She pulled away and fixed me with a smile, her bright green eyes blinking at me from behind her glasses. “I still had another week until school started, so I decided to stay a little longer in this state and spend time with my favorite cousins!”
“How’s Jake been?” Adam asked her.
“Oh, for this whole week he’s barely been in the house!” she said, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I’ve been so lonely!”
“Barely been in the house?” Adam said, his eyebrows coming together. He was worried about Jake’s well-being, I was sure of it. Things are never easy after a divorce.
“Oh, no need to worry Adam, he just has this new girlfriend that he won’t shut up about,” she said with a sigh.
A frown pulled across my face. Then I felt Adam’s hand on my shoulder.
“It’s my mom, isn’t it?” I asked.
Laura put her finger to the corner of her mouth, trying to remember, “Her name is Sarah, if I remember correctly. She was at the cookout on Sunday.”
I waved my arms in front of me as if they could stand a chance at getting rid of the memory of my mom making out with Jake behind the barn. “Ugh, I don’t want to think about that! That’s my mother!”
“Oh! Well, I’m sorry I brought it up Luke, I didn’t want to upset you!”
Adam was chuckling uncontrollably.
“Follow me into Adam’s study, I want to show you something,” Laura said, beckoning for me to go with her.
I looked behind me at Adam’s tall, hulking form, and raised my eyebrow.
He smiled knowingly.
When I entered the study, the space that had been previously filled with a desk and stacks of papers was all cleaned out. In the middle of the clean, organized room stood a bust.
“I got this for you!” Laura said, gesturing to the bust. “It was the first one I ever used when I was interested in getting into fashion design. And Adam helped me get all this stuff for you too; we’ve been shopping up a storm all week!” she said.
I turned to check out the transformed space, my mouth popping open in awe. Behind her was a shelf riddled with drawers, each one labeled a different color.
“All your thread colors are in there,” she said, gesturing to where I was looking. “In the sewing desk over here, we got you a few different pairs of scissors.
I walked over with her as she opened the drawer to show me different sizes of scissors, all shining like they were ceremonial weapons or something.
“And we got you a bunch of new fabrics you can use to try out,” she said, pointing to the corner of the room where several huge spools of multicolored prints where leaning against the wall.
I went over to inspect them. They were all prints that I would wear— one a nice taupe wool, some silky-feeling material, and a floral print. My eyes were brimming with tears.
“Adam picked that one out,” she added as she watched me touch the floral fabric.
I stood up and turned to the doorway, seeing Adam standing in it with his arms crossed, looking proud.
“You… you didn’t have to do all this!” I cried, running into his arms. “No one has ever… no one has ever encouraged me like this before!” I exclaimed, unable to stop the tears from pouring down my face.
“Aw, it was nothing,” Adam said softly, pulling me into a hug. “If anything, it gave me something to do while you were gone. And Laura helped a lot too; I don’t know how to use all this stuff or what to get for it.”
I pulled away from him and then went over to Laura, wrapping her in a huge hug too. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…” I repeated over and over again as she held me.
“Oh, you’re welcome!” She answered brightly, cradling me and humming. “I’m glad you like it. Like I said, this is pretty close to my setup I had when I started.”
“How did you… how did you even start doing this? I mean… I wouldn’t even know where to begin…”
“Tutorials!” she said. “Youtube tutorials. I’d draw something in the sketchbook here, and then try to make it real on that thing,” she gestured to the mannequin.
I was speechless. I’d had so many ideas for outfits over the years, but without a way to turn them into reality, all I’d done was sketch them. Now I was equipped with everything I needed to make my dreams into a reality.
Like I was pulled in by his orbit, I went back over to Adam and gave him a huge, tearful hug.
“Thank you… I love you so much…” I said.
He kissed me on the forehead like I was something precious and chuckled a little. “I love you too, Luke.”
26
Adam
The next few months went by so easily that I had to keep pinching myself to make sure it was real.
Luke kept working on finishing his English degree— his classes came easily to him. Every day we’d text all day, then late into the night. I couldn’t get enough of him.
There were long days at the station in those few months, but Luke kept me virtual company over the phone. Then when it was finally the weekend, I’d go pick him up and we’d spend long, lazy fall days together. When Sunday always came too quickly, I’d take him back to his dorm in the city at the very last possible hour.
It had been months since Luke had an anxiety attack. I asked him about it, and he said that knowing Kirk was in jail stymied his constant nervousness.
“It’s still there, though, a little,” he admitted one night when we were in bed. “It’s like… muted though. As if there was a pot that was constantly threatening to boil over, but the heat’s been turned down to a simmer.”
“A simmer is manageable,” I told him, holding him close and interlacing his fingers with mine. “We can deal with that.”
Luke smiled and kissed me. “Yes,
