Jolene
I woke up on the floor. With a person for a pillow.
We’d sort of folded into each other. Adam’s head was resting on the crook of his arm, which was draped over my hip; mine was cushioned on his thigh. The comforter that he had wrapped us in was constricted tightly around my arms and pinned under Adam’s weight. When I tried to extract myself, I had to tug hard, which succeeded in freeing my arms but also waking him.
Adam shifted so that I could untangle the rest of myself and sit up. He blinked several times and arched his back, then righted himself, too. Weak sunlight spilled into my room through the glass doors. It lit a path that stretched toward us but didn’t quite reach. There was no real warmth from the early-morning sun.
“You stayed all night.” My voice cracked when I spoke. Not because I was struggling to control my emotions—I felt more numb than anything—but because I’d abused it the night before with laughter that had turned into something else. “Did you mean to?”
“I wasn’t going to leave, so yeah, I meant to.”
I’d let so much cold into my room the night before that the air still felt chilly once we were no longer pressed together. I shivered. “You’re going to get in trouble.” I didn’t want Adam to pay for helping me, but even had I been thinking clearly the night before, I still would have gone to him. I’d needed him more than I’d worried about what his dad would do later.
Adam leaned away, not from me but toward my laptop to wake up the screen and check the time. It was still early. Maybe early enough for him to sneak back home—through the front door this time. If he left right then, if he was quiet...but he didn’t get up.
“Is it too late?” I asked.
Adam shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Then you should go.” But I didn’t push him or in any way urge him to move, apart from my words.
We were back in the same position we’d started in the night before. Sitting on the floor against the foot of my bed, shoulder to shoulder, except we weren’t touching. It had been so easy to lean on him in the dark, but I couldn’t shift even an inch to my left that morning.
“Doesn’t matter anyway.” When I looked at him, Adam plucked at the side of his pants. “I didn’t think to grab my keys.”
When he moved, I was able to see him in a way I hadn’t during the night. Adam was wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt and the same red plaid pajama pants he’d worn on his birthday. And he was barefoot. He’d gone out into a blizzard for me with nothing but thin cotton covering him. He’d crawled across an ice-covered wall to reach me. Because I’d needed him. Because I was stupid, so stupid. I hunched into myself as my stomach clenched.
“Hey, hey. It’s all right.” Adam’s hand slid over to grasp mine, to thread our fingers together. “I’m not complaining.”
The thing that broke me, that thawed my numbness, was that he meant it. He’d gladly get in trouble for me, and we both knew he was going to get in some trouble. He wasn’t agitated or mad or anything like that. He was completely relaxed, holding my hand like he didn’t have a care in the world beyond being there with me.
“What you said last night, about me being your favorite person, did you mean it?”
“You know I did.” The answer came so easily to him. He didn’t even think about it. He wasn’t trying to comfort me, keep me from freaking out and running into a blizzard again. He didn’t have to say it again, but he did. I closed my eyes, because he was so bright.
“Sometimes I just think about you and I feel better. I don’t even have to see you or touch you—” Adam squeezed my hand “—and I feel warm. How do you do that?”
“I’m the physical embodiment of Prozac.”
Adam didn’t laugh.
“You’re better than I am.” I forced myself to look at him, letting him look at me. “Your mom, your dad, Jeremy, even Erica knows that. Everyone who knows you loves you. They want you around. They fight over you—you, not what you represent, but you. I never knew Greg, but I know he loved you, too. Because how could he not? How could anyone not?” I pulled my hand free and immediately missed his warmth. I wasn’t to anyone what he was to everyone. The breath I took then was painful, hollow, empty, and cold.
I suddenly realized I could still taste Guy in my mouth. I scrambled out of the comforter, tripped, and ran into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth until my gums bled. And then I brushed them again. Adam was there, watching me. “I just need a minute,” I told him. And he didn’t push me. He closed the door behind him and said without words that he’d be waiting outside.
I cleaned myself up. Washed my face, brushed my teeth a third time, and combed my hair. I thought about rebraiding it, but then I thought about Adam and the urge left me.
Adam was sitting on my bed with his legs crossed. It was the exact position I’d been in that first night that he’d decided to be my friend, to keep me instead of throwing me away. He’d become my favorite person that night, and he did all over again as I stared at him.
“Bit of a role reversal.” I climbed onto the bed and sat facing him, so that we were knee to knee. “You’re sneaking into my room now.”
Adam looked into my eyes. “You needed me. I came.” And then, even though it was awkward—and I could tell he realized it was awkward about halfway through—Adam leaned forward, across his bent knees and mine, and he hugged me. We both had to stretch forward to reach, but we did. I needed to be held and to know that, even though it wasn’t fair, I was his favorite person.
I wasn’t anyone’s favorite, but I was Adam’s, and that was everything.
I should have tried harder to make him leave, to urge him to go, and at least try to get home before his dad realized he was gone. But when I moved to climb off the bed, Adam tugged me back.
And I went.
ADAM
I’d never lain on a bed with a girl before. I kept eyeing the closed door like her dad would kick it down any second and beat the ever-living hell out of me. That was what he should do. He should be worrying about his daughter, be aware that she had a guy in her bedroom. He should know me and, to a degree, terrify me. That was what dads were supposed to do to guys who were interested in their daughters.
But Jolene’s dad didn’t know I existed. He barely knew she existed. He didn’t care that she’d been crying, or that something had hurt her. I swore in that moment, with Jolene lying next to me and her long, loose hair tickling the back of my hand, that I would kick in his teeth if I ever met him. “You should come home with me later. My dad will be mad enough to yell at both of us. If you’re really lucky, he’ll ground you, too—maybe even confiscate your phone.”