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“Oh my God, he’s so smallll,” Chloe cooed, making me laugh before I turned to Adam.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you were out with your friends for less than an hour before asking what I was up to,” I said. He squinted at me for a second before she added, “I made the reservation Adam. I know.”
“Right,” he chuckled. “Well. They’re kind of loud and I wasn’t really in the mood for all that noise,” he said just as Georgia and Chloe started squealing, because puppy and owner were crossing the street to say hi.
“I think you might’ve come to the wrong place if you’re in the mood for quiet,” I said. He laughed.
“I’m in the mood for you, AJ,” he said unapologetically, making me swallow hard. “I don’t even remember what it’s like to not be thinking about you every five minutes.”
I was speechless for a second. It was just that he said it so unabashedly. Like it never occurred to him that this would be an embarrassing admission for somebody else to make. Namely me. I hated this particular fact about myself in the past couple weeks—so much so that I hadn’t even admitted it to myself. But leave it to Adam to say it like it were any other sentence.
I was thankful to be sitting, because it kind of knocked me off my feet for a second.
“Same,” I finally said as quietly as possible, just in case Emily could hear.
But apparently it didn’t matter, because thirty minutes later, as we were all getting ready to leave, and as Adam was saying bye to my now-very attached friends, Emily pulled me aside.
“What. The fuck, AJ.”
“What?” I practically whined, stamping my foot playfully because I was in no mood for her lecturing. But that wasn’t what I got.
“There is a lot that you haven’t been telling me,” she said, looking me dead in the eye, like she could read the memories of the past few weeks flashing through my mind. I frowned at her, ready to ask her what she was getting at, but then she said it. “You realize he’s into you, right?”
“What?”
“Adam. He’s genuinely into you. Like, two notches from falling-in-love-with-you type into—”
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chill,” I said, my stupefied seriousness followed immediately by a burst of incredulous laughter. “Emily. What’s going on? Is this you?” I teased. “What happened to my no-nonsense, tells-it-like-it-is sister?”
“She’s right here, bitch,” Emily snorted. “And she’s telling you like it is—as someone who has an even better perspective than you, because she was actually watching him when you were talking to Georgia and Chloe about the dog. And the way he looks at you… it’s something.”
My smile faltered and I could actually feel the laughter in my eyes fading away. Because I thought I’d wanted Emily to ease up on me about Adam, but I was realizing now I couldn’t quite handle this total one-eighty. “Look… I don’t know what this is, Emily,” I said carefully, suddenly forcing myself to get serious. Practical. “And you were the one who pointed out how much this couldn’t work. How he’s never been in a relationship,” I reasoned.
Emily shrugged just as Chloe called her to the car, but before she walked off, she left me with a piece of advice.
“Well, maybe you should ask him why.”
25
AJ
The entire ride to Adam’s house was spent talking on the phone with Georgia, who had graduated to the weepy stage of her drunkenness and kept thanking me for “the funnest afternoon.”
“And the fact that Adam came,” she cried before graduating immediately to her thirsty stage. “God, that man is next-level sex, AJ. Adrienne Joelle. When he lifted the pitcher of sangria—did you see his bicep? The way it twitched? I think I have to booty call Wes.”
“Georgia—no.”
That, of course, kicked off the first ten minutes at Adam’s house, which were spent talking Georgia out of booty calling her ex.
I was wandering in the kitchen when Adam touched my waist.
Gonna shower, he mouthed to me as I tried but failed to wrap up with my very hammered birthday girl. I nodded, mouthing back sorry but smiling as he let his touch and his laughing gaze linger on me for another second before heading upstairs.
God…
