Rosemarie had stopped in the hallway and asked if there was anything she could do, but Ada told her no and to go back and enjoy the rest of the reception. Rosemarie had left reluctantly, and now that Ada was on the other side of the door alone, she wished she’d asked her to stay. Grayson had taken the boys home already, put them to sleep. She needed to get her mom out of the bathroom and into bed so she could send her little sister off on her honeymoon with sparklers and go home.
“I’ll…sleep in here,” her mom slurred. Ada watched the light disappear underneath the rectangle slip of door.
“Mama, no. No. You’ll be much comfier in bed. Please. Open the door for me and everything will be perfect. Don’t you love it when everything is perfect? I do!” Ada said.
“Oh yes, I love it wheneverthing is…perfect,” her mom said. The light flicked on again. The lock clicked. Her mom’s eyes were closed and she was leaning against the wall.
“Why’d you drink so much when you knew you had to take your pills too?” Ada asked.
“I need them. I take them because I need them,” her mom said with a thick tongue. Ada put Holly’s limp arm around her neck and carefully guided her to the bedroom. Got her in bed, unzipped her dress, and shimmied it off, only then realizing she’d peed on herself.
Ada went to the bathroom and cleaned up the floor, got a soapy wet towel and wiped her mom’s legs and in between them, positioned her on her side under the covers, naked from the waist down. She was snoring by the time Ada turned off the light. Her dad was out back with his friends; her brothers were out there drinking with theirs. Ada was upstairs alone, fixing everything. Again.
Outside, Ada grabbed a sparkler, found Rosemarie and Kasey, kissed her baby sister goodbye, and stood with everyone crying and waving as Taylor and Ben made their way down the sidewalk and got into the limousine. She told her daddy she’d put her mom to bed, then Ada drove herself home.
*
Everyone in her house was sleeping. She closed their bedroom door. Grayson was naked on his back under the covers. Ada woke him up by climbing on top of him and kissing him as she rocked her hips back and forth. Afterward, she cried. It happened sometimes.
“Are you okay?” Grayson asked.
“Yes. I’m just tired.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
2004
16
Holly Plum was the head of the PTA, so oftentimes, Ada would literally bump into her mom in the hallway at school. This time Ada was looking down at the stack of graduation flyers she’d copied in the office before first period.
“Oops! Hi, Mama,” Ada said. Her mom’s laugh was left over from another conversation that just ended.
“Hi, baby girl. I’m on my way out. Graduation committee meeting adjourned,” her mom said, adjusting her designer bag on her shoulder. She’d gotten a new French manicure earlier in the week and her hands looked so pretty Ada had to tell her so. Her mom thanked her and they stepped aside so they wouldn’t clog up hallway traffic.
“I need a white dress. Like, soon,” Ada said. Next week was the senior trip, when they’d spend three days in Adora Springs and see the Lion King musical. Graduation was only two weeks away.
“We’ll go to the mall after school,” Holly said. A teacher and a counselor walking down the hall stopped to say hello to her and she beamed, touching Ada’s shoulder.
“Okay. Thank you, love you, bye.” Ada waved to her mom and headed to class. Grayson was closing his locker and she blew him a kiss through the air.
*
After finding a white dress in her size and going back home, Ada got picked up by Grayson and they went to the lake house, where they’d have two hours alone before his parents got there.
They had sex in his bed and when they were finished, he got up, put on his boxers, and went to the kitchen. He returned with two cold red pops and opened the window.
“When we get married, can I still have a pop after we bone?” Grayson asked, snapping the tab with a hiss.
“Ew, Grayson. Don’t say bone.” Ada put her pink bra and panties back on and sat up against his headboard.
“What am I supposed to say, make love?” He laughed.
“How about you shut up, you freaking dork?” Ada said, laughing too.
“No, but seriously,” Grayson said, sitting on the edge of the bed. His shoulders, his arms, his bare chest: Grayson Castelow was exactly what she wanted her boyfriend to be. He was a dream. Her mom had told her once that Grayson was perfect, but Ada didn’t need her mom to tell her. She knew it already and it didn’t even matter if he was perfect to anybody else; he was perfect to her.
She watched him scratch at his earlobe, and even his earlobe was perfect. Life could maybe throw plenty of curveballs her way, but she knew she’d never forget how Grayson looked sitting on the edge of his bed with the warm spring wind blowing in. How dark his hair was, all of it—his head, his arms, between his legs. His blinking black lashes, the gentle scrape of his chin because he hadn’t shaved. How his armpits smelled like trees; how their bodies carried the misty musk of both of them now.
“Seriously, what? Can you drink pops after we’re married? What kind of question is this, Grayson?” Ada asked.
“Will you really marry me someday, though, when it’s time?” Grayson asked, taking a sip.
They’d joked about it and her girlfriends teased her about it, but it wasn’t like he’d asked her. It didn’t matter yet. She was seventeen, not even out of high school! It wasn’t like they were getting married next week or even next year, but it did feel like magic, Grayson sitting there in the golden light, being all serious about it.
“You know I will. Come here,” she said, hooking her finger at him and kissing him once he was close enough.
“I love you, Ada Plum.”
“I love you too, Grayson.”
Unlike Kasey and Silas, who would be ripped apart in July, and unlike Rosemarie and Sparrow or Rosemarie and Leo, who weren’t sure what they were to each other yet, and unlike Caro and Beau, who couldn’t be what they wanted to be, Ada and Grayson had it easy—had it all planned out. They would get married and be as happy as her parents. They’d have babies. She and her mom would expand Plum Inc., and she and Caro would stay in Goldie and be best friends and small-town princesses, and Roses and Kase would come home a lot. They’d be friends and sisters forever, raise their kids together.
Why couldn’t they have it all? Not everyone could, Ada knew that, but some people could! Somewhere, somehow, it had to be true. It was almost graduation, almost time for one chapter of her life to be over and for the next one to begin. She was ready.
She felt abuzz in Grayson’s bedroom thinking about it. Thinking about everything. They kissed and kissed until their mouths were almost numb, and on the drive to her place, they rolled the windows down. Ada put her pink toenails up on the dash, and Grayson had his hand on her leg. The birds were singing, and she and Grayson were singing along with the radio too. Goldie was alive and shimmering—the air glowed yellow and orange against the fresh green like it always did in the springtime, like it always would.
Act II
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.