19 Adam
19 Adam
Hu ? , Vi ? t Nam
Connor doesn’t emerge from his room until a quarter past six. Adam knows this, because he’s been holed up with Connor for
the better part of the day, trying to convince him to rejoin the tour, despite Veronica’s cruel, two-timing heart and the
slap-punch heard around Hu ? .
Connor spends most of the hours ranting about suing ?? c and Love Yêu Tours, though Adam takes neither declaration seriously. And while Connor’s dramatics—throwing pillows across
the room, wailing into his own reflection—are undeniably tiresome, Adam understands where he’s coming from. Betrayal is a
bitch. It was, after all, what prevented Adam from ever thinking about a woman with serious intentions. Until now.
The whole time Adam is coaxing Connor down, he can’t stop imagining Evie and Riley on their date. Would they be strolling
hand-in-hand? Would Riley try to kiss her under an archway of blooms? Would Evie let him? The thought makes Adam clench his fists. He knows he has no right to be possessive, but the notion of anyone touching Evie fills him with a fury he’s never felt. It’s primal to want someone like this. Uncomfortable.
But he can’t help himself. All he wants is to grab her as soon as she comes back, take her to his room, and finish what they’ve
started—again and again. Kissing her lips until she’s forgotten her name. Licking down every inch of bare skin until she shudders
into him—
“You coming to dinner?” Connor asks, his hand on the doorjamb, all prior melodramatics forgotten at the thought of a hot meal.
Adam shakes his head tightly. He’s in no mood to see anyone. And if he meets Riley, he’s afraid he’ll try to punch him or
something equally steeped in unnecessary machismo. Two physical assaults on one tour. Doesn’t seem like the best advertising.
Instead, Adam stalks to his room and takes a very cold shower, trying (and failing) not to think about Evie.
The next day, Riley, Fen, Adam, and Evie are due to go on an overnight expedition to the massive caves near the village of
Phong Nha while the rest of the group visits the Museum of Royal Antiquities. There’s a slow, gray drizzle outside, and most
everyone prefers the warmth of the museum—or better yet, a cozy day at the hotel, enjoying all the amenities and playing card
games in their robes while drinking thick, French-style hot chocolate. This is what he finds the tour’s older contingent doing,
all while heckling the younger folks for venturing out in the rain like fools.
But Adam is anxious to see the much-lauded caves, known as some of the largest in the world. The four guests will get private
access to the campgrounds, situated right at the mouth of one of the openings, a rare perk that few will ever experience.
Early in the morning, Adam sets out to buy a plastic poncho for himself from a shop near the hotel—and on second thought,
gets ponchos for the rest of the group. They’ll stay dry once they’re inside the caves, but the hike there will be wet. He
shoves the ponchos into his backpack, then adds a change of clothes, nuts and dried fruit from the Dong Ba Market, and plenty
of water.
Downstairs in the lobby, the first tour group is leaving for the museum. Just before Fen joins them, she slips something in
Evie’s hand that makes Evie redden tremendously, fumbling to push Fen’s gift into her pocket before anyone can see. Cackling,
Fen blows Evie a kiss, to which Evie responds with a lift of her middle finger.
“The universal gesture of conviviality,” Adam says.
Evie turns, still a little red. He likes seeing her flustered, unsure for once, though he would prefer to be the cause of it. Today she wears a pair of skintight leggings that hug every curve, sending a jolt of arousal through him. Her crop top reveals a few inches of tanned skin, on top of which hangs an unzipped, slightly oversized hoodie. Her hair is swept into a bun on her head with one of those ridiculous pens of hers that constantly fall out, clattering on the ground as her unruly strands release.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she demands. She runs her tongue over her teeth. “Do I have watercress in my teeth?”
He clears his throat. “Isn’t Fen coming?”
“No.” She rolls her eyes. “She changed her mind at the last minute. Said that if she sprained her ankle in a wet cave, her
agent would have her head. Then she proceeded to explain to me how every inch of her body is insured and would I want to be
the cause of such a loss to the world?”
“The cinematic gods would never forgive us. What’d she give you just now?”
“None of your business,” she snaps.
Again, that poppy-red flush. The embarrassed bite of her lip. Adam swallows a groan. How is she so damn sexy when she’s just
standing there in tennis shoes and a messy bun?
“Okay,” he says with amusement. “Keep your secret. We just waiting for Riley?”
“Erm, no,” she mumbles. She picks up her backpack—a tiny thing that likely holds little more than a water bottle and that
notebook she’s always carrying around—and makes for the lobby doors. “He said he had indigestion. Or something.”
“ Or something ,” Adam repeats. He hides a smile as he trots next to her. “Does that mean your romantic date didn’t go well?”
“Again, none of your business, Curious George.”
“What happened? Did he bore you to death? Try to get you to read his new manuscript?”
“So what if he did? Some of us like to consume literature more current than Tolstoy.”
“Dusted annals driven to a shelf—hieroglyphs of a broken heart—”
He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. But the words are inside of him now, memorized as if they were a part of his own history.
She stops suddenly, making him crash into her. Her eyes widen. “You read my poems?”
“Your whole book.”
“And you hated it.” She raises her eyebrows, arms crossed, a defensive pose meant to field criticism. Yet somewhere on her
scowling face is a raw vulnerability she’s trying to hide. She cares about what he thinks, even if she believes he doesn’t
like her work. It hurts him to see her like this. Why would she think anyone could hate her words? He’d devoured every single
poem, each describing the yearning of the diaspora, the weight of history. Longing threads across each line. Her imagery is
precise, her language at turns lyric and then shockingly brusque. An echo of her soul, he likes to think. Honest and complicated
and worthy of many rereadings.
But he doesn’t say this. He just takes an extra poncho out of his bag and drapes it on her body. He pulls up the hood so it
covers her head. There’s a tenderness to the gesture that makes his heart thud a little louder. It feels right . He’s happy just being around her, protecting her, listening to her. This quiet joy is different but related to the arousal
he feels every time she makes her way across his sight line.
What is this thing between them? It’s not love. It’s much, much too soon for that. It took him years to tell Lana he loved her.
But Adam has to admit that it’s more than lust with Evie. Lust-plus.
In her ear, he whispers, “I loved every fucking word.”
The surprised gratitude on her face is almost enough to make him melt.
Later, their guide, H ? i, drives them to the paths leading to Hang én, one of the largest caves in the world, and the place where they will be spending
the night. Through the car window, Adam watches the slow fall of the rain, the way the threads crisscross and waver, a thousand
pearls clinging to the windshield. The guide describes underground rivers where they can swim and passages leading to the
jungles. Tenth-century religious altars can still be found in the depths of the caves. Adam watches Evie’s eyes widen at H ? i’s descriptions, her wonder bubbling to the surface.
“I can’t wait,” she breathes.
“Not a nice day to hike,” H ? i says, glancing back at them in the rearview mirror.
“Good day to swim in a cave, though,” Adam says. Not that he brought a swimsuit. It’s the one thing he forgot.
“You want to turn back?”
Adam gives Evie a questioning look, but she shakes her head firmly. “Not on your life.”
They trek for hours through a jungle, grateful for the ponchos as they huddle under whatever available tree cover they can
find. The rain starts and stops, punctuated by bright bursts of sunlight that don’t seem to last more than a few minutes.
Evie doesn’t complain even a little, though Adam can hear her breath start to quicken as the uphill climbs get steeper. He
slows his pace so they can walk side by side.
H ? i leads the way with a humongous backpack jammed with supplies. They stop for lunch at the Ban Doong village, where the Bru-Van
Kieu, an ethnic minority of Vi ? t Nam, lives. Over fish soup and bowls of rice, villagers talk about their ancestors’ escape from the great flood, and how
their small school emerged to serve the community. Adam and Evie listen, rapt.
Afterward, Evie plays with the children, who gravitate to her like she’s their personal jungle gym. They hang off her, braiding
her hair, offering her bites of food. Her clear laugh lights up the huts. She dances a little cloth doll around one girl’s
forearm, making her giggle. Another child tries to feed her a piece of banana.
“Your wife wants children, yes?” H ? i asks Adam in a low voice.
Adam starts. “No, she’s not—”
“Take it from me, my children are the treasures of my life. They require time, they require money, but you won’t regret them.
You give her babies. Lots of babies. My wife is pregnant right now!”
Unbidden, the image of Evie with a child in her arms rises in Adam’s mind. Rocking slowly in a nursery glider while he stands
in the doorway, beaming. He shakes the thought violently away.
“I hardly know that woman,” he tells H ? i, his voice gruff even to his own ears. “We met a couple weeks ago.”
“No?”
“Yes.”
“Your hearts have met long before that, I think,” the other man says. “You remind me of my wife and me. Twinned souls. This
is a rare thing—and rarer still when those souls are so at odds.”
At that point, Evie finally, laughingly sheds her fan club of children and makes her way to them. “We’re losing light, gentlemen.
Chop-chop.”
“Is that another inane Americanism?” Adam mutters.
Evie fluffs her hair and leads the way back onto the trail.
Sweaty but invigorated by the sudden spot of sunshine in Ban Doong, the three of them slosh through a damp valley on limestone
paths and soon arrive at a cave entrance—the most remote one—shaped like a wide, gaping eye. Water dimples the surface of
the silt-colored water. Because of the rain, which had picked up after they left the village, they are the only ones at Hang
én that day. The guide tells them that they are likely to be the only people around for the next day or so due to the unexpected
storms.
“I don’t mind,” Evie says.
“Turn around,” Adam tells her.
Though she is facing the interior of the cave, staring at the rough patterns on the walls, she obliges, pivoting her gaze
back toward the jungle, which now reveals a cinematic vista of the towering trees and the streaming water. The scene looks
utterly untouched, especially without the crowds, and Evie gasps at the sight, so unlike anything either of them has seen.
They could have been in another era entirely.
She reaches for his hand and squeezes. His heart flips.
“Is this real life?” she whispers.
“I’m not sure. It could be a dream. Primordial.”
“Magical.”
The paths are muddy and slippery, but Evie presses on, leading them into the interior of the cave. Around them, the light
buzzing of insects, settling in for the evening.
“Maybe she should be the guide,” H ? i says.
Adam shoots him a wry smile. “I think she would prefer that.”
Once inside, they set their things as far from the opening as they can to avoid the wet splatter of rain, coming down ever faster now. H ? i builds a small fire and tells them to explore while he sets up the tents. He urges them to swim in the water, cooled by
the shade. A perfect antidote to the humid jungle heat.
Evie whispers to Adam, “I probably shouldn’t tell him I intend on skinny-dipping when his back is turned. I forgot my bathing
suit.”
Adam grits his teeth at the image.
Inside the cave, there’s a palpable feeling of crystallized awe, a settled solemnity earned from centuries of formation and
repose. Timeless, yet constantly shifting. The light refracts and diffuses in a golden stream, grazing the surface of the
rocks, the soft yellow sand. There’s an almost animal-like musk in the air, something sensuous and questing.
Soon they arrive at the opening of a dark, narrow tunnel. There’s too little room, so they crowd against each other, hip to
hip. It would take next to nothing for Adam to place his hand on her waist, tug her in front of him, where she would feel
the hardness of his desire for her. But he doesn’t. He backs away.
“We should get headlamps if we go any further,” he says. “Let’s return.”
Back at the campsite, H ? i kneels before the fire, peering at his satellite phone with concern. When he sees them, he brushes the dirt from his knees.
“I’m so sorry to do this,” he says. “My wife is giving birth. The baby is coming early—too early. I have to return to her.”
“Of course you do,” Evie says. She puts a hand on his arm. “What can we do?”
“Nothing; I just need to go now, so I’ll make it back.”
“It’s not too dark?” Adam asks. The dusk is settling in, and it will likely be an hour or two tops before the sun disappears
completely.
“I’ll have my lantern. I’m used to this. But you—” Here, H ? i glances around the cave, at the display of tents. “You’ll come with me?”
“I think that’d just slow you down,” Evie says, frowning. “Besides, I’d like to see the caves. Stay the night like we planned. I think we’ll be fine. It’s just one night.”
She throws a questioning glance at Adam, who nods firmly. “Yes, we will be.”
“I can send another guide in the morning to get you home,” H ? i says, a bit uncertainly. “You’re sure you’ll be all right by yourselves for the night?”
Adam says, “Completely. I won’t leave her side.”
Evie says indignantly, “Hey. I’m not some helpless damsel in a cave. Maybe you’re the one that needs me not to leave your side.”
“But what about the tigers?” Adam teases.
Evie narrows her eyes, then turns to the guide. “Just go take care of your family, H ? i.”
The other man nods, too distracted by the thought of his wife to protest. He deposits most of the food and supplies for them,
as well as an extra satellite phone. His backpack thus lightened, he begins to make his way back through the entrance. He
waves, disappearing into the trees, now fleet-footed without two extra hikers dragging him down. The rain has almost stopped,
save an occasional flicker of wetness from the shaking branches.
And then it’s just the two of them. Evie and Adam, stuck in a remote cave, miles and miles from civilization. Alone. It’ll
be a miracle if they survive the night without murdering each other, Adam thinks. It’s that or screwing one another senseless.
With her, there’s absolutely no in-between.