I can’t make myself ask. It’s already a lot that he’s done for me.
Adam eyes my dinner. “I didn’t know they had mac and cheese!”
“It’s a Bodie experiment,” I say. “Want some?”
I dump a spoonful on the side of Adam’s sandwich plate and we try it together, like it’s a dare. The mac is warm and gooey and the cheese makes strings. It tastes a million times better than the stuff that comes in a box.
“Bodie’s that blond guy, right?” Adam says.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know why I expected it to be bad.”
I laugh. “I know. Me too.”
“It’s awesome.”
“You can have more if you want.” I push my bowl toward him.
“I don’t want to take your food.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Really.” I’m eager to give him something. Anything.
“You eat it,” he says, smiling.
He tells me about the article he’s reading on a new museum in Barcelona. How interesting he thinks it must be to design a space to show off art you haven’t even seen.
I don’t want him to know that I’m not exactly sure where Barcelona is, if it’s in Italy or Spain, or it’s like Luxembourg. Maybe Barcelona is in Barcelona, and maybe if I’m nineteen I should know that. So I focus on what he said about the building. “You mean like someday paintings that haven’t even been painted yet will hang there?”
Adam nods. “I wonder what it’s like to make a landmark.” He tells me he’s an architect, but not that kind of architect.
Then he asks what I was doing to the espresso machine before, so I tell him about Bodie and the penny and he laughs. I feel like our whole conversation is some kind of secret test and his laugh means I passed.
After dinner, I take our plates into the kitchen, and Adam is waiting when I get back. He holds the door for me on the way out. He nods, I nod, and we walk to my car together.
“Why were you homeless?” I ask.
“I got in a fight with my father,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.” I don’t want to talk about my father, so I don’t ask questions about his. And maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his father, because he doesn’t ask about mine. But it’s not uncomfortable to walk together, my footsteps filling the beats between his, and I don’t flinch when he gets in my car.
* * *
Adam throws his bag on one of the black canvas chairs and says, “What can I get you?”
“What do you have?” I ask, giving him a big smile, trying hard to act like I’m completely comfortable standing here in his living room.
“Water, milk, Coke?” he says.
“Coke,” I say.
He goes into the kitchen and comes back with a can of Coke and a bottle of beer.
“There’s beer too,” he says, plopping down on the futon. “If you want one.” He rests the can of Coke on one of the birch coasters and uses a bent metal corner of the footlocker to open his bottle with a quick pound of his fist.
I crack the can open, slurping the foam so it doesn’t drip on his futon, and say, “I’m good with Coke, thanks.” I can’t afford a buzz. I know enough about men to know the good ones don’t ever want to be alone with a sixteen-year-old girl. And I’m pretty sure Adam is one of the good ones. I can’t afford to say something that will give me away. I already messed up with him once.
“So you’re an architect?” I ask. He moved on from it quickly in the cafe, like he was self-conscious. Like how I’d feel if someone asked me to sing in the middle of just being normal. “You actually make buildings?”
“Well, in theory,” Adam says. “I’m getting my PhD now. And I’m not supposed to be working outside of teaching, but that woman I met with at Decadence? Anna. She’s converting a barn, and has ideas she doesn’t know how to implement, so I’m helping her draw up plans. She’s my first client.”
Everyone I knew in Little River worked on their own houses, turned barns into garages and garages to extra bedrooms, but they didn’t ever seem to have much of a plan.
“Is it hard to design a building when you’ve never built one?” I ask.
Adam seems surprised by my question. “I’m about to find out, I guess.”
He kicks off his boots and lines them up, side by side, heels against the trunk. He’s careful about everything—how he touches my arm or leans closer to show me a sketch from his notebook—like he understands that I might be scared and doesn’t want to add to it. I’ve never been around someone who didn’t have at least a little bit of reckless bubbling under their skin, but he doesn’t.
We talk for hours. I don’t understand a lot of what he’s telling me about his doctorate program at Cornell, the classes he’s teaching and something or someone called a TA, but he doesn’t seem to expect me to. And eventually he starts talking about ordinary things.
He’s twenty-seven. He’s from a place called Needham. He used to smoke, but only cloves. He quit when his favorite professor died of lung cancer in August, but when he’s working he still reaches for cigarettes that aren’t there. Now his ashtray holds loose change.
It feels like we’re playing house on an old fashioned TV show where the couple comes home and talks about their day. I never thought people actually did that. My dad, when he did come home, used to sit and smoke and be all stuck in his head like he wasn’t even there.
Adam’s voice is soft, but it fills the room. There’s more space than furniture, so every word echoes just a little. My extremities are thawed. The dark is outside. I wish this was actually what life was like, even though it’s just this simple little thing. Two people sitting on a couch.
Adam clears his throat and looks at the ceiling. “Another Coke?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
And then we’re back on the couch with his beer and my Coke and talking like we’re old friends or new friends, or I don’t know what. Like he’s forgotten how I almost kissed him last night.
He wants to get a dog and maybe a kayak. He wants to have a kid someday. His girlfriend left him last year. He doesn’t say why. I want to know, but I don’t think I should ask. I tell him I left someone. I tell him that sometimes, it’s only about the person leaving. Sometimes, the person being left did nothing to deserve it.
* * *
It’s after midnight, I’m sure. My voice is hoarse and scratchy. I don’t think I’ve talked so much to anyone ever. I don’t tell him about my dad or the motorhome, but I tell him about stealing Mrs. Varnick’s car, even though I don’t say why. He laughs big and I can see all his tiny teeth. I make it sound like something that happened ages and ages ago. When I was just a kid pulling a prank. I tell him about Ida and her orders and he tells me about how he tended bar to pay for college. We swap stories about weird customers and crazy cooks.
The conversation lulls for a second and I yawn too big to stifle it.
Adam taps my leg. “Alright, up,” he says.
I stand. He pulls the futon away from the wall and I help him lay it flat again. We hold opposite corners and fluff the sheet up in the air like it’s a parachute. We don’t talk, as if the process of making the bed is a solemn occasion. I feel the weight and the strangeness of it low in my belly.
When we’re done, Adam says, “Are those enough pillows?” like an apology, like he’s supposed to know how many pillows I like. “Were they enough?”
“Yeah.” I stare at his lips, at the stubble along his jaw. This time the bed is made and I know where he sleeps and that he’s not expecting anything from me. But no one has ever talked to me the way he does, with all the little details of a life that’s not like mine. Everyone I knew before—they were people who were around my whole life. We lived from the same angle. But Adam is interesting and he thinks I’m interesting too, and he’s seen so much more of everything than I have.
“Well, okay,” he says, and I think he gets what I can’t make myself say. But then he turns off the light and starts to walk into the h
allway.
I don’t want this to end. I grab at his hand. Just a quick pull.
And then his lips are on mine and his body is on mine and the sheets on the bed we made are quickly crumpled. He kisses my collarbone, the palm of my hand, smooth skin on the insides of my wrists, places no one’s thought to kiss before, and he’s not in any kind of hurry about it.
He touches me softly, gently. It starts out feeling like that longing I had with Matty that always ended up in a bunch of nothing, but Adam touching me feels so much bigger than what it is and gives way to this flood of warmth, like a dam breaking, that makes me gasp and grab hold of the pillow. I run my hand down his belly. His body jerks when I get close. He breathes through his nose and it tickles my cheek. He’s small and soft under the blankets. He finds my hand with his and pulls it away. We kiss more before he gets up and goes into the bathroom for a while. I’m not sure what’s happened or happening. Is he getting a condom? Is he going to the bathroom? He runs the faucet the whole time. When he comes back he gets in bed behind me and wraps me in his arms. “You’re so warm,” he says in a sleepy voice. Brushes my hair out of my face with his sweaty palm. “Sleep tight.”
— Chapter 17 —
I wake up before Adam does. His arm is draped over my side, sticking to my skin, and he’s breathing stale beer breath into my neck. The sun streams through the windows. We’ve kicked the blankets off and I’m only in my underwear. I want to cover myself, but I don’t want to wake him. His fingers are pressed against my belly and I wonder if they’ll leave pink prints behind. His hand is smooth and his fingernails are clean.
I’ve never spent the night with anyone before. Matty had a curfew. I’m worried Adam might be upset to see me when he wakes up, and it will be like when I thought he wanted to kiss me and he didn’t, but so much worse. Or maybe he’ll be mad that we didn’t have sex. I can’t just grab my boots and run down the stairs if I want to leave. My clothes are lost somewhere in the tangled sheets.
Slowly, carefully, I twist around under the weight of Adam’s arm. His hat is on the pillow next to him. His hair isn’t sparse like I expected. It’s thick and wiry and sticks up in every direction. I try to reach across him to pull the blanket over us to cover myself, but he stirs and opens his eyes. I hold my breath. He smiles when he sees me, a clear, happy smile that stops the scramble in my head.
“Mmmm.” He stiffens his body into a stretch. He rubs his hand up and down my side, kisses my cheek and pulls me close to him. My bare chest against his, our legs warm and sweaty.
“I swear,” he whispers into my ear, “I wasn’t expecting that.” And I know he means it, that if I hadn’t grabbed his hand, he would have gone to bed and left me alone in the living room to wait out the buzz from the four Cokes I drank.
I don’t know what to say, so I kiss his cheek back, but he turns his head to kiss me for real. I feel him through his boxer shorts, getting hard against my thigh, but he pulls away.
“Morning breath,” he says, grabbing his wadded t-shirt from the floor. “I’ll be right back.” He goes into the bathroom and closes the door. The faucet runs again.
I pull a corner of blanket over myself, try to tuck it around me in a way that’s flattering. I don’t want him looking at me too much in the bright morning. With his chest hair and full stubble, he looks so much older than Matty and I worry there are ways that my body could give me away. When I turned twelve, Margo bought me a training bra and gave me warnings about getting my period and growing hair in weird places, but maybe there are other ways I’m supposed to change past what’s already happened and I don’t even know. Adam would, because he lived with a girl who was probably his own age. I look around the room like maybe there are clues about her, but of course there aren’t. She’s been gone for a while, and it’s not like he’d have a naked picture of her hanging on the wall so I could see what a woman is supposed to look like.
When Adam finally opens the bathroom door, he doesn’t come back to me. I hear cabinets open and close, water pouring and then the burbling sound of a coffee maker.
I am not sure what to do with myself. I yell, “Are you making coffee so you can go get coffee?”
“Busted!” Adam shouts. “I need fuel for my walk to the coffee shop.”
“Me too.” I find his long sleeve flannel wadded on the floor and wear it, like women do on TV. Like I’ve done this before and it’s no big deal.
“You sleep okay?” he calls.
“Yeah,” I say, walking into the kitchen, bare feet on the cold floor. My legs feel so naked. I’m worried he doesn’t want me, that I’m doing something wrong and that’s why he didn’t come back to bed, why he doesn’t want me to touch him. I’m worried it means I won’t be welcome for long, that maybe I’m not even welcome now, but then he brushes my hair out of my face and says, “God, you’re gorgeous.” He gives me the kind of kiss that makes me grab the counter to steady myself because I’m not sure which end is up.
* * *
Adam holds my good hand while we walk to the coffee shop together. And we’re clean and smell like peppermint soap, and I’m wearing one of his sweaters with the sleeves rolled up, because we’re going to wash all my clothes in the laundry room in the basement of his building tonight and fold them while we watch Seinfeld and order calzones from the place down the street, and I know it’s stupid, but it means everything to me to have plans further ahead than the next twenty minutes.
When we get to The Commons, Adam drops my hand and says, “Here. Take my key again.” He’s blushing. “You know, in case you need to stop in at your lunch break, or you go home before I do.”
I know he’s saying home like it’s nothing, just the place he lives, so I try not to be that girl, the kind who takes the most stupid little word and lets it turn her inside out.
“Thanks,” I say quickly.
He brushes his lips against my cheek. “I’ll let you go in first, so they don’t think we’re together.”
My blood stops short in my veins. I’m sure I don’t look like I’m playing it cool this time, because he kisses me on the mouth and says, “Just so it’s easier on you at work. And so I can watch you walk away.”
— Chapter 18 —
“Pilgrim! How goes it?” Bodie says in his lazy lilt when I walk in. He’s taking orders up front, and the line is almost out the door. He has a pencil behind his ear and chews on a red coffee stirrer like it’s a piece of hay. “Do you know how to total when there’s more than one item?” he asks, while I duck under the counter.
I reach from behind him and hit the add button. “Now put the next one in,” I say.
“Thanks, P.” Bodie gives me that great big grin that makes his eyes all but disappear. “Carly called. She’ll be in late. Problem with the espresso delivery.”
The way he says it makes me think maybe it’s some kind of code, but what he could be saying between the lines is lost on me.
“What did you do if you didn’t know how to add up items?” I ask.
“I just did each one as a separate transaction,” Bodie says, moving his coffee stirrer to the other side of his mouth. He scoops espresso into the little metal basket, tamps it down slowly, carefully, like it’s the only thing he has to do all morning.
It drives me crazy. “I got this.” I grab the tamper out of his hand. “You take orders and I’ll get them done,” I say, even though I still have to look at the board to see what goes in which drink. I throw my weight into tamping the coffee and screw the basket into the machine, but by the time I finish the drink, Bodie is too busy chatting up some cute hippie girl in a chunky sweater to have an order for me. “Next up?” I ask.
The girl smiles. “Oh, I don’t know what I want yet.” She steps back like she’s just now going to look at the board and think about her order.
“I’ll come back to you,” I say, pointing to the person behind her, who looks relieved. Hippie girl and Bodie move to the side, continuing with whatever the hell they’re talking about, and
I go into full gear.
Carly comes in a few minutes later with a sack of coffee slung over her shoulder, walking bowlegged because it’s so heavy. Bodie doesn’t even look up or offer to help. I’ve got the line down to three people now, if you don’t count the hippie girl, and I don’t. The last person in line is Adam. He smiles at me whenever we make eye contact.
Carly dumps the sack on the counter with a loud thump. “You are a saint,” she says, hugging me dramatically when she gets to my side of the counter. It makes me blush like when Margo hugs me. “I was dreading what I’d walk into, leaving Bodie in charge. He’s lucky he’s cute, huh?” She rolls her eyes. “Bodie! Kitchen!”
Bodie pats the hand of the hippie girl, takes the pencil from behind his ear, and writes something on a napkin that he hands to her. And as ridiculous as Bodie is and as much as it’s nice to have Adam smiling at me while he waits for his coffee, I still wish just a little bit that whatever Bodie was writing he was writing for me.
“Alright, alright,” Bodie says, walking past us.
Carly takes one of the dish towels and snaps it at his ass. “Could you be any more blond?” she says as he walks through the door to the kitchen.
“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful!” Bodie screeches, the door swinging shut behind him.
— Chapter 19 —
We don’t have sex, Adam and me. There could be a big difference in the way you have sex with a teenage boy in the back of his mom’s station wagon and the way you have sex with a man who you live with. Maybe I’m supposed to seduce him. Maybe I’m supposed to drive to the mall when my shift is over and buy lacy things to wear to meet him at the door when he comes home. But I don’t go to the mall after my shift. I go back to Adam’s place, and I wear Margo’s old leopard leggings and one of Adam’s sweatshirts, and drink a Coke and watch Ren & Stimpy until he gets home. And then we order pizza and play Rook until we can’t stop yawning.
The People We Keep Page 12