3. Tessa

Me:Do you happen to have Adam’s number?

Five minutes pass, and I fervently wish I could un-send the text I just sent to my friend.

McKenna:Adam? My brother Adam?

I hesitated for a moment, my heart pounding unsteadily in my chest and my belly twisting with churning anxiety. What white lie could I tell one of my closest friends so she would give me her brother’s phone number?

Me:Yeah. I had his phone number in my contacts, but when I got my new phone, I lost some of them.

Okay, that was actually true, so I wasn’t lying.

Me:I need to ask him an accounting question. He said something about some kind of software he recommended. You know how much I hate doing my taxes.

I did hate doing my taxes, so that was only kind of a lie. And I had overheard Adam recommending some tax program to someone at the potluck. So really, it was all true. Of course, spring and tax season had just passed, but that was a minor detail.

Ha! My cynical mind mocked me.

McKenna is too busy being in love to worry about why I need her brother’s phone number, I told myself.

A second later, she shared his contact. I bit my lip. With seven siblings, the Cannon family was unusually large in this modern day.

I giggled when I saw what McKenna named this brother in her contacts. Adam #4. The smart one.

My heart kicked a little faster again, and my belly still spun from my encounter with Adam hours ago. He’d set off a chain reaction in me. I felt reckless.

After my disaster of a marriage and divorce over a year and a half ago, I hadn’t dated. At all. I convinced myself that was fine. It was fine. I didn’t want a relationship. I just wanted to see if I could kiss a man and not be terrified. I trusted Adam. Or I thought I did. Trust wasn’t a familiar feeling for me. Not with men.

Before I lost my courage and that streak of recklessness was trampled by common sense and the fear that had ruled my life for too many years, I tapped the contact and saved it in my phone. I renamed it simply Adam.

Opening up a text window, I typed out a text.

Me:Maybe this is crazy, but I wanted to take you up on your offer.

I hit send before I could chicken out and set my phone on the bed. My pulse galloped along so fast I could hardly catch my breath, and all I was doing was sitting in bed alone.

When no reply came for over a minute, a familiar feeling began to rise, a churning sense of panic. It felt like water creeping up my ankles while I was trapped inside a room with nowhere to go. That was how I had felt for… I paused as I mentally calculated.

I was still in college when I started dating Rich. He asked me to marry him six months into our relationship, and I said yes. The next day, he hit me for the first time. That was after months of verbal put-downs and jabs. I should’ve backed out. But I was ashamed, and I believed him when he apologized. I thought it would never happen again. I thought it would get better.

My life then played out like a textbook on emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. I felt completely alone, like no one could ever have been as stupid as I was. Before I knew it, we were married. I rode the whiplash of days of quiet, punctuated by verbal jabs and insults, occasional hits to objects and me. Then he’d calm down. Around and around and around we went. When I was pregnant, he threatened to kill me. I stayed until I learned to cry in complete and utter silence in the darkness and didn’t know if I could ever get out. By that point, it felt as if the water had risen to my chin and occasionally a little higher, and I feared I would drown.

But my son or, as my ex insisted on emphasizing, our son made me want to fight. One day, something just broke inside me. I left with nothing more than a backpack of my clothes, my son, and two bags for him.

As I sat there by myself, I fidgeted, wondering what had set off my panic. While I cataloged the anxiety zipping through me, I realized waiting for a text response was a trauma trigger for me. Because Rich used to do that to me all the time. I couldn’t ever recall him replying to a text quickly. I always had to wait.

Doubts clamored loudly in my brain, shouting that Adam couldn’t have meant what he said. That I wasn’t cute, that he didn’t want to kiss me, that I was absolutely out of my freaking mind to have sent him this text.

Just as I lifted my phone to type in a follow-up message, it vibrated with a response. I swallowed through the tightness in my throat and stared at Adam’s response.

Adam:The offer to kiss you?

Fiery heat flashed into my cheeks. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I said out loud.

My pulse went wild, and a warm, tingly sensation built in my belly.

Adam:Any time. Just say when and where.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!

“Mom!”

“Oh fuck!” I whispered quickly before kicking back the covers on my bed and scrambling to my bedroom door. “Yeah?”

“Why are you saying ‘oh my God’ over and over?” Eric asked.

“Oh my fucking God,” I whispered under my breath. Six-year-olds could be so nosy and had really good hearing.

“I stubbed my toe. I promise I’m fine.”

For good measure, I opened the door. My son’s worried face was right there, his brown hair sticking straight up. He wore pajamas with bears all over them and had the cutest little toes. These were the silly details mothers noticed all the time.

I hated the look of worry on his face, and I hated even more that I understood where it came from. He had heard many arguments through closed doors and walls when we still lived with his father. As a result, he was hypervigilant. According to his therapist and my therapist and the women I’d met in a support group I went to after I somehow escaped the hellhole of my marriage, this was an expected response. He was constantly attuned to every little reaction from the adults in his world.

Eric blinked, and I watched as the tension softened in his face. “Okay.”

“Why are you still awake?” I asked as I leaned my shoulder inside the doorframe.

“I was reading my comics.” He held up his comic book.

“Okay, lights out in…” I glanced at my watch. “A half an hour ago.” I gave him a pointed look, and he grinned.

“Okay, I’ll go to sleep now.”

I watched as he trotted across the hallway to his bedroom at an angle across from mine. I waited until he closed the door and the light disappeared from under the doorway a moment later.

I took a deep breath. Just recently, Eric told me he didn’t want me to tuck him in every night. Every time I thought about that, I experienced a pang in my heart. He was growing up so fast. In some ways, he was so old for his years.

I padded into the kitchen and got a glass of ice water. After a few sips, I returned to my bedroom and looked down at the phone. All of my recklessness had dissipated. I just felt like a frumpy, un-sexy mom.

I debated not even replying to Adam. I could try to play it off and tell him I had texted the wrong number. But when I reached for my phone, another text from him awaited me.

Adam:I’m guessing you’re freaking out. No need. I’d still like to kiss you, but please don’t stress over it. Good night, Tessa.

I swallowed as my heart began racing again. I was hot all over. It’s not that I’d never noticed Adam Cannon before. He was handsome, like all of his brothers. But I had trained myself to never pay attention to any other man during my marriage. Never. It wasn’t safe.

Just remembering that brought a surge of courage and adrenaline flooding through me. Lifting my phone, I replied.

Me:I’d like that kiss. Promise?