The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,65

face and her expression of amazement burst into a smile of satisfaction. I felt a twinge of anxiety when I saw Daddy’s surprised face. He’d never liked surprises and tended to foist them on Momma whenever possible.

“It’s . . . Uhm, it’s awfully soon, isn’t it?” Daddy directed the question at Momma, not us.

“It is soon, Robert. But that’s not the question. They’re asking for our approval. If we approve, what does it matter if we approve now or in six months? They’re not asking to get married today.”

Daddy listened. A second match flared and he sucked on the pipe.

Momma glared playfully at him, but her voice held serious undertones. “Nobody’s rushing you. We can take our time with the answer. But, Robert Roe, do you remember how many times you had dinner at my daddy’s house before you asked for my hand?”

Daddy rose to his feet. “As long as I am not being rushed . . .” He held a congratulatory hand out to Adam and nodded to me as he excused himself to go inside. A second later, we heard the bathroom door shut. He hadn’t agreed, but he was letting us have our way.

Momma sighed. “Mark my word, he’ll soon be saying it was all his idea. Welcome to the family, son.” She beamed up at Adam.

Adam and I grinned at each other. We were home free.

That night Adam snuck back out to the farm from Joe’s and woke me in the middle of the night. We went outside and made love near the apple tree. He lay under me on the very spot where I had found him, the smooth undersides of his open arms pale against the dark, red clay. A cloud passed over, dimming the moonlight for a moment, and I had a sudden fear that he might go back into the mud he had come from, that he could vanish, dissolving beneath me as I pressed onto him. But he did not. He pulled me down to his perfect mouth and remained as he was, a man.

Everyone seemed surprised at the speed of our engagement, but not the engagement itself. After everybody knew about it, Momma and Daddy paid less attention to Adam’s comings and goings on the farm.

We went at each other like drunken rabbits. Everywhere, anytime we could, working late into the night to make up for chores we had missed during the day. I was as crazy in love with him in his new body as I had been before. Everything I had done with Addie could now spill over into the world. In the fields, in the barn, in the daylight, in every room of the house. What I did with Adam had a name and required simple privacy, not secrecy. I put my fears about children behind me, but they followed me, mobile and unobtrusive as shadows.

On the Monday after our engagement had been announced, we were making love when Adam surprised me with a question. “I don’t want to pull out. Do you want me? Do you want this?”

I could not look away from that bright gaze. His whole body was so warm, almost hot. The last of my resistance uncoiled. “Yes,” I said.

What rose from him was not his normal sound of pleasure. Stronger, his cry swept past sweetness into a joy intense and sharp as sorrow or rage. It rose and passed not through, but into. Into me.

That was it. When my monthly time should have come, four weeks before the wedding, I knew. He was right about his fertility. We’d gotten on the train there is no getting off. Too late for more questions. Only time would bring the answers.

We had stepped into the public whirlpool of events that comes with a wedding and having a child.

I was in a state of bliss. Sweet, wide-open joy.

women usually talked about sex back then only as something to put up with. The physical details were left unstated. If a girl was lucky, her mother might give her a frank private talk about the specifics of what parts were going to go where the night before she married. But most mothers skirted the issue, assuming the barnyard to be education enough. There were no women’s magazines in the grocery store checkout aisle, proclaiming the joys of multiple orgasms. No books or charts for us.

With A., I never needed a chart or a manual. The act itself could vary so. Some nights I felt myself unfurl. Other nights