“I really liked them too,” I say.

We’re both quiet again for a moment.

“Ada.”

“Hmm?” I ask.

“You’re my summer night.”

I feel my face molding into a question mark. For a second, I wonder if he’s still dreaming.

“I am?” I ask, peeking up at his sleepy face. His eyes are closed, but there’s a faint smile hanging on his lips.

“Yeah.” He nods. “And my blue-sky afternoon and my rainy Sunday…and…my open road.”

I push out a laugh.

“All those things?” I ask.

“Every one,” he confirms.

“Well…” I lace my fingers in his. “You’re my…” I think about it and let a few silent moments pass. “My sea otter.”

“What?” he asks.

“My sea otter,” I say again, with more confidence.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well,” I say, playing with his thick hair, “if you puffed up your hair a little, and if you grew out your whiskers a little more…”

“Oh really?”

He laughs, and I do too.

“No, I mean you’re my figurative sea otter.”

“Your figurative sea otter?” He narrows a playful eye at me.

“Yeah,” I say, “when they sleep on the water, one holds the other’s hand so she doesn’t drift away from him.”

I feel his hand squeeze mine a little tighter.

“I won’t let you drift away,” he whispers near my ear.

I can tell he rests his head back on the pillow, and then he’s quiet again. His last words mean more to me than I think he knows because drifting, for me, is dangerous. It only leads me back — to memories and a broken heart.

“Whose shirt is it anyway?”

My thoughts break instantly, and my eyes fall to my sweatshirt as I let a few seconds pass.

“It’s mine,” I say.

He laughs. “No, I mean before it was yours.”

I don’t say anything for a moment. I just swallow — hard.

“It was my high school sweetheart’s,” I say, at last.

I don’t look at him, and he doesn’t say anything more about the shirt.

“The boxers?” he asks, sheepishly. “Should I assume the same person?”

I take a second before slowly nodding into his chest.

“Why do you wear them?” he asks.

I angle my face up toward his. “I thought you liked this outfit.”

His head lifts slightly. “I said you look good in it. I never said I liked it,” he clarifies.

“Aah,” I say, sending him a playful smirk. But his eyes only widen, as if he’s still waiting for my answer.

“Why do I wear them?” I ask myself, my voice fading off.

My eyes fall to a spot on his tan chest and get stuck there for nearly a minute before I look back up at him and shrug my shoulders. I could tell him why. I could tell him everything right now, but I just can’t seem to find the first word.

“You don’t still…,” he starts but doesn’t finish.

I know what he wants to ask: You don’t still love him?

I shake my head. It’s not the true answer to his question, but it is the right one. It’s the one that matters.

“Do you want some new pajamas, Ada Bear?”

Ada Bear? I feel a slight smile edging up my face again. I go by a lot of names, but Ada Bear has never been one of them. I catch his eyes, and then suddenly, I feel my head slowly nodding. I don’t know if it’s the new nickname or the way his blues hypnotize me, but I nod without any real thought.

And as if the earth all of a sudden shifts, Jorgen jumps up, grabs a pair of basketball shorts lying on the floor and pulls them over his boxers, then runs to his closet. I sit up on his bed and dangle my feet over the side. I listen to him root around the little room for a while until he finally emerges a minute later. He’s holding out a gray sweatshirt with his high school football team’s name stretched across its front and a pair of blue, checkered boxers.

I take the shirt and boxers and stare at them clutched within my fingers and lying against the backdrop of the gray and red, checkered cotton of my old life. And when I look back up, Jorgen is smiling a wide, goofy grin, and I can’t help but smile too.

“Thank you,” I manage to say. “These are perfect.”

If it’s possible, he looks even more content.

“You want some breakfast?” he asks.

I take in a breath and then nod my head.

“Comin’ right up,” he says.

I watch him hurry off into the kitchen, and then I hear some clanging of pots and pans before my eyes travel down again to the sweatshirt and boxers in my hands. Then, slowly, I feel my stare moving to the old sweatshirt I’m wearing. I pull its collar up over my nose and breathe in. It doesn’t smell like Andrew anymore. It used to smell like his sweat and his cologne. It did for a long time, until one day, it just didn’t. And after several days of not being able to smell him, I finally laid the shirt down inside the wash machine, closed the lid and pulled the knob. But as soon as I heard the water pouring into the machine, I flung open the lid and tried to retrieve it. But it was too late. I cried for almost an hour that day, hovered over that soggy sweatshirt. And I still pull it up over my nose every once in a while, just to see if I can smell him again. They say the strongest sense connected to memory is smell. And I believe it because sometimes, if I closed my eyes and breathed him in, I could almost feel him next to me.

I swallow hard, forcing the lump in my throat back down, before standing up and sliding Andrew’s boxers off and then sliding on Jorgen’s. I fold the red boxers and carefully set them onto the bed. Then, I pull off Andrew’s old baseball sweatshirt and force Jorgen’s old football shirt over my head. After Jorgen’s shirt is on, I carefully fold Andrew’s and set it on top of the boxers.

I stare at the folded pile then. Andrew’s hooded sweatshirt no longer has a drawstring for its hood. And the cuffs at the ends of each sleeve are tattered and torn. The word baseball across the front of the shirt is now just a faded and broken semblance of the word, and there’s a tear at the end of one leg on the boxer shorts where I caught it on the arm of my Adirondack chair one day. The pile looks sad and discarded, and all of a sudden, there’s a ripping at my heart, and I want to throw Andrew’s sweatshirt and boxers back on as quickly as I can. But instead, my eyes fall to the clothes I’m wearing and get stuck on the blue in my new boxers. I love the color. It reminds me of Jorgen’s blue eyes. I tug on the sweatshirt that now all but hangs off my shoulders. It’s larger than Andrew’s, and it almost feels as if it’s swallowing me. I kind of like the way it feels.

“Ada, do you want your eggs scrambled?”

My eyes travel to the kitchen and then eventually fall back onto the little pile of clothes sitting on the bed.

“Yes, please,” I call out to him.

I stare at the pile for another minute before scooping it up and making my way into the kitchen. But I only get two steps outside the bedroom door when Jorgen’s hungry gaze makes me freeze. His sexy eyes narrow in on mine, and within an instant, he drops the skillet and starts a slow saunter toward me — looking as if he has a million thoughts running through his mind but only one clear goal.

When he gets close enough to touch me, he wraps his strong arms around my body and lifts me off the floor.

“Now, that outfit I love.” He trails a soft, deep whisper into my ear.

A shiver runs down my spine, and I almost gasp when he presses his lips to mine and gives me a long, hard, slow kiss. I take it all in — as much as I can — until our lips part, and he gently sets me down again. A strand of my hair has come to rest over my left eye; he takes it and tucks it behind my ear before flashing me a crooked grin and leaving me for the kitchen again.

I have to catch my breath. Sometimes, without warning, he just takes the air right out of me. He’s always surprising me somehow — there’s always a new, softer or funnier or sexier side of him — as if each day, I’m discovering him all over again. I’ve really never met anyone like him. He really is an interesting — and beautiful — creature.