Chapter Thirty-Five

Through the quiet, empty lobby, I hurry upstairs to my room. I sit on the bathroom floor and cry.

I'm crying for the boy I hurt and the girl I could have been and the future that never existed. The music wafts in from outside my balcony window, unable to be blocked out. For an unknown length of time, I listen to cheers and different melodies, wondering what these other songs sound like, what they're about, and if I'll ever have the strength to listen to them.

I finally wash my face. I put on my pajamas.

Adam cared about me leaving, more than just for a week or two. He wrote songs about it. He must have told his friends about it. And even if he dabbled in drunk bachelorette girls, some part of him always loved me, I heard that in his lyrics. I felt it in the deeply passionate way he sang. Truthfully, I felt it in the little ways he touched me today.

I take the soft robe from the closet, turn off all the lights, and wrap up in it.

Now that the question of if has been wiped from the table, and we can also strike a line through how long. All that's left to wonder is: what's next?

I open the balcony doors and sit on the wicker loveseat. Solar-powered candles glow inside glass lanterns, giving off the romantic ambiance that someone staying in "the red room" might want. I'm too busy sitting in the cold, my face numb from crying, to need decoration to prompt feeling. I think of all the things I might say to him.

I feel happier being with you these last few days than I have in years.

I'm terrified that we won't be able to function in a real-world relationship.

I'm afraid I'm too cynical.

The room door opens and then locks shut. Adam calls out into the dark, "Vienna?"

"Here," I answer with a shaky voice.

He comes outside, arms wide, curious about why and where I'm sitting. He says, "It's freezing. How long have you been out here?"

I wipe my nose with my sleeve. "I think quite a while."

"What's going on?" He sits beside me.

My legs tuck up, and I wrap the bottom of this soft robe around my pant legs. A chill pierces holes in my socks. I mumble, "You wrote that song about me."

"They're all about you," he admits. "I played my first five hits. I wrote them each back-to-back, right after I got to Nashville."

I wonder, "Do you sing them just because they're popular, or…do you ever think about me when you're singing those words?"

Adam drapes his arm on the back of the seat, scooting closer so that our hips are touching. His palm lays on my forehead, gently brushing my hair from my face. "I think of you every time I sing anything. I think of you when I'm in line at the grocery store and I see an Us Weekly."

I cover my mouth to laugh.

He keeps going. "I think of you when I eat chocolate chip cookies and drink shitty coffee. I think of you every time I pet my dog that reminds me of your dog. And that one time I was scrolling through the TV and sat through seventy-five percent of Bring It On."

"That's such a good movie," I think aloud.

"You were on my mind the entire time I was interviewed by Andy Cohen."

I wince. "That's the only Watch What Happens Live that I couldn't bring myself to watch."

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. He grumbles, "We need to get you in a book club."

I inch further into Adam's side. His arm curls around my shoulder. My feet press slightly under the warmth of his leg.

"I'm asking this because…" I falter.

Be brave, Vienna.

"Because I think about you all the time too, and not just because you're on the radio or Instagram or because I've heard six-year-olds mindlessly singing your songs."

"I'm a big hit with the kindergarten crowd."

I say, "I bought beeswax wrapping sheets instead of plastic wrap because it's better for the environment." I throw him a look.

He smiles and nods like, go on.

"I bought Catcher In The Rye. Have not read it, will not read it, but I own it. Because you wouldn't shut up about it." I swallow, looking at my hands. "I even convinced my friend to have her bachelorette party in Nashville this Spring. I didn't know if you'd be there or if you still lived there, but I just wanted to feel what you felt. Go where you've gone."

Adam's face tightens. He bites his lip, a line of seriousness forming between his eyebrows. Softly, he asks, "What does this all mean, Vee?"

Truth, I don't really know.

"What do you want out of us?" I pass the torch back to him. I can be sure of one thing: he wants me, in some capacity. Whether it's in that bed tonight, for a few months, forever, I'm not sure.

Adam reads my body language. When he's satisfied, he cups under my knees with one hand and wraps the other around my back. He tugs me onto his lap. After a moment of surprise, I loop my arms around his neck and sink into his hard, heaving chest.

Face to face, he checks, "Is this okay?"

My heart sinks into his.

His hold on me tightens. "I want you, Vienna. All the time."

"For how long?" I whisper.

"I never took back the question in the back of my truck," he says with strength in his voice. "You know exactly how long I want you for."

That's too much. I warn, "Adam –"

"I'm just telling you what I want. You asked."

I focus on the fake candle glowing by his feet and the sound of the wind in the dry branches below us. I formulate the thought in my head before it comes out so that I don't get it wrong.

"We don't know each other enough to say things like that," I try. "It's dangerous. I don't want to get too romantic and forget to be realistic."

" Vienna ." Adam breathes my name into my mouth, either a curse or a prayer, and he leans his forehead against mine.

I breathe in his warmth, relax under his gaze, and fight the urge to cry. Apparently, I don't fight well enough. Adam wipes his thumbs under my eyes before I realize tears have fallen free.

He starts, "I like you. You have crappy taste, but I like you. I like your personality."

Despite my scowl, he continues, "But I love you because to me, you're the moon. Your mere existence is majestic. I don't want to live in a world where I come home to the dark. I want to have you, some phase or portion of you, in my gravity, always."

Before I can interject, he barrels forth: "As long as that's what you want. I won't die without you. I can survive, I did it for fourteen years. I'm not that unhinged. I'm not Romeo."

I smile at the corner of his lip turning up.

"But goddamn, Vienna, whatever made the stars and the trees and the grass made you too, and I never felt special until I saw how special you were. I feel majestic with you."

He sighs into the crook of my neck. "It's not practical, I know that. It's romantic and stupid, but there it is. That's how I feel. How I've always felt. If we move forward together and something changes along the way that we can't repair, then so be it. But I know how I feel right now. It's how I've felt for fourteen years."

My fingertips run along the collar of his jacket. "And you'll feel this way when I'm sloppy and lazy and in my pajamas all day?"

He flips up the bottom of my robe to check. "Is there a version of you that's not like that?"

I move with him as he chuckles at his own joke. I say, "I'll get the flu. I'll watch trashy tv in the living room with you. I won't go on hikes and I'm probably not going to be a big fan of environmentally conscious influencer-led park clean ups."

He shrugs. "We can figure all that out. It doesn't make me love you less."

I bite my lip. "Hasn't too much time passed? We have two very different lives –"

"Do you want me in your life?" he interrupts. "Be honest."

I nod. "Yes."

"Then we have exactly the same life." He takes a deep breath, filling up his lungs while I feel breathless, my head light. He sucked in all of my worries. Everything I overanalyzed today, he erased with one sentence, one inhale, slow and simple.

I want everything he's offering, even if it scares me a little. "Can we take it slow?"

"As slow as you want."

I twist in his lap. His hands move out of my way as I settle in, facing him, my legs falling to either side of his. I hold his face in my hands the way I wanted to do when he pressed me up against that tree and eyed me with desire.

He raises his brow.

"I meant emotionally slow," I explain.

He nods, laughing, " Oh ."

Adam's hands move to my thighs, care and concern in his eyes. I don't flinch this time when his touch moves farther back.

I fall into him, meeting his kiss. Our mouths move slowly, carefully, until he's drinking me in, and I'm held as carefully as glass in his arms, molded to his bones. Adam pulls away, purring into my ear, "Does this mean I don't have to sleep on the floor tonight?"

I plant kisses down his jaw. "Only if you want me there too."

His eyes flash mischievously as he picks me up into his arms. "We already went over this." He pauses for a kiss. "I want you everywhere ."