Kate brings me
toast and eggs on a tray along with
orange juice.
She kisses me on my forehead and touches the back of her hand to my
stubbly cheek. I sit up,
yawning, and take a sip of the juice.
She's amazing, you should know. She's
twenty-two and I'm three years older. Brown, silky smooth hair, brown eyes, a pearly white smile and a golden heart,
she's perfect And above all that,
she loves me.
Two days before:
We're walking on the
pier, hand in hand. I step up on the edge and look over the rail at the water below. Kate comes up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. She kisses my neck and I smile. She makes me happy, but
I don't love her. I try so hard to love her, to want to
take care of her like she wants to take care of me. But I don't.
I can't.
On the other side of the city:
There's a boy sitting in a
cafe sipping
latte. He's reading
Faulkner and nibbling on a chocolate chip
cookie. I'm sure he just came back from a shopping trip to the
Book Barn, where he surely has bought at least two new books.
His name is
Joel and he's fresh out of the
state university. He's got a degree in
psychology but he's choosing to waste it and work every other day at a
record store on 8th Street. He's got a crooked smile and a
jaded outlook on life. He claims he's had his heart broken three different times, but in spite all of that,
he loves me.
"
Adam!!" Kate is screaming at me. Hearing the words she's saying is like reading blurring words on a computer monitor when I haven't slept in days. "
Oh my God! Adam! Help me!! Help! Somebody!"
"
Adam? Adam! Can you hear me?" I do not know this voice.
Discombobulated and cold, I surface. I have fallen over the rail and I am
floating face down in
murky water.
There is a man in a
red reflective jacket grabbing me and pulling me up on the rocks. His mouth closes in on mind and I feel him put his
breath into my lungs as his hands push down on my chest. I cough and search around for Kate.
She stands above me, her hands
clutched at her mouth. I close my eyes and everything
fades to black.
I take a bite of eggs,
over easy. Kate sits down beside me and lays her head on my chest.
"I was worried about you, Adam. That was one of the most terrifying moments in my life. I thought you were
gone. Seriously."
I chuckle, half-hearted. "Well, I'm okay. I just
slipped." I didn't slip, I was
subconsciously trying to escape, but
I cannot find the right words to tell her this. I want to. I want to
scream it,
blow it with all the force in my lungs, but I don't. I can't.
"I know.
It was just scary."
I cough to the
point of tears and Kate
brings my blanket closer around my neck and shoulders as if I was a child with the
flu and
she was my mother.
"You should get back to sleep. It's been a long day, the doctor says to prevent you from getting
pneumonia or anything you should sleep as much as possible. I'll make some
soup and wake you up around supper." She kisses my forehead again and I curl up like the
insecure child that she's treating me like. She leaves the room and shortly I hear the TV turn on. I close my eyes and fall asleep to the sound of
Wheel of Fortune.
I awake and
Joel is sitting on the foot of my bed.
"What are you doing here?"
"Checking up on you. Duh. I heard you had quite a scare today. What's the deal?"
"I don't know, I just...I just
shut my eyes to think and then I just remember being pulled out by the security guard."
"Oh," he says as if he's
disappointed in my answer, like he wanted to hear something with more heart to it, more meat, more interesting.
"Where's Kate?"
"She said she needed to go to the store, so I convinced her to go while I stayed with you." Joel runs his hand up and down my lower leg, from my foot to my knee, from my knee to my foot.
"This can't be happening."
"What?"
"This."
"This what?"
"This complexity. You. Kate. Me. All of this. The way I feel."
"Adam, you know how I feel, but look, do you love her?"
"Kate?"
"No, you're
grandma. Yes,
Kate.
Do you love her?"
"I don't know. Yes. Well no.
My mind says yes but my heart says no. You're not the right person to be talking to about this."
"Why not? You don't love her, even though you want to. You don't. You just can't admit..."
"No, look, I do. I know what you're thinking, what you want, but, look--
she takes care of me. And she loves me, cares about me. She does what's right for me."
"
And you squirm every time she does."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"
You feel guilty."
"
Guilty? How do you see that?"
"
You love me. And you know it. Guilty because you know
you're leading her on. Not telling her how you feel. You fell off that pier thinking about me and you know it. You feel
trapped by her, and you can't bring yourself to hurt her by telling her that you love--"
"No! Don't say that."
"Why not? It's true."
"So what if it is?"
"So what if it is?
So what if it is! So, tell her. Adam, you know we both love you, but
you don't love both of us. So you've got this over your head.
Don't think I don't see you curl up every time she touches you.
You try not to cringe but every day it gets increasingly harder.
Don't think I don't notice you flinch every time she tells you she loves you.
And don't think I don't know you're caught living a lie every time you lay her down on this bed and do things you wish you were doing with me."
"Joel."
"Adam."
Two months pass:
I'm back at the pier. I step up on the rail edge where I was standing the day I fell. Joel comes up behind me and places his arms around my waist. In the distance, I see Kate. This was always her favorite place, I should have expected her to be here.
I have not seen her in a month, but she is still so beautiful. She is
hand in hand with
another man now. The most she has to say about me is, "
At least he was honest."
Joel takes care of me and I relax.