Chapter Thirty-Three

Mackenzie comes by to ask us about the food.

"Delicious," Francesca answers, leaning in her chair, rubbing her stomach. "Ten out of ten."

He laughs and responds, "Excellent! I'm glad. Well, if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Enjoy the night. The lights in the garden are beautiful."

Adam comes around and claps his friend on the back. "Mac, let's chat about when you want me to play." He drops his voice. "Also, I've thought of how you can make it up to me about the room situation."

They head out of the door and David announces, "We've got to get these kids changed so they can run off a little bit of energy before bed."

Caroline says, "I'm excited to listen to Adam play! I love Should've, it's one of my favorite songs."

"Do you think Mackenzie will get to come out and listen?" Kate squeals.

"Oh my God," Francesca groans. She sets her napkin on the table. "I'm going to go up and change, too. Are you coming, Vienna?"

I focus back on the hallway, searching for a sign of my roommate. "I'll finish my dessert. You guys go ahead, I'm fine here on my own."

I'm finished with my pumpkin cheesecake, I don't touch it again. I just want to know where Adam is, how we're going to handle the rest of the night, and how drunk or sober I should be when the lights finally go off.

There is a fire pit outside with long metal benches in a circle. In front of it will be Adam, in his element, so far from mine. I'm about to hear my first ever Adam Kent song, and I'm both terrified and hopeful that he's asking Mackenzie to put sheets on the kitchen counter so he can steer clear of more mistletoe mishaps.

When he returns to the dining room, he searches for everyone else, smiling when he sees they've gone.

"What's that look for?" I wonder.

He says, "I'm glad you're all alone. I have a surprise for you."

I'm guided out of my chair and into the hallway. Adam pushes open the door to the kitchen, and waves at the cooks and cleaning staff who don't seem surprised to see us. He opens a second door, and we stand in a smaller kitchen, with subway tiled walls and a metal island. We're completely alone.

I spin around, speechless and confused.

Adam takes a white apron from a hook. "Mackenzie owed me one," he says. "So, he's giving us the pastry kitchen for the night."

"I don't understand," I whisper.

He places the apron neck over my head. "You have as long as you want." He comes to stand behind me, taking the ties to my back, bending down and speaking into my ear, "In this pastry kitchen." His arms hug my waist, tying the straps in front of my body, adding into my other ear, "To do the thing that brings you joy."

I lean back into his chest, looking at the stand mixer and metal bowls and pots hanging from the ceiling. My hand absently rests on his. "Really?"

He slightly pulls me closer. "Really."

I twist my head, finding my nose a centimeter from us. "Thank you." I smile.

He smiles back. Releasing me, Adam steps back and asks, "What will you bake?"

I cup my warm, astounded face. I think it over: "Well…I'm at the opening of a new business. I don't like to just bake for myself, I want to share it with people. And these people all just ate dessert. They're going to sit by the fire and listen to a musician sing to them."

"I'm aware, yes." Adam crosses his arms, sniffles, listening. "And I'm going to sing at them."

"I know what to make." I assess his comfortable stance. "Are you going anywhere soon?"

"Not without you."

His eyes sparkle when I request that he get out the supplies I need to make sugar cookies. I mix the wet ingredients in the stand mixer.

"Cornstarch makes the edges crispy," I explain while Adam adds the flour mixture. "You don't want to mix it too much."

As I spread powdered sugar on the counter, he asks, "How come you don't need a recipe to make these?"

"It's the basic sugar cookie base."

"I need a recipe to make scrambled eggs."

When the dough is done, he hands me the ball of it, and I hand him the rolling pin. "I need to get the icing ready."

"This is a lot of pressure." He looks at his clothes. "I'm not wearing an apron."

I bend down and find one folded on the shelf under the island. Getting up on my toes, I hang it over his neck and reach the string around his waist. My chin raises to him as my fingers tie the strings around his back. "Now you are."

Adam smirks. "How mad would you be if I wiped some sugar on your face."

" Don't ." I jump back. "You already had your food fight fun. I'm serious."

"I'm not going to!" He laughs.

As I stir food coloring into bowls of icing, Adam rolls the dough into a rectangle. He follows my instructions, stamping round cookie cutters and rolling the dough back together so there's nothing left by the end but a tiny scrap. He puts the cutouts on two cookie sheets.

"The oven should be done preheating any second." I twist the end of my red piping bag full of icing. Just then, the oven beeps.

"The things your mind can do," he says, putting the cookies in the oven. "Time an oven, remember a recipe. Read palms. How long?"

I throw him look and seven fingers. "You know, the palmistry thing isn't an exact science. I wouldn't read into it too much."

He leans into the counter beside me. "So, I'm not going to have one great love?"

I glance sideways. "I guess that's up to you." I remember something I wanted to say. "Hey – thanks for taking Grayson to the bathroom earlier."

Adam runs his eyes over my regretful face and says, "You can't let her take advantage of you, Vee."

"I know." I spoon my green icing into a bag.

"She's just going to keep doing it. The way she expects you to solve her problems for her…it's not fair ."

I sigh. "Her mother died in a car accident when she was twelve."

Adam puts two fingers under my chin and forces me to look at him. His brow furrows. "So did yours ."

"She's more fragile than I am."

"That doesn't mean she can walk all over you." His hand moves to gently grip my jaw. "She's a grown up. Help her when she needs it. Finding her child in a field and taking him to the bathroom does not require your help."

He drops his hand, and I busily organize my piping bags into rainbow order. "It's hard to find the words to stand up for myself," I admit.

"It takes practice."

I'm good at practice when it's something I feel confident I can do. I've never struggled to work on tumble skills or study for a test or hone my bread kneading technique. But, Heddy has tried to get me to meditate for years. I told her once that I could not do it, my mind refused to be quiet. I just can't do it.

"It's not going to be suddenly quiet," she told me. "Meditation is about noticing the thought and choosing not to engage with it. Let it go. It's a practice. You can't do it once and all of a sudden think you've mastered the art of meditation."

Adam echoes those same sentiments, saying, "The more you stand up to her, the easier it will get and the less she's going to do that to you. She didn't ask Kate or Caroline to take him. She didn't wait for David to get back."

"It's always been me," I explain. "Because I'm the one who has always been there. I'm the one who will never leave her."

He says, "You told me once that she didn't realize she was doing it. I think that's true, too. So just make her realize it."

The timer rings out and Adam goes to open the oven. He puts one sheet of cookies on a cooling rack, and I put the other sheet on another.

I say, "After they cool, I can ice them."

He nods, looking around the room. "What do we do in the meantime?"

"I'm not sword fighting wooden spoons with you."

"I wouldn't mind some mistletoe right about now," he teases, raising a brow.

I shove his shoulder lightly.

"What?" Adam throws his hands up laughing. "It's Christmas! I'm just saying that I love Christmas, and I love Christmas decorations."

"What's a cold, windy Chicago Christmas, like?" I ask, filling a glass with tap water.

He wanders around the little kitchen, opening drawers to check out their contents. His head pops up. "It's really cool." He holds up a bag of small white beans, with question.

"For pie crusts."

He puts them back. "Anyway, I go to this bar every year and they cover the ceiling in Christmas lights, it's insane. You would love it."

We stand on opposite sides of the kitchen.

Adam cocks his head. "…but I'll be in Atlanta for Christmas. With my dad."

"You don't spend it with your mom?"

He scratches his jaw. "Yeah, no. She doesn't invite me."

"Sorry," I offer.

"It's okay." He pushes off the counter and walks toward me while I sip water slowly. "I spend a lot of time in Atlanta, actually. My dad and I have gotten pretty close since he retired." He sidles up next to me. "I got to teach my half-brother, Luke, how to fish over his Spring Break. We went to a Braves' game and ate great barbecue. I like Atlanta."

Is he saying what I think he's saying? My body burns under the x-ray vision of his eyes.

"I'll visit any time if I have a reason," he finishes with tight lips.

This is my opening to…what? Tell him that I find him as attractive, funny, warm and mine as I ever did. That all week I've dreamed of curling up in his arms and listening to him tell a wild story about his travels.

I begin, "Adam, I –"

"Yes?" He begs with his eyes, his hand sliding along the counter until it's beyond me, his arm and body caging me close to him.

"Um…" I look at the bare cookies and whimper, "I need to ice those."

Chicken .

He hangs his head, peeling himself away from me. Pained, he mutters, "Yep. Okay."

I pick up a cooling rack. He picks up a cooling rack.

I'll tell him later.

Maybe.

He follows my lead and sets the cookies out over the table.

Me and Adam at a Braves' game. Me and Adam walking through the botanical gardens. Me showing Adam where Margaret Mitchell got hit by a taxicab.

At first, I didn't think Adam wanted me, then I thought he hated me, and then I figured I wasn't enough for him. I'm not stupid. He's been flirty and consistent about it. It's just not as easy as casually getting to know each other or long-distance dating. I already know bits and pieces of him, intimately, and we have this heavy history.

Pushing him away with morning won't be the end of it, I see that now. We're roommates, a twist I didn't anticipate at dawn. Staying away from him is impossible.

I can't get into a big conversation about feelings and futures and all of that when he's about to go play a mini-concert and I need steady hands. I sigh, trying to relax my body. We can talk about it later. We have all night, one bedroom, to talk about it later. Whatever it reveals itself to be.

I clear my throat, returning to business. I pick up the green icing and trace the outline of one circle, flooding it in with color. The sides of my hair fall in the way.

"I can hold your hair back," Adam presents, pulling my hair into a ponytail he holds with one hand.

I laugh, trying to rotate my head like I need to, reaching to different cookies and coloring some of them green, some purple. "I can't move!"

"Here." He tucked the ends of my hair in the back neckline of my dress.

" Thank you ."

I paint some of the cookies with orange paint and others with yellow. I draw pumpkins and sunflowers with the icing, letting some dry while I work on others, then returning to add more detail.

Adam leans on his elbows and makes a surprised noise. " Wow , Vee. That's amazing."

I slowly add flowers and details that match the ambiance and color scheme of the inn. With a slow and steady hand, I write GEMSTONE INN to several of them with black piping.

He adds, "I've seen your stuff on Instagram and it's so good, but it's wild to see you do this in person."

"You've looked me up on Instagram?" I twist my head to see his face turn lightly pink.

" Of course ." Adam looks at his watch. "Hey, I'm going to change my clothes and head down to get ready. I told Mac I'd play a short set at 8:30ish."

"Okay."

"Are you coming down?"

"To listen to you play?" I smile at the wonder in his voice.

He straightens up. "For the first time, ever, yeah."

"It's not the first time I've heard you play music," I defy.

He sways just behind me and fixes, "The first time you'll hear one of my recorded songs. One that I put out into the world and didn't just workshop for a lovesick teenage girl in my backyard."

I laugh and pause my movements to not mess up my work. "Lovesick, my ass! I let you follow me around all summer because it was good for my self-esteem."

"Is that right?" He continues to watch me with expectation.

I answer, "Yes. And I'll be done with these soon. I'll change then meet you outside."

"I'll be busy, though, so don't think you're going to come hang out with me." He straightens up. "I'll be in professional musician mode."

"I hope that guy doesn't have too big of an ego," I say, swirling icing with a needle tool.

"It comes and goes."

I drop my tools and face him properly. "Adam, thank you. For all of this." My pulse quickens. Warmth radiates in my heart when I look at him in the kitchen he requested access to, giving me an hour of pure joy. My love language is acts of service.

"You're welcome." He takes my hand and keeps his eyes glued to mine as it raises to his lips. He kisses my knuckles and murmurs, "I'm gonna go. I've got a girl to serenade."