Page 11 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

I push the bathroom door wide, and the scratch of the metal trash can against the floor bounces off every white ceramic surface in the modern space. My entrance is so loud and so inelegant that his failure to acknowledge it has to be deliberate.

He’s sitting on the edge of the spa bathtub, so I’m left to make do with the lidded toilet. The back of Adam’s neck radiates irritation, but somehow, I still notice that he smells good—notes of firewood, hot coffee, and soap, but that last one might be the eleven or so mostly empty bottles of shampoo and body wash lying next to him on the white hexagonal tile. A few are economy sized, but most are hotel filched.

Adam grimaces at a dark gray bottle of body wash, the dried bits of creamy light blue soap crusted down the side in a hardened drip. “I’m tossing anything perishable or mildewy first. I emptied the fridge, so that’s dealt with.”

“You work fast.” I hold my hand out for the soap.

“Did you want anything in the fridge?” Judgment rings through his tone.

“No. It’s fine. Fast is good. Better than good,” I prattle, flailing my arms. Mercifully, the shower curtain has obscured his face, so he can’t see me.

“I would’ve been faster, but Judy asked me to wait for you.”

It’s faint, but if I listen, I can hear how put out he is by having to consider me at all.

“In case I want to keep his half-used bottle of men’s Dove?” I hold the bottle up like a slimy trophy before setting it next to the other soaps on the floor.

He grunts, turning away from me.

I promised Sam’s sister I’d play along, I remind myself. For Sam and his family. Sam. Sam. Sam.

“I’m sorry. It was nice of you to make sure.” I hesitate, briefly wondering whether Sam’s Current Girlfriend would be able to part with his things so easily. “I’ve never been much for remembering people through their stuff, but I’m glad to help sort through it all, especially for his family,” I say, to remind him why we’re both here.

Adam points at the trash can, his face expressionless. I uncap a tube of hair pomade and inhale the scent one last time before tossing it in with a low clunk. I don’t know why I do it—or why I do it with the other hair products—before discarding it forever. It doesn’t conjure a feeling or a particular memory, just Sam’s smell. One small, static part of him I can hardly remember.

I wipe dried toothpaste off the inside of the medicine cabinet with a sponge while Adam rubs Goo Gone on a mysterious, tacky stain Sam hid behind a painting. Every so often, I attempt friendly conversation. Adam always seems to thwart it.

“Adam.”

He doesn’t respond.

Adam lost his best friend, I remind myself.

“Adam,” I repeat, touching my hand to his forearm. His eyes dart to my fingers and then up to my eyes. I’m intending a reassuring, supportive pat of camaraderie—a You and me, buddy, we’re in this together gesture. What I’m delivering is more of a tentative middle-school-dance hold.

My self-preservation instincts are screaming at me to remove the offending hand and run out the door in humiliation, but I can’t.

It’s my first proper look at Adam since the luncheon, and he looks completely different outside the context of a funeral. His eyes are just as striking as before, but today, there’s a warmth to them, like hot chocolate so decadent and rich, coffee shops would have to call it “drinking chocolate.”

His dark brown hair is oddly swoopy, like he’s been nervously tugging at it. Under the lights of the bathroom vanity, I see the way his beard is dusted with gray hairs and wonder if I might be into this silvery detail if I allowed myself to examine my reaction to it. Which I will not.

The whole “unkempt man of the woods” thing is a more appealing picture in his comfortable posture and regular clothes—jeans, off-white Henley, and Red Wing leather boots showing signs of serious wear. His shirtsleeves are pushed up to his elbows, doing that sexy-magic thing Henleys do to male bodies by pulling tight through the chest and arms to make shoulders look their brawniest and forearms look their forearmiest.

He’s not sculpted in the way Sam was—a body that required hours of targeted work to maintain. Adam’s body is muscled in the way men are when they develop strength through chopping wood in the forest.

And now I’m imagining Adam chopping wood in the forest.

But it’s not as if he’s passively accepting my appraisal. He’s looking back, his gaze heavy on my skin like fingertips padding along the blush blooming on my neck, my cheeks, the tips of my ears. I shudder to think what he’s cataloging about me.

It’s at this moment the realization crashes into me. Mara was right, and if I wasn’t noticing him at the funeral, I am now, while I’m perched on the toilet lid in my dead ex-boyfriend’s bathroom. Neither the location of this revelation nor the flush creeping up my body in this current moment is ideal.

His mouth turns down at the corners as we run out the clock on what would be a normal amount of time to look at another person. I can either acknowledge it and make a joke or tear my arm away and cower in shame and denial.

I choose the latter, dropping his arm to ask, “You didn’t empty the freezer, did you?” I’m out of the bathroom and crossing the living room toward the kitchen before his mouth can form a response.

He yells from his seat on the bathtub. “Some of it, but I left behind—”

“Yahtzee!” I smile into the glowing freezer, letting the cold air cool my cheeks.

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