Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
All I can say is—all I want to say—is thank you to Whoever is listening upstairs, whether that be Jesus, Buddha, or maybe Gandhi, for the absolute glory that is Amazon Prime.
After how horrible our last few outings have gone, delicious milkshakes notwithstanding, I’ve decided I am never driving again. It took the rest of the evening for my heart rate to calm. Again, though, might have been the sugar.
I’ll just order everything I could possibly need online. For the rest of my life.
Speaking of sugar, I rip into lush, brightly colored bags of it like a kid on Christmas morning. Like myself on Christmas morning in this living room. One of the bags splits down the side, and individually wrapped chocolate bars and gummy candies spill across the kitchen table with plastic plinks and dull thuds.
It’s midafternoon, but Adam is already cooking. Soup, I think, or spaghetti sauce. Whatever it is has been simmering for a few hours, and the entire house smells of roasted meat and vegetables, fresh herbs and spices. There’s a loaf of bread on the island, waiting to be sliced and toasted. We’re in a cold snap, something that didn’t deter Lovie from gardening this morning until her fingers were blue.
She planted the forget-me-nots, and the irony wasn’t lost on me that she probably wouldn’t remember by morning.
Adam looks at me over his shoulder. How he manages not to splash any of the simmering liquid onto his hands, even as he takes his eyes off the pot, is beyond me. “I thought the chocolate cravings were over.”
Which means he also knows my period is over. “You think there’s a scheduled time for chocolate? Screw diamonds. Chocolate is forever.”
“I guess I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”
My hand freezes deep within the bag. My eyebrows almost touch from how hard I’m wincing. “This isn’t going to work.”
His jaw twitches.
“What?” I say. “I’m serious.”
“Oh, I know.” He shrugs. Still doesn’t spill a drop of soup. He loses the battle with his smile, and his face softens with it. “This is just the first time I’ve ever been fake dumped.”
I close my hand around the candy I’d been searching for and pull it out. “What about real dumped?”
The smile slips off his face. “Yeah, of course.” A cord in his neck jumps. “Hasn’t everyone?”
I tear the end flap off a box of Dots so hard it splits down the middle.
Grady James and I go way back, if way back is five years ago, when I was twenty-six, the podcast was just taking off, and I was juggling a job I didn’t care about with a passion I loved but didn’t have time for.
You might be wondering how Grady fit into this cozy little dreamscape. Like a square peg in a round hole, that’s how. But I tried. Embarrassingly hard, for much longer than I care to admit now.
Lovie’s in the other room, out of earshot. It only needs to look like I’m in love with this man, and I don’t have to share my life story to do that.
“Of course,” I repeat, robotic.
Adam runs a hand over his hair and hooks it on the back of his neck. Maybe there’s something in my face he doesn’t like either, because he returns his focus to the stove.
“Have you ever dumped anyone?” I ask.
His ears go pink. “Does kindergarten count?”
I picture kindergarten Adam, all knobby knees and wild hair. “Tell me everything,” I beg. “Immediately.”
He chuckles. “Her name was Jessie, and we were tablemates.” I rest my head in my hands, shooting playful googly eyes at his back. Without turning around, he says, “Quit looking at me like that.”
I grin wider. “What did Jessie do that was so horrible?”
“She,” he mutters under his breath, with unexpected animosity, “stole my pizza pencil.”
A laugh slips from my mouth. “Your what ?”
“It’s stupid.”
“I don’t care.” His shoulders are still tense beneath his scrub top. “Adam. I promise I won’t laugh.” Laugh again. “If it’s important to you, it’s not stupid.”
He rolls his shoulders, a quick dip of his head the only sign he’s heard me. Sensitive subject, his pizza pencil.
A knock on the front door startles us. I squeal. Adam curses softly, swiping the dish towel from the oven handle to wipe hot soup from his wrist. So he’s not impenetrable after all.
I grab two large handfuls of candy on my way to the door. “It’s time!”
“Time for—”
He’s drowned out by three children screaming, “ TRICK-OR-TREAT! ”
“Honey,” I call to Adam, putting enough inflection in my voice so he knows I hate the title as much as he does. “Did you call the fire department without telling me?”
The three-foot-tall firefighter in front of me giggles beneath her helmet. It tips sideways as she holds out her bucket.
I’m giving a generous handful to the last of the trio, one of the fearless leaders from PAW Patrol , when Adam appears at my side. The children crane their necks to see all of him. One of them gasps.
Fine. Same.
After they run back to their parents waiting on the sidewalk, I study my partner in crime. “This isn’t going to work either. Where’s your workbag? The duffel you take with you.”
His head tilts. “Why?” He stretches the word over several beats.
“Because you need a costume, and we’re running out of time.” I tap an imaginary watch.
“And why exactly do I need a costume?” He leans into the open doorframe, crossing his arms. The porch light is on, and it illuminates a teasing gleam in his eyes that the waxy fluorescents inside always cover up.
On the street, two preteen girls start up the driveway, but they see Adam’s hulking figure and share a look, giggling.
I grab his forearm, toting him fully onto the porch as I wave them forward. When they approach, I slide my arm around his waist. I drop my voice. “This is why. I told you before—with your general form, you could be a bad guy .”
The girls, dressed as fairies, approach. I pinch Adam’s hip. His gaze jumps to me, but when he sees we have company, it changes. Goes softer. Much like our nightly Jeopardy! escapades, he slings his arm across my shoulders. “If I’m a bad guy, what does that make you?”
“I am very”—I lick my lip, sugar bursting across my tongue; Adam’s eyes flash dark—“ very good.”
He presses a thumb into the deep groove between his eyebrows. It shows up whenever I get on his nerves or under his skin. I see it once a day. Hell, once an hour . A new vein pops out in his neck.
Once the girls collect their candy, I drop my arm and shrug his off my shoulder. A crisp breeze rustles through the tree in the yard, and we step back through the door. “So. Your bag.”
Adam stares at me through his lashes.
I throw him a blinding, you-won’t-win-this smile.
He breaks. Sighs. “In the bedroom.”
Lovie doesn’t look up as I pass the living room. Luckily, her favorite movie is on television tonight. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. I won’t say it the third time. That, at least, is something we still have in common: you don’t have to have lost your memories to want to keep coming back to what brings you comfort. Some things can just be good , deep in your bones.
Once I’ve retrieved Adam’s bag, I sling it onto the table. “Can I?”
He’s back at the stove. “Something tells me you’re going to anyway.” I wait, though, and he sighs in resignation, throwing a nasty glare at the vent hood in front of him. “Yes, Elle. Let’s get it over with.”
I tug the zipper, anxious to see what’s inside. It already smells like him—warm skin and bad decisions—but it’s amplified here, in this fabric. I’m not sure what I’m searching for, but I’ll know it when I find it.
There’s an old pair of trainers, the same brand as the ones I wear to run, and a clean pair of athletic shorts to go with them. A phone charger, bundled neatly and tied in a self-sustaining knot. A smaller version of the toiletry bag he keeps in the bathroom: a stick of deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, some acetaminophen. The interior pockets are empty; maybe where he stores his keys and wallet. No old food containers or moldy coffee thermoses. The last time I cleaned out my workbag, I found an uncooked macaroni noodle.
Aha! I pull out my object of desire and unclip his work badge from the handle before rounding the island in his direction.
“Find anything good?” he says over his shoulder.
I tap him there, and when he turns, we’re closer than I was expecting. The tips of our toes are touching. He flexes his, and mine do the same involuntarily.
“Hold still,” I say, even though, aside from his toes, he’s a statue now. Is he breathing? We’re close enough that I’d feel it, his chest brushing mine.
I sling the stethoscope over his neck, but it gets twisted in his collar. His eyes dart around my face as I fix it, from my ears to my chin to the tip of my nose. When the stethoscope gets snagged on his tag, I groan in frustration, and his gaze drops.
The soup is bubbling to my left, Lovie’s too-loud movie to my right. And in front of me, always, is Adam. With his uniform, with those eyes, with this unreadable expression.
It’s just a black stethoscope, no fuss or frills, but it changes his entire look. I swallow hard as I hook a nail in his chest pocket, clipping the badge on.
“There,” I murmur. I move my hand to his sternum and give him a pat. He is warm and firm there even through the fabric. I’m starting to think he’s warm and firm everywhere I could touch him. I pull away with a sharp inhale, rub my fingertips over my burning palm. “Now you’re dressed for the part.”
His gaze tracks down the length of my body. I feel every inch of it, like it’s his hands dragging over me instead.
Or something sharper, like his teeth.
His voice rumbles through my bones, dropped low so Lovie doesn’t overhear. “And what are you supposed to be?”
It bites into soft parts of me—definitely his teeth.
“I, um—” What am I wearing again? I look down. I’m just in my normal clothes, but I—unlike someone —planned for this.
“It’s the twenty-first century, Adam.” I step back, toes touching laminate instead of Adam’s socks. I hold my hands out to the side, palms up, showing off my leggings and zip-up jacket with Elle on the L ’s logo on the front pocket. “I’m a podcaster.”
My skin grows itchy under his undivided attention. While his gaze traces the line of my leggings, the podcast logo, I eye the soup on the stove. My stomach flips inside out—it really does smell amazing.
While he’s distracted, I inch my hand toward the spoon.
Adam frowns at me, my hand freezing with mere inches to go. I’ve started to notice he frowns at me quite often. Displeasure again, the expression I see enough to draw with my eyes closed. “You look like a hoodlum.”
I widen my eyes, move my hand another half inch. “Well, it won’t win any costume contests, but—”
He pushes my hand away before I can grab the ladle. “Nice try.”
“ Rude ,” I say, but he does that thing where he palms my shoulders to move past me without knocking me off-balance.
It doesn’t matter. I’m less and less balanced every day.
How much of that has to do with the man who’s swiping my editing headphones from where they sit on the kitchen table? The same man who scared children off the driveway approaches me now, his face drawn tight in focus as he gently hangs the headphones around my neck. Takes care to move some of my hair over my shoulder. His fingertip brushes my skin, and I shiver.
“There. Now you’re dressed for the part too.”