Five of Us Went to the Theme Park, They Only… novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Eleven Hours

I drove to his house at nine that night without calling first.

It sat at the end of a quiet street, with one lamp on in the kitchen.

He opened the door in a gray T-shirt, barefoot.

"They want me out," he said. "I thought you'd be at your parents'."

"I left."

"Wendy, tomorrow could go badly. You shouldn't be near it."

"Be quiet," I said. "I came here to ask you something."

He stepped back and let me in.

His kitchen was big and bare, with a black counter and nothing on it but a fruit bowl.

I put my bag on the stool and turned around.

"Why were you kind to me?"

"Because I wanted to be."

"I looked pitiful. I was standing in a lobby with my shoes ruined. Anyone would have carried my bag."

He frowned.

"Is that what you've decided?"

"It's what I know. Nobody has wanted me for anything but what I carried."

"Look at me."

I did.

"I watched you from that terrace for eleven hours," Adam said. "I was supposed to be in meetings."

"You watched a woman holding phones."

"I watched a woman give a stranger's kid her own sandwich. I watched you check your watch every hour and then put your arm down again, because you didn't want to look like you minded."

My throat tightened.

"You laughed when a boy dropped his ice cream, and you didn't know I could see you. At four o'clock you shifted the bag to the other shoulder and your face went white from the pain. You never put it down."

He took a breath.

"I wasn't sorry for you, Wendy. I was the one who couldn't stop looking. By the sixth hour I had stopped hearing the board. By the eighth, I wanted to be the man who gave you somewhere to set it all down."

I couldn't answer.

I walked up to him, put both hands flat on his chest, and walked him backward until he hit the counter.

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