Remembering Us (23 page)

I stand up and brush the invisible crumbs off my black apron. “Okay, then. When do you go?”

“Tonight. I’ll be back Friday.”

I want to call him on it. I’m not stupid and it’s offensive that he thinks I’d believe this. There’s no way he has to attend a conference ten hours away and he’s just now hearing about it.

But instead of bringing it up at work, I let it go.

“All right then.” I press my lips together. “Anything else you want?”

He frowns and takes a step closer to me. “Are you okay?”

Are we okay is the question he’s asking. I’m not sure what to tell him. Two weeks of trust after months of confusion is being flushed down the drain right in front of me.

“You bet. I need to get back to work.” He sighs and nods, like he understands. I know he’s lying. He knows I know. And yet, neither of us say anything. “See you Friday, then.”

I turn around and he holds my wrist, pulling me back. He stares at my lips like he wants to kiss me, but I take a step back, not allowing it.

“I’m at work, Adam.”

“Alright. I love you.”

I nod once.

It doesn’t sound like he loves me, not right now. It sounds like one of those obligatory sayings the couple that has been married for forty years has said every day, twice a day. There’s absolutely no emotion and no conviction behind the words.

Three empty words hang between us and I leave them there, disappearing into thin air as I turn my back on Adam and pretend I have work to do in the office.

And then something stops me.

I’m not that girl who puts up with people lying to my face. I’ve fought too hard to get to a place with Adam where I’m beginning to feel something real for him, something that may be different than what we had before, but it’s there.

I feel it when he pulls me into his arms and when he throws that sexy crooked grin in my direction.

I follow him outside.

He’s just a few feet ahead of me when I call his name and he turns around.

He runs his hand through his hair and takes a couple steps in my direction. I fidget with my hands, unable to decide if I should cross my chest and protect myself or put them on my hips defensively. In the end, they fall lamely to my sides.

“Why are you lying to me?”

His chin jerks, shocked either by my bluntness or my ability to read him.

“What is it?” I ask, feeling a nervous energy flood my body. Maybe I don’t want the answer to what he doesn’t want to tell me.

He exhales a deep breath and reaches for me. I pull away and decide to cross my arms after all.

“My dad has a parole hearing tomorrow. I have to be there.”

Nervousness floods his face although I don’t understand why. My heartbeat doubles as I consider what this means to him. I know so little of what he’s told me about his dad and his mom. But my heart breaks for him.

To have to see his dad in prison, knowing what he did.

Knowing that Adam had to see it. Forced to watch his mom die.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He reaches for my hand, pulling me closer to him. This time I let him. I want to comfort him. Pull him into my arms and pull his face down to the crook of my neck and hold him tightly, but I can’t.

He was going to Iowa to go through this. Alone. And he lied about it.

I no longer understand my role with him. Who I am to him.

“I just found out,” he sighs again, and grasps my hand tighter. “I’m sorry.”

For lying or for hiding it? I don’t have the confidence to ask.

I fidget back and forth on my feet, completely unaware of the street traffic passing us by or that I’ve left Hooka’s completely unattended. I don’t know if any customers have gone in while I’ve been outside.

I’m searching for something in Adam’s eyes. Something to bring me comfort or assurance, but there’s just a dull blankness in them. He’s hiding from me.

“Would you have told me?”

He lets go of my hand like it burned him. His hands return to the back of his neck and clasp together. “I didn’t think you were ready.”

I pull back like I’ve been slapped. Angry that he gets to decide what I’m ready for. Hurt that he doesn’t trust me enough to be honest with me.

“Ready for what? The truth? To be there for you?” I’m pissed as my tirade begins but unable to stop it. “Would you have told me before all of this?”

“Yes!” His hands slam against his sides and they tighten into fists. “We didn’t hide things from each other. Not like this. Of course I would have told you.”

“But not now. Why?”

“Because no matter what you say, I still see the hesitancy in you when I come to close. The times that I touch you and you flinch.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

As if to prove his point, he reaches for me. My right shoulder immediately jerks back.

I’d like to tell him it’s because I’m pissed and angry and hurt but even I know it’s a lie. It’s a small jerk, almost unnoticeable to me. But Adam has seen it before. Enough to know.

“You do, Amy,” he repeats, and pulls me to him.

His hand reaches around and clasps the back of my neck, pulling my face so it rests against his chest. I go willingly this time. Ashamed that I could think things were going so well but clearly they aren’t. Will I ever trust him fully?

“I’m not upset. I get it, I do. I just … I can’t put you through a parole hearing with my dad. I can’t have you see him and wonder if I’m like him.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would.” Regret laces his voice as his warm lips brush against my temple and down my jaw. “It’s hard enough to bear when we’re alone. I don’t think I could handle seeing fear on your face with that monster in the same room.”

“You’re not him.” I know he’s not. Tears fall down my cheeks and I turn my head so I don’t get his shirt wet. Guilt consumes me that I’ve made him feel like this.

“I need to go, and I need to do this.”

“I want to be there for you.”

“You can be,” he whispers against my skin and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s warm and hot and makes my knees to turn to jelly instantly. “When I get back, okay?”

I nod, although I don’t fully understand.

“I love you.” There’s more conviction this time, but the emotion is still lacking. I try to tell myself it’s because of his dad. That it has nothing to do with me. But I can’t make myself believe it. “I’m sorry I lied about it.”

I sniff the remaining tears away and wipe my cheeks.

“I get it.” Even though I don’t. I look into Hooka’s, remembering where I am finally. “I’ll see you soon?”

“Three days.”

I walk inside, leaving him on the sidewalk because I’m not sure what else to say. What can I do to soothe him and make him believe that seeing his dad, hearing the testimonies of how he killed Adam’s mom, wouldn’t scare me? I’d be lying just like Adam did to me.

By the time I get home, the apartment is silent and I know that he’s already gone.

I decide I have two options. I can be ‘that girl’ and run down to the corner grocery store and grab a quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream and wallow for a few hours.

Or I can drink.

“Drink!” I slam my hand down at the bar and wave for Zander to slide another shot my way. He looks at Kelsey for approval, who nods.

“How’s work going?” I ask her.

She’s a nurse on the oncology floor. It has to suck. I’ve never been able to handle being around dying people. They make me nervous.

“Long and exhausting,” she tells me as we take a sip of our beers. “I have two patients who aren’t doing so well right now.”

She shakes her head, erasing the memories of her day. I don’t blame her. It’d be impossible to not bring that sort of work home with you. Thank goodness I’m just a bookkeeper at a coffee bar.

“So what are you going to do when Adam comes back?”

I frown into my empty shot glass and slide it toward the edge of the bar so Zander can give me another. She just brought up the elephant I’ve been trying to avoid.

“Not sure. I figure I have two options,” I say, and hold up one finger. “I can be pissed he lied to me and tried to keep something important from me.” I flick up a second finger and nod a thank you to Zander for the new shot. “Or, I can realize that our relationship is just as he said – not where it used to be.”

The liquor catches over a lump in my throat at my own disappointment in realizing that.

Kelsey smiles widely and wiggles her eyebrows. “That makes you upset.”

I hate that being friends with someone forever means that they can read you better than you can read yourself sometimes. And I hate that she seems thrilled at my disappointment.

“It means, that regardless of everything else, I care about him.”

“You lo-ove him,” she sings, and it’s clear we’ve had too many shots as she covers her mouth and giggles.

I blink and shake my head. “No. But lately, I guess I’ve seen glimpses of why I once did. And maybe I’m not as scared of him as I thought I was.”

I stare awkwardly at the shot glass in my hand and wonder if Zander put a special truth serum in it.

I’m not afraid of Adam.

I roll the thought around in my head for a bit while Kelsey smiles at me softly.

I am not afraid of Adam. I’m not. I know it with certainty.

And with the realization, I feel a weight leave my shoulders that I didn’t know was there. I graciously take the bottle of beer Zander put down without me having to ask. He nods his head in my direction and watches me, expecting something.

“So what’s holding you back then?” Kelsey asks, breaking through the fog in my head.

“I don’t know.” I shrug and pick at the paper label on the bottle.

My tongue feels heavier than it should and my cheeks feel warm. I’ve clearly had too much to drink, I think, and push the beer away from me.

“Maybe it’s just the not knowing.”

“Not knowing what?”

I look over her shoulder at the crowd in behind her. It’s Tuesday night and the tables aren’t completely full, but there’s a small group of guys in the back playing pool. Slapping each other on the backs with easy smiles on their faces. A girl is standing in between a guy’s knees who is sitting on a bar stool. One of his hands holds a cue stick, the other a beer bottle, and both hands rest on the girl’s hips as she smiles at the man she clearly loves.

He throws his head back and laughs, placing a kiss on her forehead before he gets up and goes to take his shot.

“Not knowing what it was like to fall in love with him in the first place.”

I turn back to Kelsey whose lips are puckered in thought.

“I think we should go to the cliffs tomorrow.”

I frown, confused by the subject change.

“It’ll be fun,” she says, and claps her hands. “We can take lunch and walk off the hangovers we’re totally going to have. Where else have you ever gone that makes you feel more peaceful and helps you think more clearly?”

“Kelsey, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

I turn to Zander’s deep voice from his side of the bar.

“Why not?” I ask.

He looks between the both of us, uncertain and maybe annoyed. Like going to the cliffs is wrong.

“Because you’re not healed enough to walk that far.”

Even he doesn’t believe his own excuse. My casts have been off for weeks and it’s only a three-mile walk once we park the car.

“She’ll be fine,” Kelsey says, like she just scolded a child.

He shakes his head, but it makes me more determined to go.

“Sounds perfect,” I say with a smile.

“You’re acting weird,” I tell Kelsey as I watch her fidget with her fingers.

She’s been quieter than normal ever since she took me to my apartment this morning after passing out on her couch last night. She waited while I showered and got dressed for a hike. My head has been pounding from the excessive liquor we overly filled our stomachs with. Even my sunglasses aren’t helping my eyes from feeling like they’re getting stabbed with toothpicks from the harsh sunlight.

Hangovers suck.

“My head hurts,” she moans, and I almost believe her. But then she bites her thumbnail absentmindedly and I know she’s hiding something.

I shrug and follow her as she veers off to the last path that we have to take to get to my favorite cliffs. It’s so narrow you have to walk through it single file and it weaves around the natural evergreens that fill the mountains. It’s barely a path, mostly just worn down ground from the few hikers like us who like to go off the main trails and explore the woods on our own.