Page 43 of Dear Adam
“I’ll just be a minute,” Aly says as she steps out of the car. Pretzel jumps out after her, and I watch through the big, picture windows as they disappear into the back. I’m parked in the middle of the road, and I wait as long as I can until a car behind me beeps, so I circle around the block a few times before finally finding a spot a few stores down. After parallel parking and ensuring the Teenie Mobile’s eyelashes aren’t brushing the tailgate of the truck in front of me, Hank and I weave in and out of tourists on my way to Bloomie’s. King Street is crowded tonight for the holiday, with the locals and tourists alike out celebrating.
Aly didn’t seem like she wanted me to follow her in, but after the silent car ride here and her rigid posture in my passenger seat, I know we need to talk. I push open the door, expecting to find her walking out with her bank bag under her arm, but she must still be in the back room.
“Aly?” I call. “It’s me. I didn’t want to scare you.”
“I’ll be right out,” she calls back in an unusually high voice, followed by a sniffle. I hear the rustle of papers followed by a muttered curse word.
“Everything okay?” I ask, pacing in front of the cash register and running my hands through my hair.
“Mhm,” she mumbles followed by another sniffle. I lean against the counter with my forearms, head in my hands, wondering where exactly tonight went wrong.
“Levi?”
I look up to find Aly closer now, silhouetted by the faint light from the back room. I wonder how long she’s been here, watching me wrestle with the weight of the evening.
“You didn’t have to come in.”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” My eyes travel from her swollen bottom lip to her puffy, red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m fine,” she promises, not breaking eye contact, but the splotches on her tear-stained cheeks tell me otherwise. “We can go now.”
I inch toward her, slowly trailing my hand along the counter, unsure if what I’m about to do will make the evening better or only more confusing. “What if I’m not ready to go yet?” My voice is husky and foreign to my own ears. Even in the dim security lights, I don’t miss the way the skin on her arm prickles with goosebumps when I reach out to tilt her chin up. Her inky blue eyes have filled with tears again, and my frown overtakes my entire face. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’ll be your secret keeper for the rest of your life if that’s what you need, Aly.” A glimmer of hope streaks across her face but is gone as quickly. She backs away and my hand drops to my side. She opens and closes her mouth a few times before finally finding the right words. When she speaks, her voice is so quiet, so soft, I strain to hear her.
“Watching the fireworks with you was…magical. Everything I ever dreamed about. And it got me thinking that your time here is limited. I’m surprised you haven’t gone back to California already. And I’m so afraid you’ll leave and never come back. I’m afraid that you’ll only be mine until Adam wakes up and once he does, once you know I’m okay, that’ll be the end of whatever this is. I’m afraid of trying this,us, and getting so used to having you here, that when it’s all ripped away from me, when you never come back to me again, I won’t know how to put my pieces back together. I won’t let myself fall for you, Levi. I can’t. I’m not ready to be wrecked by you.”
“I landed a job with a huge client back in California,” I blurt.
Aly’s eyebrows draw together. “What? When?”
“I got the call this morning. I was going to wait to tell you because tonight was just too perfect, but that doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“When do you go back?”
“A week or two. It starts in August.”
She’s silent for so long I’m fully prepared for her to storm away and never speak to me again. Instead, she says, “This is what I was afraid of.”
“Aly…” I reach for her and pull her into me, her head resting right under my chin. I breathe in her coconut shampoo and after a couple of seconds, the tension from her body begins to melt away. She softens and finally wraps her arms around me. “I don’t know when I’m coming back,” I admit, through a shaky breath. “But I know that when Adam wakes up, because hewill,Aly, I’m not ever going to forget about you. I don’t know what my future in California will look like after this job, but I do know that I will never, ever leave you. Not the way I did last time. I’m willing to give this a shot and figure out a way to make it work if you are.” I use my thumb and forefinger to tilt her head back so I know she hears me when I say, "I want you, Aly, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I wantus.”
“Promise?” she asks shyly, peering up at me through mascara-smudged glasses.
“I promise.”
Her lips are only inches from mine, and I can smell the pineapple gum she popped into her mouth on the way over. More than anything, I want to kiss her right now, to taste that pineapple gum, and make the fantasy I’ve had since high school a reality. Instead, I kiss her softly on the forehead, my lips lingering. When I pull back, she audibly swallows then lifts to her tiptoes.
Her mouth meets mine slowly at first, testing the waters with a gentle caress. When I don’t pull back, our kiss turns into something more, something wild and hungry, in seconds. Finally, I’m giving into the feelings I’ve suppressed for years. From the way she’s kissing me back, it appears she’s doing the same. Her hands trail up my back and into the curls at the nape of my neck, and I suppress a feral sound that tries to escape my throat. When she hitches one leg around me, all bets are off, and I hoist the second one up, too, lifting her off her feet. I back her onto the counter and a vase crashes to the floor, but neither of us notices or cares.
Then she pulls back and rests her forehead on mine. We’re both a little breathless, and I can’t believe I just had the privilege of tasting her strawberry-red mouth.
“I want us, too,” she says on an exhale, then dips her head to find my lips once again.
Chapter twenty
Aly
