If I Stay

I force my head up and my eyes open. Adam. God, even in this state, he is beautiful. His eyes are dipping with fatigue. He’s sprouting stubble, enough of it that if we were to make out, it would make my chin raw. He is wearing his typical band uniform of a T-shirt, skinny pegged pants, and Converse, with Gramps’s plaid scarf draped over his shoulders.

When he first sees me, he blanches, like I’m some hideous Creature from the Black Lagoon. I do look pretty bad, hooked back up to the ventilator and a dozen other tubes, the dressing from my latest surgery seeping blood. But after a moment, Adam exhales loudly and then he’s just Adam again. He searches around, like he’s dropped something and then finds what he’s looking for: my hand.

“Jesus, Mia, your hands are freezing.” He squats down, takes my right hand into his, and careful to not bump into my tubes and wires, draws his mouth to them, blowing warm air into the shelter he’s created. “You and your crazy hands.” Adam is always amazed at how even in middle of summer, even after the sweatiest of encounters, my hands stay cold. I tell him it’s bad circulation but he doesn’t buy it because my feet are usually warm. He says I have bionic hands, that this is why I’m such a good cello player.

I watch him warm my hands as he has done a thousand times before. I think of the first time he did it, at school, sitting on the lawn, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I also remember the first time he did it in front of my parents. We were all sitting on the porch on Christmas Eve, drinking cider. It was freezing outside. Adam grabbed my hands and blew on them. Teddy giggled. Mom and Dad didn’t say anything, just exchanged a quick look, something private that passed between them and then Mom smiled ruefully at us.

I wonder if I tried, if I could feel him touching me. If I were to lie down on top of myself in the bed, would I become one with my body again? Would I feel him then? If I reached out my ghostly hand to his, would he feel me? Would he warm the hands he cannot see?

Adam drops my hand and steps forward to look at me. He is standing so close that I can almost smell him and I’m overpowered by the need to touch him. It’s basic, primal, and all-consuming the way a baby needs its mother’s breast. Even though I know, if we touch, a new tug-of-war—one that will be even more painful than the quiet one Adam and I have been waging these past few months—will begin.

Adam is mumbling something now. In a low voice. Over and over he is saying: please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Finally, he stops and looks at my face. “Please, Mia,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”

I’d never expected to fall in love. I was never the kind of girl who had crushes on rock stars or fantasies about marrying Brad Pitt. I sort of vaguely knew that one day I’d probably have boyfriends (in college, if Kim’s prediction was anything to go by) and get married. I wasn’t totally immune to the charms of the opposite sex, but I wasn’t one of those romantic, swoony girls who had pink fluffy daydreams about falling in love.

Even as I was falling in love—full throttle, intense, can’t-erase-that-goofy-smile love—I didn’t really register what was happening. When I was with Adam, at least after those first few awkward weeks, I felt so good that I didn’t bother thinking about what was going on with me, with us. It just felt normal and right, like slipping into a hot bubble bath. Which isn’t to say we didn’t fight. We argued over lots of stuff: him not being nice enough to Kim, me being antisocial at shows, how fast he drove, how I stole the covers. I got upset because he never wrote any songs about me. He claimed he wasn’t good with sappy love songs: “If you want a song, you’ll have to cheat on me or something,” he said, knowing full well that wasn’t going to happen.

This past fall, though, Adam and I started to have a different kind of fight. It wasn’t even a fight, really. We didn’t shout. We barely even argued, but a snake of tension quietly slithered into our lives. And it seemed like it all started with my Juilliard audition.

“So did you knock them dead?” Adam asked me when I got back. “They gonna let you in with a full scholarship?”