Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Turns out it’s really fun to have a secret sexual relationship with the guy your senile grandma thinks is your soul mate. We don’t have to act anymore. The kisses we used to hide in hallways and laundry rooms are out in the open. Adam’s arm around me during television hour is no longer pretend. There’s no questioning who’s getting the bed—now we share.
Adam and I stayed up late into the night in my Chicago apartment. We ate the rest of our makeshift pizza in bed and continued our Friends binge, and he was right, we did make it to season two. I’m not sure how much he remembers, considering my hands started to wander a bit toward the finale. But that was okay, because his mouth never strayed from some part of me—hand, hair, cheek, lips, neck—for more than a few seconds.
Our second time was much like our first, exploring with hands and mouths before we got too desperate to wait any longer. Resetting the clock with an agonizing speed, only to realize we hadn’t reset it at all, just pressed pause. He managed to undo me twice that time, and once more from his knees in the shower the next morning. It was part of the reason we got back to Elkhart around lunch instead of first thing.
Also, the roads still sucked, and we were forced to take our time on the highway. Adam’s hand sat on my thigh, claiming it again as we passed field after field, all of them blanketed in perfect white snow. It was in direct contrast to the chaos taking place in my heart. There, things were bright new colors and loud music.
They still are.
If Angie noticed anything different about us when we got back, she didn’t say. What she did say, though, right before she left, was that there were still no insurance updates. I tried to be sympathetic. But waking up beside Adam is quite distracting.
A week later, I’m still in a daze, which I will need to snap out of soon if I have any hope of surviving the night. I’m prepping a vegetable tray, though Adam has warned me a few times it will go untouched.
“I’m telling you, Ruth orders fried chicken. We eat off paper plates. And I don’t think Chloe has willingly touched a vegetable in her life .”
He steals a cucumber slice, giving me a forehead kiss along the way.
My laugh is light, flirty, in a way I’m not used to. It’s been that way a lot since coming back from the city. I talked to Liss for an hour on FaceTime yesterday, and my cheeks hurt when I was finished from all the smiling.
I sag into him, bury my face in the collar of his scrub top. Navy today. I close my teeth around his collar and give it a little tug.
His grin follows the curve of my temple, but before things get carried away, we hear Lovie moan as she stands, and Adam goes to help her.
I don’t know how I would have done this without him these past few months. What if someone else had been assigned this job, had been in my bed the first night I came here? I know there’s a lot to say about forced proximity, but part of me wonders if he wouldn’t have found me anyway. If we wouldn’t have bumped into each other on the L or in a coffee shop on one of his trips into the city. Adam is the kind of person who makes coincidence feel like fate.
Those are some big revelations for Thanksgiving—especially when I’m sober.
Something shifts in my peripheral vision: Adam, doing his cross-lean in the doorway. He’s looking at me the way I was just looking at the carrots and celery.
We stare at each other, across the room, my heart swimming with sentiments too big to contain and too small to encompass everything.
“I’m glad you’re coming today,” he says. “You look … you’re beautiful. I haven’t said it before, and I should have.”
I look down at my outfit. I’m wearing a fluffy red-orange sweater and black leather jeggings. My favorite winter coat—knee length, plaid—hangs over the kitchen chairs. I’ll slip into booties before we leave. “It’s nothing special.”
His eyes narrow, but before he can refute me, a knock at the door cuts him off. “That will be Vivi, I think.”
As Adam briefs the nurse, I make my way into the living room.
Lovie’s on the couch, eyes trained on the television. “Hey, you,” I say, perching on the edge of No-Man’s-Land beside her. “Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone.”
She blinks at me. “Where are you going?” She takes in my makeup, the hair I’ve mussed and curled back from my face. I guess I meet her approval tonight, because a slow, sly grin appears on her mouth. “Is Bobby finally taking you out?”
Maybe on a different day, this would sting more. But I listen to Adam’s deep timbre as I remember how that deep tone sounded in my bed, dipping along my lower back, lower , kissing the bruise from where I’d fallen on the sidewalk. Butterflies take up most of the space in my stomach. There’s no room for sadness tonight.
“He is.” I bump her shoulder with mine. “And it’s about damn time, I’d say.”
“Attagirl.”
Adam clears his throat from the doorway. “You ready to go?” he says. The relief nurse beside him smiles widely.
Before we head out the door, I spare a parting glance at Lovie.
Her eyes are watery, but omniscient. I’m struck with that feeling again, the same one I got at the grocery. Even though her words don’t match my suspicion, something deep in my gut knows. She’s seeing me as Elle when she says, “Take the scenic route on the way back.”