Page 37 of Dear Adam
“That thing has been blowing up ever since we started again.” Outwardly, I’m the picture of calm, cool, and collected, but really, I’m wondering who could possibly be trying to reach her so badly, if they are an attractive male, and how I’m going to knock him into yesterday if he’s interested in her.
She giggles and swipes open an app on her phone. “It’s blowing up because ofyou,” she says. “If you thought people loved that pic of you hanging up a light fixture, people areobsessedwith you tiling a shower in your underwear.”
All the color drains from my face, and my stomach instantly plummets to the ground. “Please tell me you didn’t actually post me in my underwear,” I choke out. I’m not ready for the world to know I love these unicorn boxers.
“If you would just download the app, you could look for yourself.” She’s still scrolling, and her glasses start sliding down the bridge of her nose. I fight the urge to gently push them up and set them straight. “Not happening. That’s one stress I don’t need in my life. I need to know though, am I really gracing the social media world with my unicorned butt?”
“No,” she replies, the corners of her lips twitching with pleasure at my discomfort. “I’m notthatheartless. But I did post a picture of you tiling it before you lost your pants, and the people love it.” She turns the phone to me and for a moment, I’m awestruck by the number of people who have liked a photo ofme.
“What are these?” I ask, pointing to the top right hand corner. A ridiculous number of red notifications are glowing there, too.
“Those are nothing,” she answers quickly.Tooquickly.She white-knuckles the phone, and her eyes have grown to the size of golf balls.
“If they’re nothing, let me see them.”
“Nope.” She manages to get one leg around me in an attempt to flee the bathroom, but I wrap both arms around her from behind. With one hand, I reach blindly for the phone. Aly is doing everything in her power to make sure I can’t see it, and for a second, the way her body is shimmying and writhing against mine distracts me from my mission.
“Let me read just one!” I spin her around with both hands on her hips. We’re close enough now that I can trace constellations in the freckles smattering her sun kissed cheeks and nose. Her breath is warm on my neck, and her chest rises and falls with every breath.
“Why?” she asks in a small voice, grasping the phone in both hands, hanging on for dear life.
“Why are you hiding them from me?" I ask, finally aware this isn’t a game to her at all.
“I don’t want you to see them,” she whispers.
“Are they mean? Are you trying to protect me from some cyber bully? I can handle it, Aly.” I don’t use social media, but know enough about it to understand that people can be cruel for no reason other than their own sick and twisted pleasure.
“The exact opposite actually.” She offers me a tight-lipped smile.
“I won’t look at them if you don’t want me to.” If she doesn’t want me to see what’s hiding behind those little red notifications, I’m sure she has a good reason, and I trust her.
“Technically though, itisyour account though,” she offers.
“I promise, whatever they are, you can delete them, and I’ll never ask about them again.”
“Womenloveyou,” she blurts. “Every day, a hundred new messages come in asking for your number, wanting to know if you’ll take them out to dinner, or sometimes… sometimes, they’re a little more aggressive than that.” She looks away from me, but not fast enough for me to miss the way her cheeks flush crimson.
“And that makes you unhappy?” I ask, tipping her chin up with my index finger.
“It makes me feel a lot of different ways,” she admits. Her cheeks blush impossibly deeper and gently, I pry her bottom lip free from her teeth with my thumb.
“You can delete them,” I assure her. “I don’t want to see them anyway.”
“You don’t?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Nope. We did this to drum up business, remember? That’s it.”
“You don’t even want to see one?” she presses. “Some of these girls arereallypretty.”
“Right now, I don’t want to focus on anything but what’s in front of me.” My voice dips and my eyes trail down to her swollen bottom lip.
This is it. This is the kiss she deserved a few mornings ago. Ididbrush my teeth this morning however, and now nothing can stop me. I close my eyes, lean in, and prepare myself for a soft landing on that perfect mouth. Instead, she dips her head and shimmies out of my grasp. When I open my eyes, she’s standing in the doorway with a satisfied smirk, bouncing lightly on her toes.
“Where are you going?” I ask, a little breathless and a whole lot embarrassed.
“I’m hungry,” she says simply, all traces of the shyness from moments ago gone. Instead, she looks smug, like she’s just won a game I didn’t know we were playing.
“You coming or not?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow.
