My heart is like a tea kettle set to boil.  I have not felt this out of control since I was a teenager, certain that something was fundamentally wrong with me, and that there was no way to fix it. Cold sweats, fearful thoughts, circling round and round in my head.  Ebbing for a moment, only to flow stronger the next.

Everything has been building to this moment of what must be panic.  Anxiety’s spearhead.  I can feel it coming for me—waiting for it might be worse than the attack itself. Fear of the fear doubling the bad thoughts, forming concentric circles of dread.

I take deep breaths, and that helps for about ten seconds, but then the worries start to swirl in my mind again. What is going to happen? What should I do?

What have I done?

Loneliness kicks me in the gut.  I miss my mother more than I ever have since her death. It hardly seems possible or fair that I should feel such a surge of grief nearly five years on, but I can’t help it.  If only Ruth were here to discuss this whole situation with me, she would know the answer, I’m sure.  Save me from my anguish.  Point me to the correct path, show me it’s okay.  She knew him, welcomed him into her home, laughed at his observations; way back when, she said he was the nicest teenage boy she’d ever met.

Ruth loved him, just as much as I loved him.

Love him, I mean.

Adam.

Lord knows, I need to talk to someone, though it feels disloyal to him. A breach of trust.  But what choice do I have?  I’m losing my mind.

Fairfax hates Adam (double A-hole, she had labeled him), so it shouldn’t be her, but my mind keeps returning to her nonetheless.  Maybe she would listen and not judge.  Not condemn anyone.

But still, what if she said something like, “I knew he was bad news”? It would be the end of our friendship.  And I cannot lose that bond.  Not right now.

I tried calling dad, but he and his friend Blanche are at her family reunion.  In Valdosta, which was scheduled, canceled, then rescheduled, once Dorian passed Florida, then Georgia (thankfully) by. I don’t want to bother my father right now while he’s busy being an escort.  I don’t think I could even explain the whole thing over the phone.  I might cry, and tears ruin a telephone narrative.

So…other people, other confidantes, click through like a banner widget:  Martha, Janey, Angela, Beth Anne, Ellie, Peter.

Peter.

Guilt heats my face.  The fact that he is even on my short list is shameful.  I don’t deserve him as a friend. I ended my relationship with him, one he valued highly, through a text.

Awful.

But, I think now, pumping gas for the long ride home, I wasn’t thinking straight back then, in the beginning of it all.  They say that love is a drug, and it’s true.  And not having experienced anything like love for so long, when the oxytocin hit my blood stream, it was super strength. All my usual routine (work agenda, priorities, courtesy) went out the window.  I was love-crazy. That sounds like something my mother would say. Or maybe not.  Maybe Ruth would say that my instincts, plunging right in with Adam, were the most sensible I’d ever had.

I don’t know right now.

All I know is that I have never, not once, been remotely as happy as I was back then, at the start of it all.  Adam called me last year during the Guilford reunion in November, and it was like regaining a sense I’d lost, like sharp vision or good hearing, but in this case, it was…well, it was an intense sensation of belonging.  A deepness of feeling and attachment to the right person.

Connection.  That phone call reestablished the connection between Adam Ainsley and me.  Started in 1985 and never lost.  Despite thirty odd years and missed chances.

Without a second thought, barely saying goodbye to Ellie and Amelia (and Jacob Kempner, come to think of it) I checked out of the Greensboro hotel, Chum in tow, and drove straight to Adam’s little house in Atlanta, finding it with no trouble.   That’s an achievement in Atlanta, even with Google maps.  Adam was waiting on his front porch, barefoot, though it was middle-of-the-night cold outside.  He had a huge smile on his face, and as we hugged, I noticed the flaking paint on the railing, some old bicycles propped against the bushes.  But the rundown appearance of his home was only a backdrop to the blossom of Adam Ainsley.  Wearing a T-shirt and cargo pants in the same army green as his eyes. Embracing me.  Kissing me.

And from that point on, I was caught up in the thrill of him.  The swirl of us.  I barely remembered to bring Chum and his crate inside, so intense was the connection.  And it wasn’t just the sex, and I hate to even use that word, so base, so unimaginative. Being together—becoming us—was more of a revelation, one I’m still processing.  How it can be so different, depending on the person.  The shared emotions, deep history.

It was more than just the physical.  The glued-together of us—we made something bigger than both.  We created our own universe.

Adam cooked for me—scrambled eggs and toast mostly, his kitchen tidy compared to the rest of the house, I’m realizing now. We talked about high school and college, how hard it was to be an adult today, to take care of yourself.  The never ending list of bills and chores. Adam mentioned projects he had planned, repairing a water leak in the living room ceiling, fixing the toilet.  How these mundanities could compose your life.  Unless you had faith, a belief in something greater.  Which, of course, Adam did. It was one of his connections with my mother, their belief in Jesus Christ.  And God and the Holy Spirit.  The Trinity.  I listened and lapped up his words like Chum at his water bowl.  Adam’s passion for God, his belief that He had brought us together again.

Adam cracked eggs into a charred iron skillet, wrists twisting and discarding the shells, lips spilling stories of searching for meaning.  Finding it with God’s help, time after time.  The sun beamed in through the window as the eggs bubbled, and I sat there, watching Adam prepare me breakfast.

I think, for the first time, I understood what the Holy Spirit might be.  Not wispy fog, or an understudy in the Trinity, but the vital connecting presence on Earth.  Maybe the most real entity of the Three—present in morning sunshine and eggs.

And my world with Adam Ainsley.

Morning after morning, I ate this breakfast, slipping a scrap or two to Chum, who gobbled up the handouts.  Adam refilled my coffee cup over and over again.  There in his kitchen, we were a pair.  Two strands intertwined.

It felt meant to be.

For the first time, I understood all the hype about pairing off.  Two becoming one, and all that mushy stuff.  It’s hard to explain without using clichés, so I’m sorry.

Let me explain it this way:  it’s like my past self finally caught up to the present.  That all iterations of me clicked with all iterations of him.  There was no thinking about what to say next, or stupid stuff like if I should shave my legs. If he would ever call me again.   Our time together was conversation to movement to feeling and back, spontaneous and unedited, like playtime as a child.  Running and swinging and climbing and laughing with no regard for purpose.

With no thought about if or when it might end.

I think we finally emerged from his house that Friday to go grocery shopping. (I had called in sick to work the whole week, with no regrets.)  We’d eaten every scrap of food in his kitchen. Chum had helped in that regard, after decimating the supply of dog food I’d packed for the trip. (I’m cringing now, remembering how he helped us finish off a pack of bologna.)

That Friday, I floated through the Cabbagetown Publix with Adam, feeling like one of those birthday balloons they sell.  He pushed the cart, and I strolled tandem, noting that his dirty blond hair needing trimming, just like in high school.  His grip on the grocery cart showed hands still tan from summer.

Adam reached for a bag of dog food, one eyebrow raised, and I nodded.  That’s the one, I thought to say, but he knew.  No words necessary. He squatted to stow the bag on the bottom of the cart, and I was hit by a vision of that hand on my thigh.  A hand as familiar now as my own. My face bloomed with heat.

What a gift to understand the parts of a person, their unique landscape, both in a grocery store and a bedroom.  In the public and the private.  To have the luxury of a relationship which moves between the two realms, seamlessly.

But most important, what an accomplishment to be the kind of person who embraces the whole of another!  The seen and unseen, the attractive and the quirky.  The good and the not so good.

I felt proud of myself back then, shopping in Publix, one-half of a couple.  Deliriously happy.  Nancy Plumb had finally graduated to an adult relationship, at age forty-eight.  I’d done it.

Now I see, I was smug, sure that I had finally stumbled into my very own perfect world.  With all that self-congratulatory happiness, maybe I was due for a fall.

Because the “not so good” of another person can turn out to be the truly awful. And then the oxytocin levels off, even disappears, and there you stand, having pledged eternal love, scared to death.

I bite my upper lip.

No, no, don’t go there now.  You need to get home.  To Jacksonville.  Avondale.  Mallory Street.  The mundane and familiar. The workaday details of your life, your old world.  These will save you.

And work.  I’ve been neglecting my job, I know.  Going to Atlanta almost every weekend (which bled into many Mondays and Tuesdays), delegating some Jacksonville events to Cara, who seemed eager to learn about onsite planning.  In the past, I would have been territorial, protecting my meetings with bulldog ferocity. Knowing that more cuts were coming, I would not have ceded one inch of responsibility to the Director of Online Education.

But in the beginning of my relationship with Adam, I found that none of that mattered to me.  Only he was important. I daydreamed about quitting my job, moving in with him, thoughts that would have terrified me previously.  I had always had a career, always had an income.  I took care of myself because no one else was going to. But I found the lure of Atlanta weekends and being with Adam erased these responsible concerns.  So much so that I had used up all my PTO for 2019.

And was way behind on my planning for Annual Meeting 2020. I’m sure there’s a glut of contracts to review—last year, most were not fully executed, so I spent the better part of a week chasing down all signatories.

Right now, a file of unsigned PDFs doesn’t scare me as much as saying goodbye to Adam Ainsley.

As the gas handle clicks off, I hear Chum bark from the back seat of my car.  He’s hungry.  I meant to feed him before we hit the road, but in the flurry of logistics and paperwork, I forgot. Surely, there’s some dog food in the trunk.

I re-latch the pump and grab the gas receipt (after punching the button five times to convince the thing to spit it out).  Then the car trunk won’t open—the unlatch button isn’t working for some reason—and I can’t find my keys, though I just had them in my hands.  Right—I had to have them to drive here, right?  To this station south of the city, where I always stop before I head back to Jacksonville. So, where are they?  Jeez! I throw open the driver side door; no keys on the front or back seats.  I find myself diving in head first to the front seat, almost hitting my head on the gear shift.  I scan the floor boards, twisting my body to snake my arms underneath the seats.  Chum starts barking again.  Then whining.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, boy!” I yell at him. “Stop it!”

But Chum doesn’t stop.  He’s howling, he’s baying at the moon, except there’s no moon, and it hurts my heart to hear him.

He’s a tea kettle about to boil over too.

The cracked leather of the seat is damp from my face, and I wonder why I’m sweating so much.  Then I realize I’ve started to cry. My sobs join with Chum’s moans, making a sad chorus at a Georgia gas station.

“Hey, lady, are you all right?”

I glance up. A young man in a John Deere cap is staring at me through the passenger window.  His eyes flick from me to my dog and back.

I sit up, wiping my eyes, my face.  Okay, okay, I think. I’m okay.

“I’m fine,” I reply to the fellow.  He gives me a searching look, a second or two, then turns away. I wave at him belatedly.  Search my pocket for a spare tissue and find my keys instead.

Okay. Back on track now.  Trunk, food for Chum, hit the road.  I feel better, the tears relieving the tension, clearing my head a bit.  Maybe it’s good to let the tea kettle screech if it releases some steam.  And settles your heart back to a bath-water temp: warm, comfortable for the moment.

And giving me what I have come to call an “eye of the storm” moment.  Clarity amidst strife, knowledge more valuable because it might be fleeting, clouded over.  Lost.

I have to talk to someone, and that someone has to be Fairfax.

My anam cara. Soul friend.

I cannot figure this out by myself.  And Fairfax is good at problem-solving.  I will throw myself on her mercy.

Maybe the whole point of our friendship has been to get me to this moment.