I want to tell her that I mean for it to be bigger.
I mean to make it so the next time I touch her, she doesn’t have any doubts about me or herself or this thing that’s between us.
Instead I keep waiting until I see the long line of her bare throat bob in a courage-gathering swallow.
“Okay. Let’s go out.”
Chapter 17
Jess
In general, I’m not one to exaggerate.
But it’s the best two days I can remember having in years.
It isn’t that I haven’t had good days in the last decade of my life. If I think back, I can count a lot of them, in fact. Tegan’s first day of sixth grade was a great one: in the class she wanted to be in, with the teacher we’d hoped she’d get, wearing an outfit she’d loved, smiling huge and happy when she’d gotten off the bus in the afternoon. Mid-May five years ago, there was a day where I got a return big enough to pay off our property taxes for the year, and Tegan and I had ordered takeout for an entire week in celebration. The day Tegan got accepted to Allegheny with a scholarship package that made me cry—in the shower, of course—with relief.
And there’s smaller ones, too, little victories of life that I know I don’t think about or appreciate enough. There’s times when Tegan and I have laughed together until our stomachs hurt or times when she’s rested her head on my shoulder or thanked me earnestly for some everyday service I’ve done her. Times when I’ve watched her do something smart or kind or generous or funny and felt a swell of pride and love so big that it almost took my breath away.
But those days, they’re different from these two.
It starts with Adam Hawkins doing exactly what he said he’d do: He takes me out.
Midmorning in small-town Missouri, me and him in the minivan alone, windows down and driving past places that he tells me about as we go: the fields where he first played peewee football, the diner that still serves his late grandfather’s favorite apple pie with a slice of melted cheddar cheese on top, the chain pharmacy his mom refuses to go to because it replaced her favorite local place over fifteen years ago. We go to what has to be the most sophisticated farmers’ market I’ve ever seen, and a woman who sells beautiful, delicious-smelling loaves of bread pinches Adam’s lean, stubbled cheeks and looks at me as though I belong right there beside him. We drive back to the house with three bags of fresh food and together we make the kind of lunch that Adam says will get him forgiven for missing chores in the morning.
In the afternoon we go out again, this time with Tegan and Beth to the hardware store. We buy a bunch of stuff for a project Beth says Adam ruined yesterday, and they rag on each other good-naturedly in a way that makes Tegan and me smile at each other in sheepish envy. We get the girls from camp, take turns jumping on the trampoline again, eat a noisy dinner all together at the huge dining room table, and the whole time, things feel so easy between Tegan and me, easy like our best days at home, or maybe even easier.
That night, Adam and I sit beside each other in the family room while a kids’ movie I can’t pay attention to plays—the girls climbing all over Tegan as they watch and react, Beth and Mace asleep against each other fifteen seconds into the first musical number, and, most distractingly, Adam’s arm slung along the couch behind me, his fingers occasionally brushing the back of my neck softly, perfectly, teasingly.
When we all go to bed for the night, I get the barest but somehow still extremely satisfying experience of my hallway bathroom fantasy: I step out from washing my face and brushing my teeth and Adam’s leaning against the wall opposite. He pushes off and takes two steps forward, setting the whole of his warm palm against the nape of my neck, those fingers that teased me on the couch curling along the curve of it as he tips his head down and presses his lips once against mine.
“See you in the morning,” he says quietly, as though we do this every single night, and it’s simply incredible that I manage to walk back to the room I’m sharing with Tegan, what with all of the bones in my legs turned to putty.
When I wake up after a delicious, dreamless night of sleep, the sun’s streaming through a slice of open curtains and Tegan’s not in the bed beside mine, but it doesn’t jolt me with concern because we’re here and for some strange reason, here I know she’s okay. The house smells buttery and sweet and divine, and that’s because Adam Hawkins got up early enough to make pancakes for all eight people staying in this house.
But when I sit down at a chair he holds out gallantly, I think maybe he’s made them only for me.
It’s hard to explain how it’s all so perfect. In the abstract, I can see that everything we’re doing is so simple, so everyday. But to me, it doesn’t feel simple or everyday at all. It feels like Adam—who maybe at first glance doesn’t look the type to be so careful, so graceful—leads us through the most beautiful, complex dance, one where he’s resetting all the positions we were put in when we first met. He puts himself on the spot so I don’t have to be; he opens himself up about the small, silly details of his life so I can find room to do the same. He guides me through the steps until it doesn’t feel as though I’m doing steps at all; I’m just . . . I’mdancing, talking easily about what my favorite foods are or what music I like best or why I’m well-known for doing the best balayage in all of Franklin County.
It’s nothing about Mom or Lynton Baltimore; it’s nothing about how I took over custody of an eight-year-old when I was barely an adult myself.
It’s nothing about all the things that aren’t me but have ended up defining me.
With Adam, during these two days, surrounded by his family and mine, I’m more myself than I’ve been in ages.
I can admit, though, that by sunset on our second evening—our final evening here, before we need to get back on the road to whatever we’ll find in Tulsa—I’m restless with thoughts of what we haven’t done, what we’re running out of time to do.
In quiet moments, my mind drifts to that kiss on the trampoline, to Adam’s rough hands and his firm mouth, his warm breath against my skin.
To the ways we don’t know each other yet.
And I think Adam knows it; I think he catches me at it.
I think it might be part of the dance.
Other than that kiss in the hallway, every touch has been like the one on the couch—soft, sort of secret, something he makes an effort to ensure no one else notices. They stack up inside me, warm, smoldering coals that I want to feel ignite fully. Those factory settings I felt certain about on the trampoline the other night are an illusion to me now, or maybe I simply recognize them as having been installed by someone, something else.
So, when the sun is fully down and another family movie is playing, and Adam and I are in the kitchen quietly putting away the last of the dishes we volunteered to do, I barely let him finish his softly spoken, “Can I take you out again tonight?” question.
