“What did you do if you didn’t know how to add up items?” I ask.
“I just did each one as a separate transaction,” Bodie says, moving his coffee stirrer to the other side of his mouth. He scoops espresso into the little metal basket, tamps it down slowly, carefully, like it’s the only thing he has to do all morning.
It drives me crazy. “I got this.” I grab the tamper out of his hand. “You take orders and I’ll get them done,” I say, even though I still have to look at the board to see what goes in which drink. I throw my weight into tamping the coffee and screw the basket into the machine, but by the time I finish the drink, Bodie is too busy chatting up some cute hippie girl in a chunky sweater to have an order for me. “Next up?” I ask.
The girl smiles. “Oh, I don’t know what I want yet.” She steps back like she’s just now going to look at the board and think about her order.
“I’ll come back to you,” I say, pointing to the person behind her, who looks relieved. Hippie girl and Bodie move to the side, continuing with whatever the hell they’re talking about, and I go into full gear.
Carly comes in a few minutes later with a sack of coffee slung over her shoulder, walking bowlegged because it’s so heavy. Bodie doesn’t even look up or offer to help. I’ve got the line down to three people now, if you don’t count the hippie girl, and I don’t. The last person in line is Adam. He smiles at me whenever we make eye contact.
Carly dumps the sack on the counter with a loud thump. “You are a saint,” she says, hugging me dramatically when she gets to my side of the counter. It makes me blush like when Margo hugs me. “I was dreading what I’d walk into, leaving Bodie in charge. He’s lucky he’s cute, huh?” She rolls her eyes. “Bodie! Kitchen!”
Bodie pats the hand of the hippie girl, takes the pencil from behind his ear, and writes something on a napkin that he hands to her. And as ridiculous as Bodie is and as much as it’s nice to have Adam smiling at me while he waits for his coffee, I still wish just a little bit that whatever Bodie was writing he was writing for me.
“Alright, alright,” Bodie says, walking past us.
Carly takes one of the dish towels and snaps it at his ass. “Could you be any more blond?” she says as he walks through the door to the kitchen.
“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful!” Bodie screeches, the door swinging shut behind him.
— Chapter 19 —
We don’t have sex, Adam and me. There could be a big difference in the way you have sex with a teenage boy in the back of his mom’s station wagon and the way you have sex with a man who you live with. Maybe I’m supposed to seduce him. Maybe I’m supposed to drive to the mall when my shift is over and buy lacy things to wear to meet him at the door when he comes home. But I don’t go to the mall after my shift. I go back to Adam’s place, and I wear Margo’s old leopard leggings and one of Adam’s sweatshirts, and drink a Coke and watch Ren & Stimpy until he gets home. And then we order pizza and play Rook until we can’t stop yawning.
Adam never asked me to move in exactly. He just kept offering me spaces for my things. My clothes are hanging in his closet, which was half-empty anyway, like the girl before me left that space and Adam never even thought of spreading his clothes out to the other side. My toothbrush lives in the cup on the edge of the bathroom sink with his. A few of the mugs from Margo’s Diner are in the cabinet with his nice mugs and he uses them like he doesn’t even mind the chipped rims. I wish I had someone to ask if this is how it happens. It’s the kind of thing I’d ask Margo if I could.
I didn’t even know my dad knew Irene before he stopped coming home. So I certainly don’t know if she asked him to stay or he just stopped leaving. Matty and I were going to get married before we got a place together, and even though, deep down, I didn’t want to marry Matty, at least there was some kind of order to that plan. With Adam, I feel like there’s something I’m missing and I don’t even know where to find it.
Sometimes, when Adam has a couple beers, we fool around on the futon in the living room that’s always folded up like a couch now. I sleep with him in his bed. But we don’t have sex ever, and we don’t do much more in bed than kiss good night.
Once Matty and I started messing around, all he ever wanted to do was have sex. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if he heard a word I said, but it’s like he was addicted to me and that mattered more than the kids who teased him about his weirdo girlfriend or his mom picking at him to find someone better. It mattered more than when I bruised his ego with a joke or turned him down when I didn’t want his grabby hands on my body. I knew I had this power over him, and I liked it.