After the night in his barn, when I’d felt our hearts beating together, it was like a cruel joke to feel mine breaking when his was so full.
ADAM
She moved away and nodded too many times. “Oh, wow. That’s great. I’m really happy for you,” Jolene said, but her tone lacked conviction. Not because she was lying, I knew, but my birthday had gone very differently than hers. I hadn’t meant to brag or rub my happiness in her face, but maybe it had come out that way.
“It’s not like everything is going to be better overnight,” I told her. “My dad—he’s not moving back in, and when my mom dropped me and Jeremy off just now, she still wouldn’t come up to see him.”
And I’d really wanted her to, a fact I hadn’t tried to disguise the way I would have in the past.
Which just meant we’d have to try again next time—me, Jeremy, and Dad.
Jolene
How could he not see that he was making it worse? He stood there trying to convince me that nothing had changed, when I could tell that everything inside him was screaming that it had. It didn’t matter that his dad had come back to our building, or that Adam and his brother were still spending every other weekend here with him. All of that was technically true, but it wasn’t going to last. It was as though someone had put a giant countdown clock above our heads, and the numbers were racing.
My heart was racing, too, pounding so fast and so hard in my chest that I felt sure he could see it.
ADAM
I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, me or her, but I could tell that neither of us believed me. The truth was that everything had changed, and not just because Dad had come over on my birthday. I’d changed. I could see how much my anger had further driven in the wedge that was keeping my family apart, and I was beginning to understand that no one person had been responsible for putting it there.
I’d already decided to go with my dad to his next support group meeting, and this time I wasn’t going to stay in the hall. And when he dropped us off at home on Sunday, Jeremy wouldn’t be the only one inviting him inside. It was starting to feel like we might have a chance, and it hadn’t felt that way since Greg died. But Jolene...
Jolene
I saw the exact moment he realized what it would mean for us if more days like that one on his birthday followed. If his dad started coming around his house more and his mom saw both of her sons wanting him to be there. If his parents started to realize what he and Jeremy had known from the beginning: that they were better together, as a family.
His words cut off midsentence, and his hands stilled. He went the opposite of red, and if I could have seen into his chest to his heart, I thought I would have seen a crack spilt right down its center.
My heart had seen the crack coming, and since it had never been whole to begin with, the fissure didn’t show as much on the outside. For me, there had never been any hope for a happy ending. I didn’t have to lay my anger aside in order to help heal my family, because anger had never been my problem, and my parents were never going to reconcile. My problem was something that made me so much more vulnerable than I’d ever wanted to be.
My problem was that, just when I realized I could be loved, that love was being pulled away.
ADAM
I didn’t mean to rush at her, but I didn’t have time to check the impulse before I had my arms around her.
“I’m not letting you go,” I said, more than a flicker of the anger I’d decided to abandon surging into my voice. “I only just found you, and I won’t give you up. I don’t care what that means.” I didn’t let go, not even when it took way too long for her arms to come up and hold me back. I’d been so happy since my birthday, both from that night with Jolene and the morning with my family, that I hadn’t for a second considered what that potential happiness would cost me, cost Jolene. If things went the way I wanted them to with my family, these weekends would end, and Jolene and I would... What? Drive out to see each other twice a month in the cars we didn’t have?
The thought of not seeing her, touching her... It hurt. Staggeringly so.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, drawing back so she’d have to look at me. “You’re still gonna cry at the airport when I go to college, and I’m gonna be there when you win your first Oscar, right?”
Jolene
But I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted, because how could we? Adam was determined enough that I believed he’d find some way for us to still see each other even if he had to bribe Jeremy to bring him to me. He’d leave his newly mended family to spend time with me...and he’d continue to alienate the only brother he had left in the process. He’d give things up so that we could have a taste of the future he wanted for us.
He’d made me want that future, too—the one where we stayed in each other’s lives and that neither of us had voiced; one where there was no Erica 2.0 for him and the only leading man for me was him.
The future where there was only us, together.
The problem was that he’d made me want his happiness more than my own. And his future could be happier without me in it.
ADAM
Everything about her laugh felt wrong. “You’re always so dramatic. So you start spending more time with your dad when you’re here. Honestly, that’s fine with me.” She swept the full length of her hair over one shoulder and started to braid it. “I’m way behind on finishing my application for my film program.”
I’m pretty sure I flinched. “Yeah, but—”
“Once I get in, I’ll be gone in a few months anyway, so you might as well start figuring out some way to survive without me. Hey, cheer up!” She clapped me on the chest, and I felt so shaken that the light pressure forced me back a step. “We both own phones, and I promise to check mine before I go to bed unless I’m super caught up in working on something, okay?”
I didn’t respond, because Jeremy swung open the door and leaned against the frame. “Five minutes are up, lovebirds.”
As he started tugging me inside, I thought I saw something flicker over Jolene’s face, like she wanted to reach out and stop him. But her hands stayed at her sides, and after saying bye, she left, her braid swinging behind her.
* * *
I hated myself for not hating the next two days more. Jolene and I texted a little on Saturday, but mostly I spent time with Dad and Jeremy. We ate out, hit up the home improvement store, reframed windows, played video games, hit up the home improvement store again. We also visited Greg, and when Dad once again offered to send Jeremy and me home with Mom, when she said no, we didn’t push it. In short, we acclimated to each other again. There were still stretches of silence and moments when I had to grit my teeth in order to keep my temper in check, but I did it.