Chapter Twenty-Six

Everyone laughs and heads outside without explanation. In the living room, Kate sits alone in the chair by the fire, staring at her phone.

I point a finger to the open door, the chilly air penetrating my thin shirt. "Do you know what they're doing?"

She doesn't look up. "If you're going to participate, you might want to change into grubby clothes." Her eyes run over my body, and she adds coolly, "Actually, you're probably fine."

The laughter outside doesn't warm the air between us.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Fine!" she snaps. "I'm just not playing."

It must have been the engagement thing. She didn't take to Adam's declaration well, and it's causing her to scowl and scroll social media alone. I know the sting of liking someone and not having it reciprocated. Before going outside, I offer, "There's some pie in the kitchen if you want it."

I close the front door behind me and wait on the porch.

The yard lights are on, the moon glows in the background, and my family and the two neighbors stand in a wide circle on the grass with food spread out between them. It's either a ritual sacrifice or a weird sort of picnic. Mashed potatoes, bags of spaghetti, cans of whipped cream, containers of yogurt.

Adam jogs up from the woods. "I put Copper away," he breathes.

"What's happening here?" I demand. "You do know you can't grow a garden of spaghetti by planting it in the dirt." Suddenly, the realization dawns on me, cracked over the head by the falling lightbulb. " Oh my God ."

Francesca waves me down with a sly smile. She sings, "Come on, Auntie Vee. We have one more game to play."

"Diego, Maggie and Adam planned a little game of their own," David explains.

I lock eyes with Adam, whose expression reads as waiting, hoping. He calls out, "Come down here!"

I cross my arms. "A food fight? Seriously?"

"Food fight!" Grayson squeals, jumping up and down. Alice tries to join him, but she falls in her poncho.

"It's forty degrees," I point out.

Adam replies, "A little cold never killed ya."

"We're grown-ups."

" Boo ." He gives Grayson a thumb's up. "Maybe on the outside, but we're all kids at heart."

"This looks very wasteful ," I observe pointedly, hoping that Adam will remember his claims of caring about food waste and the environment.

I slowly walk down the stairs, unsure of when the attack starts. I check out my outfit. Sneakers – washable. T-shirt – washable. Leggings – Lululemon, so some kind of alarm will go off that I'm not in hot yoga and I'll be expected to burn them for desecration.

"I don't fight with my food," I argue. "I love with my food."

"Oh, we know," Adam responds, walking behind his sister and coming up to greet me. I lean backward. His bites his bottom lip, grinning, a glint in his eye, and his hand scoops something from the ground that I didn't see before. He exhales. "You put a lot of love in your food."

Confused, I look down at the object in his outstretched palm. "No!" I scream. "Not my chocolate pie!"

"This old thing?"

"Adam, put the pie down!"

He throws his head back in a laugh. "Oh. It's gonna go down."

"Please, not the pies!" I beg once more, ducking and running into the lawn as something cold splatters on my back.

Screaming and laughter fly into the air along with globs of yogurt and swooping spaghetti noodles. It's complete anarchy. It's my first year of teaching.

At a run, I grab a fistful of mashed potatoes and fling it at Diego, who wields his whipped cream can like a weapon, spraying the side of my head before turning to Alice's open, sacrificial arms.

David yells, "This is good lemon meringue pie, Vee!"

"I know !" I hiss, hiding behind Grayson's legs. I snatch a yogurt cup off the ground and tear open the top. As Maggie approaches, I shake the contents like I'm flouring my cutting board.

Cold, slimy noodles land on my head.

"Don't use my child as a shield," Francesca threatens.

Sauce dribbles down the side of my face as I run for a lonely tube of whipped cream just as Caroline does. She grabs it before I can, my lovely yellow pie splattered across her body like she's a Jackson Pollack painting. She runs off as wet hands land under my armpits.

Adam snarls in my ear, "You look too clean, Vee." He drags his palms down the sides of my body, his breath hot on my cheek.

I gasp.

This doesn't seem like typical food fight behavior.

We fight with food, not hands, and although Adam's not harming me, he's definitely crossed a line that would have him red-carded out of this match if anyone else noticed. Because we can't do this. Grope each other.

Not that I mind.

Striped with mashed potatoes, his hands on my hips, I grab a handful of whipped cream from the top of my head. It's not the first time today that we've stood this close, but the gratuitous touching has just made its debut. I grab on to a passing thought.

If he can touch me like this, I guess I'm cleared to return the gesture.

His hold loosens, and I turn to face him. I push my hands together. "You are far too dirty," I mutter.

I reach underneath his hoodie and press my palms to his bare skin – who'd have thought – and drag my hands down the length of his torso, my breath catching in surprise at his flesh. My fingertips glide along the ridges of his abs.

His chest rises and falls.

My cheeks burn. I keep my eyes on my hands as they press into the front of his hoodie, patting the whipped cream underneath, but he's staring at me. I sense it, the same way I sensed him watching me all day.

"There," I breathe. "Now you're filthy."

He smirks. "Oh…I can get filthier."

Since I don't have an ounce of sexual charisma, I always wondered how he said things like this without turning into embarrassment soup. He challenges me with his eyes, and I have tunnel vision while war rages around us.

He wants to get filthier. That's definitely an innuendo. What Adam doesn't know is that after he de-flowered me, I went through a bit of a slut phase. I might be easily flustered, but I'm acquainted with filth.

Alice charges at me then, and Adam and I separate. Her grumbly little pudding-covered fingers dig into the tops of my shoes.

"Alice, stop it!" I order. I bounce from foot to foot, backing away, her assault like bullets in a western movie. She jams her sticky vanilla scented hands between my shoes and socks and then runs off giggling.

"Ugh." I look down at her fingerprints. "Little weirdo."

Adam steps back into her shadow.

"Well, Vee," he says, holding what's left of my chocolate pie in his other hand. "I'll bet this was delicious. It's such a shame it came to this."

"Don't you –" I stop, getting a good look at him now.

His hair sticks up in the front, smushed back with mashed potatoes, and noodles hang from his shoulders. I walk backwards and clap a hand to my mouth, checking out the destruction, snorting into my palm.

He gestures to his body, following me. "If you think this funny, we've got to find you a mirror."

"I always look elegant," I argue. I scoop a yogurt from inside my ear. "I'm a lady ."

"That's not what I remember," he murmurs, his eyes going dark.

I swallow, glancing around at the woods behind us, the side of the house in view. We've somehow backtracked from the yard. It's quiet here. We're completely alone.

"What do you plan on doing with that?" I point to the pie.

"This?" He holds it high in the air.

"I poisoned that one, you know."

"Is that so?"

My back meets the trunk of a tree. Startled, I grab the sides of it.

Adam settles in front of me. "You look cold, Vee. I'd offer you my sweatshirt, but it's been defiled."

"That's not the only thing defiled tonight," I grumble, nodding at the dessert. "You owe me a pie!" Then, I remember. "Two pies!"

"There's a bakery in town."

"Not as good as mine, and I want a homemade chocolate pie made with blood, sweat and tears." My spine leans into the scratchy bark of the tree.

He scoops his hand into the aluminum plate and leans forward. "How do you know yours is better?" Adam covers the right side of my face with chocolate, his hand stopping on my closed lips. He stares at that place. "Other people make great pie."

My breath becomes choppy. "There's no pie like mine," I say.

There's little room between us. Adam places his left hand on the tree, beside my head. The pie rests, unsecured, on his shaking right palm, and I scoop out some of its contents. I watch his jaw clench under a stubble of hair, flecks of food mixing with his spattering of freckles, his throat bobbing.

I wipe the pie across his cheek, just as he did mine.

"You should taste it," I whisper. Before he can respond, I inch up my toes and hold the sides of his face with my fingertips, grazing the brush of chocolate with my tongue.

He closes his eyes. Something hits the leaf-covered ground. The pie, I assume.

I pull back, knowing my ears and cheeks and neck must be bright red under mashed potatoes. My hands drop. I search Adam's face, his lips tight, for a sign of how he feels.

That was stupid of me. Obviously. Up until this morning, he was so angry that he could barely look at my face. Last night he laid bare the gritty details of the grudge he'd held for fourteen years and the disdain he reserved for me. Now I'm licking his face and trying to resist the urge to pull myself closer to his body.

Adam opens his eyes. He glances at the chocolate on my face. He murmurs, "I think I will."

His right hand lands on the tree beside my waist, my shirt riding up, his forearm pressing into the skin of my hip. He bends and sinks toward me, breathing into my ear, and his tongue caresses my jawbone. He doesn't stop. He melts further into me, delicately licking the chocolate off my skin, and my left hand drags through his hair.

" Vee ," he mumbles into my neck.

I make a faintly aware sound.

"Tell me to stop."

My head falls back as his licks and nips cease, but he edges even closer, his lips gliding down my neck, drawing breathy lines over the prickled skin.

Adam cups my jaw with one hand, and I beg myself to realize two things – two things that could stop me from moving forward.

One: this is Adam fucking Kent.

This man stuck his tongue where Leonardo DiCaprio stuck his tongue, he's featured in magazines I read, and he's the subject of internet memes.

Two: this is Adam. The boy who wanted to marry me once upon a time. The boy whose heart could have been mine if romance was enough.

"Adam," I whine, hooking my elbow around his neck, refusing to focus on the facts.

He repeats, "Tell me to stop. Tell me this is too much." His arm hugs my back, pushing us together, and his mouth pauses at the corner of mine. "Too soon."

I feel him waiting, feel him elsewhere. He presses into me, and my breath catches when I involuntarily push back.

We're pressed tightly together, molded like two tree trunks growing into one another, and it's not close enough. He holds me against him, and I hold him to me. It feels like it could have always been this. We could have come back to this house every year and relived that first summer, enjoying our springs and winters and autumns twirled up in each other's lives and futures.

That first time wouldn't have been the last time. I would have ravished this man. Devoured him. Explored his body and mind and soul in more ways than two months would have allowed.

Adam whispers against my mouth, "Vee."

"Yeah?" I try.

Something cracks behind us.

Adam flinches, and I freeze. He stares at me, a spell broken, and our eyes ask the other what to do. Still pressed into me, our bodies flush with the tree, Adam turns his head.

Alice stands in the woods, picking up a toy.

Without looking at us, she calls out, "Auntie Vee, I found one missing!"

I slide my arms from Adam's neck, and he releases his hold. He turns his back to me, and I push my shirt down, sighing, "Alice, what are you doing out here?"

I rush ahead and scoop her up, holding her on my hip. The poncho crinkles. She taps me on the nose with her hard plastic lizard.

Adam sniffles and his feet make noise, and I glance back at him as he adjusts his pants, smiles at Alice, and then directs me with a sad well-that-happened kind of look. I don't know what kind of look I return. I'm too shocked and confused internally to process my external response.

If we hadn't been interrupted, what was he going to say? Was it: "We can't do this, it's a bad idea" or "Vee, I've loved you fourteen years and I'll die if I can't have you." Or maybe he would have kissed me. The way he used to. A kiss that felt like more than just lips touching, more like insatiable hunger, falling without caring if you'll be caught. Sinking into a dream.

He croaks, "Let's go assess the damage." Adam marches onward toward the yard.

Alice draws a line in the mashed potatoes in my hair.

When we reach the others, they're laughing, giddy, picking up trash and containers.

David asks, "Where have you been?"

Adam stretches his arms. "Tracking down this little runaway." He gestures to Alice, who squirms out of my arms.

It's quiet and peaceful now that the shenanigans have ceased. We're all a mess. Francesca has her raincoat hood over her head and Diego has shed his sweater, shaking it free of leaves and spaghetti. Grayson makes snow angels in the grass to wipe himself clean.

Adam rests his fingers in his belt loops. He's breathing from his nose but the way his upper body rises and falls, I wouldn't call him relaxed. I watch him for signs that he wants to talk about what happened. That's what we should do. We're adults now. We need to talk about things.

"I'm going to jump in the lake," he announces.

"Adsy, it's freezing!" Maggie says.

"That's what I'm hoping for," he groans.

Grayson shouts, "I want to go swimming!"

Adam strips off his hoodie, displaying two awkward handprints of whipped cream on his not awkward body. Strong, lean muscles and a ladder of abdominals just begging to be climbed. He kicks off his shoes.

If his jeans go next, I will lose my mind.

Francesca grapples for Grayson, who also wants to jump into the cold, dark lake.

Caroline's jaw drops. "Isn't it too cold, aren't you going to get hypothermia?"

"It's not that cold," Diego answers.

"Adam's always been a bit of a daredevil," Maggie chuckles, watching him run off toward the dock.

Francesca jokes, "My sibling, too. She's wildly adventurous and unpredictable."

Adam's feet hit the dock and he front flips into the glassy water, the moon shining down on the ripples he made.

"I can be unpredictable," I say absently, watching him come back up to the surface. The cold water would feel good against my burning hot skin.

Francesca snorts, "Sure. As in, ‘You'll never guess what flavor of cookies I'm baking today?'"

" No ," I argue, "as in, you don't know everything about me."

"I do know you, Vee, you're the most predictable person in my life."

Hearing her smug voice, something inside me snaps. I say, "Predictable or dependable ?"

She drags her eyes across my face, stuck in a half smile, assessing my tone. "I don't depend on you."

"Seriously?"

"What could I possibly need you for?" She glances around for support. "You're the one who offers to help out. I'm a grown married woman with two kids and a job." She holds ups her hands and scoffs, "I think I'm doing fine on my own."

The other adults on the yard look away, uncomfortable. At least they can see her statements for what they are.

Disparaging.

But the look on David's face, I know he's thinking of the same word I am: inaccurate .

How can an adult woman lack so much self-awareness?

I bite back the urge to unleash on Francesca. I have a lot of pent-up tension inside.

I listen to Adam splashing in the water.

"What are you doing?" Francesca shouts at my back.

I started running for the lake before my brain made the decision. I just…wanted to. I need to surprise her and myself. I need to pour cold water over my head and imagine myself as a new person, someone who isn't burdened by the past or her manipulative sister. I don't want to be the woman who overthinks everything. A big part of me loved how I felt in Adam's arms just now. It reminded me of being eighteen.

That girl would have jumped in the lake.

Catching Adam's position, I drive off the dock and slip into the water to the left of him.

It's really, really, really cold.

"Fuck!" I scream, head above water. "Shit, shit, fuck that's cold!"

My arms move rapidly, and everything hurts. There's food floating in the water around my head and dripping into my eyes. I inhale and exhale fast, then drunk my head once more, shaking it under water. I aim for the dock when I come to the surface, but Adam blocks the view.

"What are you doing?" he demands, half laughing.

Water dribbles from my lips. "I'm not boring," I decide.

He blinks. "I know ."

"And I really hate my sister sometimes."

"I know that, too."

I take a struggling, deep breath. "I just jumped in this lake. And I'm going to die in here."

Adam wades toward me. "Your crowd of admirers will save you."

There is cheering from the yard. I want to get out and join them as soon as possible, but the heat that got me in this mess has returned. Adam bobs in front of me, glistening, cheeks pale and lips red.

I chatter, "How are you not freezing?"

"I have an ice bath at home," he answers.

"Of course you do." My arms and legs kick rapidly to keep moving and get warm. I'm not as accustomed to this torture as he is. My breath won't regulate.

Adam tips his head. We're at the edge of the dock, underneath it. His hand reaches up to hold on to the edge of the planks. "You remember when we used to sneak out at night for a swim? And that time you thought a fox was in the woods and we had to tread water for so long I was sore for two days."

How could I forget? We'd sneak out and hide under this dock so no one sleeping would hear. He'd tease me that dead bodies have been buried at the bottom of the lake and tease the straps of my bikini top. I loved the look of Adam with water dripping from the ends of his dark hair.

He watches me with curious intent.

I'm about to need a doctor.

I plant my hands beside his and peel my clothed body up to sit on the dock. My muscles violently shudder. "You remember that?" I manage to speak.

Adam stares up at me with a frown. His hand moves to my thigh. Then, it moves to my ice-cold hand. "Vienna, I remember everything."