I walk back to Adam’s apartment. The college kids who rent the places downstairs must be at class or sleeping. It is so quiet. I decide I’ll sit in the sunlight and put my feet up and read. Maybe if I work my way through Adam’s books I’ll have things to talk about that are far from who I used to be.
I get myself a Coke from the fridge and stand on the couch in my socks to look at Adam’s books. But instead of choosing one, I stare at the picture of Adam from college, really look at the other guys this time. I wonder where they ended up, because since I’ve been here, none of them have called. Adam hasn’t done more than go to euchre with a few other townies. And even though he smiles at me all the time, it’s a few degrees faded from his smile in the picture, and you can tell he wasn’t quite happy then. I wonder if maybe all you do is meet people and lose them and your smile fades the further you go because you have to carry the space they leave. Maybe it all just turns into old pictures on a bookshelf, engraved rings, memories of sticking stars to a ceiling, and maybe the space gets bigger and heavier every year.
I use the phone number Adam left on the fridge and call him at his office.
“Yo,” he says when he picks up.
“Um, it’s me,” I say. “April.”
“I know,” he says. “Caller ID. I don’t usually say ‘yo’ when I pick up my phone.”
“I’m home early,” I tell him. “Just thought I’d let you know.” It reminds me of when I lived over the Wash ’n Fold and I had to call my dad after I got home and locked the door behind me. That was when he worked at the electric company, before he got fired. When he had a work number I could call.
“Hey, I’m just grading papers,” Adam says. “I can work on them later. Want me to come home? We can go do something. See the falls, maybe.”
I say, “Yes, I’d like you to come home,” and the words don’t feel as strange to me as I’d expect.
* * *
Adam picks me up and says we’re going to Tackonick Falls, but when we get there somehow Tackonick is actually the way Taughannock is pronounced.
I like the way Adam looks when he’s driving—his hat pulled back further than usual, a few curls peeking out around his forehead, the scratched wire-rimmed glasses he only wears in the car sit slightly crooked on his nose. I like the way he focuses on the road completely, as if I’m precious cargo and he’s being very, very careful.
He parks and we walk on a crushed stone path along a creek. I hear the rush of water from the falls long before we see it. The creek is close to dry and the water that’s left is almost completely frozen. When we get closer to the falls the boulders in the creekbed are glazed with ice, thick and white like frozen milk. None of it looks real. The cliffs are so high and it’s hard to tell what’s frozen and what’s moving water. I blink and think maybe when I open my eyes I’ll just be looking at a plain old creek in plain old woods, but the falls are still there, like someone painted a huge picture and left it for us. My eyelashes are heavy with snowy droplets, and everything looks blurry and bright and misty. My teeth chatter.
“It’s too soon, isn’t it?” Adam says as he wraps me in his arms. Somehow he’s still so very warm. I hug him back. “But…” He wipes mist off my cheek. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
He kisses me before I can say anything, which is good, because I don’t know what I should say.
* * *
We stop at Wegmans just outside of town and buy food for dinner. Not the quick kind of dinners we usually have. Adam buys tiny round steaks that get wrapped up in paper at the meat counter, asparagus, big fat egg noodles, and real garlic, not the chopped stuff in the jar Dale used at Margo’s.
Adam stops at the liquor store on the way home and leaves the car running for me while he goes in to buy a bottle of wine. And I’m nervous because I know something is different about this, but I’ll never be different enough to not have lied to him.
* * *
Adam sets me up in the living room with the TV remote and a glass of wine and the bottle just in case. He tells me I get to be a lady of leisure while he makes dinner. I flip channels for a while, but TV chatter is a reminder of my old life. It makes me feel like a bag of coffee spilled in the dirt and I realize I’d rather listen to the rhythm of Adam chopping things in the kitchen, the clink of pots and pans, and the sound of water boiling. I drink my wine and pour some more and think about how these are the sounds of what a home is supposed to be. This is what most people grow up to. I lie on the futon with my hair falling over the side to the floor and watch the way the light changes as the sun sets, and the smell of garlic gets warmer and fuller, and I think of it all like a song, with words I can’t quite hear yet. I hold my hands like I have a guitar and pretend I’m strumming to try to focus the words in my head. Something about deception, something about perception, and something about home and love boiling in the kitchen and light turning to dark on the ceiling.