Page 39 of Dear Adam
The waiter sets our food on the table, breaking me from my reverie. “In some ways, this is the same old city it’s always been, but in others, it feels like I came back to a completely different one, too.”
“You didn’t come home at all?” she asks. “Adam never mentioned you being back in town again, but you never know.” I search her face for any sign of judgment but am met only with a creased forehead and eyes sparkling out of sheer curiosity.
“I didn’t,” I admit, with a shake of my head. “At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, stepping away from here and focusing all my time and energy onto growing a business out there. I thought if I just spent every waking second putting everything I had into that business, I had no choice but to succeed. Now, I know that’s not the case.” A sarcastic snort leaves my mouth, surprising me.
“Don’t give up hope quite yet,” she says softly. “If it’s meant to happen, it will. Your next big break could be right around the corner. Just think, Harry Styles could call you at any minute asking for you to build his next home.” She smiles in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“That’s the thing though,” I start. “At the time, I didn’t think it would be so crazy to one day work for a celebrity. I just thought if I could find someone who knew someone, someone who could vouch for my work, my ethic, I would get there. So far, that hasn’t happened.” The back of my neck heats, and I rub at it with my hand. I hadn’t planned to unload all of this to Aly, and the confession has me both relieved to finally be getting it off my chest and embarrassed, too. “When I was eighteen, I thought anything was possible.”
“It still is, if you want it to be. Don’t give up,” she says, but her smile is tight, and she quickly glances toward the water after briefly meeting my gaze. “If I could do it all differently, I would. I would’ve come home for Christmas, and for my parents’ birthdays. I would’ve made sure my dad wasn’t getting overrun with work, and I would’ve absolutely made sure that I didn’t lose touch with my best friend.”
“You and Adam were so close,” she says, her voice faraway. “It made his day when he realized he would be working in the same city as you.”
“Honestly, those few days he was in town were some of the best days I’d had since moving out there. We picked right back up where we left off all those years ago.”
“Why didn’t you even call?” she asks, seeming genuinely curious.
I sigh and toy with the glass of water the waitress sets down. “Truthfully, I knew I would get homesick. I thought if I could erase all my ties to Charleston, it would be easier. I know that’s not the case now. If I could do it all differently…”
“Everything happens for a reason,” she says. “I’m just glad you're back now.”
Her face tells me everything else she wants to ask but won’t.But for how long?
Chapter eighteen
Aly
“Don’tstayouttoolate,” Emma says as we put the last buckets of flowers back in the cooler for the night. Some people in the south would consider it a sin to work on the Fourth of July, but I only consider it a success. With all the tourists in town, we made more money today than we did the entire first month we were open.
“It’s the Fourth of July,” I whine. “You have to stay out late to watch the fireworks.”
“It’s the only piece of advice I could think of to give you,” Emma says. “I was going to say don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, but we know how that would end up.”
“Emma!”
“What? You’ve always been the more reserved of the two of us,” she says with a shrug.
“Speaking of, who are you spending the evening with?” I ask her.
She turns her back to me as she grabs the final bucket. “I’ll probably just lay low and go to bed honestly. I’m whooped. You’re paying me time and a half today since it’s a holiday, right?”
I don’t miss the way she’s avoiding my question, but if she doesn’t want to answer me, I won’t press. Emma has always kept her love life more of a mystery, seeming only to float from one tourist to the next.
“Commitment issues,” she told me once when I caught a tourist dropping her off at work one morning. “It’s way more fun knowing you’ll never see them again.”
Emma is totaling up our cash sales from the day when she looks up and says, “Are you sure there’s nothing going on between you and Levi?”
“We’ve already gone over this.”
“He’s been here for how long now? Almost a month? Has he told you when he’s going back?” She stuffs the cash into a bag and then walks into the back room to drop it in the safe before I can answer.
When she returns, I say, “No, he hasn’t. We haven’t really talked about it either. I think he’s staying for you,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.
“I think he’s staying because he feels guilty for what happened to Adam and doesn’t want to leave me alone. I’d bet money that once Adam wakes up, he’ll go back to California without giving us a second thought.” Once the words are out, I realize that’s only what I’m telling myself to keep from getting my hopes up then crashing and burning when he leaves again. After all, he’s already left once.
“You don’t think he’d really do that, do you?” She grabs a rag and polishes a stubborn spot on the counter where a lily stained it orange.
I shrug. “I’d like to think no, but you never know.”
