Chapter Thirty-One

Wade stays behind to talk to Dr. Koch.

Talia goes to breakfast.

I find myself in the lobby with Adam.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He looks at me for a long time and I just stand there, dying.

“Can we talk somewhere?” I say.

“Is it going to change the outcome of yesterday?” he asks.

“No,” I say. It comes out in a whisper. “Not in terms of Jade or Talia or any of that…horrible mess. But maybe in terms of what you think I… Well, I don’t know what you think happened.”

He turns and stalks off.

I follow, not sure if this is an invitation or if he’s trying to get away, but unable to let him go. He ends up at a door to the outside, slides his card in, and goes out. The door almost hits me as I go through after him.

He follows the path out to the long, grassy area before the beach and stops in the middle of it. We’re far enough away that no one would be able to hear us, but in plain sight of anyone who might look out a back window of the main building.

“Look, Lola,” he says, still standing, legs wide, sending the clear message that this is not a cozy meeting and not a friendly one, either. “I’m angry and I’m…other things, too. But whatever you have to say, whatever excuses you’re going to make, the take-home point for me in all this is that I am at fault for my own lack of judgment. About leaving the group alone, about you, about my ability to be objective about you. Because probably you shouldn’t have been there yesterday. But I vouched for you because I knew you wanted to go. And because I wanted you to be there. Obviously it was a mistake.”

“Adam—”

“The worst and most obvious cost of that is one of our patients is in the hospital with an overdose,” he says, running right over me and almost shouting. “But on a personal level…” He stops, takes a deep, shaking breath. “To have had to spend the day watching you and that fucking guy together, and then to find out you’d actually taken off with him—”

“But—”

“Don’t lie to me, I know you did. My point is that every single part of what happened yesterday is a lesson in poor judgment—my own poor judgment—that I’m not likely to forget.”

I do my best to take it, stand there and let him get it out, even though it hurts. Regardless that he’s got some of it wrong, I deserve this. Good intentions, I finally realize, do not excuse shitty results.

“Is there more you want to say?” I ask quietly when he stops talking.

“Not at the moment.”

“All right. May I speak now?”

“My saying yes or no never stopped you before,” he says, but not in the funny, rueful way he used to. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not interested in excuses and justifications or even really in apologies. But go ahead.”

I want to ask him to sit down with me or maybe take a walk, but it’s clear he’s not going to do any of that. It’s also clear he’s not in the frame of mind to even hear anything I say. Still, I look at him, emotionally bruised, and ragged and raw from lack of sleep, and it seems like I can feel all of it—all the pain and anger and fear from the past twenty-four hours. I want to reach out and pull him close, run my hands over all the invisible wounds and make them better. I want him to do the same for me. But I can’t. I can’t lighten the effects or fix any of it, but I also can’t turn away from him, can’t help wanting to at least try.

“I’m not going to make excuses,” I say, forcing myself to keep my distance, forcing myself not to beg or wheedle or try to be cute. “I was stupid and irresponsible and weak.”

He nods.

“I’ve learned lessons I’m never going to forget, either, about poor judgment. I would say this qualifies as learning the hard way, and for the record, I don’t think the learning is worth the price of what could have happened, or even what did happen.”

He nods, but in agreement, not to let me off the hook.

“I did take off with Wade and it did cause a chain reaction, and I’m responsible for that. There’s nothing I can do to make that untrue, Adam. Jade, Talia, the massive scandal we’re dealing with—that’s on me.”

“And him,” Adam points out.

“Sure, him. Both of us.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and waits, watching me, and I have to steel myself because all of a sudden I want to cry.

“There are just a couple of things,” I say, gutting it out, “that…maybe aren’t going to matter to you, but…” I swallow. “Number one: we only left the group for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t my intention to take off—we just went up over the hill.”

Adam starts to talk but I hold up my hand.

“I know that doesn’t excuse it. I just want to tell you that I came back and everyone was gone.”

“You came back? What about him?”

“Well…” I squirm inside, uncomfortable with the idea of trying to pin anything on Wade, but also needing to tell the truth. “He was upset. So…I came back by myself, and then I made him come back, and we waited there for half an hour, hoping someone would return and find us. And then we were on our way to an information booth and we ran into Talia and Jade, and they were high and with those guys, and Talia took off and it all just…went to hell from there, basically, and we were trying to catch her the entire time from then on, until you found us. Again, it’s not an excuse, but you need to know we weren’t, like, partying or running around the park having fun.”

“Do you have any idea how fucking scared I was, Lola?”

“Yes.”

“Or how hurt?”

“I’m not with Wade, Adam.”

“I don’t mean that.”

“No?”

“No,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes. Then, “It’s way bigger than that, than him.”

“Him” comes out with a particular violence of tone, but I decide not to press.

“Fine, even if you don’t care about him, I’m going to tell you: I’m not with him. I don’t want to be with him. He somehow got the impression—okay, early on in the program I gave him the impression—that I liked him. I thought I did. And he came on like a tornado yesterday and I was…taken off guard and didn’t want to be mean and okay, maybe I was feeling a little hurt still, and rejected by you. Even though I now fully understand—fully—why I’m not supposed to be falling for my mentor, and vice versa. So I didn’t discourage him as much as I should have at first, and I didn’t get how…sort of crazy he can be, and not taking no for an answer, and not believing when someone says she’s not into him, which I finally had to just tell him, straight up.”

Adam’s posture shifts, just slightly, and I can tell he’s at least listening.

“It took more than once for it to get through, and he didn’t respond well, Adam.”

“Is that why you took off with him?”

“It doesn’t matter, I still did it. But…I was trying to be gentle with him because I finally got how fragile his ego is and how… Well, he’s an addict and he’s at a crossroads, right? I mean, I knew him as a kid, and he was a good kid. He was my friend. I didn’t want to mess him up.”

“Part of growing up is realizing you can’t always have everything you want,” Adam says. “He has to learn it.”

“And so do I,” I say, finding I need to look away…because I want Adam. Adam is really all I want right now, all I’m going to want for a long time. But the damage is too great, the trust is broken, and he was right that we shouldn’t have been getting involved. “Anyway, I am sorry. I’m about as sorry as I can be. That’s it.”

He doesn’t say anything. I gather my courage and look back up at him. He’s less furious, but that’s about all I can read from his expression.

“Are you… I guess you really are going to try to get reassigned now. From me.”

A bark of laughter.

“What?”

“Reassigned? You think Koch is going to reassign me? You’re hilarious.”

“I…I don’t get it.”

“Oh, I think Dr. Koch has bigger plans for me than that.”

“Wha—”

“Put it this way, Lola: I’m not going to be asking for any favors. I did this for the experience, for the money, sure, because I need to pay tuition, but also for the ability to put it on my résumé and have a good reference. I’ll be lucky to get through the day with the job, much less the rest of it.”

And with that, he heads back to the main building, lets me inside, and, feeling like a miserable, steaming pile of crap, I head upstairs to the dorm.