~ Eight ~
“What’s that?” Colt glanced down at the bag in Sam’s hand as he helped her out of his SUV.
They had just pulled up and parked across from his parents’ colonial. The cul-de-sac was already crowded with cars, most of them owned by extended friends and family of Colt’s parents, there for the annual Green Family Cookout. It started around noon and usually ran until well after midnight, with folks stopping in at different hours, all through the day and well into the night.
“Wine.”
“Wine?”
“It’s a gift. For your Mom.”
Colt narrowed his eyes. “A gift? What for?”
“For inviting me.”
“Since when have you ever needed to be invited? You always come to their cookouts. And you know doggone well no one in my family is interested in a bottle of wine. Not with all that beer and hard liquor around.”
“Your mother might be. I bet she will. Especially with the black forest cake. Red wine and chocolate are a great pairing. Grab that from the backseat, by the way.”
“A great pairing,” Colt said under his breath, making a scoffing noise.
He waited till Sam climbed out of the truck and shut the door behind her. She was wearing gold sandals and a swishy mini-dress—yellow with little white flowers all over. It was getting warmer out, so a summer dress shouldn’t have been unusual. Except that for Sam it was.
Sure, she was, on most days a little on the prim, princess-y side but never in the history of their friendship and these family cookouts had she worn a dress just to come to his parents’ house. A dress, and lipstick. Eyeliner, even.
“Sam, you know this looks weird, right?” Colt leaned in the back door and took the cake box off the floor.
“I look weird?” She glanced down at herself, stricken.
“No, not you. This whole set-up. The dress, and the …” He indicated her newly-done ‘do. “Looking like you’re headed to a garden party.”
“A cookout is kind of a garden party.”
“Nah. With my family, it’s more like a bacchanal complete with booty-shorts and drunk uncles. Anyway, my point is, you usually come in cutoffs and a t-shirt, with Converse, and suddenly you’re all dressed-up? Someone’s gon’ ask questions.”
“What kinds of questions? And if they do, I’ll just tell them the truth. That I wanted to look nice for a change.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Why what?” She avoided his gaze.
“Why do you suddenly want to ‘look nice’ when you’re coming to my parents’ house?”
“You know why,” Sam said, still not looking at him.
“They’ve known you since you were practically in diapers. You think they’ll suddenly think differently about you just because you wear a dress?”
“Yeah, but …”
“So let me tell them then. That way at least you being in the goofy dress might make a certain kinda sense.”
“You think it looks …”
Colt grabbed her and pulled her against him, kissing her on the temple. “Nah. You look good. I just mean, don’t try so hard. We’re good. And when you finally let me tell them, they’ll be good, too. Whether you’re wearing a dress or not.”
Sam squirmed out of his arms. “Stop. Someone will see us. And you can’t tell them. Not until I tell my mother and sister. You know the minute your mother hears, she’ll call my mom and it’ll be this big … thing.”
“Okay, so when are you telling your mom and sister?” he asked.
“I’m working up to it,” Sam mumbled.
As far as Colt was concerned, it was a non-issue. Or at least it should be. So, he and Sam were exploring something different. What the hell did it have to be a secret for? And for that matter, it was no one’s business but theirs to begin with.
The only reason he wanted to tell his folks at all was because he respected his parents and Sam’s mother too much to have them hear through a rumor circulating among their small tight-knit group of friends. The news that Colt and Sam were keeping a different kind of company than they had in the past, shouldn’t come to them from someone’s casual comment in the grocery store.
But Sam felt strongly that if they were to do the telling, her family needed to be told first.
‘Your parents aren’t as high-strung as my mom and sister,’ she pointed out. ‘They’d freak out if they heard from anyone else but me.’
Colt definitely agreed with that. So, whatever Sam wanted was what they would do, even though it meant showing up at his family cookout and pretending they were still ‘just friends.’
With the cake in one hand, he reached for Sam with the other, and slammed the door with his foot.
“Don’t hold my hand!” Sam hissed. “Since when have you ever held my hand walking into your parents’ house?”
Colt rolled his eyes. “And since when have you ever worn a dress? But okay. No hand-holding. Anything else before we go in?”
“Ahm …” She actually seemed to think about it. “No. Nothing. Just don’t … touch me too much.”
“Got it. We good now?”
“And we’re leaving no later than ten, or I’m getting a ride home. You and your cousins are ridiculous when you get together. If we stay any later than that I’ll probably have to peel you off the floor.”
Colt laughed. “Ten? That’s a fifteen-year-old’s curfew.”
Sam looked at him.
“Okay, fine. Ten it is.”
Colt’s family was far more interesting than hers. Complete with mouthy aunts, uncles who still hadn’t accepted that they were well on the way to senior citizenry, and fast cousins who tried to sleep with any single man or woman in sight.
And then there was the fighting. Whenever there was a Green family event, someone wound up in a brawl. Never quite the knock-down-drag-out kind of thing that resulted in blood being spilled and cops being called. But there were often raised voices, pushing and shoving, some lightweight vulgarity, and someone being ordered by Colt’s father to go home and “sleep it off.”
Sam always marveled at how much in stride Colt and everyone else took it. Once the fracas was dealt with, the band basically played on, and everyone else acted like it hadn’t even happened. The laughing and talking, dancing and drinking would resume, and by the next day, even the parties who were part of the fight would have moved on.
Sam’s family was different. Her mother and father had been reserved by comparison. At least until her father passed. That was when her mother seemed to have learned how to emote. Now, she was a worrier, a crier, and an Olympic-class guilt-er. That was how Sam knew that allowing her to find out about her and Colt in any other way except from her own daughter’s lips was a non-starter.
But now, sitting at one of the picnic tables with Colt’s cousin Shay, and watching the various women who always showed up flirting and buzzing around Colton, Sam regretted that she couldn’t publicly stake her claim. Not that it hadn’t always been like this.
From the time Georgetown recruited him to play basketball—long before the NBA even—Colt was the ‘eligible son’, the one that all the women in Mrs. Green’s various church and social groups tried to shove their daughters onto. They came to every family function, tugging along “Tiffany, who just got into med school” or “Stacy, who works at the Department of Justice” or “Monica, who’s getting her Masters in Early Childhood Education” to meet Colton.
Sam and he always laughed about it later, and she teased him about how he could, if he wanted, have his “pick of the litter”.
‘All those eager little puppies,’ Sam might sing. ‘Going, ‘pick me, pick me!’’’
And Colt would shake his head and say nothing but have the good grace to look embarrassed at least.
Sam had never known him to take a liking to any of the women who were thrown in his path. So, with that in mind, she shouldn’t be sitting with Shay, feeling restless, and just dying to stride across the Green’s expansive lawn and wrench him away from the super-persistent chick in an orange romper—that was two sizes too small, by the way—who was sitting so close, she looked ready to climb onto Colt’s lap.
“You see that?” Shay asked.
Startled, and guilty, Sam turned to look at Colt’s cousin. “See what?”
“Over there.”
Instead of pointing in Colt’s direction, Shay inclined her head toward the house. At the door leading from the patio to the backyard, occupying almost the entire doorway was a familiar face—handsome, dark-skinned, smooth, and chiseled.
“Damn, he fine,” Shay said, making a hissing noise between her teeth.
At the doorway, he looked up, and around the yard, taking everything in, until his eyes settled on Sam. She crossed, and then uncrossed her legs, gave an awkward smile, then lifted a hand in a meek wave.
“Jesus Christ, he’s coming over here,” Shay said.
Sam nodded, mutely, unable to keep her eyes off the man heading their way.
“Hey.”
His voice was a deep rumble, with a dash of hoarseness. She hadn’t heard that voice in a long, long time.
When they were kids, he was the first of the boys in seventh grade to have his voice change; the first to shoot up from a sprout and begin to resemble something more like a man.
“Drew. How are you?” Sam tried to keep her voice level, though her heart was pounding.
He looked around, and finding a vacant chair, pulled it toward him, spun it around and straddled it. His legs were so long, his knees almost came up to his chest. Sitting in that position, the chair was dwarfed beneath him.
“I’m good.” He glanced in Shay’s direction and gave her a grin and wink. “Shay-Bay,” he said.
“How you doin’, Drew?” Shay said. There was a note in her voice that said, ‘Boy, you know you can get it if you want it, right?’
“Good,” Drew said. “A little jet-lagged. But otherwise, real good.”
He looked at Sam again, and she swallowed hard.
“Just got home?” she asked.
“Yup. Just this afternoon. Then I got the word from my pops that the Greens was finna throw down, so … here I am, hoping for some home-cooked food.”
“Colt’s over there,” Sam said, indicating the spot where she’d last seen him with the pushy woman in the kids-sized romper. She indicated, but she didn’t look, because it was difficult to tear her eyes away from Drew.
“Yeah,” Drew drawled, sounding wholly uninterested. “I’ll get to him, sooner or later.”
Drew West. If Colt had been the number one basketball phenom while we were growing up, Drew was always number two. Their friendship became tinged with rivalry around the time they were fifteen, and by the time they were twenty-one, had morphed into something that was close to enmity. But the community was small, the families all close, and so Drew and Colt had, over the years developed an uneasy peace.
That peace was made much more uneasy when Colt got drafted and Drew didn’t. He found a way to make his career in basketball, but in the European League. Twice a year he made it home, and Sam rarely if ever saw him anymore, which was just as well, considering.
“How long are you here for?” Shay asked, leaning in.
Sam leaned back to make way for her, and Shay’s braids swished by, less than an inch from Sam’s face. The thirst was real.
“’Bout a month,” Drew said. “Maybe more. So, what’d I miss while I was gone?”
“Not a doggone thing,” Shay said. “You know how it is ‘round here. No one and nothing ever changes.”
Drew looked up and around the yard.
“I think that’s what I love about this place,” he said.
Sam watched him take it all in; crowded with friends, family, and people they had all known almost their entire lives. A small smile played about the corners of his lips and she could tell he was basking in how comforting it felt to be home.
They’d talked about things like that, once.
“You want a plate?” Shay offered. “I’m about to go see what those ribs look like.”
“Nah,” Drew said, shaking his head. “I’ma check ‘em out in a minute.”
“No, you sit right here,” Shay insisted, getting up. “I’ll be right back. If you move from that chair, you’ll never even make it across the yard without a dozen people stopping you.”
Sam said nothing, knowing perfectly well what Shay was up to. If she got Drew his plate, he would have to stay put to wait for it; and then to eat what was on it. Shay wanted him hemmed up with her, if at all possible. And Sam couldn’t say she blamed her. At one time, she would have been the same way.
When they were alone, Drew turned his attention back to Sam and smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He reached out and touched her hand, his long, tapered index finger stroking her wrist.
“So,” he said. “Now that we got a minute, tell me what’s really up with you.”
“Not much. The usual.” She shrugged. “It’s just like Shay said: nothing ever changes.”
“Still at that job you always complain about? The lobbying firm? What you workin’ on over there these days? Still immigration reform? Farmworkers’ rights?”
Sam nodded slowly. “You remember all that?”
Drew shrugged. “How could I forget? You used to send me those long messages, telling me everything you did that day, including what coffee you drank at Starbucks before going to work. Remember that?”
“Yeah. I remember.” She wanted to paint him a picture, not just send him a string of words. She wanted him to see her, even if he couldn’t see her.
“Kept my head up, back then,” Drew said. “Being so far away from home. Not knowing the language yet …”
“And now?”
“Now? Hablo español como un nativo.”
Sam smiled, and let herself remember.
“Why’d you stop writing?” Drew asked. “The calls? That, I get. I mean, there was a time difference, a lot of other differences … whatever. But those emails. Those long-ass emails. Sometimes that’s all I had to look forward to, y’know?”
“You know why,” Sam said, looking away from him. “But what about now? How is it over there for you now?”
“Found my groove,” Drew acknowledged with a nod. “I have a life, a nice place. Friends, a social life …”
“Exactly.” Sam shrugged. “None of that probably would have happened if …”
“You should’ve let me be the judge of that.”
“Drew …”
“It wasn’t just about that. You holding me back.”
“Drew.”
“Samantha.” He mimicked her long-suffering drawl.
And then he grinned at her in that way he had, and it was impossible for her to do anything but smile back.
“Are you dating anyone?” she asked, and then was immediately sorry that she had.
Drew gave her a chiding look. “Are you?”
“I asked first.”
“I’m dating lots of ‘someones’, how’s that?”
“So, no one special.”
“Nah. I’ll be coming home when time comes to settle down,” he said. “Coming home in more ways than one.”
Sam shook her head. “No cute little Spanish mamacitas about to become Mrs. West?”
Drew kept his eyes fixed on hers. “Nah. I’m pretty sure my wife is right here. In the good ol’ U.S. of A.”
“Drew, there’s …”
“Drew!”
Neither of them had noticed him approaching, and suddenly Colt was there, pulling up a chair of his own. He extended his legs in front of him, so they created a barrier between Sam and Drew.
“What’s good, man? When you get back?”
The two men exchanged some dap while Sam eyed them, keeping very still. Between Colt and Drew, there was always something just short of aggression now, but beneath that there was still a whole lot of history, and a fair amount of affection as well. How could there not be affection? They had been boys together, become men together. Their parents had known each other for almost two decades.
But the two men were also very much the same, their competitive take-no-prisoners natures too prone to conflict, especially when their ambitions were so similar. Drew had never completely gotten over not being drafted to the NBA; and Colt had never soft-pedaled his relative success to spare Drew’s ego.
“Got back just now. This afternoon,” Drew said. “How you been?”
“Didn’t make the playoffs. But you know …” Colt shrugged.
“That’s how it goes sometimes,” Drew said. He’d almost succeeded in sounding sympathetic. Almost, but not quite. “What’s up otherwise?”
Sam tuned out their conversation and glanced across the yard.
Now would be the best time to go get something to eat. Because being in the company of both men at once, was sure to be unmanageable.