- 5 -

About half an hour later I step out of the shower, walk towards the walk-in closet and dress in jeans, a long sleeved shirt and a dark pink hoodie. I pull on socks and put on my brown boots, and then walk out to the living room.

Anna's finishing cleaning off the stove when I walk in. "Hey." I say shoving my hands in my jean pockets. "Hey." She says as she turns the sink facet off. "You ready chica?" I let out a deep breath. "Yeah. I want to grab Adam's sketch pad, our I-pods and my laptop so I can work on stuff while I'm there." I reply. Anna shrugs. "Okay, sure. Go ahead."

I go into the living room to find the stuff and dig it out. "What's the story behind that thing again?" Anna asks. I look up at her. "What?" Anna points at the small sculpture on the coffee table. Smiling, I pick it up. It's the sculpture that Adam gave me the first time I was in his shed at his house back in Arcadia. It's a small sculpture and is made of wire, metal, copper and I think some plastic as well.

"It was a couple days after I'd first met Adam. Grace and him had come over to my house to work on our chem. group project and he left his book bag at my house accidentally when he left that night. I went over to his house the next day and he gave it to me." "He did it also as like his way of trying to say he liked you, right?" Anna asks. I put it back down on the table. "I don't know. I've never really, you know thought about it that way. Maybe he did." I reply.

I stand and walk over to the stove to stand beside Anna. "Got everything?" she asks. "Yeah." I reply nodding.

We turn off the lights and walk to the door, locking it. We walk to the subway station and ride the train down to the hospital. We go into the hospital's lobby and ride the elevator up to the 14th floor. We get off and I look up to see Luke sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting area.

"Luke?" I say. He looks up at me and gives me a huge smile. I practically run to my younger brother and I give him a huge hug. I pull away a moment later and ask him where his fiancée is. "She's in visiting with Adam. So, what happened?" I re-tell the story once again and by the end, Luke has a very "wow" look on his face. "Say something." I say. Luke blinks a couple times, and then looks at me again. "I don't know what to say Joan. How is he doing?" I shrug and reply, "He's doing better now. He's on antibiotics right now, so he's doing better."

"Anyways." I say trying to change the subject because talking about it almost non-stop for the past 12 hours has made me sick of it. "What do you want to know?" Luke asks. "I don't know. How's California. Grace? Her job? Your job? Science? Glynis and Friedman?" Luke shrugs slightly. "California's good, as always. Grace is doing great. She loves her job and seeing that she works for a free-style magazine she can talk about anything she wants to." "Bch about anything is more like it." I say, interrupting him. "Yeah." Luke says, trying to remember his train of thought again. "You were talking about Grace." I say, trying to help him. "Oh, right. She also now co-owns a skateboarding/surfing shop, so she's really enjoying work right now. My job's going pretty good. I'm busy, so I'm happy. Science as always is doing awesome! -- What?" Luke says, pausing seeing my expression at the sentence "Science as always is doing awesome!" "Nothing, it's just you make it sound so interesting and I don't remember it being as that. I just enjoyed it enough to pass with a descent grade." I say. Luke looks at me as if I'm crazy, but he continues again.

"Glynis and Friedman are doing good as of last time we talked. They should be here a little bit later." Luke says, finally finishing. "It all sounds great Stud Muffin." I say with a chuckle. Luke cringes at my comment. "Sorry, it's just so funny." I say.

"Have you heard from Kevin and Lily?" Luke asks, desperately trying to find a way to change the subject. "No, I haven't. Anna talked to them early this morning from what I've heard. She said that Kevin told her that they'll be here later." "Okay, coolie." Luke says.

"I'm going to go say hi to Grace." I say as I stand up. Luke nods and gives me a thumbs up. I shake my head as I head down the hallway to Adam's room. I look in and see Grace sitting in the chair beside Adam's bed, laughing hard about something. Grace sees me and smiles. "Hey Girardi." She says and Adam looks up to see me in the doorway and gives me a warm, sweet very "Adam" smile. I smile back at him, then at Grace.

"Hey Grace." I say as I cross the room and motion that I want to hug her. "No way dude." She says, stiffening up her body in the chair. It makes me smile to hear her say, "Dude". We've been out of high school for almost 5 years now and it still makes me smile to hear her call people "dude" after all of this time.

"Girardi... you're doing that weird spacey thing. Quit it!" She says and I look at her and roll my eyes. Seeing that she won't hug me, I reach down and give her a very awkward hug. It was awkward because she's pressed her body flat against the back of the chair and I can barely get my arms even partway around her. She pulls away quickly and says fake glaring at me "Dude, that was way too freaky." I smirk and say "I bet you let Luke wrap his arms all of the way around you." Adam gives Grace a look of pure disgust. She glances back and forth between Adam and I, uncomfortably. "Yeah, well that's different." She finally says. Adam's still looking at her totally grossed out. "Rove, stop it." She says.

Adam raises his eyebrows at her and says "okay". "Anyways." I say, helping her change the subject. Finding so much entertainment out of her right now, I immediately add "So, how are Stud Muffin and you doing?" This earns Grace another look of disgust from Adam. Grace glares at me and says, "fine", before getting up and out of her chair.

"What?" I say, my smirk reappearing. "This is just to creepy to disguise with you Girardi. I'll be out there." Grace says, walking towards the door. She walks out of the room.

"Well, that was fun." I say, my smirk slightly returning. I glance over to see that Adam's eyebrows are re-hiked up. "That's one way to say it," he says. I smile at him and sit down beside him on his bed.

"Hi." I say, kissing him. "Hi." Adam says kissing me back. He opens up his mouth and it's like he's trying to pull me into him. He kisses me again, stronger this time. Teeth against teeth, lips against lips, mouth against mouth and tongue against tongue.

Adam pulls me into his lap and I latch my arms around his neck. His tongue plows deeper into my mouth and I pull away, breathlessly.

I'm breathing really hard and Adam apologies. "It's okay." I say. "No, not really. I got a little eager there and I am sorry. It's just I've really missed you all morning." "Yeah? Me too."

"When did you leave? I woke up and you were gone." "Oh, a nurse came in at like almost 6 and told me to basically get out." I reply. Adam laughs. "I missed waking up without you being there. You've been there every morning for a while now and it was weird that you were gone, that's all." I look at him for a moment, and then give him a quick peck. "Aw, you're sweet. Are you hungry by the way? I've been starved all morning." "I'm hungry yo, so yeah." Adam replies. "I'll get you something that you can eat up here that won't get me shot at." I say, which earns a laugh from him. It seems like his sense of humor's starting to return.

"I'll be right back." I say. Adam leans his head towards me, asking for a kiss. I oblige and lean in for a quick peck, and then I stand up and walk to the door.