Every Other Weekend(109)

I wanted to make her tell me, to shake her and scream at her and hold her all at once. I wanted her to hold me. I still felt threads of terror stitching through me until I could almost see them under my skin. I’d already known I loved her. But I didn’t know until that moment when she’d started to climb to me that I’d die for her.

“Just so you know,” I said, hearing the way my voice shook, “you’re my favorite person. In every way, you are my favorite.”

After a minute, I leaned forward to flip open the laptop that she’d left on the floor. I turned on the first movie I found, then settled back into the comforter with her as the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite started to play. Her frozen tears had melted away, but new ones fell silently as we watched the movie.





   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.