I nod. Too vigorously. Because my voice is sure to fail.
He’s here.
But he can’t be here.
He’s real.
But he can’t be real.
He’s taller, somehow, in reality. His eyes are alive now, amazingly alive. He’s curious, concerned. He knows me—that much I can tell. He knows who I am.
He’s the most beautiful male I’ve ever seen. Ever. Anywhere. George Clooney and Johnny Depp and Justin Timberlake and all of them, all of them, would be cast as Adam’s less attractive best friend.
I wonder, can he speak anything more than my name?
Although even that’s great. I liked hearing him say my name. I’d like him to do it again.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says.
“Unh?” I respond brilliantly.
“Your mother sent me to find you.”
It’s obviously true, and the honesty of it surprises me. “Are you supposed to tell me that?”
“I don’t know.”
He doesn’t shrug or smile or duck his head. I realize he has no affectations. He’s acquired no little tics or habits.
The strangeness of seeing him leaves me speechless. He’s a creature from a dream. He’s something I doodled on a sketch pad, brought to life, fully formed.
I want to touch him. To ensure that he’s real and not some weird trick of my tired mind.
I also just want to touch him. Because … just because.
And I believe I can touch him. I believe he will allow me. I believe this because he is, in some impossible way, mine. Does he know that?
“Do you know who I am?” I ask. I’m not just asking if he knows my name. I’m asking if he knows who I am, what I am. I’m asking if he knows my importance.
It’s the kind of thing I’ve heard coming from my mother on more than one occasion: Do you know who I am? With italics on the “who” and a rising, incredulous tone on the “am.”
I don’t say it that way. But I mean it that way.
It’s insane to even think like this, but despite the magnificence of this boy, he is in some sense mine. And I want him to know it.
You are mine, Adam.
Where the hell does that kind of thinking even come from?
“You are the one who designed me,” Adam says. “I am your perfect match. Your soul mate.”
“You know about all that?”
The first hesitation. He isn’t being coy. He’s considering. “I don’t think I know all of anything, Evening.”
I want to tell him to stop using my name because every time he does it sends a shiver through me. I don’t want a shiver. I don’t want him to make me weak in the knees.
I stay silent and he continues. “I have been given some information. It’s a crude technique, I understand, so all I know is parts of things. I’m still being formed mentally. I have knowledge but no experience.”