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And I can’t let tonight be about that. If I let it take over my mind, I’ll go mad with guilt and I’ll end up exploding the nuclear bomb that is my life. So I focus on Ollie and how beautiful she is, and everything that I’m learning about her.
She’s an only child, which I knew. Her parents moved out of the city to rural Pennsylvania to retire. Her favorite vacation spot is the beach, any beach, and besides her love of World’s Waterfall, she’s also hugely and nerdily obsessed with origami. I didn’t see any at her apartment, but then I wasn’t looking for it.
I tell her about medical school and some of the crazy shenanigans that my friends and I got into while we were there. I tell her the story of how we played a prank on one of our teachers using a live goldfish, and the story of how I nearly broke my spine out of stupidity.
We laugh together, and drink wine, and by the time all of the five courses have passed we’re both stuffed with delicious Italian food and just drunk enough that everything is perfect and glowing and happy. “My place?” I ask as we exit the restaurant into the gathering cool of evening.
“Yes,” she says, pulling me down for a kiss in the middle of the street.
And that’s that.
20
Ollie
I knew that Adam and his family were rich, but wasn’t expecting the absolutely gorgeous apartment building that the cab lets us out in front of on the Upper West Side. Old architecture and a quiet street, it’s almost unassuming but it still speaks of the kind of wealth that a lot of the established families of New York have. It’s on Riverside Drive, which means it’s going to have my second gorgeous view of the river today.
We go inside, and unlike my building, Adam’s has an elevator. Thank god, I’m so stuffed full of Italian food that I’m not sure I could walk up six flights of stairs right now. I can’t help but notice that we’re in comfortable silence. That’s not typical, at least for me. Most of my silences are awkward. But this feels nice, just existing next to each other without having to fill up the space with words words words.
Adam unlocks the door to the apartment, and…holy shit. It’s giant and tastefully decorated in shades of grey and blue, with big windows in the living room, and it’s spotless.
My jaw drops. “First, this place is amazing. Second, you told me your place was messy!”
Adam grins, “I told you that to make you feel better. You were freaking out because you thought your apartment was messy.”
“It was messy.”
“You and I have different ideas about what’s messy,” he chuckles.
I move further into the living room and look out the windows that overlook the Hudson and Riverside Park. It’s so beautiful. And then I turn my attention to the other gorgeous thing in the room: a massive built-in bookshelf with a truly great collection of books. There are quite a few of the same books that I have, and some that I’ve been wanting to read. And then, I see them. On the top shelf, the entire World’s Waterfall series.
“Wait a second,” I say, pointing. “You’ve read those?”
Adam smiles, seeming almost embarrassed. “Yeah.”
“When?”
He laughs. “I was obsessed with them the same time you were, in high school.”
My mind flashes back to that day in the gym when he told me that he hoped I had a chance to finish the book. It was because he loved that book too! “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“My father hated them,” he says. “He didn’t want his kid to be a nerd, or rather, he didn’t want a kid that would read those type of books. He wanted someone masculine and smart. Someone who could become a successful doctor.
“In his defense, I think it was at least partially out of love and not ego. He was afraid that I’d be bullied the same way he was, and he didn’t want that for me. So I hid my inner nerd and moved on, and it’s honestly just become a habit to not talk about it.”
I cross the room to him and pull him into a kiss, “I wish I’d known this then,” I say. “I wouldn’t have been so afraid to talk to you.”
“You were afraid to talk to me?”
“You were Mr. Popular, and I was very, very not. Of course I was afraid to talk to you.”
He laughs. “I’m sorry. Guess we were both freaking out about the same things. I was so nervous to talk to you. I thought you’d blow me off because I was popular. But I guess what matters is what we know now, right?”
“Right,” I say. “We’re both nerds. I’m glad I know.” Suddenly I freeze. “So, at the reunion, I guess that you noticed that—”
“The dress you were wearing is shockingly similar to the one Rienne wears when she and Colbert first have sex? Yeah, I noticed.”
I’m really blushing, truly fiery red. “Lor found it and she knew that it was like that dress and she thought it would make me more confident.”
Adam pulls back, taking me in. “You don’t have to justify why you were wearing it. You looked beautiful. You would have looked beautiful whatever you were wearing. I can’t say that it didn’t cross my mind though.”
“I can’t believe that I didn’t know.” I look back at the bookshelf and suddenly my stomach drops. The books on the shelf are the same kind of gorgeous copies like he gave me, and the first book is missing. “Did you give me your signed copy?”
“Yeah.”
Wow. “That’s…amazing. But don’t you want it?”
“I want you to have it. The copy you have is still the beat up ones from ten years ago.”
“Thanks.” It was a nice gesture when I thought that he bought it for me. Now that I know it is one of his own books, it feels completely different. Way more intimate and special.
Adam heads towards the kitchen. “Let me grab us some drinks,” he says. I think he needs a moment, and I let him go. I keep looking through his bookshelf. I’ve found that you can tell a lot about a person by which books they do—or don’t—read. John Waters famously said, ‘If you go home with somebody and they don’t have any books, don’t fuck ‘em.’
Adam, thankfully, seems to have a lot of good books. On the table by the couch I see a copy of the business book that I’ve been reading. “Did you just buy this?” I ask him as he comes back into the room.
“Yeah, I picked it up on my way home yesterday. What you said about it seemed interesting.”
I laugh, and suddenly I can’t stop laughing. “I’m sorry, I just can’t believe you were actually listening.”
“Why?” he asks. “Because I happened to be inside you at the time?”
“Yes, that would be why.”
He toasts me with his glass and pulls me close to whisper in my ear. “It turns out that I’m a pretty good multi-tasker.”
“Oh?” His breath tickles my ear and I laugh, but I lean into him. “You have any plans to multi-task tonight?”
“I might.”
"Are you going to tell me?"
"How I'm going to multi-task?"
"Yeah."
He smiles. "I thought I'd surprise you."
I make a face. "I told you before, I don't love surprises."
"Given our particular history," he says, "I get that. I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie with me. Then we can make out like the teenage sweethearts that we never got to be." He leads me over to the couch, and I manage to kick off my shoes before I sink onto the couch, careful not to spill my wine.
"Does it need to be a scary movie so I can pretend to be afraid just so that I can have you hold me?"
He laughs, purposely putting his arm around me on the couch. "It can be whatever kind of movie you like."
"Hmmm." I turn so I can see him a little bette
r. "One more question. Does the end of this end up with me in your bed?"
"In many very compromising positions," he says.
"Then bring on the movie," I say, downing the rest of my glass.
Adam turns on the TV, and I tuck my feet up onto the couch, leaning into him. "Now I have two questions for you."
"I might have two answers." I'm feeling the wine from dinner, and with this glass, I'm in perfectly, blissfully tipsy territory. I can tell that I'm smiley, maybe too smiley, but I don't care because I'm happy and I love that I'm here in Adam's apartment and that somehow we're together after all this time doing what we might have done in one or the other of our parents’ basements.
"Do you want more wine?"
"Yes."
I feel the vibration of his laughter in his chest. "And do you want to care about the movie?"
"What do you mean?"
He clears his throat. "I mean, do you want a movie that—despite any making out that will happen—we'll want to finish? Or do you want something we can heartlessly abandon halfway through?"
I think about it for a second. "Let's watch the movie," I say. "It's been a long time since I've actually watched a movie with anyone outside a theater. It might be nice."
Adam stands, taking my wine glass. "It will be more than nice," he calls behind him. "It will be excellent." He fills both our glasses and comes back, shrugging off the jacket of his suit before he sits down again. Flicking through movies on the TV, he chooses one that I vaguely remember from the theaters a few months ago, a fluffy romantic comedy that looked funny. “How about this?”
“You really want to watch it?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I guess I didn’t think this would be your kind of movie.”
Adam slides his arm around my waist, settling his hand on my hip. “I don’t really have just one kind of movie. I think that any genre can be good if done well.”
