He nods. “Okay. Let’s head back.”
Adam tries to talk to me on the hike back, about simple thingslike the weather and the birds. I don’t respond. What is there to say?
Just before we reach the parking lot, I’m startled when something sharp hits my shoulder. “Oh gods,” I shriek, but then freeze when I see it’s…well. It’s a hawk. A gorgeous, red-tailed hawk with eyes so black, they look like they contain two entirely new universes.
Adam jumps back when he sees. “Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know why a hawk landed on me in front of Adam. It’s almost like a sign, to keep doing what I’m doing with him. Keep telling him the truth. But right now, I just want to be as far away from this man as possible. I stroke the hawk’s beautiful burnt sienna feathers lightly. They somehow feel soft and sharp at the same time. “Why hello. Go on and have a good day, would you?”
And then he flies away, his big wide wings as graceful as blown glass made alive.
Adam’s eyes are wide as well. I anticipate him going into an intense conversation about the “coincidence” of that hawk “randomly” landing on me. But instead, he doesn’t say a word. We drive home in silence. The only thing he tells me is to have a good evening when I turn toward Nadia’s. I say nothing in response.
The only thing I can think when I’m inside isWhat a waste of a perfectly good hike.
14
Adam is nowhere to befound when I bring dinner over for William later, which relieves and annoys me at once. On one hand, I don’t think I could take the awkwardness of being extra unsure of what to say around him. On the other, it pisses me off that he thinks he can treat me like I am insane and disappear without a trace. I didn’t take him for the sort to run away after being a piece of crap to someone, but then again, it seems like I didn’t really know Adam after all. Even with all the spying on him as a ghost a couple of years back.
Luckily, William doesn’t seem to either notice or mind my emotional distress. “What are these things?” he asks, grabbing his now third helping of dinner.
“They’re enchiladas,” I say, picking at my own plate. Not even Nadia’s world-famous extra-cheesy enchiladas can help my mood.
I listen to William wax on for a while about how too many damn people are moving into town, when he shocks me with this question: “So what the hell are your intentions with Adam, anyway?”
I blink. “Come again?”
William ignores my question. “Just go easy on him, will ya? The kid hasn’t had a lot of good luck lately. After his mother died, and then him having to stop drinking, and then losing all those jobs—”
“Jesus Christ, William. Don’t tell me any more of his business like that. Adam and I aren’t dating.”
He looks at me and raises one white, fuzzy eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
I nod. “Oh yes. I’m sure.”
“Then why did he come in here earlier, after seeing you, stomping around and looking like someone punched him in the face?”
I shrug. “He was an idiot to me earlier and I called him out on it.”
William scoffs. “Damn kid. He’s got no sense when it comes to a good woman, does he?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’m oddly touched that William thinks I’m a good woman. Good enough to be romantically entangled with his grandson, even. But after everything that’s happened with him,Idon’t think Adam’s good enough to be entangled withme.
Specifically after today, I’m having a difficult time remembering what it was like to crush on Adam, anyway. I shake my head when I realize William’s waiting for a response still. “I don’t know about that. He’s doing a reporting piece on me, and we had a disagreement.” I shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal. He’s looking like someone told him his mother’s dead again, and you’re looking like someone told you that the damn animals in the forest all dropped dead—”
I gasp. “William! Enough with all the dead talk, man!”
“You two better have made up by next week!” William points his finger at me. “I don’t want to deal with you two moping around again, you hear?”
Well, I guess I can see where Adam got some of his lack of tact from. I refrain from sighing too loudly as I stand. “Sure thing, William. Let me pack up the leftovers for you before I go, okay?”
Nadia’s car still isn’t back when I walk home, for some strange reason, and that makes me extra annoyed as I imagine where Adam could be, because his vehicle is nowhere to be seen, either. Because, honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is him, looking charming and attractive as usual, sitting next to a beautiful woman at some swanky restaurant downtown or even in the next town over. I imagine his big hand on the small of her back, and how warm and safe it would feel for her there. How he’d whisper in her ear the things he was planning on doing to her later. How she’d giggle and blush.
How she’d benormal. How she wouldn’t be a woman who lost eight years in a way he would never believe. How because of that, he’d thinkshewas worthy of his respect.
I try and distract myself from my bad mood first with food. I couldn’t finish my plate at William’s, so I open all the cupboards in the kitchen, trying to brainstorm and find something that would hit the spot. I settle for s’mores—made up with value-brand cinnamon graham crackers, a few pieces of mint dark chocolate, and big, honking marshmallows that I roast over the flames of the gas range. I eat them in the living room while watchingGilmore Girls, the Thanksgiving episode where Lorelai and Rory get invited to so many Thanksgivings that they have to micro-schedule their whole day and appetites, around, like, ten different meals.
