Chapter Twenty-Two

Caroline, David, Diego and Adam stand around holding homemade mallets, waiting for Grayson to hit his wiffle ball into the thyme plant marker.

I sit on the porch stairs with a plate of garden snacks – cheese and sliced green apple – watching them play. Adam twirls his plastic baseball bat in the air and gives it a swing. I smile, watching him patiently wait, knowing he could have abandoned the game like the rest of us.

Just like that, everything is so much lighter. This imagined weight that pressed into my shoulders is picked off like tugs from a swath of cotton candy, making me wonder how much of my feelings are full of hot air.

Every time Adam looks at me – tug. Every time I laugh at something he says – tug. Every time I think about him sprawled in the yard when we were alone, watching me perform a cheer routine – tug.

My mind tends to swirl with extra nonsense, gathering more thoughts as it spirals.

I can't have Adam or suddenly live the life I wanted when I was eighteen. But I can control how many unnecessary dark thoughts and much self-loathing I wrap myself up in. Last night, I didn't just stand up to him, I also stood up to myself. For myself. I defended my choices because they deserved that.

"What a great day," Maggie says, walking over to sit beside me.

"Yeah," I agree.

Adam glances over at us, and she waves back.

"You do this every year?" Maggie asks, taking a bite from a carrot.

"We do, unfortunately. Big on traditions around here."

"We didn't grow up with family traditions." She clarifies, "Adam and I the only two who share both parents. We grew up with our dad and stepmom and stepbrothers. Three of them. Then, they had two more after we were out of the house."

I look at the boyish group on the lawn and make a judgement about Maggie's presence with us girls in the house. "Dare I ask their gender?"

She gives me a look. "Boys."

I laugh.

"They're sweet boys," she says. "And I got a good one with Adam. I'm glad he and I stayed close."

She's aware of my relationship with her brother so she might have thought he talked about his family life, but he divulged very little.

I met his dad and stepmom, who bought the house and stayed on and off that summer we met. He mentioned his older sister Maggie. He shared about his Mom in Vermont, how they talked on the phone every few weeks, but didn't see each other much.

Maggie says, "If you don't mind me asking, how old were you when your mom died?"

"Eight," I answer.

"What happened?"

"Car accident. It was raining. She was on her way to a PTA meeting."

That's more information than I typically offer. Even though I say very little, my mind always wants to add: she had the prettiest smile, the softest skin, gave the best hugs, never once raised her voice to anyone. My mother was an angel with Francesca's hair color, my eyes, and a sadness I recognize now that I'm older.

Maggie doesn't pry. She continues, "And then it was just you, Fran and your Dad?"

I bite a chunk of apple. "Yeah." Swallow. "I don't remember much about my mom dying, so the worst part of the whole thing was after . Just it being the three of us." I cast her a look. "Or, I should say, the two of us."

She understands. "And Heddy?"

My heads nods. "Heddy and my mom were best friends." Having her around felt like a piece of my mom still existed. Or, exists , I should say."

Those early years, the late elementary and middle school years, the most challenging part of childhood.

I say, "We had nannies until I was sixteen, but Heddy still showed up all the time. She came to parent-teacher conferences and field trips, spent weekends at our house, and planned our birthday parties. She signed us up for soccer and cheerleading. She brought us here for the entire summer, just like we did when my mom was alive."

"Wow," Maggie awes. "That's quite a friend."

I smile. "Yeah. Heddy never had children, but she's been married about five times. I don't think any of them could have ever worked, because Fran and I were her family. We took top billing. She prioritized us over everything else."

Maggie takes a swig of her soda and grumbles, "I wish I had a Heddy growing up."

She senses my confusion and explains, "When my mom left, I was twelve, Adsy was seven. We didn't have a choice about which parent we would stay with. She didn't want us."

She's matter of fact in her tone and expression, as though I know what she's talking about.

I didn't know any of that. Not until right now.

"I didn't know that," I mutter.

"He didn't tell you?"

I shake my head, not wanting to get into graphic details of the unspoken summer, but say, "He didn't talk about her much. Or himself, actually, beyond playing music. Likes and dislikes, that sort of thing. But…he was a really good listener."

I watch Adam whack his ball, colored blue with washable marker, then fall to his knees dramatically when it lands in a pile of leaves. Grayson yells about docking points and Adam throws his hands up in understanding. He wraps his arms around his waist and bows to Grayson's authority.

The idea of anyone not wanting him baffles me.

"He called our mom every day that first year. Sometimes she answered the phone, sometimes she didn't." An angry breath shoots from Maggie's nose. "Being the abandoned pre-teen girl, I just wrote her off. I was so mad."

"I'd be mad, too."

"And then I was mad that she strung him along like that. I couldn't figure out why he didn't get angry like I did."

"It's hard to grow up without a parent, even one who sucks," I commiserate.

In this moment, I'm not thinking about my mother. I'm thinking about my father.

Maggie nods, sadly. "Yeah. Well, Adam couldn't walk away. He wanted to convince her to come back or take us with her. He just wanted her to care."

"He said –" I stop. Maggie knows our secret, but if take her on the scenic route of our two-month romance, then it's that tiny bit less sacred, less precious. I'd have to answer for it.

Bless her. She doesn't expect me to finish.

"They worked out a relationship," she goes on. "I haven't been able to do that with my mother, but Adam couldn't just let it go. And I'm glad he couldn't. Because when my mom decided to reach back out to me, I wouldn't have anything to do with her. I can't forgive it yet.

"He takes rejection pretty bad," Maggie continues. "He will work so hard to do everything in his power to get what he wants." She sighs. "When he can't control the outcome and there's no way he can win…he just crumbles."

"Oh." I inhale, sharply, sensing the meaning behind the details dropped in my lap.

Maggie glances over at my profile. She flips a strand of my hair and brushes it down my back in a sisterly way and squints. "Does that make sense?"

I read her gentle face as Adam's consuming laugh warms my subconscious.

"I didn't know any of that happened to him," I reply. "I didn't know what he was dealing with."

"I figured."

Francesca and Kate walk past us with a platter of snacks for the boys. An overwhelming urge to express our mutual sentiment comes over me, and I turn my knees to Maggie, dropping my voice.

"Maggie, I would never…I didn't mean to…"

She smiles, her hand lifting on my cheek. " I know . I can tell." She pats my knee. "But I figured you deserved that context."

She stands up and walks toward the yard, joining the others as they cheer for Grayson's inevitable victory. With her plate in her right hand, her left arm wraps around her younger, taller brother.

Adam squeezes her back, his face curious. Then, he looks over at me.

My stomach drops.

Context . He thought I was loving and leaving him, just like his mother did.

I lost my mother, but she didn't want to go, and I spent that whole summer sharing about her and how wounded her passing left me. Adam never said a word about his personal pain, just let me talk and cry. He held me and kissed my hair, stroked my forehead, soothed the burn of absent love with his presence and words.

Then I walked out on him. His old wounds never healed. They only got larger, more prominent.

"Vienna," Adam calls out to me, waving me toward him. I peel my legs off the stair. I don't know what he wants from me now, but we're old enough not to hurt each other anymore and to speak our minds.

Kate's head bounces between the two of us as the others clean up the yard.

Adam squints as I join them. "You good?" he asks.

I swallow, watching his hands fiddle with a dead brown leaf. If I could go back in time, I'd take that hand. I'd tell him how wanted he is.

"Good," I say instead.

He leans toward me. "Well, Grayson here doesn't believe you can do a back handspring."

"That's because I can't."

"See!" Grayson shouts.

"I used to," I tell my nephew, "but I'll probably end up ruining my spine."

" Boo ," Caroline laughs. "You can still do it."

David begins to chant, "Vienna, Vienna, Vienna…" It doesn't catch on.

Grayson throws his ball in the air and Copper runs off to chase it. He taunts, "I told you Auntie Vee can't do superhero stuff."

My jaw drops. "Superhero stuff?" I repeat incredulously.

"Yeah, like Spiderman."

Francesca snaps her head up. "When did you watch Spiderman?"

David tenses. "It's a kid's show."

"No, it's not," she says.

"There's a cartoon one, Fran –"

"You know how I feel about weapons and encouraging him to do dangerous stunts!"

I put up my hand to garner her attention. "Excuse me, Grayson, but you think I don't have what it takes to be super ? All right then…everyone get back."

Francesca groans, "Don't do this, I don't want to go to the emergency room today. We don't have time for that."

"My honor is on the line." I stretch out my neck and wrists, quickly arch my back and touch my toes, and shake out my muscles. This will hurt tomorrow, but my reputation is at stake.

When a path is cleared, I begin to run. My feet hop into a roundoff, and my hands press into the grass, muscle memory taking over. I finish the back handspring with a flourish, wrists flicking in the air. Though my body clenches painfully, the group cheers my skill which makes it worth the Epsom salt bath I'm going to need later.

David admits, "I did not think you were going to do that."

"Ow, ow, ow," I whimper to myself, walking off the pain.

"Very nice," Adam says, coming up beside me. "Perfect form. Ten out of ten."

My head tips back, and I whimper, "I think I broke my body."

"Yeah, yeah, been there. You'll go to sleep tonight a young adult and wake up tomorrow needing a Life Alert," he quips. "At least you've still got spirit ."

I fight off a smile. If I don't at least pretend to fight, it'll be an all-out grin to match his, the kind that reflects enough sunlight to power a small home. Adam and I are joking with each other. Adam's trying to make me smile.

His hand meets mine as we bend to pick up the same lavender plant marker, and he doesn't flinch from the touch. "What did you and Maggie talk about?" he whispers with a curious brow.

My fingertips graze his. It's the closest I can get to an embrace. "Nothing much," I answer.

He doesn't buy it.

"You have a really good sister," I say, leaving him lost in thought, tapping pieces of metal together.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Francesca yells at Grayson to stop playing with the beach balls while she tries to explain the rules of her game.

Maggie turns to me. "I don't think I understand."

"There's not much to it. They are the enemy," I say, pointing to the five figures standing on the opposite side of the grass. "They have to get to their beach ball to our side, but we have to try and steal it. If you steal it, they can, as the game suggests, snatch you up, and drag your defenseless body, fingernails in the grass, back to the side you started on. Whoever gets the ball to the other side gets a point. But they get two points if they manage to steal a human."

"That sounds violent," Diego considers.

"Yes," I reply. "Liam Neeson made several movies about the very thing they'll try to do to us."

"Got any tips?" he asks.

Francesca supplies the opposing team – Adam, Grayson, Caroline, David, Alice – with beach balls.

"Grayson will straight maul you. Keep your hands in front of your face. Watch Caroline put her ball in her shirt and try to belly bump someone to the other side." I laugh, thinking about it. "It never works, it's her go-to strategy. David goes straight for the goal, he won't try to take anyone with him. And just don't step on Alice."

I linger on Adam. He laughs and tosses his ball. I push through the flutter in my stomach and say, "Let's be glad Adam never played football."

As Francesca stands beside me and blows her whistle, Maggie says, "Oh, but he did."

"Run!" Kate calls out.

She darts straight at Adam, but he runs diagonally. Francesca scoops up Alice, who runs the wrong way, and Diego fearfully puts his hands up to let David pass. Maggie runs up to Caroline and smacks the top of the ball out from under her shirt. Caroline wraps her hands around Maggie's shoulders as the older woman trudges forward with an iron determination, letting Caroline's body drag like a cape behind her.

"Excuse me, that's my ball," I tell the man jogging up to me.

"This one?" Adam holds the ball out and pulls his to his chest when I made a grab for it. He makes a motion forward, and I stick out my leg.

He jumps over it, jaw dropping, asking, "Did just try to trip me?"

"Everything short of murder is acceptable in this game!"

"Oh yeah?" He turns, his mouth shifting into a grin. "And I was going to let you escape."

My feet stumble backward.

"Now I think I'll abduct you."

"No!" I try to squirm out of his reach and make another brazen grab for the beach ball.

He clutches my body and digs his fingers into side, a spot he knows will turn me into a flopping fish.

"No probing allowed!" I giggle against my will as he continues to tickle the skin above my hipbone. When I twirl around, his arm cradles around my back, and everything around us seems to disappear. Between our faces, my hair flies up with my breath.

"You said anything's allowed," he mutters.

The tips of our noses graze. His palm warms my back, and I fight not to close my eyes and breathe in this moment, adding this snapshot into the hundreds of memories we shared together years ago.

That wouldn't be productive.

So, instead, I bite my lip and say, "Anything is allowed…like this." My knee rises between his open legs.

His eyes go wide.

The distraction gains me access to my body, freedom to run and an easy grab of his beach ball. Maggie and Francesca cheer me on as I join them. Diego still stands in the center of the grass, hands in the air, and Kate runs in circles, screaming at Grayson to stop trying to kick her in the ankles.

Francesca blows her whistle. "Points to Team Francesca! We have three beachballs and Team Loser Crybabies have a measly one ball. Grayson, let her go! This round is over!"

As my team disperses, Adam walks over to me, and I laugh at the shock still displayed on his face.

"You really thought I was going to knee you in the nuts?" I ask, crossing my arms. I feel the need to cover my body. To prevent others from seeing how his loopy grin makes me feel.

He gasps. "Yes! You people are brutal. And you scare me."

"I wouldn't do something like that," I chuckle. "I won't hit you below the belt. I know you want children one day."

I toss him the ball. He steps up, the brim of his cap casting a shadow over his face. "Yep. Thanks for the forethought."

"I'm also too gentle to cause you actual harm."

He throws the beach ball into the air. "And you've already hit me where it hurts."

We both watch the ball gently fall into my open arms.

Adam blinks. I look away.

We play two more rounds each of the game, switching sides each time, and Adam doesn't detour from his game plan. Whether he has the ball, or I have the ball, we find our way to each other. He throws me over his shoulder with ease, lets me dart past his legs, and hoists me to his hip, cheering his team's victory as though we didn't tie the game.

I loved every second of it. And hated it at the same time.

It was very conflicting.

"What's next?" Adam pants, scratching at his stubble.

My eye catches David's curious gaze as it moves back and forth between me and Adam.

"Um, my thing." I run my fingernails along the bumpy edges of the plastic ball and gesture toward grass. "You better go find Katie. She wanted to partner up and get weird."

He teeters, nodding his head and kicking an acorn. "Sure."

I pair up with Alice.

"The rule of the game," I say to the group, "Is that you must mirror your partner's movements completely. You're competing against your partner. They decide if you're still in it or you're out."

I get down on my knees. I swipe my nose across Alice's, and she giggles.

"This is trippy," David calls out, waving his hands slowly in wide circles.

"Every time, I feel like I'm on shrooms or I'm doing tai chi," Francesca laughs, copying the movement.

David snorts, "Or like we're whales at the aquarium waving through the glass to school children."

"Set me free," she chants. "Set me free…"

David says, "Wax on. Wax off."

They both bowl over in laughter and they're not the only ones.

I match my hands to Alice as she breaks our imaginary glass pane and tries to touch my eyelashes. It's not worth explaining the game to her.

Caroline kneels in front of Grayson. "We're pretty good at this," she comments. "I feel like a mime."

"I'm trapped in a box!" Grayson jokes, cracking himself up.

Maggie muses, "I like this. We did this in couples therapy."

"We did too!" David and Francesca say in unison.

I venture a glance at Adam and Kate. She's kept her hands to herself so far, so I've lost that bet to myself. He's smiling. His shoulders shake so he must be laughing at whatever she's saying. Their hands move mere centimeters from one another, and her long, toned leg stretches and Adam tries to mirror the movement. She throws her head back and laughs.

Alice's palm smacks me on the forehead while I was looking away.

"Auntie Vee doesn't win!" she says.

I turn back to her. "You don't know how to play the game."

She presses her hands into her hips and sticks her chin out. "I win. I win, I win, I win!" She dances off, her skirt flowing in the air.

Ten minutes later, we're in the house. David holds out his bike helmet to me.

From it, I take out the last piece of paper and scold, "Why am I last to pick? This isn't very organized."

"I had to make one more clue. I miscounted." He climbs a few stairs. His long fingers spread wide.

With a booming voice, he says, "You all have one item on your paper. This game is both ‘I Spy' and scavenger hunt. Find something that matches the description on your paper and bring it to me. I will determine if it's the item I was thinking of when I wrote it down."

Francesca snorts. "And this is where we all lose."

"If a door is shut, there are no items in that room," David says. "If you find Katie's makeup bag, you get extra points because my father would like to compare its contents with her credit card bill."

"Ha. Ha," Kate sneers.

"Okay, go," he says.

Francesca blows her whistle.

Adam grabs Copper, who jumps up thinking the sound is for him. Whistles weren't used in a training capacity, that's for sure.

I unfold my paper. " Findy Findy – ugh, really, Dave?"

He takes a swig of seltzer water. "That's the name of the game."

I read, " Findy Findy something that is also a simple machine."

"That's what mine says, too," Adam says, releasing his light hold on Copper's collar.

David snaps his fingers. "Shoot, I couldn't remember if I wrote that one down or not."

I rest on one hip and narrow in on his face. "Which means you thought a lot about it. Which means you think you're really clever. Which means it's not what we think it would be."

David shows Diego a thumbs down and answers me, "Getting warmer." He and Francesca walk off to get dinner started.

"This day is weird," Adam muses. "And I was interviewed by a robot once."

"I warned you."

He studies the clue, flips it around. "What are you thinking?"

Strangers don't create alliances, nor do they think about their neighbor's strong, lithe forearms. He and I shouldn't move in synchronization anywhere. And yet, that's all I want to do.

I begin, "We don't play this game in a team. It's every man for himself."

Adam licks his lips. "This isn't my house. I need the advantage."

Kate's voice wafts in from the dining room. Adam steps forward, and the warmth of his palm meets the arch in my back.

"Let's try upstairs." He ushers me forward. His breath teases the back of my neck. I climb along with him, my body moving on autopilot. At the top of the stairs, his hand still glued to my spine, he directs us along a practiced path toward my bedroom.

He says, "Oh, look where we are! Let's look in here."

Two hands push me through the open door, and I listen as he closes it behind us.

Tucking a loose hair behind my ear, I spin around. "Why are we locked in?"

"It's not locked." He puts his hands on his hips.

I lift a brow and argue, "For the purposes of this game, it's locked."

He says, "If someone wanted to come in, they could. Besides…it's not like we're going to do anything scandalous in here." Lips twist into a smirk. "Are we?"

That cheekiness got me when I was eighteen-year-old. The charm of it, the boldness, the way he sprinkled suggestive language sporadically while waiting in line for ice cream or before diving in the lake.

I say, "No."

" Rats ," he responds with a tentative smile and jokey snap of his fingers.

We're not kids anymore. There's nothing we could do that would be frowned upon or needs to be secret. But we're also not anything to each other, while being simultaneously off-limits.

I'm curious about what we could have been like this week without that summer. If we only just met now. If we were truly strangers.

Would we have gone down the same path?

Adam walks up behind me, and my body craves for his arms to wrap around my waist, tug me close to him. My ears ring, my skin ripples with desire.

Then, he brushes past me and saunters toward the dresser. Leaning against the wood, breathing out through puffed lips, his eyes glance around the room. The corner of his mouth lifts.

My eyes watch his movements while my body remembers them. "Why are in here, Adam?"

"I just needed some space," he says. His dark lashes flutter when his gaze softens on me.

A fire burns low in my belly.

"There's not a lot of it here," I struggle, looking away.

"Yeah, this room is small." His eyebrows drop. "Do you live in a house in Atlanta? Or an apartment?"

Taken aback by his question, I momentarily falter. "Um…an apartment." Embarrassment warms my cheeks, but I don't know why, it's not my fault. "I don't get paid a lot of money. You know, being a public school teacher and all."

He blinks, staring at me. "Do you have a roommate?"

"No."

"Is your kitchen big enough for baking?"

"Kind of." Needing something to do with my hands, they smooth the quilt at the foot of my bed. I wonder, "Why are you asking me these questions?"

He licks his bottom lip and focuses on his feet. "Just getting to know you." One eyebrow lifts, as does his gaze. " Stranger ."

Swallowing the nervousness in my throat, I sit on the edge of my bed and say, "If you're getting to know someone, people usually ask questions like…what kind of books do you read?"

"You don't read." Adam laughs lightly, begging me to argue.

"Fine." I wave my hand dismissively. "Then, like, what kind of shows do you watch?"

He hinges forward. "I know what kind of shows you watch."

"You're so sure I haven't changed in fourteen years? Maybe I'm, like, really smart now. Maybe I read Pulitzer Prize winning novels and exclusively watch documentaries."

Adam smiles. "I heard you and Kate talking about Vanderpump Rules yesterday. And I don't see any books in here…"

"I could read on my phone."

"You could ."

His lips pinch, telling me that he knows I don't read, that he knows everything about me because the cold, hard truth is that I haven't changed that much. Apart from being adventurous and happy and excited about life, I'm the same person I was.

But those missing qualities feel really, really important.

Before I can respond, Adam's eyes widen and his finger presses to his lips. " Shh. "

Someone walks past the closed door. Her voice wafts down the hallway and when I realize what's happening, his features contort into regret. Adam hangs his head. "I know, I know –"

"Are you hiding from Katie?" I whisper.

"She's twenty-three!" he whispers back.

" Please ." Despite the gold confetti exploding in my mind, I push off the bed and step into the space between his stretched legs. Our shoes almost touch. "You're a man. There are no age limits for men."

"There are for me."

"I thought you liked her?" I feel badly, immediately, for cheering on Kate's rejection. He doesn't deserve her attention.

Again, regret precipitates his words. "I didn't mind you thinking that. Or me trying to think that. When I wanted to be mad at you, I also wanted to make you jealous." He meets my eye. "Not that it worked."

"She is a nice girl."

"She is," he admits. "But she's too young. We have nothing in common."

"You want a girl you have something in common with?" I breeze.

Adam pushes off the dresser. He stands opposite me, close enough to play our own bedroom version of the mirror game, and a slow whistle breezes through his lips. He says, "Yeah. Like strawberry ice cream."

I step back, toward the window, stumbling a little from the speed. That statement was not a cheeky innuendo. It was not some mindless flirtation. That statement felt like an invitation, or, god-forbid, a tease.

Adam's eyes smile, apologetically, the rest of his face passive. "Like Maggie said, she's not the girl for me." He pauses in thought. "Are you seeing someone?"

He asked me that last night and I avoided the question. Why does he care? Why is that the question that just popped out of his mouth?

"Not anymore," I reply.

"Why not?" he immediately asks.

I ask myself that question often and the answer is exactly what I gave him: "Because it didn't fit. And I'd rather be alone than less than one hundred percent happy."

I busy my hands by grooming my hair while Adam keeps his eyes on me. He says, "I get that." Then, he taps a picture tapped to the wall. "This room is like a time capsule."

"Yeah." I can't help but smile at his smile when he touches the picture of Fran and I at a waterpark.

He says, "It's weird how we can feel sixteen-years-old and fifty all at the same time."

I agree, "My brain says I'm just a kid, but my body says otherwise."

"You got back problems yet?" he asks.

"No, I'm still two months younger than you."

He laughs. "Right. I forgot."

Then, his movements freeze, his hand immobile atop a snow globe, and I know what he hasn't forgotten: my eighteenth birthday.