Page 72 of Our Hearts Knew Better

Well, teen Summer…we’re doing it.

This is the closest I’ll ever be to home. The closest I’ll ever be to the girl I found here, the girl who has always deserved more.

You deserve wholly.

That’s what I need again. That feeling I had that summer.Thatpromise.

I hate I’m thinking this again, butthank you, Griffin.

With a stop at the first red light, both my feet jumpy inside my wedges, but my right still gentle on the brake, I exorcize that thankfulness with athank you, Clarissa. She can be a little demon all her own when you need her to be, but she’s the savior.

I peek at people in their yards as I pass through streets—avoiding my father’s—most faces ones I recognize. Which means they’ll recognize me, and most definitely Adam. We’ll give them something to talk about, and I doubt it’ll be love.

The blast of the air conditioning and Adam’s low snoring from the passenger seat is the only music to my ears as I turn the wheel and press the brake and hit the gas some more times, until I stop at the curb of Adam’s old house. Now our new house. With his father.

I leave the car—no longer thebribefrom Adam’s dad, but an older model, with bench seats—running to keep my body cool as I try to do the same with my mind.

My eyes become reacquainted with every window, the deep slanted roof, the plain front door, and the garden, still tended to, the only form of calm I’ll catch when I need some.

My eyes drift down to Adam’s sleeping form, my heart bleak beats over the familiar sight, the only true form he takes now, any calm he would’ve provided me while staying with Griffin a chaos in its unpredictable predictability.

I watch him a moment longer, the air from the vents blowing wisps of his dark hair, trimmed to be morepresentable, then shake him awake. My touch on his arm is gentle, too, knowing this will be worse for him and having doubts about him returning to the carefree guy he was. Though I picked hope one more time.

And no matter how gentle I am, he still jerks to life like an explosion went off.

He blinks, sighing against the seat when he reregisters me beside him. “We make it?”

His phrasing puts a clench in my stomach, some kind of laugh, some kind of ache, and I let him pop himself straight as he looks out the windows, around his childhood yard and house.

A shadow passes over his face when it hits that we’re here.

This next phase of our life, whatever that will be, is about to begin.

We both knowexactlywhat this will be, our bodies slumped to our seats in our apprehension to leave the car.

The smile Adam gives me isn’t like the seemingly real one he gave me back in our now old apartment, but he’s trying. “Let’s go,” he drones.

Let’s go.A call, a whisper, in his seventeen-year-old voice right before we would do something exciting is what I hear instead, an echo around every wall of my heart.

“Let’s go,” I mumble to myself as I cut the engine and unclick my seatbelt. Then he unclicks his, an eagerness suddenly taking him over as he shoves open his door. Then he’s gone, almost speed walking toward the back of the car, his door left open and swinging back and forth.

I don’t have the energy to bitch and moan, and I don’t have the energy to reach across the seat and pull it closed myself, but I muster one good spring.

I slam mine like an announcement after I step out into the heat, adjusting my crop top and shorts, squinting into the sun. The humidity here, especially in the mornings, is going to be great for my straightened hair.

Adam has his bags at the bumper when I meet him at the trunk, my own bags waiting for me to haul them out too.

My eyes drift in another look toward the house, then back down at my bags.

“Let’s go.” I blurt out the repeat, sounding close to those excited teenagers we were, but with more of an urge to buy more time before we have to settle in with his father. “Let’s forget this for now and go do something.”

The Adam I knew would’ve run away from this and to me.

But he just stares at me with bent brows, looking far from wanting to get reacquainted with our old town, our old spots, our old selves. This town was never his favorite place to be, but I became his favorite person here, so his lack of movement togo, to find us again, stings.

But it’s in the way I’m used to, so I don’t bat an eye when the shadow covers his face again, his eyes scanning the neighborhood with a flicker of consideration that gives me nogasp of hope, because I feel his scowl reflected in my lips before it touches his own.

“I’m just trying to get this over with,” he says as he turns for the house with his hands full.

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