The Thousand Words We Spoke (A Novella)

Chapter Three

Chinese was about ten minutes out by the time Adam walked out of the bathroom, steam wafting from the doorway and reverberating from his body. He wore simple plaid pajama pants and a tee shirt with something in French written on the front that clung to his still damp body.

"So, what's your drink of choice? I've got vodka or I've got..." Mia thought as she leaned against the kitchen counter. "Yeah, I've just got vodka. Dark alcohol makes me sick and gin is just gross."

"Guess we're having vodka then," Adam spoke with a grin, before leaning across from her. "Gotta say, I'm feeling damn underdressed right now."

Mia still hadn't shifted into the pajamas she couldn't wait to get into. She had nothing cute. She had sexy, and she had adorable, but not cute. Not that it mattered. The man had changed her diapers when she was a baby, for Christ's sake. He would hardly judge her for her sleepwear when he'd wiped shit off her ass so many years back.

While she didn't enjoy dressing up, it was an outfit she looked dynamite in and she couldn't of appeared as if she were seeking to awe him since she was wearing it when she found him asleep in her hallway. "Most of the city is under dressed compared to me," Mia joked. "I don't go out often, but when I do, I make that shit count. So lemonade, orange juice or straight up?"

He thrust himself back off the counter and roamed around the living space. "Straight up for me. Might have a chance in hell of sleeping tonight."

"Well, lemonade for me because I'm a pussy." Mia was not a pussy at all, but didn't feel like being sloppy drunk around Adam. So she seized the booze from the lower drawer and poured them both their drinks.

"Walked into the wrong room first," Adam spoke loudly so she could hear him, though even his loud voice still had that delicate, calming tone. "Saw your collage on your bedroom wall."

Mia's eyes shot up to study at him, but he wasn't facing her. Instead, he was going through her assortment of music on her iPad plugged into her stereo system. She knew what he was referring to.

Half of one of her bedroom walls was coated with every postcard he'd sent her over the last five years, along with photos he'd taken on his travels and sent to her, as well as photos of the two of them in different stages of her life.

Mia walked into the living room just as he began one of her playlists. "I like to call it my stalker shrine, but I'll admit 'collage' makes it sound a lot less weird."

A humorless smile adorned his lips as he took the glass from her hand. "How bad did it hurt you when I left, Mia?"

He wasn't lying before when he said her eyes never could deceive him. Adam had the supernatural talent to look into her soul and see every micro-emotion and thought tucked away in every dark corner of her subconscious. At least, the ones he was searching for. The biggest emotion she felt for him was one he appeared oblivious to, or, if he knew, he never let on.

Adam, on the other hand, was a closed book; a chain wrapped around the cover and a padlock, taking the pages' secrets to the grave. He shared what he wished to share and kept hidden what he didn't want others to see. He wasn't exactly closed off, not to her anyhow, but he had a poker face impossible to decode.

So when he looked at her now, all she saw were shadows of emotions locked tight beneath the surface.

"I'm guessing you want the unfiltered truth."

"Always."

Mia gave him a reluctant nod, clinked their glasses together, and took gulp after gulp until her tumbler glass was drained before she sat on the couch. When they spoke, he told her to never hold back and never apologize or diminish what she felt. It wasn't always a comfortable thing to manage, especially since a considerable time had passed since she had to do so. No one else every demanded this of her the way he had. "Worse than anything else I've felt in my life," Mia replied, knowing that nothing short of absolute truth would suffice.