Page 296 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
“I guess it was a pretty rude thing to say,” I sighed.
“He’s too cold to have a girlfriend,” Kayla said decisively. “I mean, he’s friendly enough with everyone at work, but you can always tell that he’d much rather be up to his elbows in motor grease, monkeying around up in the wheelhouse of a lift, than hanging out chatting with anyone.”
I frowned, thinking about that. It was true that Adam seemed much more comfortable when he was hard at work rather than chatting with anyone. But the Adam that I had seen that day when I had worked with him, and the Adam that I had seen tonight, especially, made me wonder about that. At first, I had thought that he was just as cold as Kayla said.
But now, I wasn’t sure. There were definitely walls there, a hesitancy to him. I didn’t think that he was deliberately trying to hurt people, though. If anything, I was sure that he was trying to make sure that he, himself, didn’t get hurt.
And that, honestly, was something that he and I had in common. I had those sorts of defensive mechanisms too, especially when it came to guys.
“Either way, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Kayla continued. “Just be careful.”
“I will,” I promised her, even though I was wondering if I had already broken that promise. Adam and I hadn’t even done anything yet, but I knew that if we never went to dinner again, it was going to hurt me. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to be friends with him, either. If I needed a friend, there was Kayla.
But there was something more that I wanted with Adam. I couldn’t quite dare to admit it to myself even, not just yet, but it was there, lurking in the background, and would be for every interaction that I had with him from here on out.
Still, I knew that Kayla was right to caution me to be careful. She wasn’t just looking out for my broken heart, if he wasn’t interested in me as well. But there was something more, below the surface, with Adam. Something that he was hiding. And I had to assume that if he was hiding it, it was probably something that he knew I wouldn’t like.
Even if not, how could I get involved with someone who didn’t want to communicate honestly with me? Someone who was clearly so wrapped up in themselves that they didn’t care how those mysteries and silences affected me?
Kayla was right. I’d be better off staying away from Adam.
But as before, it was like all the logic in the world couldn’t make me stop wishing that he were there with me. That he had been the one to agree to come in and have a glass of wine with me.
I forced a smile onto my face, though, and turned the conversation to something else.
CHAPTER 19
ADAM
I frowned when I finished up making breakfast on Wednesday morning and Ethan still hadn’t come out of his room. I dithered for a little longer, putting together a packed lunch for the boy to take to school as well. But still, he didn’t appear. Had he overslept? Usually, he was up long before I was. And although it was kind of nice to be able to get everything done in the kitchen without him getting underfoot, but all the same, I was starting to get a little worried.
I knocked on his door and peeked into his room. “Hey buddy, you awake?” I asked.
“Daddy?” Ethan asked, his voice sounding tired. “I don’t feel good.”
I felt my blood run cold. It had always stressed me out when my son got sick. Especially when he was a baby, I had just always felt so damned helpless watching him. There was only so much that I could do to ease whatever sickness he had, and most of it was about letting him rest. It tugged at my heart every time.
But things had been especially worse ever since Beth got sick.
Logically, I knew that whatever Ethan had now was nothing like what Beth had had. Logically, I knew that he probably just picked something up at school. He would rest for a day or two, maybe take some antibiotics, and then he’d be running around just like normal. It was totally natural for a kid his age to get a cold every once in a while. Especially with the cold and snowy weather that we’d been having that year.
Just because I knew that logically, though, it didn’t mean that my head was ready to accept it. I swallowed hard, trying not to panic as I came over to Ethan’s bedside. I didn’t want to freak him out, but I needed to figure out what was wrong with him. I tried not to be too overbearing in the process.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, sitting on the edge of his bed and automatically reaching out to place a hand against his forehead. He definitely felt warm. But I waited to hear what he had to say before I went for the thermometer.
“My head hurts,” Ethan said, pouting. “And my tummy feels yucky. Like there’s worms in it.”
I tried not to grin at that description. “Sounds like you might be sick,” I said. “You stay put here while I got get the thermometer, all right?”
“Uh huh,” Ethan said, sounding like there was nowhere else in the world that he would rather be.
I hurried into my bathroom and dug the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet. Sure enough, he was running a temperature. Nothing too high, nothing to be too worried about, but I was already worried, unable to help it.
And when I glanced at my watch, I knew that I needed to get to work. If I wanted to get everything done that day, I wasn’t going to be able to hang out here much longer. I knew, too, that Dad would be more than willing to watch Ethan for the day while I went to work.
But I was still thinking about Beth. About all those hours that I had missed with her because I went off to work expecting that she was going to get better. About how…
But this situation was nothing like that, I reminded myself. Ethan just had a fever, and not even a very high fever at that. He needed rest and fluids. He was going to be fine.
