Page 35 of Not You Again
Which is when Carly saw the opportunity for a good deed. She dashed ahead, reached for the door handle and pulled it open with a flourish. “Look at me, holding the door open for you, because I’m a kind person and because I need to prove my theory.”
“I recognize you’re being a bit sarcastic, but it does feel nice to have the door held open.” Adam gave a tight smile as he breezed through, then turned back to tell her, “Usually the other way around, considering my height and gender norms.”
“Call me Saint Carly, because I just made your day.” She walked inside the wide atrium where the tiled floor was covered in painted stars, and the glass ceiling opened up to the sky above them. “Well, this is cool.”
“Perhaps best of all, there are no cows here.” Adam led her across the floor and toward the café, which was stocked with grab-and-go lunch boxes, packaged cookies and a cooler of cold drinks. Carly grabbed the cheese plate, and Adam took an oatmeal raisin cookie.
“You understand that you chose the grandma of cookies, right?” She pulled out a metal chair and took a seat at a bistro table. “When presented with plenty of other, more reasonable options, you made the decision to go for oatmeal and raisins?”
“And you understand that cheese comes from cows?” He noisily unwrapped the cookie from the plastic packaging.
“Not always.” Carly popped a cheese cube into her mouth. “You’re annoying, by the way.”
“I’m starting to think my destiny on this earth is specifically to annoy you.” Adam took a bite of the cookie and chewed. When she’d finished her snack, he said, “Come with me.”
Carly followed Adam down the cavernous hall to an observation deck surrounded by windows that looked out onto the town below. The sun and moon were about to make contact. They were at the top of the mountain with the whole of Julian ahead of them, but Carly was too aware of Adam next to her to notice.
“Here.” He handed her eclipse glasses and, as she took them, the closeness of his fingertips sent a wave of heat through her.
“Thanks.” Her voice came out breathy, and she cleared her throat. “What about the shadow bands?”
“We can’t see them from up here, unfortunately, but we can prioritize them tomorrow.” Adam looked from the eclipse to his watch. “Okay, three, two and one. Let’s see if your Carly Is Correct Theory is, in fact, correct.”
She tipped an imaginary top hat and he seemed to suppress a smile.
They could’ve continued to watch in silence, but she wasn’t good at those. So to distract herself, Carly asked, “What have you told your parents about all this? Aren’t you usually with them?”
“They know about you,” he hedged. “I’m not good at lying. They don’t know about the experiments, just that I’m hanging out with someone new.”
“Someone new...” She wasn’t new, though, just rediscovered, she supposed.
“They’re intense,” he said. “I don’t really have close friends. Dean was my best friend, but if my mom and dad met you, they’d want you to come over for dinner. They’d ask you every detail about your life. They’d try and make you part of the family, the way they did with Dean. It’s never simple with them.”
She gaped at him. “Adam, you mean to tell me that all I have to do to get a home-cooked meal is meet your parents, and you denied me that?”
He gave her a surprised look, but she realized that Adam was a guy who seemed to take the small things for granted. Where he saw his parents as a burden, Carly would give anything to still have even just one of hers around. She’d lost her mom at a young age, and now her dad. From what she could tell, these were people who cared for him, and not everyone got to have that. As such, she had no problem being honest.
“All my life I’ve dreamed of having a family where we got to eat dinners together. The way movies tell you families are supposed to be,” she said. “The closest I got was if I visited my dad on set and we both ate from the craft services catering at the same time. What you have? That’s special. I wish I’d been able to have that with my dad.”
She wasn’t trying to make him feel bad, necessarily, but maybe she was.
“Tell me about your dad,” Adam said gently.
Tell me about your dadwas a simple request. She’d known the guy her whole life, until recently. He’d raised her. She should be able to talk about him.
But the truth was she didn’t know where to begin. She knew his daily routine: wake at seven, eat oatmeal and drink black coffee, open the movie theater at noon, close at 10 p.m., heat up a frozen meal for dinner, watch an episode ofJeopardybefore bed. She knew he used a 2-in-1 shampoo. Knew that he liked to weed his garden every Saturday. She knew his favorite kind of beef jerky. She could remember the feel of his hugs, and how his scratchy chin rested on the top of her head. She could hear his voice mail greeting in her head, the hesitant way he said,If you’re calling for Bruce, leave me a message, like he hadn’t been sure he was working the recording correctly. She missed hearing his voice.
But those were all super-specific sense memories that kepthim alive to Carly. So Adam’stell me about your dadquestion wasn’t as simple as he might have thought.
“Look, the eclipse.” Carly pointed out the window and hoped this would be a smooth transition away from talking about herself.
“Not quite yet,” Adam said. And she wasn’t sure if he meant the eclipse timing, but then he continued with, “Three, two and one.”
Adam lingered on his watch.
“Well?” she nervously asked.
“Four minutes, two seconds.” He licked his lips and locked eyes with hers. “No change.”
