I went through all of the details from the very beginning, mentioning how Dan said he had overheard my comment and thought he recognized Adam. When I got to the details about what had happened at Inferno, Jacob sat forward attentively.
“Think very carefully about his exact words, Lily.”
“He just said ‘tell the Moretti prosecutor the fox is in our building.’ Then, um, he wanted a ride.”
“He said ‘I need a ride’?”
“No, he said ‘drive.’ I think his exact words were ‘details on drive.’ I just figured he meant he would explain why he was drunk on the drive home.” Jacob made eye contact with a guy off to his left.
“He didn’t give you anything, Ms. Adler?” the guy asked.
“No, that was when I saw the guy in the devil costume and I passed out.”
“Tell me about your other neighbors,” Jacob said, sitting back again.
I sighed and started on the first floor with Mr. Booty Call. About half an hour later, I had given him every last detail about every encounter I had ever had with the lovely folks who lived in my building.
“Why are you so interested?” Adam asked when I was done. “You planning on paying her a visit?” Jacob looked at him but didn’t answer immediately. I think he was considering what he could say. Finally, he spoke.
“We’ve been concerned about the possibility of an attempted hit on a federal witness, and we’ve heard rumors about someone called the Fox being involved somehow. It’s possible that Dan McGuire could have been trying to pass on some information that would be of interest to us.
“What are you planning to do about it?” Adam asked.
“We’ll see if we can find McGuire and we’ll have agents watching the building.”
“When I’m there I’ll keep my eyes open,” Adam offered and Jacob seemed to consider that carefully for a minute.
“Maybe you’ll even get to prosecute some of this,” he replied in a measured tone. The two of them seemed to share some unspoken communication. It made me curious and a little apprehensive.
With that, it seemed that the meeting was over. Jacob nodded to his colleagues who got up and left. He gathered his things to go, but he paused before getting up to leave.
“Roth, would you mind if I had a quick word with you? We’ll be out in a minute, Lily.”
“Okay,” I said, hesitantly, and went out to the hall. I found a chair and quickly texted Gabrielle. I had decided just to stay in that evening and I wanted to let her know I wouldn’t be at Girls’ Night. I promised to call her soon to fill her in on all the details of my weekend. Adam and Jacob came out a couple of minutes later and Jacob said goodbye. As he headed down the hall I turned to Adam.
Before I could ask what that was about, though, he surprised me by putting his arms around me, pulling me close and kissing my neck. “So, I was thinking we could just stay in tonight. I’ll stop and pick up some things and then I’ll spend the night at your place.”
“We have work tomorrow, and I probably should do some writing tonight. Besides, we didn’t get much sleep last night.” I think part of me was afraid of getting too used to his company. It would just make me miss him and feel more lonely when he wasn’t around.
“So we’ll go to bed earlier.” He trailed light bite-like kisses up to my earlobe which he gently began to nibble and lick. My ni**les got hard and my skin heated up.
“Are you going to try to distract me with sex whenever I don’t agree with you about something?” I asked, tilting my head back so he had better access to distract me.
“As a matter of fact, I am, and considering how good the sex is, and how often we disagree, you may be walking funny from now on.”
“Shakespeare had nothing on you.”
“Would you rather I wrote you sonnets or made you see God?”
Chapter Sixteen
On the car ride back we listened to music, quietly. The fact that Pink was singing Try wasn’t lost on me. I had begun to wonder about the significance of the songs Adam listened to. I knew that words were as important to him as they were to me, and I didn’t think his choice of tunes was coincidental. If he had been a teen in the eighties, he would have been king of the mix tape.
It was good that we could be quiet together. It was a comfortable silence rather than an awkward one and both of us were obviously deep in thought. I was, frankly, trying to keep my head together. Even though I prided myself on being tough and independent, I would be lying if I said this weekend hadn’t overwhelmed me. Ironically, it wasn’t my bleeding neighbor, a potential hit man in my building, or meeting with the assistant U.S. attorney, who I had seen naked, that was making me so disconcerted. As usual, it was Adam.
For years, hell, for decades, we had been enemies. Then I had begun to question what my true feelings for him had been all along. I had finally admitted the intense physical attraction I felt for him didn’t just develop this summer. It had been there since Junior High. Now, since last night, though, something much scarier and much more difficult to wrap my head around was starting to play on my mind. What if it wasn’t just physical?
I had been a latch key kid. My parents were also highly critical and largely as emotionally absent as they were physically absent. There’s no way that doesn’t affect a person. Intimacy scared me. Rejection scared me. The idea that I might be in love with Adam, and that I might have been for a very long time, terrified the shit out of me.
He had said ‘just you,’ and I believed that he meant to try. What if I wasn’t enough, though? What if I was enough, but something happened to him? Thoughts of that little exchange at the end of our meeting with Jacob still bothered me. I glanced up at him and felt a twinge in my belly and a strange tightness in my chest. He was so beautiful and so sexy, but also so intelligent, so funny, and so aggravating, so challenging. Adam was the only person I had ever known who made me feel so much. He filled me up inside in more ways than one.
We picked up his stuff at his place and he surprised me again by taking me out to dinner. We went to a place in Chinatown with great Moo Shoo.
“Why do we Jews love Chinese food so much?” he asked, dipping into some plum sauce.
“Because it’s a Christmas tradition,” I joked, sipping my tea. “You want to go with me to see that show, Moo Shoo Jew that runs every Christmas Eve?’ It was a casual question, but my heart pounded because Christmas was a month away, and I wanted him to reassure me we would still be doing this.