To Hate Adam Connor

“We are doing something bad. That looked like a private moment, Lucy. We should get down.”

“Yes, we should.” Even though we agreed it wasn’t cool of us to intrude, neither one of us moved. We couldn’t.

Adam hung his head for a moment after the kid ran away, then he was up on his feet, walking closer to the glass windows.

Both Olive and I tensed, ready to disappear from sight if he decided to come out, but he simply stood there, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his gaze focused on the dim lights coming from his pool.

“Holy shit,” Olive said quietly, and suddenly I remembered I wasn’t alone.

I shivered and glanced at my friend. “What?”

She looked at me, then back to Adam Connor. “Nothing.” She shook her head. “I mean, we can’t really see him, see him, but he looks good from this close. And…and he looks sad too. The divorce must be tough on him and the kid.”

“I read that they both wanted the divorce. You think he still loves her?”

“After everything they wrote about me and Jason, you should know better than to believe what you read online. They have a kid together; it’s never simple when there is a kid in the middle of everything. I’m pretty sure we know nothing about what’s been going on in their lives.”

“That’s true. In that case, I could offer him my shoulder.” I paused to think about that statement for a second. “Or better yet, my boobs.” Olive’s head turned to me in a sharp movement. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s just so he can, you know, cry. My lovely boobs aren’t as comfy as yours, but I’m still rocking an almost C cup, and I’d be so gentle with him. Pat his head, put him to bed, maybe warm him up if he is cold from all the crying. Sharing body heat is a very important process. We could snuggle up under the covers…play hide the pickle to get his spirits up.”

“I thought you said you were done with guys.”

“I’m done falling in love with them, and even if I do, I sure as hell won’t let them know that I’ve done so. I never said I’m done falling on top of certain body parts. They have many, many other uses that don’t require me falling in love.” Ignoring Olive’s eyes on me, I shrugged and kept watching Adam. “You know what they say: to get over someone you should get under someone else. We can get over and under each other. I’m not picky at all.”

“Okay, let’s get down before you crawl over the wall to get to that poor guy. I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

“What look?” I asked, giving my best friend an innocent look, complete with a sweet smile. “I’m an angel.”

She laughed and patted my head. “More like the devil.”

“Hey! I take offense to that.”

Just as we were bickering, Adam Connor suddenly reached up to loosen his tie, causing a softly uttered curse word to leave my lips.

“What?” Olive asked.

“I find it extremely hot when a guy takes off his clothes in slow motion.”

We silently watched him take off his suit jacket and throw it on something we couldn’t see clearly from our point of view.

“Is it getting a little hot?” Olive mumbled.

“Shhh,” I whispered, completely focused on seeing what the six-foot-three hunk with the broad shoulders would do next.

When his fingers started unbuttoning his white shirt’s left sleeve as he kept his eyes on the horizon with an unreadable expression, I had to swallow down the lump in my throat. Slowly but expertly, he started rolling it up, exposing his forearms—forearms I would’ve killed to see closer. Then he started on his right sleeve, repeating the same process while Olive and I watched the whole thing without a peep.

“Holy shit,” Olive finally whispered when Adam was massaging his temples with his fingers, his head bent down, those thick arm muscles bulging even to our eyes.

“I think I’ve just creamed myself,” I admitted.

“What do you mea—oh my God, Lucy!” she yelled loudly enough to wake up the whole neighborhood, then started laughing. Evidently, bursting my eardrums wasn’t enough, so she hit my arm too—hard, almost causing me to lose my balance.

“Hey!” I shot back, laughing quietly. Before I could topple over, I grabbed on to the wall.

“Oh my God, I hate you!” she seethed when she had calmed down enough to speak. “Why would you even say that?”

Giving her a hurt look, I rubbed the spot she’d hit. “What? The guy almost took off his shirt, loosened his tie, and then rolled up his sleeves. I just think the whole thing was sexy. There is something called forearm porn. You know that, right? Besides, it’s not my fault my body reacted to the guy.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Thank you, I try to stand out. And relax, I was just messing with you. If I were closer to him, I might have creamed, but nope, the distance between us and the fact that I couldn’t hear his breathing ruined it. I still wanna jump him, though.”

“His breathing? You think you would learn—”

We heard a click and then a sliding sound. Olive stopped talking and grabbed my arm. Both of us had that ‘oh shit’ look on our faces, and if you were wondering, we wore it pretty damn well.

“Dan? Is that you out there?”

Olive squeaked and then slapped her own hand over her mouth to muffle the noise before we were completely screwed. Our only saving grace was that our side of the wall was pitch-dark and there was no way in hell Adam Connor could see us. I motioned for Olive to lower her head, and she obeyed without argument.

“You better be a goddamn raccoon because I’m not in the mood to invite the cops into my home,” the voice said from the other side of the wall.

Olive looked at me in alarm, but I shook my head and pressed my index finger to my lips so she wouldn’t speak. We knew there was no way Adam could know there were two girls hanging off a wall on the other side of his property, but the fact that we could hear his footsteps coming closer toward us didn’t help me relax at all.

Silence fell again. Another few seconds ticked by, then the footsteps started retreating. After we heard the telltale sound of his sliding door, Olive released the breath she was holding.

“We are not doing this again,” she whispered, taking a step down on the ladder.

When I didn’t agree with her immediately, she tugged at my shirt to get my attention. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes. Yes. We’re not doing this again.”

“I’m being serious, Lucy.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Thorn, but weren’t you the one who first mentioned we could take a peek over the wall?”

“I didn’t hear you say no—the opposite, actually. I remember you congratulating me on my great idea. Come on, get down.”

I felt another tug on my ankle as she kept descending.

I slowly raised my head up to see if the fine specimen was gone, and to my dismay there was no sight of him. Lights were still on, but no eye candy. I looked down to see a frowning Olive looking up at me.

“What?”

“You remember the girl who hid in our hotel room in London, right?”

“Don’t worry, my green Olive, I’m not planning on breaking into his house.”

Not that it hadn’t crossed my mind, but I drew the line at breaking and entering; I wasn’t that crazy. I had thought about taking a peek through one of those gigantic windows, but like I said, the line had to be drawn somewhere, and looking over the wall was where I drew it.