CHAPTER THIRTY
Sam’s apartment is nothing special. It does have two bedrooms, though, and one of them is definitely furnished for a little girl. It’s got pink and purple everywhere with highlights of yellow. There are toys in a big plastic bin in the corner, and a tiny bed with a Disney princess painted on the headboard. It smells like a little girl, too . . . a mix of strawberries and cotton candy.
He opens his fridge. “Sorry . . . I don’t have any food or anything to drink in here.”
“That’s okay. I’m not hungry or thirsty.”
He leaves the kitchen and goes into his bedroom. I follow him, stopping in the threshold. He’s thrown both my bag and his down on his bed. My heart leaps into my throat seeing our things together like that. Is he expecting me to sleep with him in here?
“You can take the bed and I’ll grab the couch tonight,” he says, catching the look on my face. “I don’t think we can leave until tomorrow at the very earliest. I need to get Sadie.”
I shake my head. “If you want to stick around for the funeral, which I assume you will, we’re probably going to be here for the next several days.”
He pauses and stares off into nowhere. “Yeah. You’re right. I hadn’t thought about that.” He turns to look at me, his face set with pain. “For a second, I forgot that she died.”
I walk into the room and put my arms around him. He returns the hug without hesitation. It’s starting to feel normal to do this with Sam . . . to hold each other in a warm embrace as we wait for a sad moment to pass. How strange it is, not only that I’m doing this, but also that I’m so comfortable doing it with a man I just met. Was it New York that changed me, or was it Sam?
“I think it’s going to take a while for her death to sink in,” I say.
“Yeah, but how could I just forget? I’m such a shit.”
“No, you’re not a shit. Don’t be mean to yourself like that. You’re a human being. Madison has been in your life for a long time. She was just a natural part of it, like your arm is part of your body. And now this natural part of your life has been cut away with no warning, like an amputation of that limb. It’s going to take a while for you to adapt to the idea that she’s not here anymore. I mean, she’s here in spirit, and she’s here in Sadie . . . she’s just not going to be here in person anymore.”
“I don’t know if I believe in the afterlife,” he says.
“That’s okay. Even if you don’t believe in that, you know that when she was here, you did your best by her.”
“That’s the problem; I’m not sure that I did.” He pulls away from me and goes over to his bag, opening the top and digging some things out.
“I don’t know you that well, but what I’ve learned since I met you yesterday is that you cared about her and you tried really hard to help her out.”
“I should’ve tried harder.”
We’re going to go round and round on this, with him trying to convince me he’s a jerk and me trying to convince him he’s not. What a colossal waste of time. “Is there really any point to this?” I ask.
He stops digging in his bag and looks at me. “To what?”
“To beating yourself up? Will it change anything?”
He seems mad now. “No, it won’t. She’s dead and that’s not going to change.”
I take a step closer. “Yes. But she’s not dead because of you, Sam. She’s not dead because you chose that ending for her. She’s dead because of the choices that she made.”
His expression turns dark, and he goes back to messing with his bag. “Sure. Whatever. Thanks for trying to help, but I don’t really need a lecture about it right now.”
The temptation to snap back at him and tell him that I’m not lecturing him is great, but this is not the time or the place to have that argument. He’s hurting and my words aren’t helping, that much is clear. I turn and leave the room in silence, refusing to take his anger personally. He’s not mad at me; he’s mad at himself, and right now me talking sense to him isn’t going to do any good.
I spend the next fifteen minutes sitting on his couch and twiddling my thumbs. There’s a permanent dip in the center cushion; somebody has spent a lot of time there. Maybe Sam likes playing video games, but the game console I see under the TV is covered in a thick layer of dust, and the controllers are buried under wires. They obviously haven’t been used in a long time.
There’s evidence of Sadie everywhere around the room . . . a toy here, a little girl’s blanket there, a pink article of clothing draped over the arm of a chair across the room. Viewing his world from this perspective, I can see Sam more fully now, as not just a really good-looking guy, but also as a man with a child . . . a father with a life that revolved around a tiny girl and her sad mother.
As I take in all the evidence of his life, I realize that I need to try to control my need to fix Sam’s sadness. He has to go through the process of mourning the loss of his friend and the mother of his child so he can move on eventually. It will be painful, but every person who experiences the death of a loved one must get through the pain of that loss to reach the happiness on the other side . . . the closure we crave as humans, the sign that life will go on, even when it deals us a shitty hand and shuts us down temporarily.
I can’t even imagine what must be going through Sam’s mind right now. He’s a single dad for real, not just temporarily. I’m sure he had hoped in the back of his mind all along that Madison would get herself together and become a true mother to Sadie. Now there’s no chance of that happening, and he’s on his own with this little girl to raise.
And as if that weren’t tough enough, apparently there’s some bad guy out there who wants to get in touch with Madison or Sam. What was his name . . . Drake? I can handle the death of a friend or the prospect of babysitting a little girl I don’t know for a few days, but dealing with bad guys? No, thank you. I’m not okay with that.
A noise to my left catches my attention. Sam is standing at the entrance to the living room. “Sorry,” he says, leaning on the wall with his hands in his front pockets.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I snapped at you and was rude. You were just trying to help.”
I stand and walk over, stopping a couple feet away. “I was trying to help, but I was also out of line. I know you need time to get through this stuff. I probably don’t know you well enough to say the right thing anyway, so I’m just going to shut up now and let you do your thing.”
He comes closer and picks up my hands, holding them between us. His fingers intertwine with mine a little. “That’s the thing . . . You do know the right thing to say.” He stares into my eyes, the vulnerability I see there piercing my heart. “I might not want to hear it, but what you’re saying makes complete sense. I’ve had a hard time my whole life letting people in. I don’t trust anyone. I guess maybe that’s why Madison and I got along so well; we’d both been burned pretty bad, so we had high walls and we understood each other and our limitations. But I don’t want to push you away. You’re a special person, and I’d like to keep you in my life . . . if you want to be there, that is.”
I squeeze his hands. “Of course I do. I think you’re really awesome too.”
His smile is sad. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Stop fishing for compliments.” I shake his hands a little to wake him up out of his sad stupor. “When I tell you you’re awesome, you just have to accept it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I glance at the door to his bedroom. “And FYI, nobody is sleeping on the couch in this apartment.” I’m feeling super bold right now, like nothing I say could go wrong.
“Is that so?” he asks, his eyebrow arching.
“Yes, it is. You’ve just been through a terrible time, and I’m not going to make you get a backache on top of everything else. And I’m not going to let myself get one either. We’ll just share the bed. We can be platonic buddies who share a mattress.” I hold up our hands, still locked together, for him to see. “Right?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know about that.”
“Why? Don’t you want to be my friend?” A little sliver of panic comes in. Maybe I took things too far. Maybe he doesn’t see us as being anything but two people who have siblings who date.
He’s still shaking his head. “No, not really.”
I try to drop his hands as my face warms with embarrassment, but he hangs on tighter.
“Don’t run away.” His voice is liquid heat. He pulls me closer.
“Why would I run away?” The realization that he’s flirting hits me and sends my heart fluttering.
“Because I’m scaring you right now.”
“No, you’re not.” I lift my chin. “It’s going to take a lot more than a little flirting to scare me away.”
“So . . . if I get closer to you, that’s not going to scare you?” He takes one step.
“Don’t be silly.” Part of me wants to run; he’s right. Maybe he knows me better than I thought he did. But I want to stay, too. I want to see how far this will go. I want to heal his pain, and there’s a crazy side of me that thinks physical intimacy could help. It could be that I’m just being selfish to think that. It’s true that I want to feel his naked body against mine more than anything in the world right now. Hell, I’ve been staring at him for most of the past twenty-four hours and dreaming of it pretty much constantly the entire time. It’s clear I cannot trust my motivations where he’s concerned.
“You sure about that?” He takes another step, leaving mere inches between us.
My heart is beating wildly, but I’m too far gone to stop. “I’m sure. I told you before . . . I’m not a virgin.”
He chuckles low in his throat. “I do remember you mentioning that.” Now his body is touching mine, hip to hip. He reaches up to stroke my arms. “Maybe it’s wrong, but I really want to take you to bed.”
“Why would it be wrong?” I ask in a whisper. My pulse is pounding loud enough that I can hear it inside my head.
“We don’t know each other that well,” he says, his mouth moving toward mine.
“We know each other well enough, Sam.”