Chapter Thirty-One

I dress in the bathroom and dry my hair at the vanity in the room while Adam showers. He hums and sings to himself in there.

It's not as chilly today, so I've opened the French doors and let some cool air in, since we're both warm from the shower and I'm warm from the wine. Happy voices laugh and chat in the garden. Everything feels rosy and romantic. I can't even hear Alice's inevitable tantrum in the room beside us.

Adam opens the bathroom door while he's shaving and I'm applying makeup. I'm not above discreetly gawking at the muscles of his bare chest.

"What do you like about your job?" He asks, pulling his upper lip taut.

My mouth falls open while I apply mascara. "The kids."

"That's the part I couldn't handle."

"I love how they're funny and innocent and want to know everything."

"Do they have pee pee accidents?"

I laugh. "I would love to say no, but …"

He shudders and questions, "What do you hate about your job?"

"Ugh. How much time do you have?" I move to the other eye.

He swirls his razor in the sink. "For you, I have all the time in the world."

I expect a cheeky grin to meet me in the mirror, but Adam's serious, focused on his task and waiting for me to answer.

"Feeling like I'm always underwater," I answer.

"How so?"

"There's never enough time in the day," I groan. "The curriculum is a mess, but I'm always expected to both follow it implicitly and add my own lessons, so the kids actually learn something, and the school board can pretend it's because of their sparkling curriculum."

I listen to the scraping blade on the side of his cheek. He says, "My step-mom was a middle school teacher."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah, she threw a huge party for herself when she retired." He laughs. "She said she could finally celebrate an achievement. She told me that she didn't get the same sense of accomplishment that I did when I wrote a song. The job was never done."

I commiserate, "It's like filling a pot that I will never see full. And some teachers like that. They like being one brick in the foundation and it's fulfilling for them. I'm starting to think I'm just not like that.

"Plus, everything's the teacher's fault, the teacher's responsibility, the teacher's problem to fix. You're never doing enough . It's never enough of yourself and your money and your time."

I fix a smudge on my eyeliner and glance apologetically at his reflection. I offer, "Sorry. I didn't mean to go off on a rant."

He meets my eye. "Don't apologize. I asked and that's your answer."

I bite my lip. I pretend to look at my makeup, but really consider the question I both want and don't want to ask. This is the leap from being easy-going pseudo friends to stumbling into the hurdle of what ended our short relationship in the first place.

I ask him, "How is it being a musician?"

Adam continues to shave. "Everything my fate line told me it would be." He flickers his eyes back to mine. "It was hard in the beginning. It's still hard, in different ways. I feel this pressure to make the next thing I do better than the previous. I keep trying to remind myself to just be in the moment and be happy."

"Because it makes you happy," I envy.

Adam likes his lip and pauses. "Yes. I'm happy writing and performing. It doesn't mean every part of my life is perfect, just that slice."

"And if music stops making you happy?"

"Then I'll do something else."

I rub my ring finger in a jar of highlighter and brush it along my cheekbones. "Like what?"

"I don't know. I think that's for me to find out when the time comes. I'm doing the only thing that has ever brought me joy. My one single dream. I guess a new thing will present itself if need be."

I have one thing that brings me joy and I had a vision for what it looked like. I want to tell him: that's what I hate about my job – that it's not my dream.

Adam cleans his face and walks out of the bathroom in blue pants. "A job is just a job, Vienna. You can get them anywhere."

"It's not that easy," I sigh, adding another layer of blush to my cheeks.

"But it doesn't have to be that hard either. Being unhappy is pretty hard enough." He stands at the foot of the bed and puts on a crisp white shirt, that he must have ironed before leaving.

I steal glances at him as he buttons his shirt. He does the same to me, standing at my back while I apply lipstick, fixing his collar in the mirror.

It's quite domestic, the two of us getting dressed for a night out, alternating between talking and moving in an easy quiet. I thought Adam would need something exciting and adventurous. I thought the mundane life I lived would bore him.

He seems pretty content. When he does catch my eye, he smiles. He pauses after putting on shoes to watch me fiddle with my jewelry.

"Can you clip this?" I ask, holding out a bracelet.

"Yeah, sure." He kneels in front of me, large fingers securing the clasp. Then, his hand wraps around my wrist to look at it, observing, "That's nice. Where'd you get it?"

"It was my mom's," I breathe as his thumb moves from tracing the gold chain to dancing along my veins.

Immediately, a question floats to my mind that I can't swim away from.

"Adam," I start. "Why didn't you tell me about your mom?"

He meets me face with a frown. "Maggie?"

I nod.

Rolling his head contemplatively, his hand smoothing the sleek locks at his hairline, he replies, "Because…I didn't talk about it. To anyone."

"Why?"

"I didn't like to say what it really was. To say it out loud." Adam's absently runs his fingertips along my knuckles. "I was living in denial about it for a long time."

When Maggie told me about his relationship with their mother, I felt guilty for the months I spent going on about my parental woes, knowing now that he has his own issues bubbling inside of him.

"I would have listened," I say. "You could have told me. I hate that I went on and on –"

" No , Vee." He stops me with a quick grasp of my fingers. "It wasn't you. Really, I didn't tell anyone . And, yeah, you had a mother who died so mine abandoning me felt a little insensitive to mention, but I know I could have talked to you about it."

I insist, "You didn't have to compare your situation to mine. They're both awful and both valid experiences to discuss. Hell, you could have had a perfect mother who gave you trauma for insisting you…eat chicken even though you didn't like it, I don't know."

He smiles, cocking his head.

"I just mean, trauma is subjective, and it's all valid. You should never hold back from a conversation with someone you lo–" My mouth stops just as it picks up the train of thought my brain was driving.

That last word isn't something that should be uttered in the red room.

Adam's smile returns, his hand releasing mine but falling, instead, to my knee. He doesn't even look at it or wait for my reaction, acting like it's a natural movement.

"You must be a really good teacher," he says.

Swallowing, my body warm from his touch, I respond, "I don't have to therapize kindergarteners. Just make sure they learn to read."

" Do they learn to read?"

"Most of them."

"Then I stand by my assessment."

As his hand slides off my knee, Adam moves his eyes to the pleated skirt and tailored bodice and mid-length sleeves of my dress. Then, he notices the soft curls in my hair, the dainty gold hoops, the crimson of my lips. The color matches this room.

The sounds crackle: his shirt moving, the television buzzing, the wind hitting the curtain. I try not to add my uneven breathing to the cacophony of intensified sound. We've made it to the portion of the evening that pleasant conversation and seductive banter can't salvage. If I don't say something soon, I'll do something stupid.

"I feel like a prized pig," I say carefully. "Are you trying to decide how much I'll fetch at the market?"

His gelled hair shines from light in the overhead chandelier. His hands move in the air around my body. "Well, to do that…I might have to touch you." He drops his arms. "And friends don't put their hands on each other."

"No, they don't," I respond.

Adam's eyes soften, drawing me in. "But I already know the answer, anyway."

"What's the verdict?" My mouth crinkles into a smile. I can't help it.

An inch from the skin, he hovers his right hand under my ankle, as though holding it with magic, and says, "Strong, flexible cheerleader legs. Two hundred, easy."

The hair on my skin stands on end. My shoulders lift slightly to my ears, wanting to squirm from the sensation of his energy. His hand moves across the bottom of my dress.

He says, "I have no idea how much women's clothing costs so I'm going to guess, fifty bucks?"

I snort a laugh and slap my hand over my mouth. "Try three times that."

"Damn, you're a high maintenance lady," he mutters, pausing both hands on the sides of my waist. "Now, for these good old-fashioned child-bearing hips –"

"Watch it," I growl.

"You'll fetch a pretty penny for those," he winks, biting the bottom of his lip.

My breath hitches as his hands move across the top of my dress, past the faintest bit of cleavage. His body angles toward me, our heads aligned since he's on his knees and I'm on this squat vanity stool. We're so close without touching, and it's provocative, thrilling.

His breath hits my hair. My stomach twists, heat in my core.

Adam runs the back of his hand in front of my collarbone as if he were going to sweep back my hair. He says gruffly, "And this whole area…" His lips pinch together, pretending to whistle, and he bites his knuckle.

He settles both hands astride my face. He's still not touching me, but my body doesn't know that. His dark lashes flutter and he sways, locked to my eyes, and I'm thinking he won't be able to manage keeping the distance of his hands for much longer. He's bound to fall because I'm on the verge myself.

Do not kiss him.

My eyes linger on his mouth. For some reason, it makes me want to cry. I think of all the times his hands and lips touched me. If I kissed him now, I'd never stop thinking of it. It might take another fourteen years to get over him.

Adam's hands pull away. His mouth twists into a soft smile. "And this beautiful face. Those pink cheeks and mossy green eyes and pouty red lips. Priceless ."

I sigh, and my head leans to the side.

He mirrors my movement.

We give each other the same look but I'm having my thoughts, and I don't know his.

In two days, I go back to Atlanta and spend the weekend preparing lessons for the week ahead. He goes home to Chicago and starts recording new music. We'll spend Christmas with our families, welcome in the spring, have drinks with friends, promote a new album, get through end of year testing, attend the Grammy's with an actress on the arm. All things that don't fit into a singular, shared life.

For all I know, Adam's only interested in this one night, this shared bed, and that's it. We're still practically strangers. We've still only known each other for two months. The version of me who stood her ground this morning remains the level-headed, correct one, and this girl, who just got phantom groped, isn't thinking straight.

Adam stands. I follow the movement, seeing the long love line on his right palm as he holds it out toward me.

"We should go out there," he says.

I stand and brush smooth my dress, but he doesn't give me space to do it, "I'll put on my shoes and go first," I say, an inch from his face. "So no one sees us in here together."

He blinks. "Yeah. Of course.'