Big Black Car

Adam could not believe how soft and warm his pillow was. He snuggled it closer to him, enjoying the feeling of the sun coming through the window and onto his bare back. It only got better when his pillow started nuzzling him back. This, surely, was bliss.

Wait.

His eyes popped open as he realized he had actually been cuddling the soft, pretty girl in his bed. Adam groaned softly and ran a hand through his short hair. He should not be feeling so attached to her, should not be thinking of her like that after such a horrible thing had happened her. The night he found her seemed ages ago, but it was only Friday night. Thinking of Annik and her bruises and her tears made him sad. He reached over to the girl and stroked her hair, slowly tucking it behind her hair.

Adam pushed himself up so he was sitting on the bed with his feet on the floor. Now Monday was here, ready to smack him in the face. He had a Voice meeting in an hour, and then he had told the band that he would meet to discuss the next album. It’s not like he would have anything new to contribute, however, as he had been in a writing slump for the past few months. Every time he sat down at the piano or with his guitar, he would only strum absentmindedly. The words wouldn’t come.

Adam looked up at the ceiling. These thoughts depressed him. Caring for Annik had been a welcome distraction, but his old thoughts and feelings were seeping in. What would happen when she, too, had to leave?

The sheets rustled behind him, and he turned around to see Annik sitting against the headboard, hugging her legs to her chest and looking at him with her light eyes. He mimicked her pose and moved to sit beside her against the wood.

He suddenly remembered last night -- her slurred words and the way her lips felt on his. She looked as if she was thinking the same thing, as her cheeks began to tinge with pink.

After a moment of awkward silence, she laughed. Her reaction surprised him.

“I’m sorry about last night, I wasn’t thinking properly,” Annik smiled, trying to shrug off any embarrassment.

Adam frowned. He had been the one to get her drunk. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you alcohol. That was insensitive of me, I—”

She effectively stopped his apologies when she leaned over and slipped her arms around him in a hesitant hug. Annik pulled back and looked him in the eyes.

“It was nice,” she admitted, “to forget for a while.”

He smiled back at her. Without thinking, he cupped her face and rubbed her bruised face gently with his thumb. “It looks a lot better today.” The black and blue were fading into a healing yellow.

The two gazed at each other for another moment until Adam’s phone began to ring from the bedside table and he pulled his hand away from her.

“Hey, Blake,” Adam said, his eyes still on Annik. “What? No, I didn’t. Fu--, I mean look, I’m sorry. I forgot they had moved the meeting up…No, I am on my way. Be there in thirty…Bye.”

Adam ended the conversation and stood up, rushing to his closet to throw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He emerged a minute later fully clothed and saw Annik still sitting on the bed, watching him in all his craziness.

“Breakfast?” He asked while taking her hand and pulling her gently off the bed and toward the kitchen. She followed after him, her feet padding lightly on the hardwood floor. Once in the kitchen, Adam started heating up the Keurig and and explaining his day.

“I have a meeting for the Voice, and then after that I am meeting with the band,” Adam said while fixing his coffee. “I should be back around five. I’ll get dinner for us. Until then, treat the house as though it’s yours. I found one of my old phones and got it hooked up for you, so that’s on the dresser in the bedroom. You’re welcome to any food. Call me if you need anything. Seriously.”

Annik forced a smile and nodded at him. She would be okay. She shouldn’t be so attached to Adam so soon anyway.

Grabbing his coffee, Adam didn’t feel particularly reassured that she would be alright. He stopped just as he was about to leave the kitchen, crossed the room in two quick steps, and kissed her chastely on the cheek. He then turned rapidly around to hide his surely flushing face and headed out the door.

Adam being gone is a good thing, Annik told herself, as she looked around his large bachelor pad. It would give her plenty of time to think. Taking her coffee in hand, she began to walk around, starting with the living room. She loved the floor to ceiling windows that surrounded the house and let in so much light.

Adam had few pictures of himself, only a couple with his mom and brother. But she did find his award room. Or rather, an otherwise empty closet with cardboard boxes filled with awards.

She soon found his music room, as well. Annik decided it was her favorite room in the house. The room was large and soundproofed on three walls. Guitars lined the left wall, while a drum set and keyboard filled the corner. Cushy couches filled the center of the room; they were currently scattered with pillows and crumpled up pieces of paper. The fourth wall was made of windows and a sliding door that led to a private porch complete with an antique wooden swing.

Grabbing a pillow, Annik headed out to the porch swing and began to let it rock her gently back and forth. For a second, she felt like she did when she left the east --idealistic, eager, and happy to finally be doing something important and making a difference in people’s lives. She had fallen in love with LA the minute she arrived.

Annik tried to hold onto that love, but where her heart was full, now all she felt was a kind of deadness. And Adam, well he was a whole different problem. Even before she was -- she still struggled to think it – raped, Annik hadn’t really thought she was ready to have a man in her life again.

But the pain and the hurt and the fear she was experiencing right now were just making it exponentially more difficult.

On some psychological level, she knew she was enjoying Adam’s taking care of her. But she also felt incredibly vulnerable. Was that vulnerability causing her to latch on to the only person who was comforting her right now? She didn’t want to confuse gratitude and her own urge for comfort with attraction and attachment. She should leave, let Adam slide out of her life before either one of them got hurt.

But as she sat in this swing, miles away from real life, she couldn’t fathom ever leaving this beautiful oasis from pain behind.