But even with that, he was running out of distractions. He'd gone through every drawer, cabinet, cupboard, and shelf in the apartment half a dozen times already, packing up things he no longer wanted or needed.
Adam had started all over yesterday with another pass at the kitchen, adding a few more things to the boxes. Then he'd taken another look at his closet. He now had a whole box full of nothing but shoes, ones that either no longer fit or for which he had no occasion to wear. Then there was one entire box he'd filled with CDs, which he never played anymore. All his music was digital now, so why bother keeping the CDs?
He shuffled over to the stacks of boxes taking over the wall in the dining room. A tiny smile pulled at his mouth. It felt good to let all those things go. He honestly couldn't wait to load them all into John's truck and drop them off at a donation center. It would make his apartment feel more like John's place. Light and airy and free of clutter. The more stuff he boxed up, the more it quieted all the nasty chaos in his head.
But there was still that third bedroom to tackle. Adam had tried—all day yesterday—to make himself go in there, but he hadn't succeeded.
Adam sighed and went back to the entryway to take off his shoes.First things first, he thought, hearing John's voice in his head. The man had given him an order, after all.
He pulled out his phone, his hands trembling as he unlocked the screen and searched through his various text threads. There was one for all the daddies and boys he knew, then another for the boys alone, plus one just for the trans boys. That last one meant leaving Dakota out of the discussion, since he was the only boy in their group who wasn't a transsexual. He'd been blessed with all the right parts from birth.
And none of the wrong ones.
Adam rolled his shoulders, feeling an itch all over his skin from the tug of his chest binder. He took a deep breath, opened the trans-only thread, and typed out the message before he could chicken out and change his mind.
Me: Who did you guys use for top surgery?
Adam let out a shaky exhale.There. He'd done it. Granted, it wasn't fully obeying John's order, but at least it was a start. He'd taken the first step. Now he just needed to wait for some responses.
Despite all of his friends being at work, Adam started getting responses almost right away. Ryder named one doctor down in Santa Barbara, while Nicky named another, but that one was closer to Los Angeles. Haven mentioned a third, who was located in Templeton, the hospital town just south of Paso Robles, and when Morgan joined in a few minutes later, it turned out he had used the same surgeon that Haven had. Adam looked up all the names, just in case, and saved the phone numbers to his contacts.
It still wasn't obeying John, but it got him another step closer.
Adam set his phone aside. It wasn't that he wanted to disobey a direct order—if anything, he itched with the need to follow through and make John proud of him—but there was still something stopping him. It wasn't even the fear that he might die on the table like his dad. Nor even the sense of not deserving the surgery. That was still there, but it was muted. Not nearly as intense as it had been.
Still, he felt like he was waiting for something. But what that was, Adam had no clue. Some kind of sign, maybe. Or permission.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “I don't even know.” Maybe he was just trying to talk himself out of following through.
Except he knew he needed to do so. That accidental touch yesterday evening had nearly destroyed him. John had grazed his chest before but never full-on grabbed him there. Granted, Adam knew John hadn't done it intentionally—he'd only been trying to shield Adam from harm—but the man's hand hadcupped right over a part of his body he never wanted John to go near.
“Fuck!” Adam yelled. He wanted to be free of the damned things. He needed them gone.
Adam snatched up his phone, picked the name of the closest surgeon, and made the call.
A few minutes later, he stared at his calendar in a daze, seeing the consultation appointment jumping out at him in red ink.Next Thursday. Holy shit. Adam panted, hands shaking as he tried to text John to tell him that he'd done it.
But his fingers wouldn't cooperate. He was too amped up. Too nervous and uncertain and twisted up inside, knowing that, in just six days—six short days that he knew were going to fly by in a blink—he'd been meeting a surgeon about finally making his body right. Something he'd been desperately craving for over a decade. Something he'd wanted so badly, he'd pushed his dad toward death.
Adam dropped his phone, then snatched it back up. Not to text John, but to start one of his playlists. He needed music. He needed loud noise to drown out the voices in his head. Otherwise, he was going to storm out that door and start walking to the nearest liquor store, no matter how far away it was.
He tapped on a playlist at random and turned the volume all the way up.
Adam threw his head back and laughed as the opening notes fromOnce Upon a Time's musical episode began to play. The first track was way too chipper for his mood, but he found himself singing along anyway, belting out the lyrics to expel some of the tension in his body.
It wasn't enough. Adam paced his apartment as he sang, looking for a distraction. Looking for something to keep him busy. Keep him moving.
Except he found nothing. He'd just had breakfast at John's place, so he wasn't hungry. There wasn't much of anything to clean, since John habitually tidied up after the both of them, probably without even realizing he was doing it. Adam made a slow, steady circuit of the whole apartment, looking for something more to pack up, but of everything that remained, anything he touched was something he either used on a regular basis or couldn't bear to part with.
“Fine!” he shouted between verses. He stomped off to the third bedroom, being the only space left to sort. Adam opened the door and stood there for a long while, staring at the seemingly endless piles of stuff, wondering how the hell to even start.
He spotted a box of his dad's business files.Yes! Okay.That, he could do. Even Dad wouldn't mind seeing those thrown out, since he had always been fastidious about shredding old documents once they no longer needed to be kept. Adam grabbed the heavy box and hauled it out to the dining room, starting a new stack against the wall. He went back to the bedroom, found another file box, and pulled it free.
Then he had to move stuff around to access the rest. There was no rhyme or reason to the way Dad's stuff had been placed in the room. When he and Haven had moved into this apartment, and the third bedroom allowed Adam to finally empty out his storage space, they'd pretty much carried everything in and stacked it all at random, not bothering to organize anything. One box of Dad's clothes sat on top of his old dresser, while another was wedged under a box of books. Some boxes of business records were piled on top of a nightstand, while others had been used to keep the mattress braced upright against the wall.
Adam's clothes were damp with sweat by the time he finally got the last of the file boxes out of the room and stacked withthe rest. He went back to see what else he could haul out, then muttered a curse. Even with several boxes removed from the space, the bedroom looked even more chaotic. If it had been disorganized before, it was a disaster now.
He picked up his phone and scrolled through his playlists until he found one of his favorites. Adam set it toShuffle, wanting to surprise himself, and set the phone back down, only to snatch it right back up when the first song began to play.Oh!He barked out a laugh. This song simply had to be part of Everett and Morgan's reception. Adam opened his text thread with Trevor and told him as much, then quickly added a second message in explanation.
