“Is that what he’s going to school for?”
“I guess,” she said. “He’s been in school for a long time. Feels like forever.” She took another bite and seemed thoughtful for a moment. “It’s weird having him at the house. I mean, Adam is moody and can be a dick but Caleb is just a jerk. You met him today. He didn’t even say hi to you.”
Neither does Adam, I thought to myself. “Everyone grieves differently,” I kindly reminded her. “Some people are angry for a long time, but you shouldn’t let that affect you. They’ll come around.”
“I dunno. Adam’s being weird. That girl has been at the house all the time, and they just sit outside smoking.”
My heart twisted and I clasped my hands in my lap under the table, hating that it bothered me so much. He’d shoved me away in favor of someone else. “I think most of us have someone we rely on, to vent to. Maybe that’s who she is for him.”
Casey didn’t look convinced. “I dunno,” she said again. “I just know that he’s not the same. You should talk to him again. Maybe it’ll get through his thick skull.”
“I should,” I agreed, not wanting to tell her I couldn’t. He was hurting, and I didn’t want to make it worse.
“He thinks you’re beautiful, you know.”
The change in subject gave me whiplash. “Uh…”
“The last time we saw Gram, before you guys left for the weekend, that’s what he said to her. She asked about you and he said you were beautiful.” Casey’s eyes were all too knowing. It was as if she’d looked inside and seen just what I needed to lighten my own heartache a little.
“Okay,” I said, not knowing how to respond.
“The only thing he’s said about Sarah is that she’s a friend. He said it to her, too, in front of us. Adam doesn’t like lying.”
“Right.”
“But you’re beautiful,” she repeated. She picked up my burger and took a big bite. After chewing for some time she looked up at me. “When I was in fifth grade, there were these girls who were super mean. Like bullies, kinda. I hated them. They made fun of me for having messy hair. But Gram’s hands were pretty bad with arthritis and I never asked her to help with it.”
I nodded, following along with her story.
“But something that super hurt was when I found out one of my best friends was making fun of me too. She never said it to me, but someone else told me that she started a rumor I had lice. When I asked her, she admitted it.”
“That must have been hard.” Poor Casey. With no mother and no other female influences in her life, she must have had a tough time the last few years.
“It was. But Gram told me that she was worthless.” She took another bite and chewed for a minute. “You know what Gram said to me a bunch of the time?”
“What would she say?”
“That if you wanted to know what someone really thought of you, you’d just have to hear what they said about you when you weren’t around.” She sipped her soda and set the burger down. “If someone talks bad about me when I can’t hear them, I don’t want them as a friend anyway. Right?”
I nodded, thinking how it was such a simple but true statement.
“And when you’re not around, Adam says you’re beautiful. And smart.” She lifted a shoulder. “He likes you. Sarah’s just a friend.”
He’d said I was beautiful before the cabin trip, I knew that much. When I thought he was easing out of his hate, he’d already told his grandmother I was beautiful. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t touch me. It did. And for the first time in the last two days, I felt a bit better.
When I brought Casey back home with a bag of burgers for her brothers, I stayed in the car when she got out. She motioned for me to follow her, and before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my purse and followed her. But I wasn’t on a mission to see Adam—no, I wanted to give him some space. Instead, I pulled a few things from my purse and set to work, enlisting Casey’s help.
I walked back to my car, stopping when I saw a shadow slip from the trees.
She wore all black, except a red leather jacket that had that lived-in look, worn in the shoulders and the cuffs. The red glow of her cigarette was all I could see for a minute until she approached, the floodlight illuminating her from the feet up. Her hair was blonde—ice blond—and her lips red. She had a kind of rock-and-roll vibe to her, from the multiple silver chains she wore to the dozens of bangles along one arm. As she came closer, I saw the ends of her hair looked like she’d dipped them in red coloring.
I held the handle on the door of my car, knowing exactly who she was.
“You’re Hollis,” she said, smoke covering her face for a minute. When the fog cleared, her bright blue eyes scrutinized me.
“You’re Sarah?” I climbed in, hoping I could get out of here before it was too late.
Nodding, she stepped up to my car.
“Hey,” she said, reaching a hand through the window. I shook it, marveling at the dozens of rings on her fingers. “Wanna go for a ride?”
She lifted her chin at my car and took a final puff before rubbing the end along the concrete and tossing it in the trash that waited by the curb for the trash pickup the following day.
“Uh…” Was this even a good idea? Adam and I hadn’t left things on the best note, and I wasn’t sure if spending more time with Sarah would help or hinder our relationship going forward. But because yes was my most used word, I hit the unlock on the door.
“Cool. I need to get out of there for a minute.” Her perfume was sultry and warm and filled up my car instantly. “Whatcha listening to?” She cranked up the radio.
It was so surreal, having Sarah in my car fiddling with all the controls. “Where did you want to go?”
She paused fiddling with the heater to side eye me. “I dunno. You live in this town, I don’t.”
“Are you hungry?” I suspected there’d be a conversation in store for the both of us and maybe having a meal would settle the unease in my stomach.
“Yeah. What do you have for diner food here that’s still open?”
Half an hour later we were seated in a booth facing each other. As the silence between us grew, I tried to think about how I had ended up here, facing off against one of Adam’s real girlfriends.
Ex-girlfriend, I added.
She was glamorous in a way that looked effortless. She had round sunglasses pushed up in her hair, and though it was messy, it looked like she’d just rode in after spending the day at the beach. Her skin was bronzed and glowed and her eyelashes were long and dramatic. She picked up her napkin and spat her gum in it, dropping it on the table, while I unfolded mine and laid it across my lap. I wondered why she asked to go for a ride. I shouldn’t have suggested food, but I hadn’t actually eaten while I was with Casey so maybe I should try to choke something down. She set the menu down and met my gaze. Her eyes were so vivid it was intimidating, and I struggled to maintain eye contact. She opened her mouth and I braced myself for whatever she was going to say.
“Whatcha gonna order?”
Well, that was much milder than I had expected. “The vegetarian skillet. You?”
“I’m debating between the burger and fries or the country fried steak.” She pursed her lips. “I usually order a burger and fries because that’s hard to fuck up, but a fried steak sounds good too.”
I always ordered the same thing. I was boring in that way. “I haven’t tried their steak but I hear their burgers are good.”
“You a vegetarian?” She had an accent that I couldn’t immediately place—something I didn’t often hear around here.
“No. I just like the vegetarian skillet.”
“How about Adam?” she asked.
So, she was just going to jump to the point then. “How about him…”
“He’s miserable right now.”
“I know.” I knew I sounded prickly and I knew my body language echoed it, but nothing Sarah had said so far gave cause for me to be like this. “I went by e
arlier today and talked to him.”
“You did? I’ve been there all day. Didn’t see you.”
I was trying to figure out what her game was. “Yes. This afternoon.”
“Oh, I went for a walk.” She dunked her straw into her glass, pushing it down and watching it rise back up to the top. “Adam has been abandoned a lot, you know.”
I didn’t know, so I said nothing.
“First it was his mom, though that wasn’t her fault. But her death was the catalyst for everything else: his dad leaving, his brother taking off.” She waved her hand like she was impatient with herself, even though she was speaking bluntly and not meandering through the conversation at all. “Yeah, his brother is technically at school, but there are good schools closer than the school he’s at.”
This was all mostly news to me. I mean, I knew Adam’s dad hadn’t been in the picture ever since his mom had died. But I didn’t really know about his brother because Adam never spoke about him.
“But Adam is a good guy. He cares deeply, even if he doesn’t talk about it.”
The waitress interrupted us to take our orders. Sarah complimented the waitress’s purple hair and they had a moment to talk about hair dye and how quickly the fun colors faded.
“So, I’m asking you not to abandon him.”
“Well, you sure cut to the chase.” I took a long drink of water. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Adam didn’t ask Bobby or me to come, by the way. But Bobby knows about Adam—which is how I know about Adam.”
I assumed she knew all of this because he’d confided in her. And, as if she read my mind, she continued.
“Adam doesn’t talk about his feelings unless he’s drunk, pretty much. That’s how Bobby knows.” She pushed her hair away from her face as she leaned across the table. “I’m telling you this because I care about Adam, but not in the same way you do. So, if you’ve got claws for me, why don’t you retract them?”
I held my palms up. “No claws.” She was giving me a lot to think about.
“Adam’s signature move is to push people away when the feelings get too overwhelming. You know what Bobby told me?”
I shook my head.
“That within ten minutes of Adam finding out about his gram dying, he let the band know he wouldn’t be returning. Sure, it had been a question—a big fat maybe—but in Adam’s most overwhelming moment, he pushed us all away. He cut us off. So, what did Bobby and I do? We came to Idaho, to be here for him. He’ll say he doesn’t want us here, but as I’ve told him a hundred times before, we’re the family he got to choose. And band or not, we’ll be here for him.”
I twisted the napkin in my lap. “I’m glad he has you all, then.”
“He’ll try to push you away too. It’s easier for him to believe he pushes people away than that they abandon him. Both hurt, but if he has control then he believes he hurts less.”
“I wasn’t planning on giving up on him. We had a mild argument, but I don’t think it’s anything we can’t come back from. I’m choosing to believe that he’s hurting and that’s why he’s acting out.”
I thought of how he’d tried to push me away that afternoon. Deep in my gut, I felt that he knew he was being unreasonable and irrational. I had forced myself to remain calm, to take his barbs and explain my side with care. What Sarah was saying made sense; Adam was trying to push me away before I could hurt him.
“You’re a more patient woman than I was.” She leaned back against the booth, regarding me. “I pushed him too hard to open up. If you haven’t gathered, I’m pretty blunt. I like to think it’s a strength of mine, but not everyone is as forthcoming and honest as I am. Adam needs to be eased into things. He’s the most stubborn clamshell I have ever known.”
But Adam had opened up to me about some things. Maybe he hadn’t been as open as he might have been if we didn’t have the history we did, but even if I didn’t know everything about his past, I understood enough about his present to know that what Adam needed most from me were consistency and steadiness.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to like you,” I admitted. I nibbled on my lip. “But you’ve helped put things into perspective for me.”
“I wasn’t sure I was going to like you either. I wanted to meet you but Adam said no. More or less. He’s barely mumbled more than a handful of words over the last few days.” She sipped her water. “You’re different than the other girls he’s dated.”
With a smile I motioned toward her. “I’m not surprised.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, nothing bad,” I said quickly, worried I’d offended her. “What I mean is that you have this vibe about you that I don’t have. You seem more self-assured than I am.”
“You look plenty confident to me.”
“I am confident in who I am. I’m not confident in stepping out of the box, or getting into a stranger’s car to talk about their boyfriend.”
“Ah,” she said, pointing a finger at me, “but you let a stranger into your car. Which is kind of the same thing.”
She had me there.
“But that’s not what I meant when I said that you weren’t like other girls he’s dated.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I mean you’re the only one of them who has tied him up in knots.”
“Oh, I don’t think…”
“Speaking from someone on the other side, you tie him up in knots. He has ignored my texts for weeks about you. If he actually talked to me about you, then I’d know he didn’t take things that seriously. Sorry,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. “But that’s how Adam is. If he won’t talk about a girl, it’s because he has Feelings with a capital F.”
It was hard to believe that he had feelings for me, especially the big and scary kind like I had for him.
But I knew one thing: I could continue to travel the entire world and not ever feel for someone else the way I felt about Adam. And I knew that even if Sarah and I hadn’t had this dinner, I still would have stuck around—whether he wanted me to or not. The small thing I had left for him, before talking to Sarah, said exactly that.
43
Adam
I had moved to the couch inside, but I was still in a weird mix of feeling sorry for myself while also loathing myself. I had been a total asshole to Hollis, undeservedly so. I knew it too. It was my curse: making people leave me before they chose it on their own.
When Sarah strolled in, I was poking a fork at a burnt edge of a cheesy casserole on my plate. Typically, I wouldn’t have acknowledged her. But the cat that ate the canary curve of her lips made me narrow my eyes at her. I knew that look.
Still, I didn’t want to give her any more attention than necessary, hoping she’d get the fucking hint and take off with Bobby.
“I know you’re curious,” she said. “So why don’t you spare us the suspense and ask what you’re really wondering?”
I bit down on the burnt cheese and nearly gagged from the bitterness. Dropping my fork onto my plate, I turned to her with a roll of my eyes. “Oh. You mean the ‘when are you leaving’ question?”
Her smile stretched wider, blindingly so. “Okay, you got me there. Why don’t you ask me the other question you’re wondering about?”
“I’m not wondering anything.”
“Oh, fuck off, Adam. You’re a terrible liar.”
If it’d get her off my back, I might as well ask. “Okay, where were you?”
Sarah clapped, snapping me awake. “With Hollis. Having dinner.”
It was as startling as the scratch of a record. “What?”
“You heard me.” She sat back on the couch, crossing her ankles. “We had dinner. It was great.”
I closed my eyes. Not a minute went by without me wanting to call Hollis and apologize. “What did she say?”
“Oh…” she said, drawing out the syllable like the word was twenty letters long. “Just that she’s gonna stick around. So whatever bullshit thoughts you
have about shoving her away some more, you might as well abandon them. You’re just wasting your breath.”
I picked my plate up and brought it into the kitchen, needing the distance to think. I hated being the topic of conversation for just about everyone except Hollis. The fact that Sarah had facilitated it gave me a little hope, because despite how annoying she was, I knew she cared. I could cut her some slack.
Sarah followed me into the kitchen.
“You know you need someone like her, someone who will put up with your bullshit.”
I turned the water on, waiting for it to get hot. “My bullshit? That’s exactly why we broke up.”
“No, numb-nut, we broke up because you don’t talk about your feelings and I have diarrhea of the mouth—we didn’t jive. Oil and water, you and I.” She took a deep breath. “And the other reason we broke up was because you didn’t and couldn’t love me. Not like the way you love Hollis.”
The plate in my hands nearly cracked in half. “What?”
“Do you need to clean your ears out or something? You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did, because whatever you said was really off base.”
“Uh huh, sure. That’s why every time I say her name you look like a dog awaiting a treat.”
I winced. “That’s a terrible metaphor.”
“It’s only terrible because it’s true. I love you, Adam—”
At my sharp look, she gave me a look of her own.
“Like a brother, but sometimes you behave as if you aren’t very smart. The symptoms are all there.”
“I don’t have any symptoms.”
“Tsk, tsk, what did I just say about behaving as if you aren’t very smart? You are smart, Adam, and that’s why it would be really great for everyone if you’d just figure your life out.”
I glared at her and shoved my dish into the dishwasher. “Figure my life out? My gram just died. After the funeral, Caleb is going to head back to school and I’ll—”
“Be here.” She placed her hands on my shoulders, stilling me. “Because you love Casey. You’ll stay here and the life you thought you had in Colorado is not going to be the same life you’ll have here and that’s okay because you’ll make the best of it. Because deep down, you want to be here with Casey.” She squeezed my shoulders. “And maybe Hollis, too.”
One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com Page 34
