Page 65 of For the Record
With his arm stretched out, I used the movement to take advantage and lean in, wrapping my arms around his body and pulling him close, my nose against his neck, breathing him in. Familiar and cozy. Warmth bloomed in my chest, and I sighed. I still felt like crying. Still wanted to be mad at the world. Mad at Art for selling, and mad at my ten-year-old self for sitting around listening to John Mellencamp instead of investing in real estate so I could have saved up enough to buy the darn place. But Adam’s hug helped with most of that. His comfort washed over me like an internal Snuggie. How long could I potentially keep him here? He was like my emotional jumper cables embodied.
“It didn’t go well?” He rested his chin on my head.
“Not good, but not bad. Just…I don’t know. It feels like the end of an era.”
More than that, it felt like one more thing I was losing.
My dad was slipping. My mother was off in California trying to make her life more than it was here. My sister hasn’t so much as texted me a single hello in the last three years. My best friend got married to the love of her life and moved out, and now my favorite place in the world was being entirely taken over. How much longer until Adam left too?
“I get that. You have roots there.”
I sniffled and nodded against his chest, my stray hairs getting all staticky. He pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. “Let’s go inside, yeah?”
Adam settled on the floor next to me, staring at my ceiling fan circling around and around as the smooth, rich voice of Frank Sinatra blanketed over us. My sad girlhood playlist was really coming in handy. I finished up one sour straw, handed him one, and stole another for myself. This package wasn’t going to last us ten minutes. I could already hear the voice in my head saying I was going to regret filling up on sour candy on an empty stomach, but my heart was slowly filling back up, and that felt more vital at the moment.
Adam chewed his straw with a scowl. “I just—make up your mind, you know? Blueberries or raspberries? What’s with all of this concocted MSG BS?”
“You sound like the men at Dad’s complex.” I took on a lower, old-man voice. “They don’t make washers and dryers the way they used to.”
He shrugged a single shoulder. “It’s true. Everything is cheap now.”
I thought back to Poppi, the green and purple Barbie who waved her hand around Sip ’n’ Spin like it was a magic wand. White wall here. Gray LVP here. Cover the old brick wall there. Cheap was right. I was all for updates, but erasing history, erasing the stories in those walls, was a whole other thing.
A snort formed at the back of my throat. “You’ve got that right.”
I gestured with my half-eaten sour straw, brandishing it in the air. “Even people. Places. Food. Everything is just cheap. Where’s the authentic stuff? Where’s the…” I searched for the right words. “Like the steady thrum of a guitar? Or a simple piano ballad? Now the world is full of artificial-intelligence remixes of songs we all once loved. Can’t we make more originals?”
Adam sat up, his jaw flexing and his throat bobbing as he finished his own straw. “Are we actually talking about music?”
No. No, we weren’t. Why was it so hard to find something real and genuine that didn’t leave? That didn’t lie, didn’t steal or cheat. A real, tangible thing that wasn’t bound to eventually crumple up like a used napkin and go flying in the wind. But was there something, or someone, just consistently there for you until…forever? Did that even exist? You hear all these stories about married couples who have lasted fifty-plus years, and yet I look around me and don’t see a hint of that. Maybe for people like Layla and Luke or Adam’s parents, sure. But did people like me ever end up in situations like that?
I couldn’t help but have my mind immediately race to Adam. Adam, who was going to get married one day or get stationed in a foreign country thousands of miles away while I waited here for him, day by day. This fight-or-flight instinct in my mind shouted at me that he was like everyone else, that everyone, at some point or another, was going to leave. But then when I sat down and thought about it, truly thought about it, Adam wasn’t like any other person in my life. This was the man who brought blue raspberry sour straws and records from the store to make me smile. People like that…did they also leave people like me?
“I don’t know,” I mumbled and quietly tested the waters. “I think I just want to try dating again.”
“Oh?” His tone of voice gave me absolutely nothing. No hint of jealousy or shock.
I sniffed and raised my shoulders. “Yeah, I mean, don’t you?”
Adam shrugged silently. We sat side by side, and I wondered if he could somehow feel how fast my heart was racing.
I pushed once more. “I like the thought of someone taking me out to dinner, telling me I’m pretty, and dropping me off back home with a kiss. I just miss that giddy first-date feeling.”
“So…you’re wanting to, like, get back out there?” Adam tilted his chin at me. The way he said get back out there sounded like he actually meant you want to go get tetanus shots together? Like he was absolutely disgusted at the thought.
In hindsight, it shouldn’t have shocked me. The guy hadn’t once—well, unless I didn’t know about it—gone on a date in the two years we had been friends. And given how we met, I supposed it wasn’t unrealistic for me to assume he could be meeting up with other women that same way and…I shook my head. No, no. The thought alone of Adam in bed with another woman was enough to make me nauseous.
“I guess.” No. Not at all.
Almost worse than imaging him picking up a random woman to take home was the thought of me going on an actual date with anyone other than the man next to me. Thinking of someone taking me to the movies and not knowing how I liked my popcorn basically drenched in butter. Or going to dinner and having to explain to some random guy why I always order a sprite and a water—because I am thirsty when I am nervous. Worst of all, having another man’s lips on mine and his eyes checking me up and down made my skin crawl.
You. I wanted to say. I don’t just want to try dating again. I want to try dating again with you.I wanted to try hand-holding, opening-my-door, kissing-me-goodnight dates with Adam more than I wanted anything else. Because when I was with him, it was like all of those anxious little thoughts in my mind dissipated into thin air. He calmed my racing heart naturally, and finding someone else to do that for me was out of the question. There was no way.
“Stevie.” He only used that nickname if he was desperate enough to really grab my attention. “Is there…I dunno, something I’m missing?”
How was I supposed to even word that? Yes. I adore our friendship and everything about you, but I also crave more and yet am terrified of losing the last comfortable piece of my life.
With a shrug, I settled with a small “I’m just scared.”