Page 54 of Dear Adam
Chapter twenty-five
Aly
“Areyousureyou’renot just overthinking it?” Emma asks.
I’m in the middle of hanging the final set of curtains, the finishing touch on this guest room, and I don’t respond for a moment, prompting her to say my name.
“Sorry,” I say. “But I don’t know? Maybe? I feel like something has been off ever since dinner.”
I just finished rehashing the gruesome details of family dinner, the sting is still as fresh as it was last night. I slide one foot onto the top of the dresser and the other onto the window ledge. I’m barely balancing, holding the curtain rod in one hand and an impact drill in the other, when my front door opens.
“Emma, someone is here,” I hiss.
“Go see who it is,” she says simply.
“I…I can’t. I think I’m stuck,” I whisper. As if on cue, my fuzzy sock clad foot slides farther and farther away from the rest of my body. “How long would it take you to get here if you left wherever you are right now?” I plead.
“You want me to walk in on a burglar?” she asks. “No thanks. Maybe this will be your lesson to finally start locking your door. We do live in the twenty-first century, you know.”
“Emma!” I cry. “I really am stuck. And I know you carry a can of pepper spray on your keychain. Please?”
Although, armed with a curtain rod and impact drill, I realize I could be stuck with worse gear to defend myself against a burglar— if I wasn’t teetering on the edge of doing a split.
Before I can prepare myself, the bedroom door flies open and Levi walks in.
“What are you doing?” he asks, taking in my appearance. “And when are you going to start locking your door?”
“I was trying to hang these curtains,” I reply, trying to hold up the drill and rod while still balancing. I try to channel my inner flexible goddess and shake the tension from my shoulders. Only when I do, my foot slides another inch further down the window sill and something pops in my hip.
“Didn’t I leave a step ladder here somewhere?” Levi asks, scanning the room.
“Now that I’m thinking about it, yes. I think you did.”
“Why didn’t you just grab that instead of doing…this?” he asks, gesturing at my precarious position. “Also, who wears fuzzy socks in the summer?”
“My feet were cold,” I mutter. “If you’re not going to help me, can you at least get the step ladder?”
Instead of doing what I asked, he comes over and gently picks me up, standing me upright. It leaves me wondering if his touch will ever stop making my skin tingle and my stomach flip.
Once I’m safely back on my feet, he takes the tools and rod from me and gets to work. Within minutes, the curtains are up and he didn’t even have to climb on any furniture to achieve it. God bless his tall, broad shouldered masculinity.
He sets the tools on the dresser, and when his troubled eyes meet mine, I know instantly something is wrong.
“Everything okay?” I quietly ask. He moves to the edge of the bed and pulls me between his knees, leaning forward until our foreheads are pressed together.
“I’ve got to leave tomorrow,” he whispers.
“Tomorrow? Why so soon?” I ask, a little louder than necessary. Blood rushes to my cheeks and my heart sinks into my stomach, making me a little queasy.
“The owner of the home we’re starting on wants to add a few more projects, and the only way we can make it work is if we get started as soon as possible,” he explains.
“Do you know when you’ll be back?” My hands tremble, and he takes them into his own, softly kissing the back of each, then cradles them against his chest.
He sighs and avoids my gaze as he answers. “I don’t yet.”
I want to trust him, to understand why he’s doing this, to believe he’s planning on coming back and staying for good, but he already left us once. I want to push back from him, to remind him that he’s got a good job here, a family here...mehere. I want to kick and scream until he understands that we’ve already waited so long to be together, and I don’t want to wait any longer.
I’m not ready for this summer to be over. I’m not ready to watch him board a plane and have everything I’ve gotten used to over the past couple of months taken from me. I’m not ready to wake up in two days only to be reminded that he’s gone. I’m not ready for anticipation and excitement to be replaced by something empty and hollow.
