Page 32 of For the Record

Her smile grew ever so slightly at that before she pulled her hand back, leaving goose bumps in her absence.

As they walked out of the back door, I placed my own hand where she’d had hers, gripping the heat there.

“What a nice girl,” Dad said as he entered the room, lifting his reading glasses to his head.

Mom nodded with a smirk. “A lovely girl.” Her voice dripped with hidden meaning that I knew all too well. The woman always tried to be some kind of matchmaker, trying to look in our eyes and sense our future. It was the reason she refused to take down Liam and Marigold’s wedding pictures. She was so sure they were going to end up together again.

“I see what you’re doing.” I reached for my keys to keep my hands busy and away from the phantom hold that had Rachel left on my arm.

Mom hummed before tossing her hand towel over her shoulder and leaning into my dad’s side. “I see what you’re not doing.”

Currently Playing: Home by Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros

***

Adam so kindly let me stuff his SUV full of my things, and I do mean full, to the absolute brim.

Any pushback I expected from him had yet to hit, if it ever was going to. He encouraged each bag that we filled the back seat with, and I tried with all my might to hold back any laughter as he struggled incredibly hard to pull off my very fragile fairy wings. He placed them on top of a bag and then moved the bag to see if they would fall. When they didn’t sit as firmly as he liked, he ended up moving them to the center console between us, keeping his elbow propped up during the entire drive, in case they were to slip.

I once said he was a panther. I knew better now. The man was a teddy bear, all soft and doughy goo on the inside.

Myrtle sat in my lap, taking in the view of downtown Philadelphia as we made our way out of town, where Adam’s house was on the outskirts. She never really got out of the cabinet much. I was sure she was bound to be extra bubbly tomorrow morning when it came time for me to make discard bagels.

Adam also let me be in charge of the auxiliary. He was used to it by now and didn’t flinch when I reached for his charger to pull up Apple CarPlay. Today felt good. Productive and positive, filled with hope and a pinch of anxiousness. But the good kind. Therefore, Steely Dan’s “Reeling in the Years” felt the most appropriate for the mood.

My foot tapped along on the side of the door, and I hummed the lyrics to myself as we reached the end of downtown. Adam’s shoulders visibly dropped as he leaned back in his seat, slumping slightly. He always seemed more comfortable outside of the city than in. I was pretty sure it was the buildings. He once claimed he liked to see his surroundings better outside the city. Something from the military, if I had to guess, since Dad was the same way.

“Are you scared about me moving in?” I asked, breaking the quiet between us.

Adam lifted a brow in question before turning back to the road.

My lips turned into a grin. “It’s okay if you are. It’s a lot. I’m a lot, and you like your quiet space. It’s okay if it’s too much.”

“You’re not too much. You’re just right.” He turned on his signal, looking over his shoulder before switching lanes.

Heat trailed up my spine at that. You’re just right. No, it wasn’t some glowing declaration of who I was, like I’d foolishly dreamed about as a girl. Wasn’t some long, drawn-out poem about how I was funny or smart or kind—I was, at most, average on each of those scales. But it felt good all the same.

Butterflies coursed through me at the thought of how quickly he said it, as if he hadn’t had to think about it. As quiet as Adam was, when he spoke, whatever he said, he meant. You never had to wonder about the authenticity of what he said. The man was brutally honest, sometimes in harsh ways like when I’d asked what he thought of my somewhat “quirky” scarf last winter and he responded with “burn it.”

I turned both air vents toward me, desperate to cool my flushed cheeks. “All right, Goldilocks. Whatever you say.”

When we pulled into his driveway both of us grabbed a single bag as we made it to his front door. He fished out his keys, balancing my luggage in one hand before opening the door.

Whatever you pictured as a single man’s bachelor pad—posters of half-naked women, dirty socks on the living room floor, perhaps some random woman’s bobby pins in the guest bathroom—wipe it from your mind completely. Adam Wells’s house, to no surprise, looked like an Airbnb that needed to be featured in a Home and Garden magazine. Shoes perfectly straightened at the door, a simple gray sectional in the living room, white walls, large TV mounted on the wall, wooden kitchen cabinets, curtains. The man had curtains. I didn’t even own a dishwasher.

I had been here before, several times. But it felt like I was seeing it through new eyes this time. Wifey eyes. Before, I’d never paid too much attention to my surroundings because it didn’t occur to me that I should. I never noticed the man had dish towels hung up perfectly in the kitchen or that he owned stone bathmats and towel warmers. Who would have thought that, this whole time, grumpy, broody Adam liked his towels to be warmed?

“You can…look around. I’ll go grab more stuff,” he announced as he stepped outside again.

He knew me so well. I would have protested, but curiosity got the best of me. I was too busy being hypnotized by perfectly clean floors and not a hint of dust in the room. Where were his dirty socks? Probably laid perfectly in a laundry basket next to his label maker and his abundance of cleaning supplies, right behind his mini vacuum.

I peered around the kitchen and down a long hallway leading to two rooms. My feet padded down the hall as I quickly peeked into each open doorway.

One was an office with forest green walls and a cleared-off mahogany desk. There were no pictures or shelves, simplicity. Very Adam. I turned to the other room, a guest room with a dark-blue accent wall. The remaining three were painted white. A queen-size mattress in the middle, an oak nightstand on either side of it. My room, I would presume.

Unless…was I supposed to sleep in his room? I mean, sure, we were married, but that didn’t require us to share a bed, right? I felt like a good majority of married couples slept separately nowadays. This had to be fine.

I turned around, my boots clicking against the stained concrete floors. Poor guy had seen my apartment, and he’d probably had an entire heart attack behind that cool, collected scowl. He didn’t have a single thing misplaced. Even the bed had fluffed pillows and a throw blanket that looked extra snuggly.