The People We Keep(36)
I pick at a bubble of paint on the bench. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Did you sleep okay?” he asks, like he actually wants the answer. I don’t think anyone in my entire life has ever been so wound up about whether I slept through the night.
“Yeah.” When my answer makes him smile, I smile without even meaning to, like I’m a mirror.
“What happened—it’s not—that’s not why I invited you—”
“It’s fine,” I say, replaying the part from last night when he stepped away because he didn’t trust me to stop kissing him. I watch a gull swoop in to grab an old french fry from the ground. “It’s fine.”
“I was homeless once. And no one noticed me. So I’m trying… I’m trying to notice you. But maybe I’m not…” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe I’m not doing it right.”
My nose stings. I hate that he called me homeless, like I’m already stuck this way. I’m tipping on the edge of tears and I wish Carly would come and open the door to Decadence so I’d have a reason to walk away.
“How old are you?” Adam asks.
“Nineteen.” I don’t let it snag my voice, so it comes out like truth. Eighteen is too convenient and I know I can’t pass for twenty-one. I look young for sixteen when I don’t try hard enough.
Adam studies my face like he’s testing this number—stretching to see if it breaks. “You working all day?”
“Till six.”
He reaches in his pocket, pulls out a key. “In case you want to shower on your lunch break, okay? You can have the place to yourself.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I wasn’t trying—” He looks like he’s about to cry, “I wasn’t trying to use you, okay? I wish someone had helped me. That’s all it is.” His eyes are so green.
I take the key from him. Loop the ring around my finger, squeeze it tight in my palm.
“There’s towels in the linen closet. Poke around as much as you want. Whatever you need, okay?” Adam pats my shoulder, quick and awkward. “I’ll stop by on my way home, and we’ll—we’ll see, if you want to stay again, okay?”
I nod. I am not going to fall apart over this. I won’t let him hear my voice break. But when he walks away, the words grow in my chest. “Thank you,” I yell.
He looks back and waves. His reusable coffee cup is hooked on his messenger bag. I wonder where he’s getting his coffee this morning.
— Chapter 15 —
It’s hard to pay attention at work knowing there’s a hot shower waiting for me at lunch. It’s not even just about the shower. I feel like it’s been so long since I was completely alone. Even at the campground there was always the possibility of people. I don’t know exactly what it is I want to do that’s so different from what I’d do if someone could see me, it’s just the idea that I can breathe all the way out, that maybe for a moment I don’t have to be ready for someone else to appear.
I’m so distracted I need to ask most of our customers for their orders twice. I accidentally shortchange one of the regulars and have to run outside to give him the missing five when I realize. Luckily Carly is at class and Bodie does stuff like this all the time, so he doesn’t see my mistakes as mistakes. But I hate to think of the Bodie catastrophes I’m not catching while I’m causing my own.
* * *
At lunch, I ask Bodie to make my sandwich to go. I walk up the hill to Adam’s house because walking to my car would take almost as long.
The downstairs door is open. I feel weird going right on in, worried someone will stop me, but no one’s around. When I climb the stairs, it smells like someone’s baking frozen pizza on the second floor.
As soon as I get inside Adam’s apartment, I lock the door behind me, kick off my boots, and slide around in my socks to look at things. The futon is back to being a couch, but the blankets and sheets and pillows are still stacked at the end, like maybe he’s planning for me to sleep here again.
He has two black canvas chairs like movie directors have. The coasters on the footlocker are slices of a skinny birch tree. Behind the futon, the bookshelf built into the wall is filled with books that are actually his, not from the library. I stand on the futon so I can see them. A red cloth-covered dictionary with gold letters on the binding. Matching rust-colored books called Encyclopedia of Architecture. A yellow one about how the pyramids in Egypt were built. A bunch of paperback mysteries. Then there’s all the CDs. Simon & Garfunkel, Eric Clapton, and Jane’s Addiction. Miles Davis and Chet Baker. David Bowie and a bunch of movie soundtracks. He likes U2, but I can’t hold it against him, because he has three Bob Dylans and they’re good ones. Highway 61 Revisited, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and Blood on the Tracks, which is my favorite. When we lived over the Wash ’n Fold, my dad had that one on 8-track and I listened to it with my cheek pressed against the speaker so I could feel the harmonica in my teeth.
I haven’t heard that album since my dad dropped the 8-track player down the stairs while we were moving out. So many of those songs never get played on the radio and I miss the way they feel in my brain. Adam’s stereo is next to his desk, and I don’t think he’d mind. I don’t think he’d mind at all, so I take the CD from the bookshelf. The disc in the player is a band called Red House Painters. I swap in Dylan, lie on my back on the floor and listen to If You See Her, Say Hello, because that song is the one I missed the most. Adam’s rug is rough and the fibers are scratchy in a way that feels good on my back. Listening to Bob Dylan’s voice swell through the lyrics is like drinking cool water when your mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.