Chapter 12

Thanks for tuning in as I post chapters of my new novel When Ivy Met Adam: A second chance, forced proximity, sexy, queer love-triangle romance. Your feedback is everything. Please post comments here or email me. I’m so excited to hear what you think.

Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapters 8&9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11

Chapter 12

I feel like Clark Kent just took off his glasses. Gah, I always hated Lois Lane. I always thought she was so fucking stupid that she couldn’t figure out that Superman and Clark were the same person. Yet here I am. Just as dumb.

I’m throwing clothes in my suitcase. I have got to get off this island. Away from this. Away from him. How stupid can I be? I stop packing and throw myself onto the bed and scream at the top of my lungs into a pillow.

Adam is Ali. Was Ali? Fuck, I don’t even know how to say it.

This. Explains. So. Much.

I am devastated. Re-devastated? Devastated all over again. I keep peeling back the layers of this renewed sense of devastation. On one level, I am still mourning the loss of Ali. She was my person. My everything. I miss her every damn day. On this new level, this fresh new hell, I just found out that my favorite person was lying to me for all the years we were together. She was a boy and she never let me know?

If I thought pomegranate made my throat close up, this is a thousand times worse. (Figuratively. I’m fine. Please don’t call the paramedics again.) I can barely breathe around the choking grief in my throat.

A better person would be happy for Adam right now. This is stunningly good news for him. But I am not a better person. The fact is, this betrayal robbed me of the opportunity to love Adam and take care of him when he went through his transition. It takes a village to support someone when they’re going through that. I would have been Adam’s village. (Do not get me started on how livid I am with his parents. Mickey couldn’t have called me? Everything I ever knew about anything was a lie.) I hate that he didn’t let me love him while he transitioned.

This feels like breaking up all over again.

No. This feels worse.

Oh, wait. Here’s more fuckery. I just lost the prospect of Adam as well. I was starting to hit the hope pipe pretty hard. Now that charming, funny, spectacularly attractive person and all his potential are off the table. Out of my life. This is what I get for trying to put myself out there in any kind of meaningful way. I’m going to eviscerate my sister for pressuring me to do this.

I’m just going to call Iris right now and give her a piece of my mind.

Before I can even open my Favorites, there’s a knock on my hotel room door. “No,” I bark in that general direction.

“Please, Ivy. Can we talk?” Adam asks.

“Go away,” I get up so I can yell it directly at the door this time. And yet, I find myself opening it. My body betrays me—I swear I had zero intention of opening this damn door. I immediately turn on my heel and walk away from him. Maybe the door will hit him in his perfect face.

“I’ll go away as soon as we talk,” he says quietly as he follows me inside. I spin around again to glare at him (I’m making myself dizzy with all this dramatic rotating). Or maybe my head is spinning because I am feeling every single feel every felt right now.

Now that I look at him, I see. I see exactly what my brain could not process in photos. His eyes are the same. That smile. Beard or no beard, I should have recognized that smile anywhere. He’s smiling at me now. Shy and scared, but smiling. Fucking wipe that smile off your face, buster, I do not say out loud. Not that I could get the words past the entire (figurative) pomegranate in my throat.

What I force out instead is, “That break-up broke my heart, Adam.” That does it. He’s not smiling now. Flopping into a chair on the far side of the room, I say, “I don’t think you understand how much it hurt to get ghosted like that.” I am done crying. I am not going to cry. That is not this kind of conversation. This is when I need to be brave. Not breaking.

“I was protecting both of us, Ivy,” he tries to protest. I don’t let him.

“That is neither here nor there, Adam.” I hold my hand up like a stop sign. “I understand you had this whole entire huge experience. That’s a very big deal and I’m truly infinitely sincerely happy for you. Please hear me say that.” I put down my stop sign hand and make a concerted effort to not make a fist with it. “But I had my own experiences. I lost the love of my life. I grieved long slow painful years for the loss of her.”

“Thank you, Ivy, that means a lot to me—” he starts.

“Adam, please just listen.” This feels familiar.

 *

We made plans for our first official date on a Tuesday night, the spring of our first year of college.

“May I take you on a real date?” I asked Ali one night while we were studying in the library. Okay, she was studying her textbooks, and I was studying her. God, she was gorgeous. Her perfect skin was lickable—I mean likable. Ha! She looked a little like Thirteen, the hot bisexual doctor on House. Olivia Wilde? Same jawline. But my girl’s hair was super short. Ali's nose was pierced. She wore the tiniest most delicate gold ring in it. (It’s long gone now, I notice in the present moment. No noticeable scar even.)

“Nah,” she looked up from her biology book to meet my eyes. “But I’ll take you on a real date, if that’s what you’d like.” Those eyes. Hazel? That’s what her driver’s license said. Sometimes they were gray. Sometimes green. Always fathoms deep. I spent hours just staring into her eyes. I’m sure we annoyed everyone else in the library. Mooning over each other.

“Ali, please just listen.” I was determined not to lose this argument. “It was my idea. I want to woo you.” She needed to know how into her I was. It wasn’t enough to tell her—I needed to show her how much I adored her. I wanted to take her on a real date, not just study together or go to the dining hall to sit with all our friends.

She reached for my hand. Her touch sent little jolts of electricity up my arm every single time. “Ivy, I am kind of a sure thing.” She winked at me. That wink killed me. So goddam sexy. “And besides, this entire thing was my idea, Vee. I kissed you first. I should be the woo-er. You should be the woo-ee.”

“Wookiee?” I smiled at her, bright and silly. Expectant.

Very quietly, she gave me a muffled, “Rrrruuuurrr.”

I giggled. We were in the library, so I didn’t blame her for being subdued. If we’d been alone, I’m confident I’d have gotten her to do a full-on “HGRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!”

“Besides,” she said, “my parents gave me money to take you out.”

I reverted to sulking. “Months ago,” I scoffed.

“Ivy, I don’t think you understand. My parents frequently give me money to take you out. They adore you. They want me to marry you.” She blushed. “Figuratively. Not literally, of course.”

I was blushing too. I could feel it. “Of course.” But, oh, gah. I would have married her. I mean, not in Indiana. But in Massachusetts, we could. “Do you think you want to get married someday?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Ivy.” She put down her pen. “Seriously?”

“I’m seriously asking if that’s something you might want to do someday with somebody, yes.”

“I like girls.”

“Gay marriage is a thing,” I protested.

“Yes, in like two places in the whole world. Plus, they don’t mean me when they say gay marriage,” she picked up her pen and went back to her textbook.

“What does that mean?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“I just mean—” she cut herself off. “Where are you taking me on our first official date?”

I recognized it as a dodge, but I rolled with it. Because I was winning! “I was thinking dinner and a movie?”

“How traditional of you,” she deadpanned.

“Why? What did you have in mind?”

“Dinner and a show in Chicago.” She pretended to concentrate on her book.

My eyes widened. “Um. Yes, please! I like yours so much better,” I said. Maybe I should’ve let her be in charge of the wooing.

“It’s settled, then. I’ll plan it,” she said with finality. Maybe it was really a win-win this way? 

 *

But it hadn’t been win-win, had it? She left me. I lost.

So, here and now, I say to Adam, “I texted a few times in the early days. Right after you moved out.”

Oh, yeah, that’s right. She moved out of our apartment. I endured three long years of dorm life waiting to move in together—finally in our own apartment—with the love of my life, and she bailed on me. Before graduation, right in the big middle of the spring. She packed her stuff into a dozen duffel bags and checked into a hotel. Must be nice to have come from so much money. (Of course, I simply called my father and asked him to pay the entirety of our rent. My rent. I know I’m privileged too, and grateful.)

Adam says, “I know.”

You know? You know!? But I let my face say that. Because if I open my mouth right now… I simply cannot get overly emotional about this. Not now. Not all these years later.

Right after she moved out, I tried texting a couple times. I got no response. I even called once, and it went directly to “I’m sorry but the person you called has a voicemail box that has not been setup yet… Goodbye.” She blocked me. Honestly, that hurt more than the break-up itself. Blocked. That’s not just a break-up. That’s a fuck you.

“Ghosted after four years of… everything,” is what I finally choose to say. “Stolen kisses for months. Then, public displays of affection as we got bolder and more comfortable with our friend group. Sleeping in the same bed.”

He looks like I’m gut punching him. Good. This should hurt. He says, “It hurt me too. I missed you desperately, Ivy—” Gross. No.

“Please shut the actual fuck completely up right now, Adam. I get to be mad right now.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m listening.” He’s perched on the very edge of the desk chair. He looks supremely uncomfortable. Good. I mean, good that he looks so uncomfortable. But, damn. He also looks really good. In a Christmas red Kahala shirt. God, this day is a mess.

I took Ali home with me for Christmas every year. In four years, it never even came up once that we might spend the holiday with her family in Austin. Whatever my parents’ faults, they make Christmas magical. Starting with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and ending with the Epiphany, it’s nonstop—shopping, wrapping, carols, decorations, cooking, baking, and lots of alcohol. My parents put trees in every room and real candles in every window. Christmas in Colorado—almost always a white Christmas and always a huge family affair—is a nonnegotiable for my sister and me. After our last final and until our first class of the new year, we were expected to be home. In dresses and pearls every evening, and on our very best behavior. That was true from the time we could walk (when it was our nannies’ jobs to get us there) through grad school. Truth be told, this is the very first year I’ve opted out and yesterday’s trip to the hospital—and this conversation, to be honest—feel like penance.

“Your parents even joined us that last Christmas,” I say. It’s a non sequitur to him, I’m sure. But this is what I choose to be mad about now. The Greenes and the Gardiners included them in everything—Mass, meals, all the drinking, even exchanging gifts. My huge Irish family absorbed their family of three, hugging and joking and being loud and drunk all night. Dr. Narvaez-Hinojosa and Mickey fit right in—they made a choice to leave their own huge extended families behind that year. On St. Stephen’s Day, Dr. NH suggested we all make tamales together. The entire family rolled up our sleeves and wrapped tamales for hours. It was the most fun I’d had at Christmas in years.

Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty and now I realize Ali was not as comfortable as the rest of us—not having as much fun even when we were all laughing and having fun—that Christmas.

So I say, “That’s why you were so uneasy that Christmas. You were planning your escape.” Maybe at the time, I thought it was nerves because her folks were there? But now I see the truth: she probably was already planning our breakup. Having our families all in one space like that? Maybe she was feeling guilty about getting everyone’s hopes up? I don’t think that’s hindsight. I think that’s probably just heartbreak coloring my memories.

If I were being truly honest about it, I’d admit that taking my girlfriend home for Christmas every year grated on my mother. Her perfect image of her younger daughter’s future did not include gay marriage, let’s be brutally honest. That Iris brought home a different “perfect guy” every Christmas she was in college was far preferable to my steady yet lesbian partner. She never said as much, of course. She’s too poised for that. But her microaggressions (a term I know now but didn’t have the language for back then) were enough to drive the entire family to drink. Well, we probably would have done that anyway. Not gonna lie.

“I am just so fucking confused, Adam.” Adam. I’m not even a little bit confused about that. About his name. His him-ness. He is perfectly, completely himself. I’m triple pissed off because I am so happy for him. Gah. What a mess. “I think you should leave.”

“I’ll go,” he says as he stands. “Please, can we talk tomorrow?”

“I’m flying home tonight,” I lie. I don’t have a new flight booked yet—my original departure isn’t for another week. But I can’t stay on this tiny island, this miniscule resort, this itty bitty hotel room another minute. (Okay. I’m exaggerating. O‘ahu is nearly six hundred square miles. This resort is freaking huge. My room’s lanai is as big as my entire Los Angeles apartment. But it’s the principle of the thing.)

“Can we talk when I get back to LA?” he asks. I can hear how nervous he is. He was so confident and sexy when he was just Dr. Lopez. Now that he’s Adam Narvaez-Hinojosa Lopez, he’s rattled. Good. Make him suffer. (A little, at least.)

“We’ll see.”

“Fair enough,” he says. He heads for the door. At the last second, after he opens it and gets ready to leave, he turns to me and says, “I have never stopped loving you, Ivy. I don’t know if that makes any difference at all. But I’d like to be part of your life again.”

I laugh out loud. A bitter bark of a laugh. “I don’t see that happening, Adam. Goodbye.”

And he goes. As soon as the door snicks shut behind him, I fling myself on the bed again and throw a full-on temper tantrum. Kicking my legs and pounding the pillows with my fists. “Muh. Ther. Fuck. Er.” I beat a pillow within an inch of its life with each syllable. Because the thing that is the most frustrating. The thing that is making me really, truly mad. The thing is, I actually do see that happening. Someday.