Page 64 of My Cosplay Escape
Adam tosses a badge, complete with lanyard, on the table. “It’s the best way to see a convention. You have a legit cover. You can people-watch from the comfort of my booth. Work different angles.”
“Like a backstage pass.”
“Exactly. Should we get some cinnamon rolls for the road?”
We do, and once we make it out of Pacific Beach and are cruising south on I-5, I eat one. Or three. To be fair, I did run 12.6 miles this morning.
“So why running?” Adam asks. His wrist resting comfortably on the steering wheel is all lean and wrapped in muscle and tendons.
“Why not?” I say, focusing my gaze out at the bay. The water around Fiesta Island catches the stray rays of morning sun and sparkles.
“Why not kickboxing? Why not yoga? Why not surfing?”
I lick the last of the cream cheese frosting from my thumb. “I dunno. I guess I crave it. I have moments where I think I can’t write another awful essay on Adam Smith. Moments in real life where I want to hide and never come out. I get through it because I know at the end of it, at some point in my future, it will just be me and the road, and I won’t have to think. I’ll be able to outrun all of my demons. All of my failures. All of my worries. Everything. I can run until there’s nothing left.”
“Nothing but you.” He glances over with some kind of introspective look that is too brief for me to tease out.
We drive on. The alstroemeria bushes in the center divide are blooming pink and white. California is gorgeous. Even the freeways.
“Were you always a runner?” Adam asks.
“No. I picked it up during the divorce. Or before…” Talk about a conversation killer.
“I hate running. Music is essential if I have to do it. How ’bout you?”
“Sometimes. Yeah. For a while, I really enjoyed making playlists for my runs.”
“Can we listen to one?”
“Because the kind of music people listen to is a direct window into their soul?”
“I’m curious. Just read off the artists on one of them.”
I grab my phone and read over the artists. Cake. Movits! Fall Out Boy. Blondie. The Used.Hamilton. “Egmont Overture.” Demi. My playlists are embarrassingly angsty—just right for pushing through the pain of those later miles, all wrong for keeping things casual with a guy as you drive down the I-5.
“Play it,” Adam says, and he laughs when he catches me cringing as Aqua bubbles from the stereo. “You’re a little all over the place.”
“I’m a lot all over the place.” I turn down the volume. “So what about you? What’s your passion? Arms that toned don’t just happen.”
He blushes, and it is the most charming thing ever. “I’m a yoga-in-front-of-the-TV kinda guy. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun at a studio too. Well, hot yoga is, anyway. I’ve tried other stuff. Jujitsu is not my thing. Surfing is too slow. I was into capoeira for a while.”
I pull off my hoodie. I’m not about to get pit stains in Adam’s car. “Is that the Brazilian dance-fighting one?”
“Yeah. Most people don’t know what it is, and trying to explain it usually doesn’t help. They end up thinking I’m a dancer.” He shrugs, and I can’t help but appreciate that his shoulders, like his arms, are very toned and very not like those of a dancer. But all the dancers I’ve known were from my fifth-grade ballet recital. Hardly an accurate pool. “I couldn’t keep up with it and grad school and my business. So I do planks and shoulder presses when I can catch the latest episode ofMBO. Maybe when grad school ends, I’ll pick it back up.” He looks over and smiles. “Nice shirt.”
My vintage Fem Fantastic tee is a nice shirt. “Why capoeira?”
“It was my mom’s idea. I was the type of kid who would literally tear things apart if I didn’t have something else to do. My mom wanted me to do dance. I wanted to do karate. Capoeira was something of a compromise.”
I snort.
“What?”
“Your mom wanted you to take dance lessons. You ended up taking Brazilian martial arts thatmayberesembles break dancing, but it’s certainly not the type of dancing your mom had in mind. That’s not a compromise.”
Adam’s lips curl into a smile, but his eyes do not leave the road. Rush-hour traffic on the five this morning is snarled up nicely. “Yeah, it is.”
“No. It’s a man’s skewed version of a compromise. Your mom gave 95%, and because she didn’t give up the last 5%, you call it a compromise. Men don’t know how to compromise.”
