Unravelled (23 page)

It takes Adam a few minutes to realise that I’m no longer behind him. I hear him stop, call for me and then turn around. I have stubbornly planted myself on the roots of a huge tree, not wanting to power-walk any more and am trying to look non-nonchalant while sipping my water. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the look down when Adam comes around the bend in a skid that makes me think of Blossom. He sees me against the tree, slows down and is now walking towards me.

“You’re walking too fast.” I call to him haughtily and pull my flushed self up a little, lift my eyebrow and bring my water bottle to my lips to take a nonchalant sip, hoping to underline my statement. As those pesky practical-joke-gods would have it, I inhale the water instead of sipping it. All my nonchalance evaporate as I start to sputter in an attempt to rid my lungs of water. It takes me a few precious moments to recover which gives Adam enough time to reach me. He towers over me and I look up at him with a flushed face, bloodshot eyes and not a little annoyance.

And here we are, staring each other down. My breathing has returned to normal and I lift my eyebrow once again in a silent challenge. Adam silently accepts the gauntlet thrown at him, leans back a fraction and folds his arms. I widen my eyes with surprise at his riposte and slowly let my eyes drift down his body and back up again, enjoying this silence game. By the time my eyes reach his face, I’m more than a bit turned on which annoys me even more and I narrow my eyes. It’s all I can do to not bare my teeth and growl at him.

Once again the corner of Adam’s mouth gives his thoughts away when it starts to tremble slightly with silent amusement. This, of course, sends my annoyance levels skywards and would you believe it, I actually lift my top lip, narrow my eyes even more, but thank god I pull short of an actual growl. The things this man make me do.

It’s been a minute or an hour, I don’t know, but we are still glaring at each other. Well, I’m the one glaring. Adam’s amusement has spread from the corner of his mouth to his whole face and he’s pursing his lips to not laugh. He blinks slowly, smiles at me sweetly and motions with his head that we should go. I manage to put my hand on my hip in my current sitting position and look away from him, so he knows that I’m considering his idea. I slowly and dramatically look back at him – I’m thoroughly enjoying this – and ever so slightly nod in silent agreement to a truce. He offers his hand to help me up, but that forgiving I am not. I give his hand a dirty look and push myself up from the root.

All would’ve been well if we didn’t have that silly stare-down. I don’t know how long it took, but it was long enough for the blood circulation to my feet to be cut off and cause my feet to not respond to the message from my brain to stand up. Adam is in the process of withdrawn his proffered and rejected hand when I get up and immediately collapse again from a lack of support from my lower extremities.

Maybe he learned this on Wall Street or maybe it is genetic, but his quick reaction keeps me from landing at his feet in a heap. At this very sad moment I’m being held upright by my armpits, grossly wet from the power walk, like a rag doll and my face is squashed against his chest.

“Are you ok?”

“Just peachy, thank you.” I grumble into his chest.

“Why did you stop?”

“Because I was tired of running after you.” My blood has found my feet again and the pins and needles make me squirm. “You can let me go now.”

Adam lifts me a little higher and plants me on my prickly feet.

“Okay?” He looks at me with sincere concern.

“Oh, my feet are fine now. Me, well, I’m mortified.” I push past him and start stomping down the path. “Why do these things happen to me?”

I don’t even know if he’s following, but I’m pissed off at the gods and I’m talking over my shoulder, whether he hears it or not. Frankly, I hope he doesn’t. “Why can’t I ever manage to be nonchalant? I want to get a point across and all I achieve is to, once again, look like a total addle-headed nincompoop. Why? Why?”

I abruptly stop and turn around, thinking, hoping that I would have to wait for him, but he’s right here, listening to me. I shake my head in self-defeat, heave a sigh equal to none and turn around to continue this walk to his favourite place. This really is the cherry on the cake or the last straw breaking the camel’s back, depending on whether you are a half-full or half-empty kind of person. After all the mishaps of the last few weeks, I feel decidedly like a half-empty kind of gal. A hand on my shoulder stops me.

“Alex -”

“Oh, let’s just go to your bloody favourite spot and have this bloody picnic.”

I really wish Blossom was here. He, no doubt, would’ve interrupted and saved me from myself by now. But he’s at the doggy parlour, getting a much needed grooming. Adam’s hand is still on my shoulder and he slowly turns me around to face him.

“We don’t have to have this picnic.” Oh great! Yea, make me feel guilty for my outburst.

“Oh god, I didn’t mean that. It’s just...”

“Just what?”

“Nothing. Forget the last few minutes even happened. Please.”

“No.” No? I blink a few times in surprise. I don’t know why I am surprised, it’s not like Adam has really ever listened to my refusals or objections. The annoying thing is that more often than not he’s right.

“Firstly, all you had to do was speak to me. You didn’t have to stage a sit in. Secondly,” he’s let go of my shoulder and is now counting off his fingers, “you did not come across as addle-headed and much less as a nincompoop. A nincompoop wouldn’t even know what the word addle-headed means.” He smiles sweetly and tucks some stray hair behind my ear which rebelliously pops out again. “You are the most atypical woman I know. You never talk about your feelings and when you show any kind of weakness you get angry.”

I’m digesting this when he stuns me with moving onto another topic altogether without any warning. “You have also made no move whatsoever to come on to me. I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong with me.”

My eyelids have gone into overdrive as my constant blinking evidences my shock. “But...why?...Adam, there’s nothing wrong with you. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Alex.” His tone tells me that he also knows that I’m lying.

“Can we please just go and have the picnic?” I can hear the pleading in my voice and bite down hard on my teeth while he looks down at me. Every time he brings up this line of conversation I either try to distract him or ask him to not talk about it, and have been successful thus far, but I know the day is going to come when he is not going to concede any longer to my avoidance tactics. After a long while of just looking at me and just before I get really uncomfortable, he nods and walks past me once again making his way down the path.

“We’ll go slower this time, but some things will have to speed up,” he says over his shoulder. “Before the day is over we will talk.”

It seems like the day to talk about ‘us’ has come. The next few minutes I spend fretting over Adam’s promise-slash-threat and wondering how I’m going to handle it. Some things are just better left untouched, unchallenged. The last time he wanted to talk about ‘us’ I was able to distract him with making me hot chocolate.

What will I distract him with this time? Sending him to gather fire wood? Maybe I should send him to catch our dinner. This brings an image of Adam dressed as Robin Hood, complete with feathered cap and tight green pants. Hmm... those pants would show off his sexy butt very well. I mean, even the jeans he’s wearing today is doing his backside great justice. I can feel my spirits lift with this thought. And then all thoughts seize.

“Oh my god.”

We’ve entered a clearing with a view so breathtaking that I struggle to take it all in at once. There is a pond in front of us with crystal clear water, a patch of clover to the left that leads back into the trees and a few large boulders on the water’s edge. The grass looks like a manicured lawn leading down to the water and the wild flowers look as if they’ve been planted individually by a landscaping artist. This is the perfect scenery for a Monet painting and for me, proof that fairies exist. Who else could make such a pretty place?

“Oh Adam, it’s...it’s...”

“I know,” he says softly.

We stand on this spot for I don’t know how long just drinking in the beauty of it all. My mind drifts from one thought to another thought until the serenity of my surroundings slows it all down and all I can do is stand there and allow Mother Nature to beautify my soul with what lies in front of me. I know it sounds like a used up cliché, but nature has amazing healing powers and I can feel myself being rejuvenated.

It is an uncertain amount of time before I become aware once again of where I am and of Adam standing next to me. At some point we started holding hands and I truly don’t know who took whose hand. All I know that it feels right and I don’t know whether I should thank the fairies for this moment or take a sandwich and hightail it out of here.

“Let’s go find a picnic spot.” As if we would have to look hard. Adam leads the way still holding my hand, even though I did the ‘relax’ thing where I let my hand totally relax so that he could let go if he wanted to. He didn’t let go.

He picks a spot and unpacks the picnic basket. I sit down on the quilt and feel like Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility, watching the magic basket render goodies that make my jaw drop.

“Don’t be too impressed. I ordered it from the deli.”

“Oh.” The disappointment is obvious enough in my voice to make him look up from the basket and smile at me. “And here I was ready to mistake you for the perfect metro sexual.” His smile turns into a funny look which includes a frown and he turns his attention back to unpacking the basket. As usual my mouth starts running away from me. “Mind you, you don’t measure up totally as metro sexual. You have the looks, the dress sense and most of the time the cooking skills, but you failed the test last week.”

His frown deepens and he puts down the last opened food container. I make a dash for the delectable looking fruit salad and promptly get wrapped over the fingers when I want to pinch a piece of fruit. I impatiently wait for him to dish it up in a picnic plate. I suppose we are going to do this in style and I reach for a fork.

“Ok, I’ll go with this one. What test?” He hands me the plate and I can see on his face that he doesn’t really want to hear about the ‘test’.

“You fell asleep during Love Actually and to add insult to injury you snored so loudly that I had to turn the sound up.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Another test flunked! True metro sexuals do not deny their weaknesses. They admit to it and are not scared to show emotion and even cry.”

Adam snorts at this and shakes his head. “Where did you get this inane knowledge of metro sexuals? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

I, of course, insist on telling him everything I know about metro sexuals which leads us to another conversation and another, and before you can say, ‘there’s no more wine’, we’re lying on the quilt with stuffed bellies, an empty picnic basket, two empty bottles of Merlot, and a delicious lightness in my head.

I can hear his breathing deepening and I know that it’s not going to take long for me to zoom out of reality and join him in the land of z’s. Just before I slip out of consciousness I realise how comfortable I am with Adam – even when I have my usual mishaps he never made me feel stupid. It is usually I who hit myself over the head. He’s proved himself to be a kind and gentle man, but still a man. There are times when he aggravates me so much I would gladly rearrange his dental structure. But, and with this thought I slip away, he’s become important to me.

Someone is looking at me. I can feel it. I keep my eyes closed and take a moment to orient myself. Oh yes! Picnic. Adam must be the one looking at me. Or maybe wild beasts devoured him and are now standing in a semicircle around me waiting for me to wake up, so they can devour me too. Or maybe it was my own snoring that sounded like wild beasts and woke me up.

“Are you looking at me?” I ask.

“Hm-mm.”

“Did I snore?”

“A bit.”

I open one eye and turn my head slightly towards his voice. Adam’s lying on his side with his head held up by his hand and he’s looking at me.

“Have you been awake for long?”

“Yes. Your snoring frightened the wild life and the stampede to the north woke me up.”

I actually had to smile at this, because it is really funny coming from the non-joking Mr Wall Street. “How long did it take you to think that one up?”

“About ten minutes.”

I’m now fully awake and smile into his eyes. “It was ten minutes well spent. It was funny.” I turn my face to the sky and close my eyes again. So, this is where cloud nine is. I like being on it.

“Alex.”

“Hmm.”

“Something strange happened.”

“Oh god! I might’ve snored, but I never fart in my sleep. It wasn’t me, Adam.”

“Now you are being a silly. I’m talking about something that happened in the last few weeks.” The sun on my face feels like it’s moving behind a cloud and an odd feeling creeps into my still full stomach. I know where this is going and I really don’t want to go there. I frown slightly and look at Adam.

“What happened?”