Page 35 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“And at my sister’s house in Minneapolis. June’s pretty handy, but she’s usually busy with my nephew, and her husband, Dev, works a lot.”

“You guys must be close. That’s nice.”

“Yeah, but we’re complete opposites. She’s bubbly and full of energy. Super chatty. She’s like color personified.”

“Really? That sounds exactly like you.”

A low laugh rumbles from Adam’s chest. The sound reverberates through my limbs and disrupts my equilibrium. I grope at the floor.

“What took you to Duluth?” I ask.

“The carpentry master I apprenticed under got me temporary work with a contractor in Duluth until I was ready to start my business in Minneapolis. And that was about seven years ago, so…” This laugh is hollow and uncomfortable. “Waiting for the timing to line up.”

I want to ask more, but I like talking with him too much. I suspect pressing this particular topic will disrupt our delicate back-and-forth.

“Can you shine the light over here?” His voice strains with the movement of his wrench.

“Sorry.” My arm, having drooped under the weight of a whopping half-pound flashlight, is spotlighting the inch of Adam’s torso that I’m definitely not thinking about. “So, in Duluth, do you live with roommates or—”

“Alone,” he interrupts.

Sam talked about Adam’s dating life once. I’d asked him about setting him up with Chelsea. I wanted someone steady and kind for her, and he brought up and dismissed the idea of Adam.

He never dates. No one seems to be worth the effort, he said. It painted a portrait of Adam as an arrogant ass. That image doesn’t match up with the man I’m with today. Prickly and stubborn? Yes. But self-important jerk?

“You’ve stopped talking,” he observes, seconds or minutes later.

“Yes, Adam. I’m aware that you think I talk too much.”

“Too much implies I don’t like it.” The word like wraps around me like a worn flannel shirt. He pushes himself out from under the cabinet and stands.

I side-eye him. “Yeah? Yesterday, did you like when I read off the titles of everything in Sam’s entertainment cabinet?”

“Especially the part where you were struggling to sort his Xboxes. Riveting stuff,” he deadpans, cleaning the new polished nickel faucet with a dry rag.

“I’m still not over that. It goes 360, One, and then Series S? Who names this stuff?” A smile pulls at my lips despite my best efforts to contain it. “I don’t mind silence. I actually like it. I don’t like when other people feel uneasy with it.” Everything they’re not saying presses against my chest—it carries a weight—and if I let it go too long, the quiet turns on me. Judges me. It assigns blame.

They wouldn’t be writhing in this interminable silence if you were a more interesting, captivating, exciting person, my insecurities whisper.

So rather than face down that voice, I fill the space with my own chatter.

Sam never needed me to crowd out an awkward moment because there never was one. His exuberance was relaxing up until the point where it exhausted me. Granted, some of that exhaustion may have been all of the mountain biking, rock climbing, etc.

But Adam doesn’t radiate agitation in silence. He likes it too.

He leans down to put his tools back in his toolbox, and I position myself in front of the vanity. I wince at the frizzy bangs in my reflection and promptly fuss with them.

When I turn the sink handle to wet my hair, I barely register Adam’s shout before witnessing the water sputter violently all over the front of my white shirt and numb breasts in the mirror. An unintelligible, startled sound chokes out of my throat, and I stand there, frozen.

“Air bubble,” he explains, searching the empty bathroom for a towel. My eyes are fixed on my startling entry to this impromptu wet T-shirt contest. Numb everywhere it matters, I feel only the damp, cold sensation spreading across my neck and stomach as I twirl away from the traitorous sink.

Wherever my nipples are in the universe, they are no doubt chilled and perky.

Finding no towel in the bathroom—I packed them all the first day—Adam averts his eyes and leaves for the bedroom.

One of the only upsides of not having nipples is going braless in a white tee. During my recovery, I met with a tattoo artist specializing in three-dimensional nipple art. She explained that without nipples, my breasts would look incomplete—“a face without a nose,” she said. She promised tattoos would fill the gaps in my confused brain so I’d no longer do the dreaded double take in a mirror.

By the time I’d healed enough for tattooing, they didn’t seem incomplete to me. They didn’t look anything like my old breasts, but they looked like my breasts, so I decided against the cosmetic substitution. But my first time with a guy after my surgery, I finally understood.

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