The Girl Who Wanted Everything

Who wants pork?

Was Steff right? I mean attractiveness is clearly subjective, but still, most people would acknowledge that Sam or Jamie were just plain beautiful. Adam though? Adam was nice-looking, sexy perhaps.... No actually Adam was definitely sexy. He owned himself, both physically and psychologically in a way that was absolutely commanding of other people's attention. Charismatic, that was the word, but gorgeous? I gazed after them. They were still near enough for the firelight to illuminate their features, and suddenly I saw it.

Adam's lips had looked full to me before, now I saw them slightly parted and they were luscious and seductive, but also slightly wicked. What might he do with those lips? My brain was racing. His shoulders strained under Jamie's weight, his muscles lean and rippling, his arms fiercely protective. His brows, jet black, were knitted in concentration over eyes that I had noticed changed color with his emotion – warm brown when teasing, a foreign golden emerald when he was intense.  

What?!  What?! How had I not noticed this before? Adam was drop-dead gorgeous. Could it be that Adam was one of those people you needed to look at closely for a while to really appreciate the nuance and depth of their attractiveness? Was Adam... a violet?

I looked across the bonfire to where Sam was standing, chatting to Tyler and Steff. He caught my eye and smiled. Yep, there was my dream boy. He didn't have that wildness that Adam possessed. You never knew what Adam might do or say. Sam was all slow and gentle energy. Sure, he was reserved, but that didn't make him any less. 

Sam was both peony and violet, or maybe he was more of a moonflower. He had the overt beauty of a showy blossom, but it took some time to release the scent. Even if I wasn't seeing his inner treasures right now, I knew what he was like inside, didn't I? They were definitely there.

That night there was silence from Adam's room. They might as well have been swinging from a metaphorical chandelier though because no matter how hard I tried, I could not sleep. Worst of all, my brain seemed to be creating imaginary sex scenes in the room next door in the absence of real ones. Whereas before I had just managed to block the images from my mind, now they were flooding me. And I was enjoying them. 

Like some kind of erotic GIF I couldn't remove from my screen, I kept seeing Adam's shoulder moving against the bedsheets, his hand planted squarely against the wall against which I slept. It was downright pornographic. 

I arrived at the breakfast table the next morning to discover Jamie in a robe, her hair in a towel, and cucumber slices over her eyes. For one very weird moment I thought she was actually Ronnie. Was Ronnie like Jamie when she was younger, beautiful and carefree? I thought back to my earliest memories of Ronnie, memories from before the divorce. She had been different back then. She had always been an attractive woman, and with money to spend on her wardrobe and beauty regimen. 

Nowadays she looked tired and sometimes unkempt, her skin had aged beyond that of either Giselle or my mum, and her personality seemed to have sunk in on itself. It was difficult to imagine now that she had helped my mum through a hard time. She didn't seem capable of helping anyone with anything.

In a flash I wondered what Jamie's future would hold? Would it continue along its current lines of fulfillment, or could she actually end up like Ronnie instead? An early marriage to a rich man could crumble all too easily as you got older and your looks started to fade. Twenty years from now, would it be Jamie wearing the smeared lipstick and stirring the margaritas? I found that despite everything, I could not wish that on her. She would probably make her own success, become a fashion mogul or something, but if not, then perhaps she would choose someone unlike her cheat of a father. She could choose another decent guy like Adam, someone who would stay by her through thick and thin.

As if on cue, Adam stuck his head out through the kitchen door. He was wearing black board shorts and an open blue Hawaiian shirt and he looked fresh as a daisy compared to the rest of us. My mental images of him from the night before rushed back and I found myself blushing the color of the fresh beet juice in the carafe on the breakfast table. I had been hoping that morning light would clear my head a bit, hoping that today, Adam would look like a mere mortal again and things would be exactly as they were before. My eyes travelling up and down the muscles on his abdomen put paid to those hopes instantly.

"I am doing a fry-up this morning,'' Adam called from the doorway, waving around a sausage on a fork. "Who wants pork?''