Page 18 of Not You Again
Adam did as he was told, mainly because he worried that ifhe didn’t, Carly might try to kiss him again. The woman was unpredictable. He guided the chair down the sidewalk. Still, he couldn’t stop smelling the peppermint of Carly’s mouth. And the weight of her on him was...
Shock. He was clearly in total shock, because Adam hadn’t kissed another person in a decade. Shireen hadn’t been his first kiss, but she had been his first in almost all the other ways. The first person he’d fallen in love with, had sex with, gotten married to.
But when his mouth was a breath from Carly’s, his thoughts ceased and all he could hear was his own heart loudly pulsing in his ears.
He snuck a glance back at Shireen, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was focused on Dean, and they appeared to be in the middle of a heated discussion. No more nuzzled noses.
Well, that wasinteresting.
“How did you learn to do that?” he asked. “Kissing without... the kissing.”
“My dad worked in film when he lived in LA,” Carly explained as they arrived at the other end of Main Street. “It’s called a stage kiss. All the actors do it.”
“Your dad was an actor?” Adam carefully set the wheels off the lip of the curb and onto the road. The library was two more blocks down.
“He was a cameraman, but he brought me to set a lot. In between takes, he’d talk to me about what was happening in each scene. He was...”
She drifted off. Adam waited to see if she’d continue, but when she didn’t, he asked, “Is that what you do in LA, too?”
She cleared her throat. “No, no, you saw how my back reacted to that fall. I’m a screenwriter. Or, well, trying to beone. I haven’t sold anything yet, but I’m getting close. I bartend to pay the rent.”
Carly stopped Adam by holding up a hand, allowing a man covered head to toe in rainbow balloons to walk past. How the guy was able to see where he was going was a true mystery.
“Never met a screenwriter,” Adam said. “That’s really cool.” Had he just given Carly a compliment on top of having kissed her? He frowned at the state of their current relationship.
Or, rather, whatever this was. Definitelynota relationship.
Carly blew air through her lips. “I get it. You think I should be doing something practical with my life.”
He frowned again. “I just told you that I think screenwriting is cool.”
“Everything that comes out of your mouth is sarcasm.” And then she scrunched up her face and said,“Acorns in the walls?”
If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was putting on some kind of accent to impersonate his voice. “I do not sound like a congested gremlin.”
She raised her eyebrows and said, “Sure you don’t.”
And suddenly, he remembered why he’d wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible in the first place. He was still so dazed from their time together—the evil cows, the stage kiss—that he’d forgotten how unpleasant Carly was.
“Luckily for both of us, we’re at the library.” He stopped the wheelchair at the entrance, then hit the big blue button that swung the doors open.
“Finally,” she said.
And something about that twisted a knot in his stomach. Was he really a person others wanted to run from? FirstShireen, and now Carly? And why did he care about what Carly thought at all?
Because no one will ever love you, the annoying voice in his head chimed. The same voice he’d had since Shireen left him.
Carly turned to him. “You’re welcome for the Shireen thing back there, by the way.”
He didn’t even know what to say to that. He hadn’t asked Carly for help. So why should he thank her?
Carly began to wheel herself in through the open doors, which is when he thought to say, “Andyouare welcome for the two-mile push to safety!” Even though he’d shouted that last bit, the doors had closed behind her and Adam wasn’t entirely sure she’d even heard him.
By the time Adam walked back to his car at the funeral home, it was late in the afternoon. He hadn’t seen his parents in almost a full loop. He wondered if they were anxious or just thrilled that he’d taken their advice to heart. And he wasn’t ready to go home yet, because he was a terrible liar and wouldn’t even know where to begin with explaining his morning.
So instead, he drove out to his favorite flower farm in Julian. In the fall, the farm opened its gates to tourists and locals for a harvest of pumpkins, apple cider and bouquets. But with the loop, there were few places people didn’t let themselves into. He opened the fence, drove through and parked in the middle of a field.
Jasmine bloomed along the wooden fence and filled the air with the thick and heady scent. The air hummed with crickets and the faint caw of a crow. He didn’t need Goldie to tell him that it was almost time for the eclipse, as a quick glance upward revealed the moon approaching the sun.
