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He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he runs his fingers through his hair. “I fucked up.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
He shakes his head, still clutching his hair. “I got in a fight with Yuri.”
The dread in my belly grows into a painful, burning knot. “What happened with Yuri? What did you do?”
He takes a few breaths before he sits up and turns around to face me. “I was at Yuri’s with Lena.”
“Oh, God,” I whisper. “I don’t want to know. Just get out.”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s not what you think.”
I cover my face to stop him from seeing my tears. He doesn’t deserve my tears. “Just get out!” I shout, my voice coarse with anger as bile rises into my throat. “Get out.”
“Lindsay, baby.” He touches my hand and I feel as if I could vomit.
“Don’t touch me!” I cry, roughly pushing his hand away. “Don’t you fucking touch me. Get out!” I cover my face again because I can’t bear to look at him. “I knew this would happen. I’m so fucking stupid.”
“Nothing happened, Lindsay. Please listen to me.”
“Get out,” I whisper, my entire body trembling with rage as my heart breaks. “Get out, Adam. You make me sick.”
Sixteen
I step into the hotel lobby in a daze. I don’t have any luggage or any clue how long I’ll be here. I’m a man with no home. A rootless drifter.
The skinny guy in the suit behind the counter smiles at me. “Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation I can look up?”
I shake my head. “I… I just need a room.”
“Of course,” he replies, with way too much pep for this time of night. “Will it be just you or are there any other guests staying with you?”
I look at him almost incredulously, as if he can’t tell by the cloud of misery hanging over my head that I’m completely alone. “Just me,” I mutter.
“Would you like a junior suite, a deluxe suite, or a grand deluxe suite?”
I sigh, unable to believe that I have to answer such inane questions at a time like this. “I don’t fucking care. Just give me a room that’s not facing the beach. That’s all I ask.”
“Yes, sir.”
He takes my credit card and driver’s license, then slides them back to me with the room key as he points me in the direction of the elevators. I trudge across the lobby, suddenly aware of how much space I’m taking up. I feel enormous and small at the same time. As if I’m stepping through a world of my own creation with endless possibilities from here on out, where I am the center of gravity, everything revolving around me. Yet, I also feel minuscule. As if I’ve fallen into a bottomless well, the whole world disappearing into the distance somewhere far above me, with every person I’ve ever known continuing with their lives as if I no longer exist.
Somewhere out there, Kaia and Mila are sleeping peacefully, completely unaware that their father isn’t sleeping a few feet away from them, ready to protect them at any moment. Just a few blocks away from this hotel, Yuri and Lena are probably still fighting, not at all preoccupied with where I am or how I’m doing. The only person out there in this whole fucking world who I know is thinking about me right now is Lindsay. She also happens to be the one person who has every right to wipe me from her thoughts after everything I’ve put her through.
I punch the button for the sixth floor and swallow the painful lump in my throat as I lean back against the wall of the elevator. When did my life set off on this collision course? If you had asked me this four months ago, I would have told you it was the moment Lindsay and I found out we were having twins. But now I realize we’ve been headed in this direction for years.
I lie awake most of the night, thinking up ways to fix this mess. There’s no way I can lose my girls. I realize now that for a very long time, I bought into my own hype. The truth is, without Lindsay and the girls, I’m nothing.
* * *
The second I get back to my hotel room after the semifinal, I call Lillian again. She sent me a text message twenty minutes before my heat against Kevin Grady.
Lillian: We’re at the hospital. The babies are coming.
I texted her back immediately.
Me: Is she okay? How long has she been there?
She didn’t respond, so I texted her again.
Me: Going into the water in 20 minutes. Please answer the phone.
Of course, Lillian didn’t answer the phone. She’s only answered one of the dozens of phone calls I’ve put through to her since I arrived in Oahu two days after Lindsay kicked me out of the house. And she only answered that time to tell me to stop calling or she was going to block my number. But some merciful grain of humanity in her soul has found it necessary to keep me updated via the occasional text message.
The day before I left for Hawaii, I texted Lillian asking if I could see the girls before I left. Her response cut me straight to the bone.
Lillian: Is there a difference between not seeing them for 10 days and not seeing them for 12? It didn’t seem to matter when u told that reporter u weren’t retiring.
I know that Lindsay has already spoken to Lena and Yuri. And Lena assures me that Yuri and Lindsay are about as understanding as we can expect them to be at this stage. Apparently, where I really fucked up was in lying to Lindsay about retiring. And until I can figure a way out of the grave I’ve dug for myself, I have a feeling I’m going to be dealing with a lot of snarky text messages from Lillian.
I send her another message asking for an update on Lindsay’s condition, throwing in there that I won the semifinal against Kevin Grady. I don’t bother mentioning that Carlos Ferreira also won his heat against John Cruz, so we’ll both be advancing to tomorrow’s final. He’s fourteen hundred points ahead of me in the championship tour rankings. The surfer who takes first place at each event is awarded 10,000 points toward their CT rank. Second place gets 8,000 points. This means that whoever places first tomorrow wins the whole fucking tour.
None of that will make any sense to Lillian, and I guess that’s fine. All she cares about is the well-being of her daughter and her granddaughters. And her two grandbabies who are on their way into this world soon.
I knew when I stepped onto that plane in Wilmington that I would probably miss the birth of my twins. But Lindsay and I had planned for this. Her mom is supposed to record the birth with her phone us
ing the Ustream app, so I can watch the streaming video of the live birth here in Hawaii. Somehow, I doubt Lillian is willing to go through that kind of trouble for me today.
But I can’t miss seeing my twins being born. I may not be there to hold them, but fuck if I’m going to miss the whole damn thing.
When Lillian doesn’t respond to my text asking for an update on Lindsay, I sit down on the small sofa in my hotel room to think. I put my sandy feet up on the coffee table, closing my eyes as I lean my head back. I have to pull out all the stops and call Lindsay’s stepdad. There’s no other way. If there’s anyone who understands how easy it is to get on his wife’s bad side, it has to be Michael. He has to have some sympathy for me. At least, I hope he does.
Michael answers on the third ring. “Hello?” he whispers.
My heart clenches in my chest as I sit bolt upright. I’ve never been so happy to hear this man’s voice. “Michael, it’s Adam. What’s going on with Lindsay?”
He’s silent for a moment, though I can hear a bit of rustling as if he’s walking. “She’s stable, but if her water doesn’t break in the next thirty minutes, they’re going to pop the sac and induce labor.”
“Where are the girls?”
“They’re with Lindsay’s friend Sarah. They’re spending the night there, I think.”
“Michael, you have to record the birth for me. Please,” I plead, not bothering to hide my desperation. “Lindsay and I agreed we’d record the birth and stream it so I can watch it over here. Please, Michael. I’m begging you not to take this away from me. I know I screwed up, but I need this. Please.”
He’s silent for a long while, then he sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you back.”
“Thank you so much,” I reply enthusiastically. “You just made my night.”
