Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
December arrives fully with little fanfare, the way all winter months bleed into one another in the Midwest. Today is as gray as yesterday, and just as gray as tomorrow.
“I need you to disappear for a few hours today,” Adam says. I’m tucked into his arms early in the morning, tracing the lines of his tattoo over his heart as we come into consciousness for the day. “Can you do that for me?”
“Am I in trouble?” I add my lips beside my fingers.
His laugh tickles my cheek, and he presses a kiss to my crown. “Have you been bad?”
My hand starts to wander. “You tell me.”
“Elle, love,” he groans, stopping my hand’s descent. “We have to get up.”
How am I supposed to move now? His words stick in my brain, looping on that one single syllable.
Love, love, love.
He called me that the day Liss and Dakota showed up to ambush me. In my half-sleep haze, I’d thought I was being called Lovie in my dream.
When Adam speaks next, his voice is richer, grittier, like maybe the word surprised him too. What base number do I text Liss and Dakota for that ? “I want to surprise you, okay? If you’re okay with driving, that is. You can take my car. I did some research, and it’s got a four-star rating. Plus I just got new winter tires last year, so those should—”
I shut him up with my mouth, letting my lips wander to try to distract myself with him. When he reaches for the top drawer of the nightstand and I catch a flash of bright-blue plastic, I don’t have to try anymore.
We dress quietly, me in fleece-lined sweatpants and a sweatshirt from college. Liss doesn’t know it yet, but I stole it from her four months ago. That’s nothing, considering she stole it from me first six years ago. Adam pulls on scrubs. Beloved by all.
With nowhere specific to go, I swing by Starbucks and wind up in Michigan City. I drive myself all the way here. I don’t even hit anything.
On autopilot, I drive to Pullman Park. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. It’s not barren yet, but it’s close. The leaves are long gone from the trees, choosing instead to decorate the ground, benches, walkways like strips of confetti. On the playground equipment to my left, a woman pushes a child on the swing while another runs amok up and down the slide. Their cheeks are bright red, their noses dripping with snot. They’re screaming with glee, the sound sharp and abrasive at my eardrums. I was like that once.
Maybe that’s just what happens when you stick a child who can’t be tamed with parental figures who thought they were done taming altogether. I caught Lovie smoking a cigarette one time and she offered me a puff. I was eleven. That could have been strategic on her part, though, because I haven’t touched one since.
I had Liss’s parents, who were wonderful and great but who were simply not mine. They got to ship me home when I started getting too rowdy. And I had myself for everything else, all the things I could never find in another person. I learned to be self-sufficient. I could always count on myself, and I would never let myself down.
I would never leave myself.
If I’d grown up in a household like Adam’s nieces—Cora and Chloe and Claire, with their perfect matching names—and had their wonderful mother who maybe isn’t perfect but who loves them and who is there , where would I be now? Would I have more space in my heart for something like that? Some days my friendship with Liss overwhelms me, and that’s not even close to the same thing.
After a bit longer at the park, I decide I prefer to feel my toes and check on the podcasts from the warmth of Lovie’s car.
Forget Me Not is on pace to outperform Elle on the L on nearly every platform. The growth is astronomical, honestly, and I don’t quite know what to do with it. Ad revenue is through the roof; when I called the assistant at one of the charities my listeners chose, she almost hyperventilated when I told her the amount of the first donation. And then she asked me to tell her boss because she didn’t think she would be able to repeat the number without passing out. I’m doing good work for good people who deserve good things. Giving to a community suffering from a disease that only ever takes .
Switching to Instagram, I scroll through a Thanksgiving weekend’s worth of “thankful for you” captions. There are Dakota and his boyfriend Sam with their two dogs. Liss, her brother Alex and his wife, their mom.
An email banner appears, and the preview of the message has me fumbling my phone. I will sensation back into my fingers so they work faster.
Your Dependency Status Has Been Updated , the subject reads.
The email is rudimentary, the way all insurance matters are: they say the most by not saying anything at all. It takes reading between the lines to figure out what exactly this is saying.
Lovie is officially my dependent.
Relief is crushing. Sometimes you don’t know how heavy your problems have become until you don’t have to hold them anymore.
With this, Lovie will have access to state-of-the-art facilities, enrichment programs specifically designed for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. She’ll be around people who understand her feelings more thoroughly than I ever have. And she will be safe, first and foremost.
And because of it, I will be able to breathe again, fully, for the first time in months.
I won’t have to worry about whether I left the ibuprofen too close to her depression medicine, whether one more serving of dairy for the day will be the straw to break the camel’s lactose-intolerant back. No more setting an alarm, locking windows, peeing with the door open.
And Adam.
Adam will get to move on to a new assignment, spend more time with his nieces.
If he’s not keen on his parents’ Christmas Eve dinner, maybe we could have the girls over to my apartment instead. Order deep-dish pizza and watch Christmas movies snuggled on my couch. I can help wrap presents. Supply the wine. I type out a text to Adam:
Can I please come home now? I’ll make it worth your while.
My heart grows wings in my chest, and I add:
I have a surprise for you too.
Nurse Adam: Yes, come home. Is that a dinner hint? I don’t think we have any eggplant, but if you grab some on your way home, I can make it for you tonight.
Me: Are you serious?
Nurse Adam: I take vegetables very seriously.
Me: That’s not what that means.
Nurse Adam: No?
Me: I should have known That is a metaphorical eggplant.
Nurse Adam: You’ll have to come home and show me what it stands for, then. ?
I see how it is. Sneaky. I also see, scrolling back through our recent conversations, usually ended by Adam sending a single red heart, that he’s called Lovie’s place home more than once lately.
It’s funny, because when I think of that word now— home —I don’t think of my apartment in Chicago. I don’t think of this house, or even Liss and Dakota.
I think of Adam.
My eyes are trained when I walk through the door, searching for any sign of my surprise. I can usually figure them out with minimal context clues—Liss doesn’t even give hints anymore after the Great Birthday Incident of 2019—but things seem normal as I slip off my shoes.
After our brief Thanksgiving reprieve, Lovie is back to her normal grouchy self, and Adam’s still just as smug while he preps lunch at the kitchen island. Everything else looks … the same.
That’s a shitty surprise.
I wind my arms around Adam’s midsection, running my fingers flush against a chest I know from personal experience is as hard as it makes him when I touch it.
“Hey there,” he rumbles.
I prod playfully at his stomach. “Is my surprise that your six-pack is now an eight-pack? I’m all for extra value, you know.”
Without words, he grabs me by the waist and leads me through the laundry closet, toward the bedroom. He covers my eyes with a massive hand just before he pushes open the door.
It smells different in here than it did when I was little, or even my first night back. It’s home, still, but there’s a layer of newness that is only Adam. It’s the warmth of his smile, the reverberation of his laugh through my chest whenever ours are pressed together. I want him like this. I just want him.
“So it is a sexy surprise,” I muse. I can hardly hear my own voice through the pounding of my heart. “You shouldn’t have. Also I’m lying.”
“Easy, or you’ll be disappointed.” He situates me how he wants me, eyes still covered. “Ready?”
“Yes,” I say, trying not to squirm like a little kid.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I bet I look like I have to pee.
Lips touch my temple. “Really sure?”
“Adam Nicholas Wheeler,” I growl. “Get to the fucking point.”
His mouth finds my neck next, the spot below my ear that lights me up. It’s so distracting, I miss his hand coming away from my eyes.
I inhale sharply. Tears spring up in my vision. My nose burns. “ Oh .”
“Do you like it?” He whispers the words to my throat but saves kissing me for when I start nodding furiously.
Adam got me a Christmas tree after all. My favorite shade of neon blue, no more than two feet tall. It fits right on the nightstand.
“I know you were disappointed we couldn’t have a big one in the living room,” he says. I reach out and run my fingertips along the bristles and lights. “So I improvised. We’ll celebrate in here, deck up to the halls. I thought it would look nice in your bedroom in the city next year. It goes with your neon sign. And I just—” He cuts himself off. “Surprise.”
He sounds a little winded and scratchy, like he chewed up dirt. He hangs his hand on the back of his neck. Waits.
“Adam, it’s …” I swallow, and I think some of that dirt must have gotten in my mouth too. My throat itches; so do my eyes. “No one’s ever—” But that’s it. No one has ever . I don’t even listen to myself this intently, and here comes this man who has figured me out, top to bottom and inside out, simply by paying attention.
I want to tell him. About the staircase and my stumbling down it, and how he is safe to me. How I still don’t believe in fate, but maybe there is a reason we look like Lovie and Bobby. Maybe there’s a reason this house has had it out for us this entire time, with smoke detectors and door handles that fall off and windows mysteriously left open.
Adam has wound his way through my heart and settled into parts of my soul I haven’t shared with anyone else. I don’t know exactly what to call us, this fragile infant thing we’ve started building here in this little magic pink house, but it’s good. Good and terrifying.
“Will you think out loud for me?” he says.
The Christmas tree goes blurry.
Adam ducks into my line of vision, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Elle?” His brows create a confused V. “Why are you crying? I thought … You don’t like it.”
“I love it, Adam. I love—” A flash of emotion in his eyes halts my confession. “It’s just that I’m so happy. And I think this tree will look good in my apartment this year.”
His hold on me falters, just a bit. “What do you mean?”
I grin wide. “That was my surprise. The insurance came through. Lovie’s on my plan now, which means she can get into a long-term facility. I can go home.”
I think he must still be nervous about his gesture, because his hand, although it could never be unsteady, seems to tremble as he runs it across his jaw. “That … that is great news for Lovie.”
He always wants me to think out loud for him. I owe him my honesty, and he asked for it, after all.
This is the loudest thought in my brain:
“Would you consider—” I cut myself off, start over again as the words flow from the aching place, right in the middle of my heart. The one that rips open whenever I think about that ambiguous next . “What if you worked in a hospital in the city or something? Maybe the one AngelCare is based out of?” This job is so hard on him, and I know he loves it, but I also know how draining it is, never having the chance to relax or turn off. He is always on , and he tries to hide it, but I know him better than that now.
Adam swallows thickly, gaze darting from the ceiling to the floor, everywhere but my face. Finally, his eyes land on me, serious. Maybe a little scared. “What are you asking?”
I love you almost spills out. Instead I say, “I want you to come home to me. Come home with me. I want to see your shoes in my doorway and have your green smoothies on my counter. I want your scrubs in my washer and I want your body in my bed.”
The color drains from his face and enters mine. The longer he stares at me blankly, maybe even guiltily, the more I regret giving him my thoughts at all. Thinking out loud sounded so easy when Ed Sheeran did it. This shit is hard.
The last thread of my hope dies when he begins to speak. “But my family is here , Elle.” His voice has been dragged through glass, and some of the shards jump out and touch me. “In Elkhart.”
Two towns over, actually. Twenty minutes. Six turns. I counted every one of them on our drive, something in my heart pulling me closer and closer to where Adam’s resided.
“It’s not like you’d never see them again. You have a car, after all,” I say, trying to tease him. It falls flat, like his face. “You have to find what’s best for you. Because I hope I’m not alone when I say I did.”
They’re still not the words, but they’re close, and maybe they’re the ones he needs.
When he still doesn’t concede, doesn’t kiss me, doesn’t do anything , I take a step toward him instead. “You said you wanted to pull back from them, didn’t you? We talked about it. That you felt they were too dependent. This could be a good start to that. Just getting a little space.”
His cheeks are striped pink; so is his neck. “A shared calendar is one thing. But leaving? I can’t just—I couldn’t do that to them. Move away completely, cut Ruth off like that? That’s exactly what my parents did.”
I should have been asking for his thoughts instead. One of us got off track somewhere. Has it been me this whole time? I nod, and it dislodges the almost ever-present tears in my eyes. I wipe them with the heels of my hand. I’m embarrassed to have misread this so greatly.
“Elle,” he says, bridging the gap between our bodies, but there is still a chasm. “It’s not that I don’t … care for you. It’s just so soon, and I—”
I hold up a hand to stop him, and it makes contact with his chest. Beneath my fingers, his heart jumps hard against his scrub top. His apology is writing itself across his features: eyes that seem to sink into his head, glazing over along the bottom rim. Skin stretching tight over his jaw. Throat bobbing repeatedly, breathing that grows increasingly ragged under my touch.
“I don’t know who to make happy,” he whispers, dropping his forehead to mine.
“Don’t be silly.” A tear tracks down my cheek. “It’s not—not even a choice. You’ll pick them. Of course. They’re your family.”
Because he has one. One that is good and that matters to him. We are so much of the people who make us.
“Maybe if I had more time,” he offers weakly. “To get things sorted out.”
I shake my head, eyes burning. “I don’t know if more time will solve anything. Your family will still be here. And once a spot opens up, Lovie will have to take it immediately or lose it.”
The thought of returning to Chicago was already overwhelming; to do it alone is unfathomable. Adam has become so enmeshed with my daily life that trying to go back to how it was before him physically hurts. I’m missing part of myself. And not just an appendix or wisdom tooth or something else extraneous, but a vital part. My heart? I already gave it to him anyway. Or maybe my lungs. That would explain why oxygen is hard to come by, why I’m underwater with grief for something that hasn’t died yet.
How did I let this happen? Happen again . I told myself after Grady I wouldn’t lose myself in another person, and I’m all but sobbing on Adam’s shirt at the idea of saying goodbye. At the inevitability of going home to an empty bed. I won’t be able to watch Jeopardy! again because I will miss his commentary. And how am I ever supposed to see this Christmas tree and not just break at the sight of it? I should have seen this coming. There was an expiration date on this arrangement from the beginning: just as long as it took for the insurance to come through. I’d started to become thankful it was taking its time.
I’d had that thought about Lovie, hadn’t I? Choosing between saying goodbye now and saying goodbye later? There’s no right answer. All goodbyes are hard.
We were always going to end, and I only realized it when we got here.
“I should go,” I say. There’s a small wet spot near his collar, and I hope he doesn’t immediately change. That maybe, after I walk out that door, he will stand with his own palm pressed there and come to the same realization.
“Wait, love,” Adam says, but it’s halfhearted and weak. And wrong.
All the warmth he’s given me over the last few months leaches from my body, and I’m near shivering. I step out of his embrace. “What do you want from me, Adam?”
He throws his hands to his sides, but his jaw clenches as he works to stay in control. Even now, he’s a fairer fighter than I will ever be. “I want to talk about this with you. Without you running away just because you’re scared .”
I stare at the spot where I dropped my bag that first night. The pictures atop the dresser, stuffed with his clothes. All the places Adam exists now where he didn’t before. “If you were on my podcast, what would I say about you? Who would you be?”
“You know me,” he says, his entire face tight. He is anguished. “You know the kind of person I am.” His palm covers his heart like I wanted, where it beats against his tattooed skin.
It makes mine throb.
I swipe at the trail of wetness on my cheeks. My fingers come away smeared with black. “I know you’re good at your job. That you love the people in your life with your entire heart, the way you have it written there. I just—I hate that you don’t save any for yourself. That you would rather everyone else in the world achieve their dreams before you ever have to decide what yours are. I think you prefer it that way.”
I’m pushing too far, I know, but I want him to push back . Push me away. It’s easier if he does it.
“You said you wanted whatever I could give you. But this—this is me. This is all I can give you.” I clear my throat, roll my eyes at the ceiling to try to stop my tears. “If I had to head back to the city, get things squared away with insurance, could you handle Lovie full-time? I know you work your other job on weekends, so I’ll send someone to cover that. Looks like you got what you wanted after all.”
“Elle.”
“And don’t worry about your contract—I know it was open ended, but I’ll make sure they pay you through the end of the month, even after Lovie is moved. Christmas is coming up, after all. And you’ve got your girls to support.” I force myself not to look at the tree on the nightstand.
His jaw ticks. “Elle,” he says again.
“And besides, it’s not like we were even that ser—”
“ Elle .” His voice is sharp. His eyes sharper. Adam doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t finish his sentence, but I know what he’s thinking. We were. We were that serious.
“If you can”—I clear my throat—“if you can handle Lovie … I’ll have Angie touch base with you. Lovie likes her well enough, so maybe she can cover the weekend shifts. Otherwise, I—I really need some space.”
My skin is too tight, his gaze too direct. I am lying through my teeth, and he knows it.
“Stay,” he asks again. Pleads .
“I just—can’t.” I never could, could I? Not when love was on the line.