“Get out of here,” I said.
He stepped back and didn’t leave.
“You have a hearing problem now?” I asked. Almost yelling. I felt some hysterical scream building in me. I’d been embarrassed before. Hair like mine, grades like mine, temper like mine, job like mine. Parents like mine. But this was something else. A whole new level.
“You’re going back upstairs?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I lied, kicking off my shoes and pulling on my jeans.
“Okay. I’ll…see you up there.”
“Fantastic.” I took my straw hair and pulled it up in a ponytail, still not looking at him. Still willing him into a hole in the earth. But he didn’t move. “I need a second, asshole.” I glared at him and he nodded.
“I’ll be upstairs,” he said.
In the silence he left behind I gathered up my crap and grabbed my keys, and in the lobby I headed outside instead of into an elevator. The party would do just fine without me.
All those years of wishing and I’d finally kissed Sam Porter. And I’d built it up as the happiest thing that could happen to me. The beginning of something. And somehow it felt like the end. I didn’t know how we could be friends after this.
My brother was married. And I didn’t know what was going on. I felt, oddly, like crying.
The employee parking lot was empty except for my Jeep and a couple of the delivery vans.
And Sam.
Of course. Standing under one of the lights in the parking lot.
“What are you doing?”
“I knew you weren’t going to go back up to that party.”
“Yeah, well, bully for you.”
Sam caught me at the edge of the light. Reaching for me, but stopping himself before actually touching me. But it hardly mattered. I was peeled, raw, inside out. Standing close to him hurt.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice that calm, deep murmur that made it hard to breathe. “Your brother and everything…with us. I just want to be sure you’re okay.”
I walked right on by him, giving him the finger as I went.
He didn’t get to know how I was. Not anymore.
7
Christmas morning used to be one of my favorite days. Not just the presents, which, you know, who doesn’t like presents? My dad was very good at trying to buy his family’s love and before we caught on, my brother and I were pretty easily bought.
But Christmas was one of the few days my whole family would be in the room together. My dad, whom I’d so rarely seen when I was a kid, would come down unshaven and in his robe. My mom managed to unscrew her lips enough to smile. And Wes. My parents weren’t great with tradition, but Wes and I picked up the slack. He used to do this thing where he’d get me a theme gift—the year I was crazy for Pink! He made this scavenger hunt to find the T-shirt, the poster, and the concert tickets he’d bought for me. And every year I bought the craziest, sometimes grossest candy I could find, going so far as to have friends ship things from overseas, and stuffed a stocking full of things to satisfy his legendary sweet tooth.
After Mom and Dad fought and left—Dad for the office, Mom for a bottle of white wine—Wes and I would sit there in the ocean of torn wrapping paper, surrounded by all the trappings of Christmas, and I would think my brother and I were being a family despite my parents. And it was enough.
More than enough.
When I got my own place I stopped putting up decorations because it seemed so fake. All those years with our house done up like a snow globe and not a speck of real Christmas spirit to be found. A tree and a wreath didn’t make Christmas. People made Christmas. Love made Christmas.
But this Christmas, just when I could have used the comfort of my brother, he and Penny were off somewhere honeymooning. My father was in jail and there was just no way— no way—I was going to my mother’s to feel like crap and get the third degree about Wes’s marriage. When I didn’t have a single answer for her.
Nope.
Not when I was still so raw from what had happened with Sam.
So I found myself performing my one other Christmas tradition. Going to see Sam’s mom, Betty. Every year that Sam was overseas I’d gone out to her trailer and taken her an angel. We had a whole thing going with them. Angels to watch over Sam wherever he was. She would make some kind of elaborate baked good and we’d have a cup of coffee and talk about what we’d heard from Sam. Some days I stayed so long we ordered Chinese food and she’d pour me a glass of beer and we’d talk until the sky was full of stars.