28. Adam

28

ADAM

A s I walk away from Anna, my hand flaps by my side, heat burning through my body like someone took a torch to my skin. I don’t get angry. I don’t let it bubble over. I flap my hand as I try and suck in a couple of deep breaths. Did I misread the signs? This seemed good. This was good. I want to march back and shake her. But what the hell, that would make me just like Maroz with his violent outbursts.

There was no warning, right?

I’m an idiot. I put myself through this again. I started to open up. I started to hope .

Jesus Christ.

What the fuck am I going to do now?

Just at the point I thought I was getting over whatever the hell’s been wrong with me for the last ten years, fear most probably, another woman pulls the rug out from under my feet.

I just … Fuck. I wanted more. For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever. I shouldn’t have compared her to Celine; she’s nothing like her. Celine hung on to me . I’ve never been in a situation where a woman has been interested and then said, thanks but no thanks, and God … A sharp pain constricts my ch est. What do you even do or say, when someone says something like that?

To me, she didn’t seem like she wasn’t ready for a relationship. I huff out a laugh. I’m so out of my depth. I understand nothing about relationships or the pressures she’s under to perform, to win. Maybe I wasn’t what she wanted anymore, was too much of a distraction. Anna Talanova . It’s like a dream in time, the kind of thing you look back on when you’re older and congratulate yourself on being wise enough to have had the experience, to go with something for once. I don’t want it to be only that, though. I want to wake up every day into the life I had for three days in Janus’s apartment. Curled up in a big bed with Anna and Pepper. My eyes start to tighten.

Restless energy seethes under the surface of my skin, and I want to do something, anything. Like burn the whole house down, and for the first time maybe I understand Fabian’s desire to take stupid risks. A sort of jittery, suicidal feeling. I laugh to myself. I was never a risk-taker: I’m way too much of a coward for that. So, I’m going to have to do what I always do, what I did ten years ago, button it up, push it down, pretend I didn’t fuck up, didn’t miss all the signs.

I tip my head back toward the blue sky between the buildings towering overhead. The thing is, I didn’t miss the signs. I knew. Right from the get-go and even recently, I knew that Anna Talanova would never settle for me. I told Janus as much but walked right into it anyway. I let my heart become involved. And the thought makes my chest clench.

Over the next few days, I don’t understand what comes over me. Something is raging through me, turning me into a man possessed. It’s like anger, at myself, at her, but somehow far worse, and it spills into everything I do.

I ask Keith to have ten more designs of different animals ready by the end of the week and tell Susie to produce marketing campaigns for all of them. I go on long runs up the west side of Manhattan, pushing harder and harder until I can’t breathe and exhaustion takes hold of me, and then, only then, does the restless feeling stop because my body is too tired to sustain it.

I wake in the middle of the night and pace around my small living room. I think about getting a dog. I miss Anna, but I miss Pepper, too: her silky ears, her wet snuffly nose, her unbounded joy.

The last ten years have been a retreat into electronics, but that doesn’t help anymore. I can’t concentrate on the details. I can’t work through schemas of boards and understand what all the components are doing.

How do I get over this? The ache in my body is deep and never-ending. And as the days roll by and I don’t hear from Anna, the hyped-up restless feeling morphs into white-hot anger looking for release.