Page 115 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Yeah, I know,” Adam says, his eyes in another dance to Levi. “Your mom told me.”

Something in Adam’s voice, like another accusation, has me managing a glance at Levi, who appears to retreat to somewhere in his thoughts before he nods like he’s not surprised.

“I get busy and you use that to your advantage and swoop in again,” Adam says, still to Levi, the accusations unmistakable now.

He blurs in and out of my sight, my stomach suddenly clenched so tight, cutting off my air.

Busy. That’s what he’s calling his—

Busy?

“You swooped in,” Levi says back, lower, but more pointed, more emphasis on his best friend.

Adam seems to freeze, Levi holding him in a stare that lasts so many loud heartbeats before Adam shifts the stare back to me.

“Why would he fight for you?” He’s half breathless, a pinched, pained crease in his cheek. “You’re with me.” A claim so bitter and broken, with an underlying desperation that feels bigger than just this moment. Like we’ve somehow been here before, that I can’t and couldn’t have been with anyone else.

Go to Adam. Ask him what happened. . .

“Adam…” Levi says his name like a defense for me, and I’m dizzy in the back and forth.

Two different pains, the same sickly confusion.

Thunder rumbles, and the first drop of rain hits my cheek, blending with the tear that rolls down at the same time, the outside storm and mine, both snapping me forward.

I start stalking toward Adam, my shuffles through the grass magnified again, as are his and Levi’s voices, both calling out my name as I keep moving past Adam for the house.

Just—

“Fuck you both,” I call back, barreling through the front door and swinging it shut behind me.

My stalk away continues to lead me to the guest room for a moment to breathe, ironically, inside more walls that have seen more moments where I couldn’t.

Footsteps barrel in after me, and I spin to Adam as he follows me insideourwalls, the walls we’ve built, with a flush in his face, his mouth open with a string of words waiting on his tongue, but they’ll have to keep waiting.

“Don’t give me shit,” I tell him, through a last gust of released air, my hands swatting up like stop signs. “You haven’tbeenhere.”

He stalls his steps, like my hands have some halting power, then stresses, “I’ve beenworking,” his voice more laborious than I’ve ever heard it.

“That’s not even what I mean,” I snap, my voice more frustrated than I’ve ever heard it.

“What the hell do you want from me?” he snaps back.

“I know what Iwanted.”

My use of the past tense stuns us both for only a moment before Adam continues with the same pressing tone for answers that’s just his defenses I’ve heard all year, living inside their pollution, breathing them in like secondhand smoke.

“I’m going through a lot of shit—” he starts, again, like he’s the only one stuck beneath the pile.

“And itisshit,” I cut in with a press, too, another agreement for us both. “But you thought coming back here would help. You’ve always wanted out of this town,” I say, the true depth of my disbelief when we first talked about this at our old apartment coming out. “You hate your father. You don’t even ask how I’m doing with mine,” I chide him at the same time he chides with, “And you love yours again.”

We pause in that pain, our widened eyes on each other through heavy breaths, our shared ache of fathers, mine the one on the mend.

“My dad wanted this,” I say, softer, that part of me always softened to that part of him. “I’m sorry yours doesn’t.”

Adam scoffs with a headshake that I know is more toward his personal relationship to his father than to me, but this dismissive way about him puts me back in my own defensive mode. Especially after he adds, like an inarguable finger-pointing, “We’re not together in anything anymore, but you’re together in everything with Levi, huh?”

His cheeks drain of some color as his eyes slide off to the side, a look like longing at the bed as if he wants to hide from the words. His hiding place. Now all my brain can think whenever I see a bed he’s buried himself in, his simple stare in that direction.

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