I can’t focus on that flutter.
“We’ve come this far. With the story, I mean. And Tegan, she—”
“She’d leave,” Adam interrupts, and I blink at him. “She would leave here, and leave this, if you wanted her to. I saw her just now, Jess. Whatever you told her about us last night—she’d do what you want her to do now.”
That softens me, and I can’t help but smile, though I direct it down to my hands. Teganhaddefended me, hadn’t she? Not just a few minutes ago, when Adam and Beth had returned from their day doing God knows what, but also last night, when she found me upstairs in the guest room Beth had set us up in when we first arrived. I’d been sitting on one of the narrow twin beds, my bag open beside me, my stomach turning and turning. I can’t imagine what expression I must have had on my face to inspire such a quick reaction in my sister.
She shoved my suitcase out of the way enough to sit beside me. “What happened?” she said, with a note of pure, unselfish concern, and it was the first time in a long time I had the sense that shesawme. Not as the person who takes care of her.
Just . . . as a person.
So I told her the truth: that Adam had made a deal with Salem, his own podcast in exchange for me talking about Mom on the record. I hadn’t expected her to react, really. If anything, I expected her to take his side—to say,Talk about Mom, then, or maybe,You can leave, but I’m staying. I was thinking of her that day at the kitchen table, those damning postcards spread out before her, anger written all over her face.
But she surprised me. She said, “Thatsucks,” and then she said that Adam was supposed to be “the nice one.”
I stared at her in openmouthed shock, and she shrugged.
“He acts more like our friend than Salem does.”
In that moment, I felt an incongruous pang of gratitude for the exact same man I was so mad at, if only for getting me and my sister to agree on something.
“She would,” I say to Adam now, and in response, he tilts his head ever so slightly at me, a question in his eyes.
If she would, then why aren’t you leaving?
“I don’t want to be part of any deal you’ve made with Salem.”
“I don’t want it that way,” he says quickly. “I don’t wantyouthat way.”
That flutter in my middle takes up firm residence again. Blood rushes to my face, warm and revealing.
“I mean—” he stops, clears his throat. “You know what I mean.”
The space between us is heavy with the possibility of that shy, cautiousyou know what I mean. I think he means what he said last night—that he wants to know me only for himself. But right now, in the fading light of the summer evening, all alone out here where I’m certain no one from the house can see us, what Adam Hawkins truly means by knowing me for himself seems as huge and as strong as he is.
My mind pulses with a hundred inconvenient images, all wrong for the moment: Adam’s big hand on the back of my neck, both of mine gripping his biceps. Adam’s chest rising and falling with breaths that come fast. My damp forehead against his bare shoulder. Our legs tangled together on a big bed.
I blink, desperate to clear them.
We are on atrampoline, for God’s sake.
“When I talk to you,” I say, trying to get back to the point, though I admit—my voice sounds suited for one of those inconvenient images. I try clearing my throat, too.
I start it over, in a safer place this time.
“IfI talk to you, that’s for you, Adam. That’s not for the story. I don’t know what that means for your job, but—”
“I don’t care what it means for my job.”
I let that hang in the air. Every small expression on Adam’s face at any mention of his best friend, every word he’s ever said about him in my presence, and I know it’s not so simple asI don’t care what it means for my job.
His job matters to him. His best friend matters to him.
He lowers his head again. “I’ll talk to Salem. I was going to talk to her. We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” I ask, even though I know he can’t possibly have an answer.Idon’t have an answer. That day at my dad’s, I had all those conditions for Adam; I thought I could set every boundary in advance. Now, those boundaries fold in on each other, blurry and confusing. I’m staying on the story for Tegan’s sake, but I’m still not talking. Except when I am, but that won’t be for the story. Adam’s staying on the story, because it’s his job, but if he ever hears me tell my perspective on it, he has to keep it separate from Salem, from the story she’s out to get.
And all that? All that is to say nothing of theyou know what I meanof it all; all that is to say nothing of those crystal-clear images of us together in my head.
