Chapter 27
AJ
Despite working up an appetite, we lay in bed for the next few hours. But when hunger hit Adam, it hit him like a speeding train, and before I knew it, I was laughing in bed, watching him growl with hunger while getting hastily dressed.
“But where are we going to go?” I said, since we were craving breakfast, but it was well past breakfast hours. Adam flashed that irresistible dimple, making a pshh sound as he pulled up his jeans.
“I got you,” he grinned.
And twenty minutes later, we were together at the one place he never went with anyone: Gizzy’s.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What happened to ‘this is my secret spot, I come here alone’?”
The ribbing came from the Lakers hoodie-wearing dad sitting at a picnic table on the patio with his grinning wife and kid.
“Same thing that happened to ‘I’m quitting coffee,’” Adam laughed as the man pushed his coffee toward his young son.
“This is Ryan’s,” he said, making Adam laugh before introducing me to the table—and then eventually, to two other tables and a pair of waitresses. We’d had several full conversations before we could even get to his usual round table in the corner.
“My God. So you’re basically the mayor of Gizzy’s,” I said.
“Basically,” he laughed just as I saw a familiar face coming out to greet us from the kitchen. It was Heidi, the owner of Gizzy’s who I could already see jumping to conclusions.
“Hi, Heidi,” I said, already blushing through my smile, because she had a big, open-mouthed grin frozen on her face as she looked between Adam and me. I burst out laughing when Adam briefly buried his face in his hand.
“I’m sorry!” Heidi said to him, hands on her hips, pretending to be defensive. “It’s just we’re so used to seeing you come here solo, so it’s so nice to see you two together for once.”
She put such an emphasis on the word “together” that Adam laughed and said, “Alright, take it easy.”
“Fine, fine,” Heidi said, doing a poor job of suppressing her delight before taking our orders and disappearing back into the kitchen.
Once we were finally alone, I smiled. “Wow. They really treat you like family here huh?”
“Yeah,” Adam grinned. “Speaking of family.”
“Your sister’s coming in tomorrow,” I said.
“Yeah,” Adam nodded. And for the next few moments we just looked at each other with the same slightly awkward, close-lipped smile we gave Heidi, because we both knew what was on our minds.
But Adam was the first to break the silence about it.
“What are we going to tell her?” he asked.
I wet my lips and swallowed.
It was basically the whole what are we doing question, and despite our last twelve or so hours, I had no idea.
I knew I had feelings for Adam. Strong ones. I knew I wanted to be with him.
But as much as I imagined myself in bed with him, entwined with him, enjoying late nights and early mornings with him, I couldn’t quite imagine us doing normal couple things. Walking down the street hand in hand. Being together in the traditional sense.
Aside from the fact that he hadn’t exactly said anything to change his mind on relationships, I was realizing that I didn’t want anyone at work to know we were involved.
It would look bad only on me. I could only imagine the looks I’d get from people like Josh MacMillan or the other assistants, especially the guys.
Just thinking about the judging eyes and knowing looks I’d get around the office made me kind of shudder, so before I could think twice, I said, “We’ll just act normal around her. ” Hastily, I added, “For now.”
Adam’s face was annoyingly unreadable as he nodded.
“Alright. Then it’s decided,” he said, and though he sounded entirely on board, I saw a glint in his eyes that didn’t quite match the tone of his voice. Or did I imagine that?
Did he prefer the other option? I wondered just as a little voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Adam!”
I blinked, turning just in time to see the little brown-haired boy from the picnic table, Ryan, come up to deliver Adam a crayon-scribbled drawing.
“This is for me?” Adam asked with the kind of big excitement that made every kid grin.
Ryan was no exception, though after he nodded giddily, he turned and ran fast back to his table, forcing me to quietly melt in my seat as I watched Adam smile while looking over the drawing.
I could barely change the look on my face in time when he glanced up with a smile and asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just… didn’t expect you to have such intense dad energy,” I teased. He laughed.
“Pretty sure I was made to be a kick-ass dad.”
I almost snorted but caught myself and squinted. “Wait—really?”
“Yeah,” Adam said matter-of-factly while nodding his thanks at the smiling waitress who came by to drop off a bowl of mixed berries. He popped one in his mouth before asking, “Why?”
“Umm… I think because you’ve never imagined being in a relationship or getting married, so I just assumed…” I trailed off as I considered that that was a totally shitty assumption. But was it? I didn’t even know anymore.
Adam looked unfazed. “I just always imagined giving my kid all the best parts of my childhood and redoing all the parts that went wrong,” he said simply, piquing my curiosity.
Because I knew about all the parts that had gone wrong, but I’d literally never heard Adam talk about any good parts.
I had kind of assumed his childhood was constant acting out, getting in trouble and butting heads with his mom until college, when he left Jersey for California and never looked back.
“Really,” I said slowly, since the only fond childhood tradition I’d heard him talk about was the Maxwell family French toast. “Care to share any of those good parts?” I asked just as our drinks arrived—a beer for Adam, a Bloody Mary for me.
Adam took a drink before he answered easily. “Baseball games. They were cheaper than basketball games and the time I caught a foul ball was the greatest day ever,” he said with a big grin that made me laugh as I pictured baby Adam.
“Amazing. How old were you?”
“Eight. But we’d been going to games since I was two. It was always Philippe’s before the game, seats in the top deck, try to catch a foul ball.”
“Cute,” I remarked, utterly charmed despite the fact that something about what he’d just said sounded off to me.
I couldn’t figure out what though, nor did I care to try since Adam was now talking about how his eight-year-old self took great care of that baseball, never going anywhere without it for basically a year. I squinted.
“Is that the one that…”
“Is on my desk at the office? Yeah,” Adam smiled. But when I made a funny face, he asked, “What?”
“Nothing. I always thought it was some client’s game ball. I guess I’m just surprised, because I always saw baseball as the sport that’s your job. It’s pretty clear you like basketball better.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. The fact that you played it pretty seriously in high school.
The fact that you’re always watching a basketball game when I come over.
Plus, I saw an absurdly tall stack of Lakers memoirs and books on the bottom part of your nightstand,” I said, smiling as I recalled the sight, along with the unexpectedly large number of dog-eared pages.
“Kind of makes me wonder why you chose to represent baseball players instead of basketball.”
Adam raised his eyebrows, as if commending my observational skills. “I just did, I guess,” he finally said.
“Mm-hm. You realize that’s a total non-answer ever, right?”
“Yes. That was by design.”
I smirked. “Asshole,” I said just as our food came out—delivered by not only Heidi, but her two dogs trailing her, the smaller one much farther behind, but trucking along. It was a chihuahua mix that was half-blind, but it still made its way over to Adam, immediately sitting at his feet.
“Yeah, Rocky can’t see, but he knows he loves Adam,” Heidi laughed when I visibly melted at the sight.
She then proceeded to crack me up with stories I never knew, namely about how Adam often walked the dogs before going to work.
And as she went on, I realized just how much I didn’t know about this man.
Once upon a time, I thought I had him all figured out. I’d spent nearly every day of the past five years with him. I couldn’t remember a day where we didn’t talk at least once. I knew secrets no one else knew, could anticipate his every need at work, so I clearly knew him inside out. Right?
Wrong.
So incredibly wrong, I thought, because it was more than clear to me now that there was more to Adam Maxwell than I could have ever imagined. And as I watched him talk and smile with the staff at Gizzy’s, his eyes crinkling adorably through his laughter, I found myself wanting to know everything.
Needing to, really.
With a smile on my face, I arched an eyebrow at him once Heidi left.
“So, kids, check. I’m guessing dogs are in your future too?”
“Oh yeah,” he replied, taking a big bite of his food before he looked at me with a curious twinkle in his eye. He finished chewing before he asked, “You too, right?”
“Of course,” I replied.
His lips turned up with satisfaction.
“Good,” he said.
And for the next few seconds, we just nodded in silence, our eyes quietly glimmering on each other as some kind of wordless acknowledgement swirled in the air between us.
But when he broke into a full grin, I had to look away, because I couldn’t let him have a head-on view of me actually blushing.
Easy, I told myself, trying to remind myself not to overanalyze his remark.
But with the way he was looking at me—the way he’d been looking at me all morning—it was pretty hard not to.
And… yep. You are officially fucked, I thought, taking a long pull of my drink from my straw, because I knew what was happening right now.
I was falling for this man. So fast and hard that at this point, nothing could stop me.
I was certain of it.