He nods again. I hold my palm out for the notebook, and he hands it over.
When I open it, I see that it’s almost completely filled with scribbled lines. Lyrics. There are random phrases everywhere, written in varied sizes and slants—almost none of them actually following the lines of the paper. “There aren’t any notes in here,” I say as I flip through the pages.
“Sure there are.” Adam takes the notebook back and flips through it before he finally finds what he’s looking for. He slides it over to me. “See?”
The note—literally, just one—says to finish the homework on page 82 for Monday—which, if I remember correctly, means that it’s more than two weeks old.
“Did you?” I ask Adam as I hand back his notebook.
“Did I what?” He flips to a blank page.
“Finish the homework?”
He hesitates before saying, “That’s not the point.”
I immediately start laughing again, and he grins at me. “I think we need to get you a new notebook.”
“Or a cute note taker,” he says with a smirk, and I scoff.
“As if those girls would actually know how to take good notes.” I’d be impressed if the girls he sits with in class even know how to read.
“What girls?” He looks thoroughly confused, his eyebrows scrunched together over eyes locked with mine.
“Those girls you always bring with you to class.”
He laughs and scratches the back of his head. “I don’t bring them. They just kind of follow me.”
I want to comment on how unbothered he seems about that, but I bite my tongue, dropping the conversation and resuming the lesson. I assign Adam written exercises, and eventually, I slide into the booth seat beside him so I can show him exactly what he’s doing wrong. When the server brings our food and sets it in front of us, I quickly move back to my side and pull my plate in front of me.
Adam is eyeing me curiously when I glance up at him. “What’s your deal?” he asks me.
“What do you mean?”
He looks at our server, an elderly woman who is now helping a family of four sitting three tables down, and then back at me. “Why’d you dive back over there?”
I don’t really know how to answer that. Because I’m getting way too cozy with you and I’m pretty sure your absence is going to feel like a giant gaping hole in my life when I have to get back to reality?
Adam sighs and sets his fork back down. “Look, if this is about last night—”
“It’s not.”
“I’m sorry. I’d had a lot to drink, and then you were in the room and I just thought—”
“Adam, it’s not that. It’s cool, alright?”
He frowns like he doesn’t believe me. “Then what is it?”
“You don’t think it would be weird if we sat on the same side?”
His head tilts slightly. “Why would it be weird?”
“It’d look like we were dating or something . . .”
“So?”
“So . . . I don’t know.”
“So what you’re saying is you have no good reason?” A one-sided smile is sneaking onto his lips, making me feel a strange mix of emotions. Embarrassment and . . . something I don’t want to think too hard about.
“I’m sure I have a good reason . . . I just can’t think of it right now.”
Adam laughs and picks his fork back up. “Then I think you should get back over here.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
I don’t answer him. Because again, I have no idea what the hell to say to that. Instead, I busy myself with drenching my pancakes. I stir a mountain of sugar into my coffee as I let the syrup soak in, and then I pour another layer on. When Adam cuts off portions of both of his French toast piles and his crepe and slides them onto my plate, I cut off a big chunk of my pancakes and slide them onto his.
He smiles down at the pancakes as he carves into them. “The guys really like you.”
The compliment makes me blush. I’m glad they don’t hate me. “They’re pretty awesome.”
Adam takes a bite of my condiment-logged breakfast and chuckles with his mouth full. “Holy shit, this is syrupy.”
I grin at him. “Only way to have it.” While he’s swallowing it down with a big gulp of coffee, I tell him, “My friend Dee and I eat at IHOP a lot. We always get the strawberry pancakes. And if we’re hungover, we order them with sides of bacon, and she always tries to steal mine.”
Adam starts cutting into a second bite. “Really? It happens enough that you have a routine set up?”
Okay . . . I really need to stop opening my big mouth. I attempt a casual shrug. “I guess. She’s kind of a wild child. We’ve been friends since . . . well . . . forever.” I hope that changing the focus from me to Dee will help steer this conversation away from drunken nights, one of which was notably spent with a very hot rocker boy who is currently sitting across from me paying nerve-racking attention to my every ill-conceived word.