by Stacey Lynn
Adam smiles at me, watching the memory play out in my head. Two days after that, I found out Tyler cheated on me at a frat party with a girl from Kelsey’s sorority house. Kelsey didn’t waste any time telling me, and I broke up with Tyler immediately. I wasn’t that upset. Our families ran in the same social circles and when my mom encouraged me to date him, I did it just to get her off my back. When we dated, I never felt anything more than a decent friendship. I mostly stayed with him because it kept my parents happy. The next weekend, I saw Tyler on campus with a bloody lip and smiled to myself when I passed him with a simple ‘hello’. I figured he got caught sticking his tongue in the wrong girl’s mouth and her boyfriend didn’t like it too much.
A hint of pink blossoms on Adam’s cheek as I stare at him, as if he’s embarrassed or nervous at what I’m thinking. “You were the guy on the grass?” I ask, with a slight twinge of humor in my voice.
“You took my breath away that day. I didn’t even know who you were, and I knew you had a boyfriend, but you seemed so beautiful when you laughed and then when you threw your arms around Tyler, I wanted to find out more about you.”
“And you did?” I ask, confused. This was still months before Adam and I met.
He shrugs unashamedly. “I heard about you from some girls in the Gamma house at a party we had one night at our house, but that was after …” His voice trails off, but a darkness flickers across his brown eyes. I don’t miss the anger that quickly appears and then vanishes just as fast.
“After Tyler cheated on me,” I finish for him. His hands press into the grass and his body goes tight. I gasp again, my eyes wide. “You beat him up for me? Why would you do that?”
“Because it takes a special sort of entitled asshole to think he can cheat on his girl and get away with it. I wanted to teach him that he wasn’t worth shit when he walked around thinking the world owed him something special just because he existed.”
“So it was to bring down a spoiled rich boy and had nothing to do with me.” Tyler never meant that much to begin with and I wasn’t all that broken hearted when we broke up, but for a stranger to beat him up for my honor? Who does that?
“It had everything to do with you.” Adam’s voice is quiet and he stares out at the library stairs as if re-creating the day he first saw me in his mind. His statement makes my pulse quicken and I press my hands together, rubbing my fingers so he doesn’t see them tremble.
“But you didn’t talk to me then; even after you knew we broke up.”
Out of the corner of my eye, Adam shakes his head. “No, it was almost summer break and I had to go home. I figured I’d try to find you again when school started back up in the fall.”
“And did you?” But I already know the answer to this question. It’s everything that happened after that summer that I don’t remember.
“The very first week.” His voice is almost a whisper and sends a shiver of nerves … or excitement through me. I’m not ready to find out which.
“But you told me we didn’t start dating until October.”
“You made me work for it.” He smirks and I want to ask him what he’s remembering. I can only imagine. From what I can tell, we’re completely different people. I grew up in a financially privileged home, while it doesn’t seem like he did. I was raised to be snotty and pretentious, and while I’ve always tried hard to fight it, I had a bad tendency to judge people before I knew them my first year of college. I worked hard to change it, to step away from my family and be my own person, but when your parents pay for everything and run your life, there is little leeway with breaking from the reins.
Something in my gut tells me that meeting Adam snapped the reins my parents held in half, and they don’t like it very much.
“Where is your home?” I have been told very little about Adam. There are no pictures of anyone in his family on our black and white photo mural. I also haven’t asked any questions.
“Iowa.” That’s all I get. I turn to Adam when he’s silent for too long and all I see in his eyes is a coldness that would chill the strongest of men to their bones.
We’re sitting in the library, tucked into the back corner on the fourth floor where the special collections are kept. I love studying back here because it’s completely quiet. It’s my favorite place to study but trying to help Adam with his Statistics homework in such a private place is dizzying.
No man has ever affected me the way he does with his dark eyes that seem to unravel every thought I have before it’s spoken, and his strong fingers that perhaps not-so-accidentally brush against my arm or my thigh while I’m explaining the concept of linear regression.
I laugh at whatever it was he just said and shake my head once, giving him a frustrated smile. “I’m not helping you in order to get a date. I hear you have plenty.”
One side of his lips twitches. “I don’t date, Amy. I don’t need to.”
Right. Because Adam is sex on a stick and most of the girls on campus are willing to jump into his bed without being asked.
“Then you won’t be hurt when I tell you no. Again.”
“I may never recover.” His eyes darken and my belly does that flip-flop thing it’s been doing for the last few weeks when he brushes up against me. I blink, trying to clear my thoughts and regain my sanity, but when I do, Adam’s hand is no longer holding his pencil on the table. Instead, his hand is brushing away a lock of my brown hair and his hand rests on the back of my neck, playing with my hair and pulling me forward.
My breath hitches just as his lips are inches from me. I freeze, putting pressure on his hand to stop the forward movement.
His eyes sparkle in mischief.
“What are you doing?”
His tongue darts out, sucking lightly on his top lip, making it almost disappear. He laughs. I blush, knowing he just watched me check out his mouth. Kissed his mouth with my eyes alone.
“I’m going to kiss you, Ames. And then you’re going to finally agree to a date with me.”
“One kiss and I’ll be unable to resist you? Is that your plan?”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
I bet his kisses leave a girl gasping for breath and throwing her morals to the floor along with her clothes.
He wipes the smirk off my lips by lightly brushing his lips once, and then twice, against mine. I instantly know why every girl wants to get their hands on him and his hands in their pants. My body lights up like a wildfire as he presses his lips against mine more firmly, taking what he wants and expecting me to give in. God I want to give in, to just once in my life go for what it is that I want and not what I’m told is best for me.
And I’m just about to throw away all my fears about him. I twist my hands that were frozen on the table out from underneath his arms and place them on his thighs. His muscular legs tighten and his lips turn into a slight smile against mine.
“Adam? Are you up here?”
The shrill sound of a high-pitched voice is like a bucket of cold water on my head and I jerk back away from him.
His eyes are still closed and I was right. I’m gasping for breath.
I press my lips together to stop my lower lip from trembling. How could I be so stupid to finally give in to him? I’m just a chase, a challenge. I just let him have what he’s been trying to get for weeks. And I handed it over so easily.
Adam frowns when he opens his eyes, right as the girl comes around the corner and sees us sitting way too close together to be studying. Never mind the fact that we’re both breathing heavily.
Shame fills me. Not only for kissing Adam, but for giving in to the man who already has his afternoon sex appointment showing up.
“There you are.” The girl smiles at me in a way that says she knows I’m no competition for her. I sit back, clumsily gathering my notebook and textbook into my back pack. “I was wondering if you forgot about me.”
Adam drops his head before turning to her, and I see his smile out of the corner of his eye. The same on
e he just gave to me. The same one that says he can have everything and anything he wants.
“Of course I didn’t forget, Lexi. I was just running late.”
He says it calmly, like he’s completely unaffected by the kiss we just shared.
I want to kick my own shins at my stupidity. I deserve it. I need someone to knock some sense into me. It obviously flees to the dark corners of the room whenever Adam is around.
I stand up, throwing my bag over one shoulder, anxious to get away from him. Away from him and Lexi together, knowing what they’ll be doing in about five minutes in these private, hidden corners. “Right. Well, I’ll, uh … I’ll see you in class then.”
I don’t look at him as I start to walk away, but he grabs my wrist and tugs on it so I have no choice but to stop and look down at him. He’s still sitting in the chair, grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Why are you running?”
I look to him and Lexi. She’s a cheerleader for the football team and on the soccer team’s pep squad. She probably spends hours lusting after Adam, watching him running up and down the soccer field. Shirtless. Sweaty.
“You have plans.”
He shakes his head and frowns. “She can wait a few minutes. We weren’t done here.”
Lexi is standing behind him with her arms crossed, letting me know that she very well can’t wait a few minutes. “Adam.” He looks at Lexi but keeps a hold of my hand. “We really need to go.”
He tugs on my hand and smiles that same damn smile. This time it doesn’t work on me.
“We are done here.” By the tone in my voice he knows I’m not just talking about the tutoring. I pull my hand out of his and I’m at the end of the long aisle stacked with books all the way to the ceiling when he calls my name.
Against my better judgment, which has always led me on the straight path in the past, I turn back to him. He has his book loosely held in one hand at his side, the other draped around Lexi’s shoulder. She leans into him and he doesn’t pull her hand away when she lightly wipes it across his chest, giggling. She giggles. In what universe is a giggling twenty-something attractive?
“I’ll get my date one way or another.” He winks and they disappear.
Silence filled our apartment for the entire weekend after I asked about Adam’s parents when we were on campus. His eyes went cold, every muscle tightened, and when he declared it was time to go, I was already packing up the picnic, knowing that our walk down his memory-lane was over. He’s frustrating and his ability to shut down his emotions so quickly scares me as we try to maneuver around each other in the small apartment.
I felt like we were beginning to take a small step forward. I remembered seeing him the very first time, even if I didn’t know it was him. But as I sift through the memory of that day outside the library, and then the reminder of seeing Tyler’s black eye … I knew he was being honest. It made me hopeful that I could begin to trust him to be honest and help me through this. But yet, his ability to shut down so quickly afterwards felt like a slap in my face. Why won’t he answer questions about his parents? Or anything about himself? Besides the pictures on the wall, I know nothing about him and he doesn’t offer up much.
And every time I dream of him, he’s got his arms wrapped another girl while flirting with me. None of it makes sense.
I spent all week, while Adam was at work as an architect with a custom home building company, tossing around the idea of moving back home. But live with my parents again? It’s the only place I have to go, and I spent the first eighteen years of my life counting down the days to get out of there.
Regardless of my uncertainty, every time I’ve gone into our closet to grab my suitcase and pack up – to leave and get out before Adam knows I’m considering it - I stop.
Something continually tells me that staying in this apartment with Adam is the only way to get answers, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me.
Dr. Jamison ushers us into her office five minutes late and we take our standard seats on the opposite side of her desk.
I begin filling her in about the assignment she gave me. Adam fidgets next to me the entire time while I repeat what he showed me, and what I remember, about the first time he saw me.
“So what did you think of what Adam showed you?” she finally asks when I’m done.
I shrug. “It was nice. I mean, I don’t remember meeting him, and I didn’t know he was the guy on the ground at the time, but I knew it happened as soon as he told me.”
“And did it help you trust him?”
Next to me, Adam nervously wipes his hands on his thighs. My fingers play with my messy bun piled on the top of my head.
“It did,” I start hesitantly, and then remember the dream of the second girl and my hands drop into my lap.
“But what?”
I turn to Adam, and for the first time hate all the uncertainty between him and me. It’s all twisted together like an elaborate spider web, and I’m caught with no way out.
“What is it, Amy?” Dr. Jamison’s voice shakes me out of my thoughts. I sigh.
“He’s always with a girl. Always. Whenever I dream, there’s always someone else that has his attention.”
I look away at the empty playground from out the window and feel just as lonely and abandoned as the rickety metal swings that never seem to get any attention.
“I can’t take back my history, Ames.” I close my eyes at his nickname for me. Every time he says it, I cringe, knowing it speaks of an intimacy we have that I don’t remember. “But I never cheated on you.”
The confidence in his voice makes me turn to him. His black hair is just long enough that it flips out over the sides of his ears, his chin and cheeks sport at least a day’s worth of growth. His eyes seem to pull me in, even when I try to look away from him.
I try to take him in just as he is, to move past this lost feeling and remember what he told me on the college campus. He looks the same as he did then, with such sincerity and honesty as he told me about the first time he saw me.
I smile at the thought. I did trust him. I believed him. Maybe it will help me trust him more with what he says to me in the future.
“Okay,” I whisper, but I feel something soften in me. Maybe I really did trust Adam and love him like everyone says. Maybe I just need to get to know him more and everything else will begin to make more sense.
Dr. J scribbles something in her notebook, allowing Adam and me this moment, however small it is, to savor a success.
“Favorite color?”
He flashes me a strange look as he pulls out of the parking lot.
“I just need answers.”
He pulls his eyebrows together for a second and then nods. “Blue, like your eyes.”
I press my lips together, hoping it will keep the blush away from my cheeks.
“Favorite band?”
He nods toward the car stereo. I don’t recognize the music, but I like it even if it’s different than the pop and dance music I normally listen to. Or did, I think, as I remember all the band t-shirts hanging in my closet.
“Radiohead. We saw them in concert last year when they came to Colorado Springs.” His eyes go hazy like he’s remember something, but I don’t ask. I don’t want to remember anything, or try to force myself today. I just want to see what it is we have in common. Why we’re together.
“Favorite place to visit?”
His smile fades and his eyes darken, but then he turns to me. “The cliffs.”
I don’t want to ask why his favorite place makes him sad. I tip my lips into a slight smile. “That’s my favorite place to go.” I found these secluded hiking cliffs when I was sixteen years old. Kelsey and I went there all the time. On the other side of the cliffs were these gorgeous waterfalls that Kelsey and I always talked about jumping off but were never brave enough to try.
He licks his bottom lip and smiles at me. “I know.”
I clear my throat. “Favorite memory?”
“That’s easy,” he says, and pulls the car to a stop outside our apartment building. He turns to me and picks up my hand. His thumb softly rubs against my knuckles, watching my eyes to see if I’m going to pull away, but I can’t. My arm sent sparks of fire though my entire body as soon as he touched me. I feel this burning sensation inside of me that, for the first time, I know isn’t fear. It’s attraction. It makes me uneasy and nervous, in a good way, at the same time. “The day you said yes.”
“Said yes to what?” My voice sounds scratchy. How is a simple thumb on my knuckles making my knees shake together?
Adam leans over and presses his lips gently against my hand. I pull it back, but he holds on tighter, smiling lightly and still looking at me. “To all of it.”
And then he gets out of the car and opens my door. I don’t know how long I sit there, still staring at the spot on my hand, waiting for the fire to stop burning.
Finally, I face him without getting out of the car. He frowns and holds his hand out to help me, but I shake my head.
“Take me to all the places we used to go.”
Martino’s Pizzeria is just a few blocks off campus. It’s a small restaurant with an outdoor deck, and the inside is bright and modern; not the usual red and white checkered tablecloth pizza kind of place. I like it immediately. Adam insists we order the MJ Special and Gyro pizzas, but I eye both of them warily when the beautiful waitress sets them down in front of us. Her black hair is pulled into a low ponytail that falls almost to her waist and she has the most exotic features of anyone I’ve ever seen.