“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.