laughed. “Split more peaches? That’s a new one.”
Joe wasn’t laughing. “Go on and say it, Sadie. I’m a manwhore. You think I’m a slut.”
I studied him before I answered. “Joe…”
He wrapped up his food and stood, then tossed it in the pail next to me. He moved like a marionette dancing under the hand of an uncertain puppeteer, all jerks and twitches. He was angry. Really angry, and I stood, too.
“Joe, stop.”
He turned to me. His suit today was black, his shirt bright blue, his tie black with tiny blue dots scattered on the fabric. He put his hands on his hips, ruining the cut of his suit, which probably cost as much as my car payment.
More shadows speckled his blue-green eyes, his high cheekbones, the slope of his nose. No sign of a smile. His glare wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and it wasn’t fair they only made him better looking instead of haggard.
“I know you think it, so you might as well say it.”
“But, Joe,” I said gently. “It’s true.”
“It won’t always be true!” His words rang out, echoing.
The plants seemed to recoil, startled at this shout interrupting their usual peace.
I shouldn’t have scoffed, but his anger had made me angry, too. “Oh, please.”
Joe stalked toward me. I didn’t move away. He stood only a few inches taller but he seemed bigger in his anger. I refused to flinch even when he leaned in so close he could have kissed me, if he’d wanted. This was my role, disinterested observer, as his was playful rogue. I acted as though I wasn’t intimidated, though the truth was, being so close I could count his eyelashes, smell him, feel the heat of his breath on my face, I was. Underneath, I always was. Intimidated and turned on.
“It’s true,” he insisted through gritted teeth.
“I’ve heard that before. But every month you come back here and tell me a new story about some new woman. Or more than one. So you’ll have to forgive me if the idea of you suddenly becoming Mr. Faithful sounds a little funny.”
He jerked away from me, his finger pointing. “And every month, you listen.”
I lifted my chin. “Is it my fault you have stories to tell?”
He made a disgusted noise and gestured with his hands as if he was throwing something away. Maybe me. I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t have to prove myself to you.”
“No,” I agreed. “So why are you trying so hard?”
We’d never argued. Arguments were for people more intimate than I’d ever have admitted we were. Now my heart thumped and heat rose in my cheeks. My stomach churned and a sharp sting in my palms made me realize I’d clenched my fists. So much for the cool demeanor. I relaxed them with conscious effort, and the motion drew Joe’s gaze. He looked at my hands, then back at my face.
“What about you? What are you trying to prove?”
“Me?” The question surprised me. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why do you listen?”
Now it was my turn to gather up my garbage and toss it in the trash. I gave him my back, intensely aware I didn’t have to see him to know he was looking at me.
“Not so nice when it’s turned around on you, is it?” I could hear his smirk.
I looked at him again. “I’ve been listening to your stories for more than a year now, Joe. I guess it’s just become a bad habit.”
His body didn’t flinch, but his eyes did. “Bad habits should be broken, though, right?”
He turned on his heel and stalked away. Panic flared in me. He was messing up the parts we’d been playing for the past two years. What did that mean? That he wouldn’t be back? Or just that he wouldn’t have another story?
“Joe!”
He didn’t turn, and I had too much pride to call after him again. I waited until he’d disappeared beneath the hanging greens and I was alone in the quiet before I sat on the bench again, my mutilated fists in my lap.
The flowers reproached me, but since they had no voice, I didn’t have to listen.
Chapter 02
I met Adam at a party my freshman year of college. Not at a frat house, this party was at “lit house,” a three-story Victorian monstrosity that had been home to half the English department, grads and undergrads, for as long as anyone could remember. It was its own frat house, in a way, though the graffiti on the basement walls featured quotes from Wilde, Shakespeare and Burns, and the limericks were clever in addition to being filthy. I was there by invitation of my roommate Donna, an English major.
I wasn’t much a fan of beer, but I carried a cup anyway. Donna had abandoned me to hook up with a cute guy from one of her classes. I moved among the crowd in search of the bathroom, listening to drunken discussions about iambic pentameter and poetic imagery along the way.
In the kitchen, looking for the toilet I’d been assured was “just through there,” I found Adam. He lounged on top of the kitchen counter, his incredibly long legs encased in faded blue corduroy pants, immense feet shod in the shabbiest brown oxfords I’d ever seen. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a famous punk rock band. He had an earring glittering in one lobe and long hair. He had a cigarette in one hand and a green short-neck bottle of Straub beer in the other.
“Bathroom?” When I nodded, he pointed to the small door just beyond the door to the cellar. “The door doesn’t lock. But I’ll watch out for you.”
He flashed me a grin of perfect white teeth, the upper front tooth slightly crooked. I was smitten. I used the bathroom and came out to find him in discourse about the writing of Anaïs Nin and how it compared to present-day erotica. I didn’t leave the kitchen for the rest of the night.
It was the first time I ever got drunk.
Later, stumbling home, Donna asked me who he was.
“I don’t know,” I said with beer-bleary lips. “But I’m going to marry him.”
Two weeks later, as I left my room to go to class, I saw him leaving a message on the door of Rachael Levine, my resident assistant. Rachael was fond of lecturing the rest of us on the dangers of drinking too much and having indiscriminate sex. She didn’t seem much good at applying the same lectures to herself, though, even at twenty-two still hitting the frat parties and making a point of leaving her ample supply of condoms out in her room for anyone to see. She also liked bragging about her “brilliant” boyfriend.
His name was Adam Danning.
He turned and flashed me the smile that had so intoxicated me. “Hey. I know you.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, my entire life changed.
“You’re Sadie.”
