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His body felt safe and solid. I wouldn’t mind staying like this. Or having this to come home to.
To come home to. My thoughts swirled with the meaning of home. Where was my true home now?
He let go. “There’s a cleaning service with access to higher grade chemicals I may be able to get in here this afternoon. Figure it’s safest for the bat aftermath.”
Okay, Adam was in fix-it mode. I could roll with that. We needed to deal with these things.
“Then, my buddy is coming to look at your car. Remember Colt Jackson? He used to run around with us in the summer. He lives in town and we met up recently.”
“Of course I remember Colt Jackson! Did he end up a country singer or a rodeo rider? There’s no other option with that name.”
“He runs an auto body shop.”
“Well, that’s disappointing. At least tell me the name is something cool like, Action Jackson’s Auto Faction or Colt 45 Car Shop.”
Adam shook his head, laughing. “I’m sure he’d like to see you. Sorry it’s not under better circumstances. Hey, want to go inside and get something to eat? You’ve got to be starving.”
I felt shaky actually, after the emotional morning. I followed him inside. He offered cereal and bananas and a ready-made fruit salad he’d picked up from the grocery store earlier in the week. I ate the food gratefully and thought through my next steps. Food helped ease the panic. My laptop sat in a bag by my purse. I slipped it out and cracked it open.
Colt Jackson came by around noon. We reminisced a little, and I thanked him repeatedly for taking the time to check out my car. He didn’t have the required parts with him, so he gave me the option to have him return the following day or send a tow truck to get my car to his shop.
“Let’s do the tow truck so I can get this done quickly,” I told him.
After Colt took off, I turned to Adam. “Do we need to hire a cleaning crew for the bedroom? We could clean the room ourselves.”
Adam blinked and seemed to take a second longer to focus. “It’s manageable. Are you sure you’re up for it?”
I had a whole life to get back to downstate. “I really need to get home. The sooner the better.”
The spark in his eyes faded. “You have a place here as long as you’d like. At least until the house sells.”
Ah, shoot. He wanted me to stay. He wanted to extend this weekend for more time together. The idea of staying in this little bubble we’d created was highly appealing. A real vacation for more than a day where I could kick my feet up (maybe coax a foot massage out of Adam), dig into one of my new books by the lake, and at night…well, night had a lot of possibilities. Maybe I could stay here and ignore the rest of my life.
Except for the tiny problem of my apartment with no future income for rent. As much as I’d love to ignore my reality, it was in fact, reality.
The silence between us grew louder.
“See, I need to be home and organized with a plan,” I explained, though he hadn’t asked for an explanation. “I can probably handle a month or two of rent, especially with some financial cushion from my parents, but the kinds of jobs I’m looking at take a lot of time to track down and set up interviews. I could end up anywhere in the country. Then we’re talking breaking my lease, student loan payments—” I needed to remind myself to breathe again. “It’s…a lot. It’s not like I’m going to find a research job in vacation land.”
Probably not the best thing to say. Adam’s face clouded further. It looked downright stormy over there.
So far, we’d only dissected a fraction of each other’s current lives. We’d mended broken feelings, shared a kiss—a really good one—but what happened now? “Your business is back home, right?”
“Rochester Hills.”
“You’re an hour from me in Ann Arbor. An hour isn’t too far. For the time being.” My days at the university might be officially over now. Who knew where I’d end up with my career? “When will you be done with all this?” I flit a hand toward the downstairs bathroom, a husk of what a bathroom should be. He had a lot more work to do.
“Two weeks at least. Do you think you’ll have a job offer by then?”
I wished. “I don’t know. I’m starting at zero. Except not really, because of the lease. I’m in negative integers.” I pressed a hand to my head. “I just need to get home.” I couldn’t explain it, but driving home felt like the best option to focus on the next phase of my life.
Adam looked like he wanted to say more. He’d already done so much by helping with the unexpected issues. But he couldn’t fix everything.
“You’re right.” He looked past me, then down at his feet. “You need to do what’s best for your career.”
My heart picked up pace. “We can see where this goes.” My words sounded overly eager, as if I needed to convince him this time around would be different. And, well, it would be. We weren’t teenagers. We had our own lives figured out—mostly. Mainly him, but I’d get there. We could build something new on our foundation, or whatever. “Let’s take this one day at a time. Today, my car is getting fixed. It will probably be too late to head out, so I can leave tomorrow. Yes. I’ll do that. I’ll stay another night and leave tomorrow.”
Adam agreed but didn’t say anything further.
