Page 57 of For the Record
Adam’s fingers slowed. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “I told him we were going to rip up the floors and find a similar pattern with better quality, and I mentioned the new light fixtures that I showed you too. He said they were too funky, but I think it fits perfectly.”
Ever since he sold the place, Art would pop in about once a month. He never bought anything, but he would walk in and look around like it was a Walmart in a foreign area, where you knew the gist of it but could still easily get confused.
The new manager was a guy from the south side of Philly, but he was cool. He came once a week to check in on things, but for the most part, I had the place to myself. And since the new people had liked the slideshow I made a couple of years back, I managed to convince them to hold more author/artist events.
“Sales seem to be good.” I grinned as my eyes peeked up at Adam, who was focusing in on my legs, back to his pushing and pulling.
He pulled his lower lip into his teeth, biting down on it. I sat up a little, my mind racing back to his lips against mine the previous night. A kiss full of stardust and flour while Karen Carpenter’s sweet, slow voice buzzed in my ear. It felt like he was unthawing me. Slowly and surely, this warmth that started in my chest reached all the way down to my hips where his hands pressed since moving their way up further.
“That’s good, I—”
“Adam.” I interrupted instantly, because thoughts of the record store drifted away from my mind, and his lips were taking the center stage.
“Yes?”
“Yesterday…when you kissed me…”
He looked up at me, eyes dancing across my face, looking for an answer. “Mmm?”
“Did it…” I sighed. This was ridiculous, but I needed to know. “Did it mean something to you?”
His laughter surprised me, and I pulled my feet back into my own area of the couch. I reared my head back. Maybe it was a little more ridiculous than I thought. I had slept in the same bed as the guy. We’d done who knew what in Vegas and the night we met, so was it that unbecoming of me to ask what a simple kiss meant?
Adam reached for my leg again, his hands wrapping around my ankle and yanking me back down the cushion so my calves would rest on his lap again.
“You’re my wife. Yeah, it meant something to me.”
My brain let that soak for a moment. And then two. “Yeah, but I’m, like, your fake wife.”
His hand left my foot and reached for my hand, his thumb brushing against the ring that I had grown so fond of. “Is this ring fake? The papers we signed?” His eyebrows dipped at me. He looked like an artist explaining his final piece before someone to review. As though these were the facts, and he wasn’t going to waver from them. “You’re in my house, on my couch, in my shirt. Is any of that fake?”
Maybe in my mind it was, because I decided in that moment to look around us, as if this were a hallucination. “Well, no.”
“Neither is our marriage, then.”
He said it as if he was entirely sure. Like he was reading the Bill of Rights or instructions on how to make Hamburger Helper. Clear as day, that’s all it was. Nothing left to be argued. His wife, in his house, on his lap.
I sputtered. “Adam, but we’re—” I huffed out an amused breath. “I mean, we’re, you know.” Us, I wanted to say. A completely undefined us that couldn’t be put into one box. And his kissing me the way he did was adding about fifty more boxes to the list.
He dipped his chin. “Explain to me what you think this is.”
I answered before I could think. “An acknowledgment between…” I paused, “…friends to reap benefits of a contractual agreement.”
His lips, still smiling, fell slightly. “Then there you go.”
“But when you kiss me like that, it doesn’t feel like that.”
“What does it feel like, honey?”
Warmth. Like being held by a friend you haven’t seen in years, or like rewatching your comfort movie for the fiftieth time. The last bite of an ice cream cone. The crisp click of a needle on your favorite vinyl.
“Like I’m yours.”
His smile melted over me. “Don’t you think, in some way, you’ve been mine since the night we met?”
Currently Playing: Golden Slumbers by The Beatles