Page 49 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

Alison:

That’s it. I’m quitting to become a carpenter. Hallmark will write a movie about my move to a small town to open a bespoke cabinet shop to save the town Christmas parade, and in doing so, its very soul! It’ll be called A Cabinet for Christmas.

11:54 AM

Adam:

I feel like you think I build a single cabinet from sunup to sundown.

11:55 AM

Alison:

You do in MY Christmas movie.

13

The North Shore Grump Has Left the Chat

On Saturday, Adam reassembles the kitchen cabinets while I pack up the last of Sam’s overcrowded closets. We work in companionable silence, except I’m hyperaware of every time our bodies nearly brush against each other.

I don’t remember the last time I felt this crazy, like I needed to catalog and dissect every tiny, nearly imperceptible look. After he licks his lips and glances at me before settling his gaze on a cabinet hinge, I spend five minutes deciphering the series of movements. Following an embarrassing amount of deliberation, I decide that if he’d looked at me and then licked his lips, it would’ve meant something. As it stands, he must’ve had a dry mouth while glancing in my direction.

In the afternoon, he holds the stepladder behind me. I stiffen, studying the feel of his shadow around me for my data analysis. It’s pure insanity from sunup to sundown as the preoccupations of a boy-crazy sixteen-year-old ping-pong around my skull.

In an absolute travesty, we end the day with a noncommittal, one-armed hug. Still, the familiar scent of cedar and oranges unravels me into the door frame.

Sunday morning is a different story. I wake up to a calendar alert—drafted by me, not the ghost of boyfriends past—reminding me of my annual appointment with my breast surgeon at noon. Still, I won’t let it dampen my mood, because Sunday is another day I get to see Adam.

I drive into Minneapolis at a snail’s speed as icy flakes travel across my windshield in sideways gusts. Color has leached from my knuckles by the time I turn into Sam’s parking entrance with a student-driver level of edginess.

“Hello?” I holler once I’ve trudged through Sam’s propped-open door. The sharp scent of paint primer in the air, I cautiously step around boxes clutching the Starbucks drink carrier Adam’s come to expect. “If you’re a robber, my dad’s Liam Neeson,” I yell.

“So it’s Alison Neeson?” Adam spies me from a ladder in the living room, where he’s hard at work spackling over divots in the walls. His pants are slung low on his hips and splotched with different tones of wood stain and paint. His gray long-sleeve has fared a bit better, with only the occasional splatter of white paint. “I’ve been wondering,” he says, biting back a smile.

“Mullally, actually. The Liam Neeson thing was a clever ruse.”

Before I can blather on, he pushes up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal the forearms that haunt my dreams. Or maybe this gesture is not for my benefit at all, and he’s just warm.

Now I’m warm. I need those hands on me for no other reason than to puncture the tension building between us and free up my brain space for necessary functions. Maybe, if I knew what it felt like to have him touch me—really touch me—I’d stop obsessing over the unknown.

“I can finally change your last name in my phone,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.

“What’s my last name now?”

I’ve once or twice saved a man’s contact as Peter GoodHair or Jordan HotFace. My skin tingles in anticipation of the descriptor Adam’s used for me.

“SamGF.”

The simple statement sucks the air out of the room. Or at least out of me.

He drops the spackling knife and climbs down the ladder. “I saved your contact a while ago. We were on that group chat for the Patagonia trip.”

“I remember,” I say coolly, removing my coat and juggling the drink carrier.

“You sounded excited about it back then. It didn’t seem like you were faking.”

I set the drink carrier down on the kitchen island. “I wasn’t faking. I was trying. I still am trying. I should go on a trip like that. Everyone should.” I’m suddenly exhausted and the day’s hardly begun.

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