“You know I don’t do relationships.”
William snorted. “When I was your age, you know what I was doing? Not cavorting around like a teenager, I’ll tell you that much.”
Adam sat on the edge of the bed and said, “I know. You’d already met her. Love at first sight.”
“And I was married with two kids! Not jerking women around!”
“I’m not jerking her around. She knows it’s casual.” Adam sighed and turned toward the television. In even the ugly gray glare of the screen, I could tell he was beautiful. His eyes were blue like the sea. His skin was freckled, his hair kind of pink gold in the dark bedroom. He looked a bit like an angel, and I suppressed a giggle. The grumpy old man, the angel, and the ghost. I don’t know why it was so funny to me, but I snorted a bit.
The strangest thing happened then. His eyes tilted left and landed on me. He blinked. Then he blinked again. He stood, and that was when William said, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Adam shook his head, still staring in my direction. “Nothing. Nothing. Have you taken that cough medicine I got you?”
“Oh, go to hell.”
Adam made sure William wasn’t running a fever (while William bitched the whole while, somehow even with a thermometer in his mouth) and then he was back out the front door. His beautiful not-girlfriend was leaning against his Jeep, her hair dark like my sister Teal’s, and just as resplendent as the vehicle. She put her phone down as he approached, his boots crunching the gravel.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me.” She smiled. She was just as curvy as Sage, all hips and breasts with a round belly, and when she smiled, I could tell that she was just a little bit, or maybe a lot, in love with him.She knows it’s casual, Adam had said, butjust from the sparkling in her eyes, I knew she was hoping she could change his mind.
“Never,” he said, and he picked her up as she squealed, and kissed her.
He put her down slowly, their lips never parting, and he curled his hands around her waist.
I knew I needed to turn around and go back home. Or maybe snoop through some other neighbors’ houses, or even other neighborhoods. What Adam and his not-girlfriend were doing—it was personal and private.
But I stepped closer. I felt like a ghostly anthropologist, observing how contemporary humans kissed. Was it different from when I last kissed a guy, seven years before?
I thought I could maybe make out their tongues. Her arms were thrown around his neck. His hand lifted to cup her breast, and she moaned a little too loudly, I guess, because he looked up at his grandfather’s house, maybe to make sure William wasn’t on his way to curse them out—but once again, his eyes landed on me. He looked at me. Up and down, like he could see me.
“We should get out of here,” he said, still staring at me.
I was a ghost and Istillgot goose bumps in that moment—they flowed over my body as though I’d stepped under a freezing waterfall.
It was like he was saying those words tome. It was like I wasalive.
We should get out of here.
Although he only stared at me for all of two seconds, I felt like I somehow had an opportunity to respond. To interact with someone, anyone else. To feel like I wasn’t the most lonely and forgotten ghost in all the worlds.
But before I knew it, before I could even try to respond, hislady friend said, “Yes.” She hopped in as he opened the door for her, and soon, they were driving away, the headlights cutting right through my body like machetes made of light as he swerved toward the road.
And then I was left alone. Just as I always was in the end.
Adam never looked directly atme again, but that didn’t stop me from trying to get him to. I snooped on him and William every chance possible that summer. I danced in his face. I yelled in his ears. I did everything I could to make himseeme once more. I was desperate, absolutely desperate, for someone else to see me other than my weeping sister Sage.
But something happened that summer that I wasn’t anticipating. And it was me accidentally developing a massive crush on that son of a bitch.
It came from the tender way Adam made breakfast for William every morning when he visited—two over-easy eggs, whole wheat toast, sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper, and, to William’s dismay, two slices of turkey bacon. And how he’d make sure William finished his plate. How he’d try and refill the bird feeder before it was even half-empty, so William wouldn’t have to balance on his unstable-looking wooden ladder. How he’d help his pregnant neighbor carry in groceries and, when the baby arrived, mow her lawn after taking care of William’s.
Adam seemed generous and thoughtful with a high emotional intelligence. I had thought he was the perfect man.
And then he had to completely ruin it one year later.
4
Seeing Adam here and now,when I had been assured by the Cranberry rumor network that he was firmly living downtown and only came to see William on the weekends, well. It catches me off guard. But I remember my promise to myself.Be sharper. Don’t let them see how much they’ve hurt you.
So I fold up my arms and say, “Excuse me? Who the hell areyou?”
