One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  I feel like we need to talk.

  My car read the text to me in its robotic feminine voice and the high I had been experiencing from his first text dipped and became a low that I was ill-prepared for.

  I reminded myself to calm, that a talk really was necessary at this point. So much had changed in the week we’d spent apart. There was a lot to discuss, so I had no reason to believe anything bad awaited me.

  Where? It was the only word I could manage.

  Deb’s Pizza. I’m already there.

  I drove that way, routinely taking a hand off the steering wheel to shake it. I thought I’d been nervous about facing my parents, but facing Adam when things were so uncertain between us felt wholly terrifying.

  I pulled into Deb’s pizza, wishing the windows weren’t so tinted. Maybe if I could see Adam before entering, I’d feel calmer. But the windows were opaque. Adam would see me coming, but I wouldn’t see him. I turned off my car and my phone pinged a text notification.

  It was from Adam, but it was an audio file.

  I hit play, expecting to hear his voice. But there were no words to the music. It was quiet for a long moment, and then a piano began playing. I closed my eyes, knowing immediately who was playing the music. I tried to pay close attention to the melody, to see if I knew what song it was because it was so familiar. It was like the game we’d played at my parents’ house, on their piano.

  The melody was low and slow, starting sad with brief moments of lighter notes sprinkled in. What was the song? It was so familiar, I knew without a doubt that I had heard it before. Some of the keys were held down for long moments, and I listened to the way each note slowly dissipated, replaced by the next one.

  And then it hit me. It was the song Adam had written about me.

  45

  Adam

  She waited in her car long enough to give me pause. So I sent her the audio file I had recorded late one night, immediately after finishing the final section of the song. It was one of the easiest songs I’d ever written, mostly because it’d been so organically created. I hadn’t been playing in order to create something catchy. I had just spilled all my thoughts to the piano via my fingers. There were sadder moments throughout the song, but toward the end it picked up in a thrumming beat, akin to a heartbeat. Faster and faster it went until the very end, when the lightest of notes trickled through.

  I watched her dip her head as she listened, watched her concentration furrow her brows. I fucking loved how expressive she was. And that was just one of the things on the list of things I loved about her.

  It was a heavy thing to say to myself. But I didn’t want another few years to go by without us talking again.

  When she exited the car, the moonlight hit her back, illuminating her like a halo. I had once thought of her as half-witch and half-angel and now, I prayed she was the latter.

  When she opened the door, coming into the light of the restaurant, the first thing I noticed was the light sheen across her eyes. I couldn’t get to her fast enough, but I forced myself to approach her slowly. I didn’t want to rush her, not after she’d been so patient with me. She wore black pants and a white shirt tucked neatly into them. Her hair was pulled back into a pretty severe ponytail, but the softness of her face balanced all of that out.

  “Hello,” I said, stopping an arm’s reach from her.

  She smiled softly, giving me a lightness in my chest. “Two hellos in one day. What’s come over you?”

  “Probably whatever it was that came over you the day you swore twice.”

  She blushed.

  “You hungry?”

  She looked at the menu above the counter. “Yes.” She turned back to me. “You didn’t want the hot dog salad leftovers, I take it?”

  I shuddered, remembering the bowl of questionable contents at the wake. “No. I’ll let Casey and Caleb battle it out for that.”

  “I looked for you at the wake, but I didn’t see you.”

  “I ducked out early. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I just—”

  “Can I help you?” the worker at the counter asked, interrupting Hollis.

  “I want a big slice of the pepperoni.” I turned to Hollis. “What do you want?”

  She licked her lips and it took everything in me to tell my body to calm down. I wanted to lean in, to capture her mouth in mine, to nibble right where she’d just licked.

  “I want what you’re having.”

  Without tearing my eyes from Hollis, I held up two fingers to the worker. “Two of those please. And two sodas. One diet and one root beer.”

  Hollis’s cheeks bloomed that pretty pink. “I loved your song,” she said.

  “It’s really yours. I wrote it for me, but it became yours.”

  She sucked her bottom lip in, like she was trying to tuck away a smile. “It was transcendent.”

  “Good. Because that’s how I felt, writing it.”

  She seemed to shrink from the compliment, her eyes looking everywhere but at my face. Her shyness was so fucking endearing. I loved that she looked at me like that, like we were back in high school. Except this time, we’d have a much better ending. As long as she agreed.

  “You look really nice by the way,” she told me, taking in the all black suit I wore, accompanied by the black dress shirt. She reached out like she was going to touch the lapels of my jacket but pulled her hands back, unsure.

  I closed my hands over hers and brought them back to her original destination. She looked right into my eyes, as her hands grazed the lines of the jacket. She flattened her hands against my chest, her fingers curling just slightly so that I felt all ten indentations of her fingertips.

  Fuck.

  “I don’t—”

  “Here’s your sodas,” the worker interrupted, setting the cups down on the counter hard enough to spill a little. What Deb’s Pizza lacked in finesse, it made up for in pizza which is the only reason I didn’t grab Hollis by the hand and run out.

  “You’re beautiful,” I told her. “Always.”

  If I could live off of her blushes, I gladly would. Each time her cheeks burned pink, I just wanted to make it happen again.

  “I’ve missed you,” I told her, knowing I needed to make amends. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. You didn’t deserve it. When I pulled my head out of my ass, I realized how wrong I had been. I was reactionary. And I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Adam. I understand.”

  “It isn’t okay, Hollis. But thank you for forgiving me.” I took a deep breath and summoned up every ounce of courage I possessed. “I don’t know—”

  “And your pizzas,” the worker said, slapping two greasy slices on the counter. I breathed in through my nose, frustrated by the constant interruptions.

  I stacked the two paper plates of pizzas and tucked my soda in the same arm so that I had a hand free to hold Hollis’s with. She made a move to lead me to a table, but I tugged her, angling my head to the other side of the restaurant.

  “This way.” I had arrived early on purpose, and the purpose awaited Hollis in the booth at the back of the restaurant.

  When Hollis laid her eyes on the pile of roses on the table, her eyes went as wide as the paper plates I held.

  “These are from Gram’s rosebushes. She used to get mad when I was little and I had picked them for her. But I think she would approve of me picking them for you.”

  She set her soda down so she could scoop them up and push her face in the red blooms. Her eyes closed as she inhaled. When she opened her eyes, she looked a little overwhelmed. “These are beautiful.”

  “I’ve been looking outside the kitchen window all week at these. I can’t look at them and not think of you.” Her natural blush matched their shade perfectly.

  “Did you get my note?”

  “Yeah, I did.” I played with the ends of her ponytail. “I’m glad to see your drawing skills haven’t improved.”

  She laughed, playfully hitting me on the shoul
der. “I told you I wasn’t an illustrator.”

  “I know. And that’s why I love it so much. It’s the same rose I stared at the day I found it. The same rose that meant so much to me at the time. And means even more now.”

  “I had Casey help me.”

  “I know. She told me. Look,” I said, sliding into the booth across from her. I set my soda down and the pizza slices too. “I don’t know where this is going to take us. I know you have ambitions and those ambitions might take you to various countries far away from here. I want all of them to happen for you.” I swallowed and reached across the table to hold her hand, when I was at my most vulnerable. “We will figure out the details. But I just wanted you to know.”

  She had been smiling shyly at me the whole time, but when I stopped she asked, “You want me to know what?”

  “That I’m in love with you, Hollis.”

  I heard her sharp intake of breath. “Oh.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “You and your ‘oh’s get me every fucking time.”

  She swallowed. “You caught me by surprise.”

  “Good. I’m going to work on doing that more often, if you’re agreeable to it.”

  She grinned, her hand squeezing mine. “I suppose I can. It’s handy, since I’m in love with you too.”

  I wished I hadn’t just taken a bite of pizza, because I nearly choked on it. “Wow,” I said, swallowing. “That is handy.”

  “I wish we were anywhere but here right now,” she said.

  “I know. Because you’re so private.” I gestured to the empty tables around us. “That’s why I chose this dimly lit, sorta sketchy corner. No one’s over here. It’s just you and me.” And that’s how I wanted it to be. No more fake bullshit, no social media pressures. Just Hollis and me.

  “Hi,” I said after she took her first bite.

  She laughed and covered her mouth with a napkin. “You already said that.”

  “I feel like I owe you a few more.”

  She nodded and took a sip of her soda. “Just as long as you don’t say goodbye.”

  I rubbed my finger over the back of her hand, loving how heavy-lidded her eyes went. “Trust me, Hollis. I don’t plan on it.”

  Epilogue

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  Hollis

  “What are you doing?” I asked, groceries slipping off my shoulder to land on the counter. Tori was crawling on all fours on the ground of the apartment I shared with Navy—the apartment we now shared with Tori, too.

  “Trying to make my cat feel comfortable.”

  “What?” I pulled the groceries out, one-by-one, and set them inside the fridge. “You’re crawling on all fours for your cat?”

  “She’s hiding somewhere. She’s been hiding since I brought my stuff here.”

  Tori had moved in the week before, sharing a bedroom with me in the meantime until she found her own place. She’d decided that living with her parents after having lived on her own wasn’t the most fun she’d ever had, so she’d made the trip up to Amber Lake in order to spend time with her friends and figure out what she wanted to do next. Which, apparently, was to crawl on all fours around our apartment. When she made a meowing noise, I laughed.

  “Laugh now, but it’ll work. Believe in me.”

  “I don’t not believe in you.” I glanced at the clock. Casey would be getting off the bus soon at the edge of the apartment complex and walk the rest of the way to my apartment. That was our new routine. She’d bus to my apartment, we’d work on her homework, have dinner, and then we’d go to Adam’s house until he got off of work. Technically, Casey was old enough to be home alone. But neither Adam or I wanted her to be alone. The last four months had been full of changes and we both wanted to make sure that what remained steady for Hollis was that she always had someone to lean on.

  Tori meowed again, shuffling across the floor in front of me.

  “You look ridiculous.”

  “Not to Margaret, I don’t.” She paused, sitting back on her feet. “When the hell is she going to come out?”

  “Maybe when you stop scaring her more.” I sat on the sofa, flipping the television on stretching my feet out on the coffee table in front of me. “I’m sure the moment you stop worrying about her will be the moment she comes out.”

  “Ugh.” Tori crawled her way to the sofa and sank into it. “Maybe I should’ve left her at my parents’ house.”

  “They’re your parents now? Not your roommates?”

  “You and Navy are my roommates now, so yeah, they’re just the parents again.” She swiped a hand over her honey-colored bangs and panted for a moment. “I probably should’ve changed out of my skinny jeans before crawling all over the floor.”

  “Probably.” I heard the whistle of the bus stopping just outside of my apartment. Normally, we’d follow our routine as usual—heading to Adam’s house after dinner so that Casey could be in bed before Adam got home. But Adam had worked out his schedule at his job so that he had Fridays and Saturdays off. And most of those Fridays and Saturdays, he spent doing the drive to Colorado and back. It wasn’t ideal or sustainable for the long term, but it gave Adam some happiness that he’d been missing the last couple months. It was seven hours each direction, and he got very little sleep the days he traveled, but he got to do a few Friday night shows with his band and come home the following day.

  He talked about doing tutoring like Navy had suggested, at her aunt’s music store, but he was waiting for the winter months, when driving to Colorado every week would be more dangerous.

  Christmas was one week away and because we’d had a milder winter so far, Adam hadn’t stopped the travel to Colorado just yet.

  The front door opened and Casey came through, bringing with her a gust of cold air and a grin. “Adam comes home tomorrow, right?”

  “Yep.” I patted the empty cushion between Tori and me and she slumped down to it. She was still cold from the exposure, so I tossed a throw blanket on her lap. “He left around noon.”

  “What kind of crap are they asking you to learn this week?” Tori asked as Casey dug into her backpack. Having Tori around to help make Casey feel more welcome had been a welcome surprise. The way Tori’s mind worked fascinated me, and seeing her walk Casey through the math or English homework she brought home made me feel warm and fuzzy, like Casey’s family was expanding. I settled in, watching them go through problem after problem while I looked on. Out of habit, I checked the weather conditions along the route for Adam’s drive. Most of the way he was fine, until he hit Loveland, Colorado—roads were already closing for the weekend due to heavy snowfall. It made me nervous, even though Adam’s car was equipped with snow tires.

  I wanted to text him and ask how his drive was going but then again, I didn’t want him to look at his phone either. I felt like a mother hen sometimes and worked to suppress it.

  But by the time dinner had come and gone—lasagne, thanks to Navy’s cooking—I hadn’t heard one peep from Adam which was unusual. He always called me when he stopped for gas at his halfway point, but it was long past the time he was due to arrive there.

  Casey and I drove to her house, and worry had me chewing on my lower lip. The weather was bitingly cold in Amber Lake; cold enough to freeze the roads, but since there was no snow, we didn’t have to worry about bad roads, which gave me the space to worry about Adam.

  Casey unlocked the front door with my keys and bounded inside. “I’m going to take a quick shower!” she called out as she disappeared down the hall.

  I sank to the couch and turned the television on, hoping to distract myself with some nonsense until I heard from him one way or another. The pipes clanked as Casey turned the water on and I abandoned the television in order to pace. He definitely would have called me. He always did.

  I checked the weather again, seeing the conditions worsening shortly after where his half-way point was. I couldn’t wait any longer and decided to send him a text. Hey, how is it going?

  I st
ared at the screen, willing him to reply, but all I saw was that my message had been delivered.

  Sinking back into the couch, I told myself that he was just focused on the drive. Maybe he wanted to keep both hands on the steering wheel the whole way.

  But that did little to appease my worry, because then all I could think about was Adam getting stuck in Colorado and not being able to return home.

  After Casey had changed in her pajamas, she stayed up late with me to watch a rom-com on Netflix. I braided her hair into two French braids, talking her through the process so that she would know how to do it herself.

  The time with Casey had worked, sufficiently distracting me from my worry about Adam until Casey started brushing her teeth. It had been ten hours since he’d left, which was when his show was to start. Maybe he’d barely gotten to the venue and was too busy to call. I’m sure he’d call after.

  I was the first to admit that I didn’t love that he was gone so often. Selfishly, I wanted to spend Fridays and Saturdays with him, but I knew that we would as soon as winter really began. But the smile on his face when he came home reminded me of how much he loved it, despite all the drive time. I loved spending time with Casey anyway and we’d settled into an easy Monday-Saturday routine, just the two of us. Being at Adam’s so much afforded me quiet time to study anyway.

  But still, I missed him.

  Casey walked back into the living room and stopped abruptly. “Who’s that?”

  I turned to see where she was pointing outside the windows. Headlights flashed on the glass, bouncing up and down as they came down the rocky drive. As soon as the car stopped moving, I recognized it immediately and was out the door without a second thought.

  Adam had barely made it out of the car before I launched myself into him. He dropped the backpack he held and wrapped his arms solidly around me.

  “You’re shaking,” he said, lifting me up off the ground a few inches. I never felt safer than when I was in his arms. I squeezed him, aware that my anxiety had been more pronounced than I’d originally thought.