Rebound (Boomerang #2)(19)

I don’t want there to be tension between us. We have to work together. It has to be okay. And I know it can be.

“Hold on a second,” I say, as he pulls the door open. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Am I?” he asks, giving me a puzzled look.

“Um . . . yeah,” I say. “You’re supposed to carry me over the threshold. My father arranged it.”

Adam throws back his head and laughs. And just like that, the tension drops away—or at least recedes. When he looks at me again, his eyes sparkle with appreciation, and I know this is another moment I’m going to miss someday.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is warmer than it’s been all day. “Total oversight on my part.”

He hesitates a moment, body swaying just a fraction toward mine. For a moment my heart stops, thinking he might try to scoop me into his arms the way he did at the party. But then he steps aside and gestures for me to pass in front of him. “I’ll do better next time,” he says.

Inside, we find a frenzy of activity. Workers haul around buckets of paint, shuffle along on drywall stilts. The space is a mess. Half the walls look like they’re in the process of coming down. Dust stirs in shafts of sunlight, and tarps cover mysterious lumps around the space. Still, the bones are there—bright and modern.

“Behold the seat of the empire,” Adam says, grinning. He plants the hard hat on my head and gives me an appraising look. “Fetching,” he proclaims.

I can’t help myself. “Who says ‘fetching’?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. My mom?” Putting on his own hat, he asks, “What do you prefer?”

“I don’t know,” I tease. “Maybe something more in a ‘dazzling’ or ‘perfect.’”

“I’m going to stick with ‘fetching,’” he says.

“Can you use that in a sentence?”

“Yes,” he says, and a mischievous grin lights up his face. “Someday your father will be fetching my coffee.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “That’s . . . not likely.”

“It never is,” he says. “Until it is. I’ve banked on that my whole life.”

I believe him. And his confidence makes me want so much more of him. “Speaking of my father,” I say, “he asked me to remind you about coming sailing this Sunday. He thinks it’ll be a nice opportunity to socialize.”

Adam gives me a shrewd look. “To socialize or talk shop? Your father doesn’t strike me as the relaxed type.”

“True. But he did say socialize.”

“And you’ll be there too?”

I nod.

“Are you bringing someone with you—a date?”

His question makes me feel pinned, tested somehow. Obviously, if I had someone in my life, I wouldn’t have been all over him in the back of a car the other night. But, it feels pathetic to say the thought never crossed my mind. I decide to split the difference. “I don’t know. I might. You’re . . . free to bring someone too, if you want to.”

But please don’t want to, I think. Though I know it shouldn’t matter.

He nods. “Okay, I’ll be there. Or we will. I might bring . . . someone. Julia.”

I keep my face neutral and tell him that will be fine, but I’m dying to know who she is, what she means to him, whether she’s just a friend to serve as a social buffer or . . . something more.

He walks me through the space, and we enter the temporary construction office, little more than a couple of tables, a few chairs, and a mini-fridge plugged into the wall.

There, Adam rolls out a blueprint for me, and with his help I get a glimpse of what the space will become. “Here’s the reception area,” he says, pointing with a ballpoint pen. “Leather couches, plasma screen looping our reel, and a wall of built-in display shelves to house our awards. Clients eat that kind of thing for dinner.”

“That’s a lot of space for awards,” I say, fighting away a host of noisy questions in my mind.

Again, he grins. “We’ll need it.”

He takes me through the rest of the plan, and it’s an ambitious one. All the most modern technology. Full-service production and post-production studios. He points out where the edit bay will be. Client lounges. Dressing rooms for the talent. A giant back deck is planned for staff to blow off steam and as a space to host the kinds of extravagant parties that put you on the map in this town. Words like “cyc wall” and “extendable light grid” come up, and though I only half-understand what he’s talking about, I just listen, swept up again by the excitement in his voice.

“And this is the coolest thing,” he tells me. “Most of the interior walls of the studio building will be movable and made of this special liquid crystal glass to allow them to block out light in any section, as needed. It’s going to be something.”

“That’s amazing.”

But really, I think, he’s amazing. He’s so natural in this setting. So in his element. It reminds me of Ethan out on the soccer field, charging down the field like he’d break through concrete to get possession of the ball.

And then I remember Ethan standing in the doorway of our bedroom. See the shock and hurt on his face. He had flowers for me—white tulips with just a blush of pink at their edges. I found them later in our kitchen trash.