CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
No . . . No.” Sam’s hold on my fingers tightens. I step closer and gather his hand into both of mine. Something terrible has happened; I can tell by his expression. His eyes are welling up with tears.
“Don’t say that. You’re fucking with me.” His face twists with emotion. Moments later, he pulls the phone away from his ear and rests it on his forehead. He tips his head down in sorrow, his voice hoarse. “Goddammit. Goddammit, I can’t believe this is happening.” He takes several long breaths that are meant to calm his emotions. He’s struggling big-time, and watching it is breaking my heart.
I step closer and rub his arm, speaking in a near-whisper. “Whatever it is, I’m here for you.”
He takes a deep breath to gather himself before putting the phone back to his ear. “I’ll come. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He nods a few times, his nostrils flaring and his lips trembling. A tear spills out of his right eye. “Okay . . . Call you when I get there.” He pulls away from me, staring at his phone as if he’s lost in thought. I wait with bated breath, twisting my hands together as I wonder and fear what he’s going to say.
“I’ve gotta go.” He sounds lost—sad and disconnected—as he continues to stare at the phone that delivered him some pretty bad news from the looks of it. “To leave. New York. I have to leave New York.”
It feels like a knife was just plunged into my heart by an invisible hand. “Back to LA?”
“Yeah.”
“For how long? What happened?” I pray this is something that can be easily fixed, that Sam will be coming back in a couple days so we can pick up where we’ll be leaving off when he gets on the plane.
“Madison’s in the hospital.” He pauses to clear his throat. “They don’t think she’s going to make it.”
My heart stops for a second. “What?” This is not at all what I was expecting to hear. I thought there was something bad going on, but not this bad. This is terrible. Devastating. Unreal. “Oh my god, Sam . . .”
“Yeah. She overdosed, apparently.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god, that’s just . . . That’s just horrible. You have to go right away.” I need to do something . . . anything but just stand here in the foyer getting ready to cry. I start walking toward the bedrooms and then stop, turning and rushing back to him, grabbing his arm. I’m so lost and confused, but I want to help him. I shake him, trying to wake him out of his stupor. “We need to get you a plane ticket, like, right now.”
He finally looks up at me. “I don’t know if any flights leave this late at night.”
I feel like I’m channeling my sister Amber. Sam has a problem and I am going to fix it, dammit! “Yes, they do. The band has a private jet that can go whenever it wants. I think. You can take their plane.”
He shakes his head and pulls out of my grasp. “No way, man. I can’t do that.”
I grab Sam’s shoulders and shake him hard. “Yes, you can. And you’re going to do it, and don’t give me any sass about it either. I know you have your pride and all that, but this is an emergency. We don’t have time for that man-crap.”
Sam just stares at me, looking numb and shell-shocked.
I step away and wave my hand in his face. “You go pack your stuff.” I point down the hall. “Right now. I’ll take care of your travel plans.”
Sam glares at me for a few seconds but then looks down at his phone and sighs. His body seems to sink in on itself. He reaches up to wipe the tears from his face as he slowly disappears down the hallway without another word.
I grab my purse and dig through it to find my phone. After dialing my sister’s number, I wait for it to ring. I pray that she’ll still be able to get calls when she’s on the plane or in the airport. I’m not exactly sure where she is right now.
The first two rings are normal, but then there’s a click and another ringing tone takes over. When she finally answers, it sounds like she’s been asleep. “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me, Em. We’re having an emergency right now, and I need your help.”
“What? An emergency?” She’s whispering loudly. From the sounds I’m hearing in the background, I’m guessing she’s on the plane.
“Yes. Are you in flight right now? How are you getting my call?”
“I transferred all my calls to my Wi-Fi account. What’s up?”
“I need you to tell me who I have to contact to get the private jet ready to go to LA tonight.”
My sister’s voice comes in much more clearly this time. “What are you talking about?”
“Listen, I can’t give you all the details, but I need you to fly Sam back to LA tonight. It can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“What do you mean it can’t wait? Why back to LA? Did you piss him off? I told you to press his buttons, not explode them!”
“This has nothing to do with me!” I yell. I have to take a moment to calm myself down before I continue. “This has to do with Sam’s personal business back in LA. I promise, I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t an absolute emergency.” I lower my voice so Sam won’t hear what I’m saying next. “I can’t tell you all the details, but it’s for real. He needs to get on a plane now, and all the commercial flights are gone for the day.” I check the time on my phone just to be sure . . . It’s past midnight, and by the time we get to JFK it’ll be after one a.m. “This cannot wait until tomorrow morning. It’s a life-or-death situation.”
“Okay, I’m awake now. Fine. Whatever he needs.” She yawns loudly.
“Sooo . . . what do I do to make this happen? I’ve never booked a private jet before.” Heck, I’ve only purchased a regular airplane ticket a few times in my entire life.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. I have all of Sam’s personal details on my phone, so it’s no big deal. You just need to get him to JFK ASAP. Mr. Blake knows where to go, and I’ll be happy to wake his grouchy ass up.”
“I told Sam to go pack a couple minutes ago. We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”
“Okay. The plane will obviously wait for him to get there, but go as soon as you can. They don’t like people leaving too late at night. Something about noise regulations or whatever.”
“You got it. Thank you so much, Amber.”
“Don’t think this is the end of this conversation, Em. You have a lot of explaining to do.”
She sounds annoyed with me, but I don’t have time for that right now. “I promise, I will tell you everything I can . . . later. Right now my priority is to get Sam out of here.”
“Are you going with him?”
“What?” Her question throws me for a loop.
“I said, are you going with him? On the flight plan, the pilot needs to indicate how many passengers there will be.”
I hadn’t even thought of going with Sam, but the idea is nuts, so the answer is simple: no, I am not going to LA with Sam. Yes, we had a connection today, but that doesn’t equate to me suddenly being thrust into the middle of his life.
“Of course I’m not going with him. It’s just Sam.”
“Are you sure? Because if this is a life-or-death situation, if it’s that bad, maybe you should go with him. Remember what I asked you to do, Em. Nothing has changed. I need your help with him and Ty. I can’t have Sam falling apart on me. He means a lot to the band right now. There’s a lot riding on this.” She drops her voice. “And Sam and Ty are on the edge of fixing their relationship, and I need that to continue forward, not move backward. They need to mend their fences.”
I can’t believe she’s trying to recruit me into this nonsense. Yes, I care about Sam, but I cannot get involved in all his problems. And even if I wanted to, I’m sure he wouldn’t want me there. That would be crazy. We’re still practically strangers.
“No, he doesn’t want me to go with him to LA; that’s nuts.”
“You can if you want,” says a deep voice from behind me.
I spin around to find Sam standing in the entrance of the foyer with his fully loaded backpack in hand. He doesn’t have either guitar I saw him come in with this afternoon.
“But . . .” I look first at him and then at the phone in my hand. “But I don’t know anybody in LA,” I say lamely.
“You don’t need to know anybody in LA besides me.”
I can’t believe how scared he looks. This is not the Sam I’ve seen over the past twelve hours. His skin is as pale as paper, and he looks physically ill. Drained. Hopeless.
I don’t know what to think about his statement. We’re practically strangers. The only thing I do know about him is that he’s a standup guy and that he stepped in to take care of a little girl who needed him because her mother was a mess. And I guess I know too that he’s the brother of my sister’s boyfriend. Maybe he’s not as much of a stranger as I thought.
I feel my resolve weakening, my reasons for not going evaporating over this sense that we are somehow connected and fated to see this thing through . . . whatever this thing is. Friendship, probably. But friends aren’t anything to discount. I don’t have so many that I couldn’t use one more.
Besides . . . do I need to know anything else about him? I’m sure he’s got skeletons in his closet just like I do. Does any of that matter? He looks so vulnerable. Scared. And I know what that feels like, to know that you’re alone in the world and that no one understands. Somebody he loves could be dying—the mother of his child, no less. The only thing is . . . I’m sure he’s got a million friends back in LA, so why does he need me?
He stares at me, waiting for me to respond.
The risk seems huge. What we started together here in New York City is nice, but it could so easily go sideways in the wrong environment. LA? What could be more opposite from New York than LA?
“Do you need me to go with you?” I finally ask. Regardless of how I feel, I know one thing: Sam was there for a little girl who needed him, so I can be there for him when he needs somebody. If he needs somebody. I don’t think it’s in him to admit that he does. I’ve only known him for half a day, but I can see that the chip on his shoulder is the size of a boulder.
He gives me a brief shrug. “It might be nice to have some company.”
I nod, knowing that’s the best I’m going to get from him. But the small amount of vulnerability he lets slip through is all I have to see. “Okay, fine. I’ll go.” I change my focus to the telephone. “Put me on the flight plan. I’m going to LA with Sam.”
“Wow. I never thought I would see the day,” Amber says.
“What’s that supposed to mean? What day?”
“The day that you would drop everything and take a spontaneous trip across the country for a guy you just met. New York sure has had an effect on you.”
My heart plummets as Amber puts what I’m doing into perfect perspective. I’m such a rube. “Shut up. I have to go.”
“It’s only going to take you fifteen seconds to pack,” she says, a smile in her voice. “We still have time to chat if you want.”
“No, we don’t. Gotta go.” I hang up the phone before she can say anything else. I take a deep breath and let it out. Sam stares at me and I stare back.
“So . . . we’re doing this?” he asks. “Together?”
“I guess we are.” My heart is pounding to beat the band.
“Is this too freaky? Is it too much?” He looks almost pained asking his questions.
I think about it for a couple seconds before I shake my head. “No. It felt like it at first, but not now. But maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet either.” I stop trying to explain my feelings because they’re too screwed up in my head to make sense of anyway. “I need to go pack.”
“I’ll be here,” he says. He’s staring at the floor when I walk out of the room.