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“This was taken the year Rachel and I met,” she offered without being prompted. “We were both in Mrs. Barton’s second grade class and Rachel was so shy. One day these two nasty girls, Melanie Decker and Nicole Randall, were making fun of her on the playground. Since she was missing her two front teeth she spoke with a slight lisp. Anyhow I overheard them teasing her and so I walked over, grabbed Rachel’s hand and marched her away from them, threatening that if they bothered her again I would tell Tommy Dristol about all the love notes Melanie had written about him. We became best friends from that day on.”
Jack adored the way Adrianna told the story as if it had happened yesterday and without looking away from the picture. He also felt his heart ache for her a little bit more.
“You two were really close,” he stated.
“Closer than sisters.”
“You have any more pictures? I’d like to see them.”
The photo album she had found buried beneath her jeans weeks ago was still sitting on her dresser and so Adrianna climbed from the bed to retrieve it. She cried while she shared the album with Jack, though only a few tears. Most of the time she laughed at the embarrassing photos while she told him of the stories behind each of one. As Jack relived parts of Adrianna’s childhood with her, he somehow fell more deeply in love.
Chapter 12
Job hunting sucks. Especially in today’s economy, and to say that Adrianna was getting a bit discouraged would have been an understatement. For over a month she scoured the internet and newspapers in search of something she could do with her degree and came up short every time. With her background in chemistry and biology she would have been a prime candidate for biotechnology companies, but she steered clear of those at first. Most of those jobs were with pharmaceutical corporations and she didn’t think it the best idea to start working with and around medications. Then when she didn’t have any luck elsewhere she thought screw it, and tried for the pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, those jobs required lab experience she didn’t have or they wanted the experience to be more recent than what she had taken in college four years ago. She searched for government jobs, clinic jobs, hospital jobs, and everything in between but never had any luck. Who was she kidding? Someone with no job experience and who had done virtually nothing for the last four years was way behind in the game of employment. She was worried she was going to have to suck it up and beg Jack for a job at Loki’s soon.
Her fruitless search for a job was majorly depressing but a series of other factors kept Adrianna from going insane and regressing. For one, she had made good on her promise to Jack and had been working with his trainer friend five days a week. Robert was a boulder-sized guy with bleached, spiky hair and hardly any neck, but he was Adrianna’s favorite person in the world next to Jack. He had her working on a regimen of light weight lifting, core strengthening, yoga, and water aerobics to help her with her back. It was difficult at first but after four weeks of working out, Adrianna felt normal, for lack of a better word. Normal, however, was the best she could come up with to describe the fact that she was rarely in pain and her back felt stronger than ever.
In addition, and even though she was hesitant at first, she was seeing a therapist once a week. Yes, Jack had to (gently) push her to do it, but each session she attended went better than the previous one and she did feel she was making progress. The guilt was still there, but she liked how Dr. Thornton didn’t immediately tell Adrianna she was wrong or ridiculous for feeling responsible for Rachel’s death. Instead, she was helping Adrianna to confront her grief and guilt and had a way of leading Adrianna to make revelations on her own, as a good doctor should. She did prescribe an antidepressant to Adrianna but assured her that the risks certainly were outweighed by the pros of being on the medication.
And then, of course, there was Jack. Even after more than two months of seeing each other, he continued to be wonderful and Adrianna frequently contemplated what she had done to deserve him. They saw each other daily and always spent the night together at one of their apartments. Free to enjoy the perks of a regular relationship, Adrianna let Jack dote on and spoil her and Jack loved every minute of doing it. He took her out to dinner, to the movies, and to White Sox games. He cooked for her, introduced her to his friends, and was planning to bring her to meet his mother soon. Besides the job, Adrianna’s life had done a total one-eighty and she had Jack to thank for every positive change.
