He nodded.
I let out a burst of laughter, thinking it had to be a joke. But Adam wasn’t laughing or smiling.
“He can’t do that!” I argued.
“Apparently, he can. He is the executor of both until I turn eighteen. My grandparents gave him total control and discretion.”
“But you don’t want to get married. You never want to get married.” As far as our futures went, Adam and I had perfect clarity on two points. Adamneverwanted to get married, and Ineverwanted to have kids. Chalk it up to Mr. Knight’s propensity for walks down the aisle and my having to be a momfrom the time I was four. It left a bad taste in both our mouths. “You’ve been saying that since you were eight.”
“Yep.” Adam sighed a heavy exhale.
“So this is what, him blackmailing you? Holding your money hostage?”
He lifted the bottle to his lips and tilted it back, wincing as he swallowed a large gulp then set it back down. “When Watkins challenged him on it, he claimed it would be highly motivating. He thinks I should have something to live for. To work for. He wants me to learn that love and family are the only important things.”
“This coming from the man whose ninth wife was a senior in high school when you were a freshman.” Adam’s mom was his first wife, but she left when Adam was five.
I looked at him for a long time. He was tall and athletically built, with the kind of dark hair that always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, but there was something fragile about the way he hunched himself small, as if trying to fit into a box someone else had built for him.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Fuck the money, I guess.” He lifted his shoulder in a shrug.
I wasn’t sure if this was the best fit for what I had planned tonight, but it was an offer I was willing to make whether or not Adam was going to be my first. “Well, if you ever need the money, and you’re not married by the time you’re thirty, then we can get married.”
His head spun to face me. “What?”
I lifted both the bouquet I was still holding and the bottle of Dom Pérignon. “If you ever need the money, then I will marry you.”
He let out a laugh, but I didn’t smile.
“I’m serious.” I stared straight into his eyes. “Deal?”
He shook his head as the corner of his mouth curled. “Deal.”
His lopsided grin told me he had no plans on taking me up on my offer, but he’d agreed, so I clinked the bouquet to the garter that was wrapped around the bottle of whiskey and then downed quite a bit of champagne.
As I drank, I realized I should have clinked the bottles together, but I was nervous, which was not an emotion I was used to. I was used to being in control. I was used to being the smartest person in any room. I was used to having the upper hand in situations. But this was a situation I’d never been in before. How did one broach the subject of relieving them of their V-card with their best friend?
I sat there for a long time, trying to muster the kind of foolproof confidence I’d always had around Adam. It was my armor: sarcasm, dry wit, the airs of a woman two decades older and three times less invested than I actually was. But now, with champagne making my tongue less sharp and my hands less steady, I realized I had no retort or clever play. Not when what I wanted was him, and the wanting was burning a hole right through me.
He’d gone quiet. Rested the bottle on the carpet, hands loosely encircling its neck. Staring through the sliding door, its glass opal with condensation and the twinkle of party lights. I could see our reflections, his profile strong and clean, mine shadowed beside. I tried to imagine what I looked like to him. Did he see something worth wanting? Or just the neighbor girl, the best friend, the one who patched his wounds and made late-night boxed mac and cheese when his dad forgot dinner?
I bit my lip and counted down from ten, then five, then one, then just breathed. I tried to catalog each sensation—the bite of the night air through the glass, the hot flush of my skin, the way my knees tingled with anticipation and nerves. I wanted to ask him so many things: Did he ever think of me when he was with his girlfriends? Did he ever dream about us, like in themovies, wrapped up together in someone’s rumpled sheets? Was he scared of how blindingly obvious I’d made my feelings, or had he actually been oblivious for years?
Instead, I just looked at him.
He turned, slowly, squinting a little because of the glare from the yard. “What?”
I was half a breath away from chickening out, but then a song came on through the speakers, “To Make You Feel My Love” by Billy Joel.
Adam stood up, all broad-shouldered and loose in the way only Adam could ever manage and extended his hand to me. “Can I have this dance, Billy Joel?” he asked, his smile—lopsided, a little wary, and yet devastatingly genuine—robbed me of the plan I’d been rehearsing. I left the champagne and flowers abandoned on the floor, put my hand in his, and let him draw me up to standing.
His mom’s favorite singer was Billy Joel, and he met me a year after she left, so he called me that a lot when we were kids. He hadn’t in a long time. We faced each other, not even a foot apart, and for a second it felt like we were standing at the edge of something enormous, a cliff, a sea, a future that neither of us could see past.
Adam grinned and snaked his hand around my waist, pulling me close to him. His other hand found my shoulder, one finger grazed a single line down the exposed skin of my bare upper arm until they met the edge of my dress and then the soft underside of my arm, making every tiny hair stand up in electric salute.
His palm splayed across my lower back, warm and certain, and he nudged me just a little closer, enough so our bodies could match the slow, shuffling rhythm of the song. I could feel his heart thumping through the button-up he’d hated wearing—rapid and out of character. I wondered if he could feel mine, too.
