Every Other Weekend(20)

After she’d gotten over her initial shock, Mom had stared at it long enough to comment that Jolene was pretty. Which I guess she was. She’d worn her hair braided back both times I’d seen her the other weekend, but this time I could see that it was thick and wavy, almost rippled. It was pretty. And when she was smiling, she was, too. Her upper lip was smaller than her lower and her chin was a little pointy, but smiling made her look like an elf or something. Mischievous edging toward dangerous.

I didn’t think Mom had looked at the picture and seen much beyond Greg. But she’d asked for another picture, and I could give her that. She needed something to hold on to when Jeremy and I weren’t with her, even if it was only an idea.

“She liked it,” I said. “So yeah, mission accomplished. And she’s expecting another picture if you’re up for it.”

“I don’t know. Are you going to freak out on me again?”

“As long as you don’t actually lick my face, I think I’m good.”

Jolene tapped her chin with her index finger a few times. “Hmm. Normally I don’t like to work with these kinds of creative restrictions, but if you insist.” She knee-walked across the bed to me and stuck out her hand. “Adam Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

It was the beginning of something.





   Jolene

When I woke up on Saturday, the view outside my window was a glittering white wonderland, incredibly rare for the beginning of October. The street hadn’t yet been plowed and the cars below were fluffy white balls. This was the first weekend since I’d started coming to Dad’s apartment that I didn’t immediately pull the covers back over my head, hoping to shorten the day by sleeping through as much of it as possible. It was a strange sensation to view the prospect of getting up with anything but resignation, let alone tingling anticipation. Ideas danced in my head as I hopped out of bed and to the window. I grabbed my camera and captured the fog of my breath on the glass and then traced a smiling sun high in one corner.

I hesitated at my door and listened. Silence. Still, I turned the knob slowly. Shelly claimed she was an early riser, but she’d been up before me only twice before. Not that I was willing to gamble. I scanned every inch of the living room before fully opening my door.

Staying on the balls of my feet, I padded into the kitchen and scrounged up breakfast for myself and even raided Shelly’s vegetable drawer for the one item I knew I’d need for the day I had planned. When I was outfitted with my full regalia of winter wear, I slipped quiet as a ninja into the hall and entertained myself by imaging I was in a John Woo–style action film, hugging the wall and side-walking the ten feet down to Adam’s apartment. I stopped short of attempting an elaborately choreographed parkour number that I was in no way capable of doing but would have looked so cool in a series of tight close-up shots.

I stopped outside Adam’s door and listened. He’d said he was typically awake hours before his dad and brother, a claim that I was about to test as I rapped softly on his apartment door.

My first thought, when he opened his door, was that it wasn’t fair that his bedhead looked so cute when mine looked like I’d slept in a jet engine. The second was that he smiled when he saw me. It made me feel like my coat was suddenly too warm.

“Hey,” he said, his voice husky with sleep. He probably hadn’t used it yet that morning.

“Hey.” I rocked back and forth on my toes, inexplicably excited. “I have an idea about our next picture for your mom that will double as a scene for a film I’m working on if you’re okay with a little quid pro quo.”

He took in my clothes, including the scarf, hat, and gloves. “Sure, give me a second to brush my teeth and stuff, then I’ll grab my coat.”

Boy stuff apparently took a really long time. As the minutes ticked by, I sighed and lowered the bag with my camera in it.

A guy with thinning blond hair who looked to be in his late twenties came out of the apartment across and one down from Adam’s and smiled at me. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, but it was different than the way Adam had smiled at me.

“Hey there. I don’t think we’ve met before. I just moved in.”

I shifted a little, giving him my back, and pulled out my phone. I wasn’t up for playing nice with the neighbors. Well, except Adam. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled.

He laughed too hard for the joke, and I pretended to take a call so he’d take the hint.

He did eventually. “I’ll let you go then. Hopefully we’ll run into each other again some morning. We early birds have to stick together, right?”

I sort of nodded and raised a hand distractedly in his direction while pretending to be deep in conversation on my phone until he was gone. After that, I still had to wait another five minutes before Adam reappeared wearing a camel-colored coat with a fleece collar. The bedhead was gone and his hair was damp. He’d had the slightest bit of stubble on his chin earlier, but now his skin looked perfectly smooth. I wondered if he’d shaved for the picture, or me.

I picked up my bag. “I feel like being five today.”

“Okay,” he said with a hesitant smile. “What does that mean?”

I pulled Shelly’s carrot out of my pocket. “When’s the last time you built a snowman?”