“She try to talk to you the whole drive over?”
“Hmm? Oh no.” I grinned at him. “I pretended to be on the phone with you.”
He half smiled. “You know, you could have actually been on the phone with me.”
I shrugged. It always took me a little while to recover when I left my mom’s on these weekends, and I wasn’t sure I wanted Adam to see—or hear—me while I was still frayed.
Another howling gust rattled the glass of the doors, and we both eyed the seemingly thin panes.
“That’ll hold, right?” Adam asked.
“It held last year.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
“But maybe it was weakened enough that it’ll shatter apart any second and impale us with large shards of glass.”
Adam looked at me. “Why do you say things like that?”
I shrugged again. “I don’t know. I should probably watch fewer movies.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s what’s wrong with you.”
If he only knew. “So where do you want to go?”
“Away from the potentially homicidal glass doors for a start. I’m assuming Shelly is in your apartment?”
“And your dad and brother are in yours?”
“Yep.” Adam went quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that seemed to scrape my skin. “Hey, how come I never see your dad?”
I’d been walking along a lifting seam in the carpet like it was a tightrope. I paused for a beat, then resumed walking. “What do you want to hear?” When he didn’t answer, I hopped off the line and spun to face him. “It wasn’t a trick question.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.”
“Aren’t you the clever boy?” My chin lowered slightly along with my shoulders. “You don’t see him because I barely see him. I could tell you about his demanding job, the one that helps him afford his ridiculously expensive lawyers who fought my mom with unprecedented savagery in order to get me here two weekends a month, but that’s the pile of horse crap that horses crap on. It’s not about the money—it’s about me. I don’t even think he’d keep Shelly around if he wasn’t legally required to have someone with me. He couldn’t care less about me. I mean, obviously.” I kicked at a freshly painted baseboard.
“You said I was petty the first day you met me.” I shook my head with a small smile. “I’ve got nothing on my dad. Somehow my mom managed to convince him that she wants me more than anything else, so of course he’s determined to take me away from her. If he thought killing me would make her suffer, I’d have a dozen hit men after me.”
“Geez, Jolene.”
“Too morbid for you? Sorry and whatever, but you did ask.”
“You just talked about your father plotting to murder you out of spite.”
“I believe the word I used was petty.” One foot in front of the other, I walked my makeshift tightrope again until Adam pulled my arm.
“Would you stop for a minute? Don’t you see how messed up that is? Tell your mom or her lawyer or someone.”
I laughed. “My mom would try to use it as leverage to get more alimony, and my dad would likely retaliate by having me committed—there, is that better than murder?”
“No,” he said, his face frozen in an expression that made me scowl.
“Get over yourself.”
“I’m trying to get over you.” My gaze shot to his, wide and unblinking, and he reddened, adding, “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—I don’t know what I meant.”
“Let’s forget it, okay? I don’t want us to waste our time fighting about something that doesn’t matter. I’m here, you’re here. You obviously missed me.” I rubbed my side again, hoping for a smile or something besides that half grimace he still wore. “And I’m not in a rush to hang out with Shelly, so...” Come on, Adam. Come on...
“No,” he said after a pause. “No, it does matter.”
I groaned. “Fine, it matters, but...” I groaned again. “You’re such an idiot, you’re gonna make me say it.”
“I’m the idiot?”
“You, stupid. It doesn’t matter because of you. Two weekends a month. It’s not a bad trade-off.”
My stomach seemed to twist in two different directions as I waited for his response. The days with him were worth enduring the ones with my parents—the presence of one and the absence of the other. He was a jerk for making me spell it out. The prickle was back behind my eyes, and he needed to say something. Fast.
I was still holding Adam’s bag, and his fingers glided across mine, warm and smooth, as he transferred the weight to his.
“Me, too.”
“What?” My gaze snapped away from our hands to his face.
“It’s not a picnic with my family right now either—for different reasons, but still. Two weekends a month. It’s not a bad trade-off.”
And then he smiled at me like a dope.
And I smiled back.
ADAM
“What made you think of ice-skating?” Jolene asked on Sunday afternoon as I opened the door to the rink for her.
“Winter. Snow. Ice. The thought of potentially watching you fall on your face before we go back to our respective homes tonight.” And, I mentally reminded myself as my face warmed, the excuse to hold on to you if you need help balancing.
She grinned. “What makes you think I’m not an Olympic-level figure skater?”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“What, like, never?”
Jolene shook her head at me. “You couldn’t be pretty and smart, could you? Yes, never means never. I take it you were born on the ice?”
“Not born exactly. My dad used to play amateur ice hockey, so he wanted his sons to learn. We used to skate all the time.”
“Oh, are we going to sad skate?”
“What?”
“Are we going to be skating and I finish this stunning triple backflip only to look over and find you in full-on Field of Dreams mode?”
“Why would I be crying?”
“Because you’ll be thinking about your dad, and because my jumps are going to be so awesome.”