I type my phone number in the message box and hit send.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The moment after I met Kevin, I called Jess to tell her all about him, and like then, my first instinct after sending my number to Adam is to text Jess. Jess has been a right arm to my left since college. My second is to think of that message Kevin sent her last night. I don’t send the text to Jess.
Instead, Jack’s words punch through my thoughts:
“You judge yourself by her,” he states, his jaw setting hard. “Don’t argue. It’s true. You know it’s true, and to your detriment.”
Followed by Adam’s first message: You looked beautiful and natural in the first photo. In the new photo you just put up, you look guarded and awkward. As if you’re afraid to be the woman in the first photo.
I’m clearly not self-analyzing effectively enough at the moment to tie those things together, but I’m aware that these thoughts are two pieces of a puzzle. That puzzle being the reason I didn’t send that text. Maybe there is nothing really to analyze at all. Maybe there is a time in life when we all don’t just become adults; we accept that we are adults, no longer resisting that reality, and once that happens, it becomes natural and even necessary to hold some things as sacred and private.
That being Adam for me.
Ten minutes later, I’m glad I didn’t text Jess for a whole other reason. Adam has gone silent. Thirty minutes later, same story. Okay, I think, forcing myself to be logical. Obviously, it’s only a mere thirty minutes, half an hour, and life is going on outside our conversation, I remind myself. It’s almost an hour later, and I’m settled on my couch, thunder rattling my walls, a book I cannot focus on open in my lap when my phone pings with a message.
I draw a breath and count to thirty, then repeat. Another breath, another countdown. Only then do I sit up, set my book aside, and reach for my phone. A new number is now live in my messages: Hi, Mia. It’s Adam. Sorry to be slow. My boss called. He had a morning meeting and I’m dealing with budget issues for the new project.
Relief washes over me and I scold myself. I don’t even know this man. Why am I so worried about the timeline in which he contacts me? Which highway are you designing? I ask.
It’s a massive forty-million-dollar road project, which will not be focused on just one road, but to start, we’re going to address the clusterfuck that is I-24 and create an underpass.
That sounds complicated.
It’s what I do, he replies. For me, it’s just like driving a car.
I actually rarely drive, I reply. I live downtown and walk to everything.
I live in the Gulch, he says. My employer is paying for my place for the six months I’ll be here.
He’s leaving, I think. This is a temporary fix, if that, and my world tilts left and right, unsteady, uncertain.
As for the Gulch, it’s a high-end section of downtown with clusters of restaurants, shopping, and bars.
I love the Gulch, I reply and then ask what I cannot help but ask. You’ll be returning to Texas?
Unless I have a reason to stay, he confirms.
It’s a good answer. The answer a girl would want, and for that reason, I can’t allow myself to accept it at face value.
From there, we text for a good hour, about his work, and mine, until he finally says: No video chat, but can I call you?
My fingers curl on my knee. Why is this a big deal? Talking on the phone is no different from texting. I sigh and grab my earbuds before I text: Okay.
A minute later my phone rings. “Hello,” I answer.
“Hello, Mia,” he replies, his voice just as it was on the video—low, masculine, warm. “This is better.”
“Is it?” I ask.
“It is,” he assures me. “Now we can talk about things that matter.”
“We weren’t already talking about things that matter?”
“Not the really important things, like why I’m like you and you’re like me.”
I laugh nervously. “We are not the same, and I find it hard to believe you ever were.”
My phone buzzes with a text, and he says, “Look at the photo I just sent you.”
I glance down at my messages to find a picture of a man that is Adam, and yet he is not. His hair is much shorter, almost buzz cut. He’s wearing glasses. His entire persona is uncomfortable rather than confident.
“That was you,” I say, and it’s not a question.
“Yes. Now you know why I saw you beneath your photo.”
“Yes, but you’re not that person anymore.”
“Yes I am. I have always been that person. I’ve just learned how to control that part of me. Once I did, it changed my life in every possible way. Even my career. No one was paying for apartments in the Gulch for me before I changed myself. Believe in yourself, Mia.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Until it isn’t. I’ll teach you how. If you let me.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
He’ll teach me.
If I let him.
“I’m a hard damn learner,” I reply, my laugh that follows a bit choked, a familiar awkwardness in it and me that I simply can never escape.
“And I wasn’t?” he challenges. “I had to nearly die to come to my senses. But the good news is that now I can help you in your journey.”
“And what way would that be?”
“Ultimately to believe in yourself, but we both know that’s a process that takes time.”
“Forever,” I murmur.
“Not forever, but humans are not creatures of change. I read a book on this topic years ago. Did you know that a woman who grew up in an abusive home statistically marries an abusive man? We gravitate toward what we know, even if that something isn’t pleasant.”
Thunder rumbles above, the walls vibrating with the low, deep sounds, a pummeling of rain on the rooftop, as if Mother Nature is demanding I sit up straighter and listen to this man, or perhaps listen to what the history of me tells as my own story. And once again I’m thinking about my presentation in college when I’d stood at the podium and amounted to nothing more than the passing of time for the audience. This time when I think of being ignored that day, therefore free of embarrassment and failure, it’s not with the fondness of my previous framing of this moment.
We gravitate toward what we know even if that something isn’t pleasant, I repeat in my head.
Invisible is not pleasant.
Invisible is safe.
Once again, he’s in my head as he adds, “Sometimes the familiar becomes the crutch that holds us back and even tears us down.”
My phone buzzes with another call, an intrusion to this insightful conversation with Adam that I resist—that is until I eye the caller ID, and my lips press together. “I have to take this,” I say, and for reasons I cannot explain, considering I barely know Adam, I add, “It’s my mother, who I have reason to believe is probably cheating on my father. She just got home from a weekend away. I need to take it.”
He’s silent a beat and then adds, “Just remember, sometimes moving on is living life. Change is not always bad, Mia.”
“I don’t want my parents to break up.”
“But you want them to stay together and be miserable?”
“No. No, of course not.” The line stops ringing. “I want them to fix what is broken.”
“Sometimes the only way to fix what is broken is to force a change.”
“Like her sleeping with her new boss?”
“If problems in the relationship exist, removing one problem sometimes creates another.”
“You’re not telling me what I want to hear.”
“Is that what you want? For me to tell you what you want to hear?”
My phone begins to beep again. “She’ll keep calling until I take this.”
“I’ll call you in an hour,” he says, removing the question of when we will speak again, and just like that, he disconnects.
I don’t even have time to process the impact of my conversation with Adam before I’ve accepted my mother’s call. “Mom,” I greet.
“Honey,” she murmurs. Always the “honey” endearment when she wants something, as if years of salt can be removed by sugar.
“How was the trip?” I ask.