Every Other Weekend(95)
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t have told you not to come.”
I felt more than saw him nod. Then he drew his chair closer to mine and rested his arm on the table where I could see it in my peripheral vision. “I wanted to be here for your birthday, but I also want you to know that I heard you, okay? I’ve been doing what I thought was best, but if you’re saying it’s not—son, look at me.” There was no command in his voice. He was asking me to face him, all the while being fully aware that I might not be able to.
I might have surprised us both when I met his gaze.
“If you’re saying that it’s not enough, then I’m going to do more.” He glanced at the open cellar door, the one he’d made with his own two hands before I could walk. “I’m going to try as much as she’ll let me.”
I dropped my gaze then, not because I couldn’t look at my dad anymore but because I didn’t want him to look at me. I was blinking too fast, and every muscle in my body was pulling too tight.
My dad put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Happy birthday, Adam.”
I nodded and let him add a couple pieces of toast to my plate. “I’m, uh—” I had to push the air from my lungs and suck in a new breath before I could say “—glad you’re here. Dad.”
ELEVENTH WEEKEND
February 12–14
Jolene
I was waiting for Adam in the hallway outside his dad’s apartment when he and Jeremy got there.
“Hi,” he said with a smile I knew Jeremy would mock him for later, but when his eyes traveled over my hair, hanging loose and free down my back, his smile grew, and I knew he didn’t care. I’d worn it that way for him, and as he closed the distance between us, looking at me like he was remembering exactly what I tasted like, I wondered with a huge leap of my heart if he was going to kiss me in front of his brother.
And I wondered what he’d do if I kissed him first.
ADAM
I wasn’t used to Jolene being shy around me, but for once she was the one with too much color in her cheeks (though I liked it), and she was the one chewing on her bottom lip (I probably liked that more). If my brother hadn’t been standing right behind me, I would have said something like how the mighty have fallen and touched her cheek. But I wanted to make her blush for me, not because I’d embarrassed her. Assuming such a thing was possible. Looking closer, I realized that the redness in her cheeks probably wasn’t from blushing but due to being windblown and cold. But the lip bite, I thought, was for me.
The hair, too.
Jeremy said hey to Jolene—a first since we’d started coming here, and it made me happier than it should have to see the truce between them was still holding—then gave me a look as he brushed past us. I knew what he was telling me, what I’d agreed to. “Five minutes, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said to Jeremy before he went inside and left me with a confused-looking Jolene.
Jolene
“You only have five minutes?” I liked to pretend that I was impervious to pain, but either I wasn’t trying very hard with Adam, or he knew me well enough to pick up the trace of hurt in my voice.
He drew closer. “I want way more than five minutes.” He swallowed and dropped his gaze to his hands. “I didn’t want to tell you about it over text, but my dad came over for my birthday. He’s going to try harder to get us all back together.” He tried to keep elation from his voice, but there was no missing how happy he was.
ADAM
Apart from Jolene coming to dinner with my dad and brother, I hadn’t gotten to spend any time with her on our last weekend, and after that night in my barn when she’d finally started looking back at me the way I’d been looking at her for months, all I wanted to do was spend time with her.
Well, that wasn’t all I wanted to do.
But my family had eaten breakfast together. All four of us. I’d been silently—and not so silently—screaming at my dad for months to make something like that happen, and the fact that he’d done it meant that I had to try more, too. Not the one-word responses that I’d worked up to either.
But it was hard to think of any of that when Jolene looked like I’d just hit her.
Jolene
I stepped back as unobtrusively as possible. I’d known it was coming, that his family wasn’t severed the way mine was. I’d known they’d start finding their way back to each other. I just hadn’t known it would happen so fast...or that it would hurt so much.
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.”