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I had a few questions about his manhood, but it didn’t seem like he’d be sharing anything about that with me.
“Just sayin’, man.” Steve looked inordinately pleased with himself. “Seems you’re both a bit out of practice. Things might take a littlelesstime than you’d like.”
As unfortunate as it was, I was most definitely out of practice with anything that didn’t involve batteries.
“Our place,” Kennedy said firmly. “One o’ clock.”
Adam didn’t say a word, just took my arm and led me after Gary, who indicated we needed to sign a few things in his office. We followed him, signing the paperwork he needed to file before drifting out to the parking lot, where Adam unlocked the truck and let me settle before closing the door behind me.
The fact he’d been silent for such a long stretch wasn’t unusual for him. He was a thoughtful person, who generally weighed things before he spoke. But that he was so quiet now meant he was thinking about how to say something, and that made me nervous.
Getting in behind the wheel, he closed the door and sat for a moment, almost like he was in suspended animation. Then he looked over at me and gave me a sweet smile, turning over the truck’s engine before he reached for my left hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed the gold band encircling my finger and shook his head slowly. “Can’t say I ever thought I’d do this again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded like I had every idea what he meant, but really I wondered what the time that stretched between us held in the way of secrets. He surely had some and I had a few…I let my mind wander through that for a moment.
“Did you date much?”
I was going about this all backward.
“In the Army?” His forehead furrowed just a little. “No, and what I did in my younger years wasn’t what I’d call dating. Then I met Jess and we decided we liked each other well enough to give it a go…we didn’t get into it for the right reasons though, so it ended.”
I sighed. I didn’t know much about Jess, just what Hailey had disclosed here and there and that hadn’t been much, which was surprising considering how much Hailey liked to talk shit. I knew she was still semi-close to Jess, though I’d gotten the hint that was a keep-your-enemies-closer kind of arrangement and I didn’t have to know why, to know that Jess and I would not be friends.
“She lives here, though?” I should have better evaluated my competition in advance, but to be fair there hadn’t been a lot of warning. I’d thought Jess was completely out of the picture.
“Oswego.”
That was a yes, as in: too close for comfort, only forty-five miles away.
I was quiet the rest of the ride, letting my arm hang out the window, my fingers trailing through the slipstream of warm summer air as we drove through town. I was lost in thought, paying no attention to where we were going, assuming it was my home, or Kennedy and Steve’s place.
When the truck slowed and he pulled into a parking spot, I snapped out of my reverie and looked around.
“The park, Beckman? Why are we here?”
Adam unclipped his seatbelt and got out of the truck, walking around the back this time to open my door.
“You and me, we’ve jumped into something big and for some really good reasons.” His expression was extremely serious. “We’ve known each other our whole lives, but we don’t know much about the last twenty years. Wouldn’t hurt us to spend a few quiet minutes together.”
Ok, tell me something I don’t know, big guy.
I hopped out of the truck, removing the hot beret and the stifling jacket before I pulled the pins holding my French braid and ripped out the elastic. Adam’s eyes dilated when I did it and his hands shot out automatically to take the braid from me, working his fingers through it to free my longer-than-regulation hair into waves down my back.
So that was his thing: Adam liked long hair. Don’t know why that was a surprise…
Almost as if he snapped himself out of a trance, Adam grunted suddenly and ripped off his jacket and shirt, so that both of us stood in the parking lot in boots, pants and tank tops. We had quite the coordinated couple look going on, if you were into armed services cosplay.
“Come on.” Adam grabbed my hand and we started off down a path. “Urban legend has it there’s a vortex here, somewhere in the park–it’s not fixed, so if you find it, it’s pretty much by accident.”
I’d heard tales of this time warp, but I liked to mess with him: “Better not astrally project me, or whatever, right back into the eighth grade.” I made a face, and he stopped walking, turning and lifting his hands to cup my face.
“I wish I could go back and do it right,” was all he said, then he leaned down and kissed my forehead again.
The forehead kissing thing had to stop. I’d hoped that with the ceremony we’d graduated to the kinds of kisses adults give one another, with lips and tongues and teeth and the little noises that make your belly flip. But apparently he’d decided that chaste and grandfatherly was the route for him, because here we were…right back to forehead kisses.
Hadn’t he confessed the deep, dark desire to kiss me just half an hour before, when he’d slipped a gold band over my finger and shared his last name?
I couldn’t begin to understand him and the way he kept his feelings under wraps. He’d always been quiet and serious, but things were different now. Now he wasmine. Now he was supposed to let me see all the deep, dark things he kept buried deep inside, even if this thing was sudden. We could adjust, adapt, get used to each other…I hoped.
