He punches back with, “You think he wants to rekindle your relationship?”
“No,” I say, the mean nature of Kevin’s interactions with me a bit hard to swallow, even if I did bring them on myself, with that message I left on his phone. “Maybe it insulted him that I broke up with him,” I suggest. “Those things bother some people, even if they have no real feelings for the other person. It’s like an ego thing.” I don’t wait for a reply. It was never really a question. “I don’t know,” I add. “The whole thing just feels stalkerish, which is why I called him and threatened to call the police if he doesn’t stop.”
I hold my breath, dreading Adam’s reply, waiting for it on pins and needles, seconds ticking by into more seconds, the silence awkward and heavy, and almost as weird as my day. “He denied everything,” I quicklyoffer, filling the empty space I can no longer endure. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not him. Whatever the case, I’m actually really creeped out and walking around looking over my shoulder.” I breathe out. “Sorry.” I laugh nervously. “I guess I just gave you an earful.”
Silence fills the line again, a long, drawn-out silence. I shift in my seat and start to worry—is he not even on the line anymore? “Adam?”
“I have a confession to make, Mia.”
Unease zigs and zags through me. “Confession?”
“Yes. I left the notes.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The room spins, and I am unsteady when I am not even on my feet. He left the notes?Adamleft the notes? How is that even possible?How is that even possible?Nothing about this feels right, and my instinct is to hang up. I’m about to do just that when he says, “Don’t hang up. I saw you around the neighborhood, and then you were on the dating app.”
“So you just left me notes? Were youfollowingme?” I demand.
“No,” he says. “No, nothing like that. I told you, I saw the old me in you. I liked the idea of giving you some space, of showing you how desirable you are, from afar.”
“Without even telling me you were doing it?”
“I’m telling you now, Mia. Bottom line, I saw you and started leaving the notes before you showed up on my dating app. I left the first note on a whim. I couldn’t resist. Then I saw you again, and you were with the person I now know is Jess. I didn’t want to approach you then, but I wanted you to beseen.”
“And today? We’d already started talking. Why stay in the shadows? I was alone.”
“I had about five minutes to get back to work,” he states. “It wasn’t the time to tell you that, hey, I’mthat guy.With the help of the lady behind the counter, I grabbed your receipt, wrote the note, and left with the hope I’d make you smile.”
His explanation is almost too perfect. I think of the man with Jack at the coffee shop. “Did you speak with Jack this morning? Did you approach him?”
“What? No. I don’t even know what Jack looks like. You’ve never told me.”
“Well, if you’ve been watching me, you have to know what Jack looks like.”
“I haven’t been watching you, Mia,” he says. “Our paths just happened to cross.”
“Three times?” I counter. “No. That’s not possible.” But as my mind traces backward, I wasn’t actually with Jack when I received any communication from Adam. Just Jess that one time, and he has admitted that already.
“It does feel impossible,” he concurs, “and yet it happened. Our paths, even on the dating app, continued to cross, over and over again. It seems the universe wants our paths to cross.”
If I were Cinderella and this was a fairy tale, I might buy this idea he presents. But I’m not. “I’m uncomfortable,” I state.
“Sometimes uncomfortable is good, Mia.”
Suddenly his use of my name no longer feels right. “I don’t like to be uncomfortable,Adam.”
“Which is why you remaininvisibleto the general population. Everything you do is about never feeling uncomfortable. I told you, Mia. I can show you how to be seen.”
I think of the man on floor two, of the group who’d watched my disaster of a presentation, and of the notes that freaked me out. “I’m not sure being seen is what I want.”
“And yet you don’t want to be ignored, now do you?”
The comment hits close to home, but not in a gentle we-are-the-same kind of way this time. In a I-know-better-than-you-and-you-are-lesser-than-me way. “I’m hanging up now.”
And that’s what I do.
I hang up.
