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I’d forgotten that people could talk this way, say such things to each other. And Adam somehow made it seem effortless. This possibility of a future he unfurled for me, like a bright flag beneath the tarnished sky.
He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Then he put his lips to my ear and whispered some other things he wanted to do with me, with his hands on me, my hands on him, my body under his, until I thought I might ignite on the sweetness and the wickedness of them, and how much I wanted them too.
“Yes,” I told him. “Yes. All of that.”
“Can I see you tonight? When I’m done here.”
I nodded. “Come when you can. I’ll be…I’ll be waiting.”
“So will I.”
We made our way to the edge of the footpath. As he’d said, it was all closed off and partially submerged. The over-spilled lake shimmered everywhere. Adam stuffed his hands in his pockets and frowned, his brows becoming dark-red warning arrows.
I nudged his elbow. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It’s definitely better than it was in 2007.” He sounded frustrated, even a little angry, but there was something oddly vulnerable about it, caring so much about something you really couldn’t control. “But better isn’t good enough.”
“You can’t stop it raining.”
“No, but I can do more than this half-arsed excuse for a strategy.”
“You could fix the flooding?”
“Hell, yeah.”
I couldn’t help but smile at him. He was so tired, and so full of passion.
“Stop laughing at me. It would actually be pretty straightforward.”
“If it’s s-simple, why isn’t anyone doing it?”
“The usual reason. It’s deemed too expensive.” He sighed. “Every flood like this brings the possibility of real action a little closer. But it seems like a bloody bitter way of going about it. Takes all the fun out of being right. I’m just…” He stared blankly at the white-curled water he was stirring with the toe of one of his boots. “It could help a lot of people.”58
“Adam?” I liked his name in my mouth, thedso safely buttressed by its vowels. “You already have. You d-do know that, d-don’t you?”
“It doesn’t seem like very much right now.”
“A f-flood is just drops of water.”
He glanced at me, smiling now. “Hot and kind and slightly mysterious. How did I get so lucky?”
“Is that how you see me?”
“Everyone’s mysterious before you know them.”
“But w-when you know me, I won’t be mysterious anymore.”
“Yeah, you’ll be you, and that’ll be better.”
I stared at the ground, full of gratitude that he could take my worst insecurities and somehow transform them into the gentlest of flirtations.
We turned away from the footpath, and instead skirted down the lane to the back of the park. The fields had been swallowed whole, and the light skated over the surface of the water until it looked like glass.
Adam let out a breath. “God. What a mess.”
“Is…is it wrong I find it s-sort of beautiful? This…”—oh my, too many sibilants, but I was with Adam, so I risked them—“s-silent, s-s-silver world.”
“It is beautiful,” he agreed. “Feels like ours.”
