Page 16 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“What about Levi?” repeated low from my mouth, as it’d been whispering across my brain since the first moment I asked. But I wondered now if he was sometimes a passenger on these drives. Was Adam’s ex the passenger? “Does he usually come along for these rides?” I asked with more of a voice, knowingthatquestion was safer than asking the other one.

Adam took several seconds to respond. “No. It’s always just me.” There wasn’t a lilt of anything in his tone, nothing to give away if he had any feelings about that. But that answered both questions. And explained why he hadn’t met with us in his car that first night after calling Levi.

I swept my gaze over the glow of Adam’s profile in the lights with that lulling feeling settling deep in my stomach. He knew this wasn’t just whatheneeded, and now I did too.

I started to like him more. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him; I just didn’t know where to lean with him. I couldn’t tell what he wanted with me, I guess. And he could be difficult to pull from, but he was here, offering his kind of support system, the ways he copes with what he has to cope with. Driving washisthing, and he was sharing it with me.

He wanted what I wanted. What I yearned for. What he told me after he dropped from my trellis. The same thing he gave to me on my way back that first night and I gave to him. Company.

“I don’t mind being your passenger,” I told him back, confirming forhim, letting him know instead of pressing him to know more of the things already pressing at him.

“I didn’t think you would.” That certain grin. That flirting. My blush. That all sat me back up as I turned toward the windshield, my exhale released as a laugh.

“Yeah, if you ever need a driving around buddy, you can holler at me.” The image of my dad’s window glowing and the sound ofheavy footsteps down the creaking hall seized that idea. “Except don’t—”

“Don’t actually holler,” Adam finished with another crease around his mouth, and I relaxed back into the seat. But his hand was still tensed at the top of the wheel. “It sucks about our dads. Mine’s not exactly like yours, clearly,” he said with a gesture at his nice car, his way of getting away. “But…”

A pit opened in my stomach for him, resting beside my own, touching in the places with feelings we shared. But mine sunk deeper in the places we didn’t.

“He’s still letting you be who you want,” I reminded him, offering the plus side I didn’t have, attempting to smile through my personal pity party.

Adam’s chuckle held his own personal pity. “Not without a price.”

He told me more about the baseball career he’d mentioned in passing that night. He only got his dad’s support to continue playing in college because he agreed to get the degree that would allow him to work at his company. His dad could hire him without a degree, but doing it properly would look better for everyone involved, his dad claimed. And Adam had a partial scholarship so he had to rely on his dad’s help for the rest if he didn’t want debt. Which he didn’t. If letting his dad think he would one day change his mind would set him free to play, he’d hit whatever books he had to. A four year sacrifice for a whole lifetime of doing what he loved? He’d take it.

I told him I would’ve taken it too.

Sport was alsohisthing. Since he was a kid, since he discovered how good he was at playing and fell in love. It was his way to make his own life.

I was seventeen and still searching for mine, time taunting me for growing a backbone too late.

Adam’s story was another example of the distance between me and so many other teenagers. My arms pressed in closer to my stomach as I told myself I wasn’t behind, they were just ahead. Even when it felt like a lie.

“I have to major in something, right?” were Adam’s final words on the subject before he turned up the music, and now, I was ready to move on too.

“Let’s have some fun,” he whooped over the song. It wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I knew the lyrics.

That fun-loving nature back in Adam’s voice brought back the bounce in my body as he finger-punched a button on the dash.

I followed the sudden sound above my head and my mouth hung open again.

His car had a sunroof.

Ihad memories that weren’t my own of people’s experiences with sunroofs, and I was already unclipping my seatbelt to make mine.

“Ready to try it out?” Adam asked with a laugh at my eagerness I wasn’t even trying to cover anymore.

“Can I?” It was a murmur, so soft, like this sunroof was some magical portal, or like I was a Disney princess taking my magical carpet ride.

Ireallyneeded to get out some more.

Then I was, seeing the world waist up in the warm wind that whipped at my face and through my hair as Adam flew down the road.

There were lights lining the white lines and some off in the distance, where I could see the bay.

I spread out my arms and closed my eyes and imagined myself on a boat.

Then I snapped my eyes open. Back to the car. Back to the road. Staying in this moment, that was real.

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