I had to remind myself that just because I’d grown up without much love didn’t mean I couldn’t recognize it when it came my way. And this was love.
“Are you going to let me have some cake?” I asked.
“Well, you’re excited about it now, but the recipe called it out of the ordinary and they weren’t lying. There’s so much ginger it burns a little.”
“Burns?” I asked and took a piece of the moist, dark cake with the thin white glaze over top. “That’s exactly how I like my cake,” I joked. I took a bite and she wasn’t kidding. There was a lot going on in that cake.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “That’s…”
“Painful?” she asked, trying her own.
“Interesting?”
“One of the reviews called it difficult.”
I went back for another bite. “It grows on you,” I said.
“That’s because you like difficult things.”
She laughed, and so I did too, and of course that’s when Sam walked in the front door, letting in a blast of cold air that just ruined everything.
He had been out shoveling snow. He wore his big Carhartt coveralls and a black hat that made his face look even redder. He saw me sitting there and looked away. Kicked his boots off on the plastic mat.
“Don’t you go bringing in all that wet!” Betty said.
“I’m trying not to,” Sam said, and I took a big sip of coffee. What was the deal with his voice and my heart? It was like one of those paddles they used on heart attack victims. It made me all haywire.
“Look who came to visit!” Betty cried, gesturing towards me like she was Vanna White and I was the letter E.
“Hi, Sophie,” he said, looking up at me through his black lashes and then away like he couldn’t stand the sight of me.
“Sam.”
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
“You too.” I was trying so hard to sound normal and cheerful but somehow I just sounded like one of the Chipmunks. Betty looked between us, like she was well aware of the strange undercurrent we couldn’t hide. Or maybe it was just me.
“You’re in time for some cake,” Betty said.
He took off his boots and came into the trailer in his socks. He filled up the whole space. “I’m gonna hop in the shower.”
Yeah, that was the final straw. I wasn’t going to sit here while a few thin walls away Sam was getting naked and running soapy hands up and down the body he did not want me to touch.
I jumped to my feet. “I should get going,” I said. Both of them stared at me, knowing I was lying. “My mom’s expecting me.”
“Oh. Well. You want to take her some cake?” Betty asked. She seemed crestfallen that I was cutting short our visit, and I realized this was just one more thing that was ruined by what Sam and I had done last night. What I had done.
I’d ruined everything I loved. Everything that mattered in my life. Except Wes. Suddenly, I felt outrageously alone. And it was all my own doing.
“No thanks. You keep the cake. Sam’ll eat it. Sam will eat anything,” I said and kissed Betty’s cheek. I grabbed my coat and took the long way around Sam who stood in the middle of the room, dominating the space, taking up all the air with his black knit cap and his frown.
“Merry Christmas, Sam,” I managed to whisper.
“You too, Soph.”
I got out of that trailer like the Grinch was chasing me.
8
Sam
The thing about my job, my old job, was that it was mostly about waiting. The recruiters don’t tell you that. The drill sergeants, when they’re screaming at you, don’t mention it. But by the time your LT is leading you into the darkest of dark, you’re beginning to understand.
The job is about waiting.
That it’s learning how to count backward from a hundred in Farsi and playing twenty million rounds of Never Have I Ever with your spotter. It’s about getting so still and quiet in your brain that the minutes stop feeling like they’re burying you. It’s about waiting so long that action actually feels strange. Waiting so long that training takes over and you’re halfway into action before you even realize what you’re doing.
Stillness and waiting—that was half the job.
And I was so good at it that it was really hard to stop. To remember how to move. To act.
Sophie left the trailer, the sound of her Jeep starting up clear through the snow and the walls of Mom’s trailer.
And I stood there, listening, my head cocked, wondering if there was a problem with her timing belt and thinking I should look at it sometime because she was so bad at taking her Jeep in for service.
“Well, what the hell did you do?” Mom asked, her hands on her hips, her eyes spitting mad.