Chapter 11
Meri
The night was a blur and Sam kept me up most of it. When I had asked him what came next, I could tell by the way he answered me that he hadn’t even thought about it. It hurt my feelings a little bit, but at the end of the day I knew that it was going to be that way. I shouldn’t expect more.
So I tried to pull myself together, like our awkward conversation about the future didn’t happen at all and I was thankful for that. It made it easier to look at Sam in the morning. He was handsome, so damn hot and even though he wanted to have a quickie, I was beyond sore and didn’t want to muck with my heart any more than it was already being done. I didn’t want to lose my heart to Sam. I had already given him my body and that was just going to have to be enough.
“Are you ready for today Meri?”
I was out of the shower and he was getting dressed. Carol was still sleeping and I was about to get her up. I stopped, looking at the man in front of me. I wanted to remember every single line on his body to remember it for later. He was just that hot and sexy. I would have never thought that a guy like him would have been interested in a girl like me. It made more sense here than in New York though.
“Yes I am. I know that Carol is ready to get home. I don’t know how to thank you Sam. You have done more than I could have ever imagined.”
“Don’t thank me just yet. You aren’t out of here yet, but besides, it was all because of Ashlyn.”
“Yeah, I am going to have to pay her back to. It was one thing for her to pay for me to go to college, but this is too much.”
“She paid for you to go to college?”
I shook my head and then tightened the towel around my body. He was given me far too much attention and it was making me nervous. I didn’t want to point it out, but I was going to have to because I couldn’t think otherwise.
“Yeah, she said it was payback because I helped her, but I think it was just because I reminded her of herself when she was younger. She doesn’t have much family, so she made her own. I have always thought of her as more than just a friend.”
“So what did you do to become family?”
I bit my lip and didn’t know how much I should say. Ashlyn was a very shy person about her past, well some of it and I didn’t think that she wanted me to tell Sam about it. So I just kind of glazed over it and hoped that it was enough.
“Let’s just say that she was going to go down a path that was dangerous and I was able to talk her out of it. It wasn’t more than that. I knew who she was around and I just kind of warned her, helped her get away from them. I didn’t want to see someone else go through the same thing. She was older than me, but when she first came to the city she was a little naïve.”
“And you aren’t?”
I giggled and moved towards the bedroom door, I had to get some distance between us.
“Not really. I may have been in some ways, but in others not so much. I have spent a lot of time in New York. I know all of the games.”
“Then why I am your first?”
I couldn’t believe he was asking me such a thing, but at the same time I could understand the wonder. He wasn’t the first person to look at me as if I were an alien. I didn’t think it was that hard to comprehend, but for many it was. If nothing else, I had at least learned that.
“I don’t know. Maybe because you saved me Sam. No one has ever done something so nice for me. I owed you one.”
“Ouch, that is not what I wanted to hear.”
“Well it is what it is. I don’t want to pretend it is something else. I will always be grateful to you Sam, but I doubt I will ever see you again. New York is a big city.”
“I know you are right, but I don’t like to think about it.”
I waved him off. I was sure that he was just being nice. “I am going to get Carol up and we will hopefully all be back in the States by tonight. You are a good man Sam and I am glad to have met you.”
I went to shake his hand and he pushed it aside, pulling me in for a hug. He tried to kiss me, but I was already telling myself that I had to back off a little bit. I was in too deep and any kind of contact was just going to make losing him even worse. I didn’t want to think about it and I certainly didn’t want to think about what I was going to feel like when I was back home. I was just going to have to focus on getting a job and moving on. I had to put all of this behind me, including Sam.
***
We made our way to the courthouse and the judge couldn’t do anything else but let us go. He put a warrant out for Rico because of the testimony that Carol gave, but I didn’t want to wait around to see what happens. Carol didn’t either. She wasn’t going to come to New York with me. Carol was going to need some time to heal and was already looking into a rehab that would give her what she needed.
I tried to forget about Sam, I really did. In the day time it wasn’t so bad, but at night I was always visited with thoughts of him and what we had done together. It was a lot to take on and it was even harder to forget. He kissed me one last time as I was getting off the plane. It was sweet and spicy, but I knew that it would be the last time. I wish it wasn’t, I knew that I was in love with the man. I also knew that I couldn’t make him do or be what I wanted him to be, no matter how hard I tried. It just wasn’t meant to be.
That was one problem, but another was my lack of a job in New York. Ashlyn was going to meet me for lunch. She knew that I was looking and told me that she had a solution to my problem. I told her that she had done enough for me, but she insisted. I didn’t know what she had in mind, but Ashlyn was good at taking my mind off of problems and that was all I had going on right now. There was too many to count and I needed a short break from my life.
The restaurant I was meeting her in was as far from reality as I could get. It reminded me of the hotel I had stayed in Thailand with Sam and a wave of emotions came back to me when I walked into the opulent building.
I told the host that I was waiting for Ashlyn and it wasn’t but a few minutes before I was taken to a table in the back. Ashlyn was there with someone else. It was a man, his back to me and I hadn’t even gotten to the table and I already knew who it was. Why was Sam here? I felt like Ashlyn had betrayed me, even though she knew nothing about my woes.
“Meri, glad you could make it.”
Her voice caught me off guard because I was busy looking at Sam and trying to ignore the feelings that welled up in me. It was impossible to do so when our eyes met. It had been a couple of weeks since I had laid eyes on him. So much for us never meeting again. When I met his gaze, I knew that I would have been better off not coming at all. A surprise indeed! What was this all about?
“Hey Ashlyn. What is going on here?”
“I told you that I had a surprise for you Meri. I thought the two of you might want to catch up.”
I did want to catch up with him, but not in a way that was advisable in a room full of people. I wanted him as soon as I realized that it was Sam sitting there at the table. My body missed him greatly.
“Sit down Meri. I haven’t seen you in a while. This city really is too big sometimes.