Page 16 of Not You Again
“Gross,” Adam said.
“To be fair, I was one of the people in the store bingeing candy, but I stopped before the vomiting.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Yeah...” Her voice trailed off.
He squinted skeptically at her, and she quickly changed the subject. “Don’t worry about them. They’re angry and have endless time. Nothing good comes of that.”
“I’m angry, too, but I’m not breaking windows.” Adam cracked his knuckles, as if he was about todosomething.
“Before you Hulk out, can you just focus on wheeling me to Moms?” Carly’s question snapped his thoughts back to the present. He looked at her, sitting in the wheelchair with her hands folded in her lap. She was so calm about this whole thing. Clearly, she’d grown numb to the madhouse of the loop and lost any sense of real danger.
“I can’t just take you into one of these storefronts they’re hurling rocks at.” Adam fisted a handful of his hair, frustrated with Carly’s blasé attitude. “What if you get hit?”
“They usually only target places without people in them.”
“Usually?”
She rolled her eyes, like he was being unreasonable. He didn’t care. He’d gotten her this far, and he wasn’t about to let her get hurt now. “Let me just bring you somewhere else. To your dad’s?”
Carly flinched. It was a barely perceptible movement, but he’d noticed it all the same. Maybe she didn’t want the reminder of Bruce Hart. She hadn’t even attended the burial, so perhaps they weren’t close. Adam hadn’t lost either of his parents. Shireen, in a sense, but he still saw her every day. He couldn’t imagine what Carly was going through, and he wasn’t sure if her mom was still in her life.
“Or, to the library down the street?” he offered. “It’s safe there.”
“I’m more of an audiobook gal, but okay.” Carly’s voice was resigned.
As Adam pushed her down the sidewalk they moved in amicable silence. He worried that by bringing up her dad, he’d somehow offended her. Maybe he should apologize, or check in? But then he was stopped in his tracks, because on the opposite sidewalk there was Shireen holding hands with Dean. They carefully walked over the broken glass. Dean shoved shards aside with his wingtip boots so Shireen would have aneasier path. Shireen cringed as she nearly stepped on a bigger piece, then looked to Dean, who pulled her in close like he was some big, chivalrous hero. Shireen cuddled in tight to him, playing a damsel in distress.
Adam had never seen them together as a couple. He’d fantasized plenty of times about a moment where he’d see them, and how he’d be much taller than Dean, and have on something other than his standard work suit. As he was now—sweating, uncombed hair, hunched over a wheelchair—thiswasn’t his time to come face-to-face with ShirDean or Direen or whatever reprehensible couple name they’d created.
“Adam?”
Carly’s voice broke through his thoughts, which is when he realized that they’d stopped moving altogether. She followed his line of sight. “Oh shit, are they seriously nuzzling noses?”
Adam gave a slow nod. He couldn’t look away. The nuzzling was sort of grotesquely hypnotic. He didn’t say anything, but stayed locked in on the undeniable proof that he’d been left behind.
Carly let out a big whoosh of air. “I see why you don’t come into town. I wouldn’t want to see my ex, either. And their namesrhyme. How do they live with themselves?”
Adam touched his wedding ring absentmindedly, and wondered if Shireen wore hers during the day or took it off after she left the funeral home. “How do you know about them?”
She squinted. “I mean, whenever you two talk you tend to share, like, a lot of very specific details. Pretty memorable moments for me.”
His jaw tightened again, but she carried on talking.
“I’ve been cheated on, too. Freshman year of college, I walked into my dorm room to find my then-girlfriend making out with my roommate. They asked if I wanted to join,like it was a book club.” Carly took in a deep breath. “It’s awful.”
She talked a lot—too much, really. Nevertheless, he acknowledged her rambling with, “Yes, it is.”
“And the worst part is how pathetic you feel, you know? Like, was I reallysobad that you had to hook up with my roommate under herBreaking Dawn: Part 2poster?”
Carly looked to him for validation, as if he knew what any of those words meant.
“Come on,Breaking Dawn: Part 2. TheTwilightfranchise. The movie where they name a baby Renesmee.” She glanced at Adam for acknowledgment, and he was relieved that he had none for her. “Anyway, the point is moments like that can make you feel terrible, almost worse than the cheating itself.”
Adam wasn’t entirely sure that was true. But then it happened: Shireen and Dean turned and clocked that Adam was there. And his response was to curl in on himself, as if sucker punched.
Wasn’t that what this was? The whole loop was just one big punch to the gut over and over again. Adam wanted to scream. He wanted to grab a rock, just as the Chaos Club had, and hurl it so that something other than himself was broken.
