Baltimore:About all the parts, really. I respect women. I empathize with their struggles. I certainly don’t see them as weak.
Durant:Hmm.
Baltimore:Take you, for example.
Durant:Oh, I don’t think we need to do that. I don’t think we need to take me anywhere.
Chapter 21
Jess
“It’s not difficult to get people like this to talk to the press,” Salem is saying as we make our way through the lush, cactus-dotted courtyard that leads to the entrance of the Kirtenour Healing Institute in Santa Fe. The air is hot and dry and it somehow smells like rocks, even though I never noticed before that rocks had a particular smell. My eyes feel so parched that I imagine they make aplinkingsound every time I blink, and frankly, I’ve been doing a lot of blinking.
Because being around Salem for the last several hours?
It’s being inside a tornado.
Or a sandstorm, I guess, if I want to be location-specific about it.
“People like this,” she continues, as though none of us are even there, “think you’re dying to hear about their heroics.”
“Salem,” Adam says, but she ignores him. We’re only a few feet from the front doors. “Let’s take a minute.”
Salem slows her steps and then stops, turning to face the three of us, and there—there it is again, the strange and crackling energy that has shot through our little foursome ever since we were all reunited this morning in the Santa Fe airport.
It’s jarring, is the thing—and that’s coming from someone who’s been jarred an awful lot recently.
But after last night with Adam, I feel unused to strange and crackling. Unused to being jarred.
At first, when I told him I wanted to talk, he resisted. Shook his head and said no, told me that he’d already made a plan of his own. He was going to tell Salem in person that he wanted to take a step back from the story; he was going to tell her that he was too personally involved.
“I wasn’t going to tell her any details,” he said, a little sheepishly, a little clumsily, both of us conscious of our half-dressed state, our position on his bed. “I wouldn’t even tell her that my feelings are, you know . . .”
“Mutual?” I said, and watched with private, proud delight as the tips of his ears turned red.
But even in his shy pleasure he was quick to turn serious again.
He didn’t want me to talk.
“I didn’t tell you about Cope so you’d feel obligated,” he said, gripping my hands in his, the warm, rough texture of his palms making my skin pebble in delight. “I told you because I wanted you to know him. And me.”
At that, I couldn’t stop from leaning forward and pressing my mouth against his.
“I can do this,” I said, against his lips, but he was already shaking his head again, his brow lowering with a stubbornness I hadn’t seen in him before.
“This isn’t about what you can do. It’s about what we agreed to on the farm. If you talk, Jess, that’s not for the story.”
He reminded me of myself, sitting in that hammock-chair at my dad and Bernila’s house, determined to lay out my conditions. White-knuckling my way into controlling a situation I definitely couldn’t control.
Seeing that expression on him gave me enough perspective to take a step back. To understand that he would never be okay with my talking unless we came up with a plan together.
So in that rumpled hotel bed, where Adam Hawkins told me about the worst loss of his life, we worked it out together. A series of compromises. He should tell Salem thatourfeelings had gone beyond the professional. He should tell her that I’mconsideringdoing an interview, but because of the bit about our feelings, he shouldn’t be the one to conduct it. He should make clear to her a new condition: If—we’d still tell her it was anif, since Adam insisted I take more time to think it over—I do the interview, she has to stick to the deal she made with Adam originally, and produce his podcast. We’d make sure to tell Tegan all about it.
Afterward, when it was settled, I kissed him again, soft and hungry and strangely relieved. I couldn’t have ever imagined feeling relief at the idea of talking about Mom, but with Adam’s mouth on mine, with his body pressing closer, I realized that the relief didn’t really have anything to do with her.
It had to do withme. I was relieved to know I was capable of offering something of myself to someone other than my sister. Of being someone different than I’ve been all these years.
When I’d crept back into my room in the small hours of the night, I felt so confident. In the morning, I didn’t even stumble through explaining to Tegan about the plan.
