leave the apartment and lead Rocket over to the small dog run in Union Square Park.
When I release him from his leash, he immediately makes friends with a shaggy gray sheepdog while I sit on an empty brown wooden bench and watch.
Other than the convenience of being around the corner, Marcia isn’t a fan of this dog park.
It’s small and Rocket has the personality of a much larger dog.
She also claims there’s a constant cloud of dust hanging over and it smells like pee.
I don’t notice either of these things today, maybe because it’s empty aside from the owner of the sheepdog talking on his phone on the bench next to mine.
The air is cold and wet like it either just stopped raining or is about to start.
It’s not pleasant, but I’m happy to be anywhere besides home with Adam.
Almost like I summoned him, the devil himself appears two minutes later. “Why does it always smell like piss in this place?” He sits down next to me.
I stiffen and shift an inch away from him.
“Do you not trust me to take Rocket? I was doing it long before you moved in.” I don’t look at him as I say this.
My gaze remains on Rocket. He’s slapping his front legs repeatedly with his butt in the air, initiating play with a new arrival, some sort of poodle mix.
“Of course I trust you.”
“Then why did you follow me here?”
“To apologize. I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier.”
I turn away from the bouncy dogs to look at him and nearly wince.
He’s so handsome, it’s almost painful. Even in his gray sweater fleece jacket, and loose jeans, he’s ready for a casting call for Emily in Paris or a Bachelor spin-off. If a stranger as hot as Adam initiated conversation with me in a dog park, it would be a brag-worthy moment.
“So why did you?”
He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “It was the book you were reading… The Outsiders . My mom gave it to me. Her mom gave it to her. The annotations are from all three of us scribbling in the margins in real time while reading.”
A blast of heat creeps across my face. Oh shit, it was a little like reading a diary. “I’d never have purposely invaded your privacy if I’d known. For what it’s worth, I was entirely focused on the story itself. I barely read the annotations.”
“It’s not top-secret, classified stuff or anything.
It’s just…” He stares down at his scuffed white Vans and kicks a pebble with his foot.
“I don’t have many tangible reminders of my mom.
The book is old. If it gets damaged, there’ll be one less.
” He shrugs into himself. “But whatever, it’s my problem, not yours.
I should probably keep it somewhere safe instead of bringing it with me everywhere I go. ”
I imagine losing my mom so young and having only a handful of her personal items to cling to. I’d be protective of them too. My heart aches for Adam. “I get it. I’m sorry.”
He scoffs. “This is my apology, Sabrina. I’m the sorry one.” His intense glare morphs into a cheek-splitting, dimple-twinkling grin that I can’t help but return.
“When was the last time you read it?”
“Last night actually. I do a reread about once a year around her birthday.”
“It aged well! Even today, teenagers deal with bullying, social classes, stereotyping based on socioeconomic factors. All of it.”
“Do it for Johnny!”
“Nothing gold can stay.” We exchange silly grins again.
The wind rips through me and I lift the hood of my red windbreaker over my head. “Marcia told me about your mom. I’m so sorry.”
He nods solemnly. “Me too.”
“I haven’t seen or heard from my dad in almost twenty years.” I don’t know why I say this, and I instantly wish I could take it back. A deadbeat parent is not the same as a dead one.
“I sometimes wish I didn’t know mine,” he says, tapping his foot along the sparse grass.
If ever there was an opening to ask for more details about his father, this is it. “Marcia said he kept you from her when he found out she was bi. What was that like?” My shoulders tense up as I brace myself for his reaction to my prodding. “No pressure to talk about it, of course.”
Adam shifts in his seat. “It wasn’t like I saw her every weekend before my grandpa died either, but she stopped being there on holidays and birthdays.
I’d get cards and gifts in the mail and the occasional phone call instead, and he never told me why.
” He looks at me with wide eyes. “I had no idea it was his doing until I reached out to her directly last year.”
All too familiar with blaming a grandparent for a parent’s failings, I’m tempted to squeeze his hand.
“When I confronted him, he said he was shielding me because I was too young to learn about sex.” He breathes out a laugh.
“I was a teenager! It’s not like I didn’t already know just about everything.
Some of my close friends were queer.” He rubs aggressively at a speck of dirt on his palm.
“I already knew my dad was socially conservative. We fought about it all the time, but I didn’t think he’d shun his own mother.
I asked why it bothered him and why it was any of his business in the first place. ”
“What did he say?” I hold my breath.
“He brushed me off like he didn’t know himself. There were no antiqueer slurs, but there was no apology or ownership of his homophobia either.” He lets out a heavy sigh. “The worst part is that he’s not a bad father and he loves me. How can someone be a good father but a bad person?”
I figure it’s a rhetorical question and don’t offer an answer.
Adam smiles over at Rocket, who has one end of a piece of tree bark in his mouth while the poodle mix bites onto the other side, Lady and the Tramp style. “That dog,” he says with obvious affection.
“He’s the best. Marcia told me about him at our first meeting for coffee as if it might be a deal-breaker.
It just made me want to move in more.” We’re both still watching the dogs when I say, “I hold a lot of guilt for the way I treated my own grandmother. She was older than Marcia… mideighties… and died my freshman year of college.” The confession comes out before I even realize what I’m saying.
I’ve never talked to anyone about this before, but something about Adam makes me want to open up.
Or maybe I just want to reciprocate his own transparency.
“What did you do? Push her down the stairs? Withhold her medication?”
I gasp. “Of course not! I didn’t kill her!” I shudder at the thought. Although it might also be the decreasing temperature outside.
Adam chuckles. “Your voice got all serious… I thought maybe it was criminal.”
“Not at all, but it wasn’t right.”
I explain how I completely disregarded all the wonderful things she did for me and acted like it was her who abandoned me and not her son.
“I slept over at a friend’s house and saw the way her father doted on her.
He was the one who drove us home from the movies and secretly got us ice cream even though we were having dinner soon.
He looked at my friend with such love. The love of…
well, a father. And all of a sudden, I was hit with what I’d been missing all that time, and it was like someone changed the Spotify playlist from soft rock to rage.
I went from wanting to cuddle with my nana in her bed to muttering under my breath and slamming doors.
It wasn’t her fault. It was his. But he wasn’t there to take it, and she was.
” I wipe my eyes. My God . Why can’t I talk about my grandma without crying?
Even so, it’s cathartic to say it out loud.
Adam’s eyes go soft. “I’m nearly positive you weren’t as bad as you think you were. All kids rebel against their parental figures. I bet your nana expected it and understood.”
I shrug. “Audrina was always perfect. I had anger issues I’ll never be able to make up for.”