Just Like That (18 page)
So Bill would pick her up and carry her up the stairs, her arms around his neck, her face buried against his neck, tears streaming. And Danika remembered seeing her father trying valiantly to hold back his own tears.
Danika couldn’t imagine feeling the way either of them had felt. Her mother felt like a burden, her father felt helpless. Because they were in love, because they’d let the other one matter so much.
“I hate that you set me up like that,” Danika said, her throat feeling clogged.
“You weren’t doing anything about your sex life, so we did.” Danika knew that her sisters believed that she was uptight. That she’d started bottling her emotions after their mom died. That she didn’t want to get close to anyone because she was afraid of losing them.
But that wasn’t entirely true.
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Just Like That
Her mom’s influence was definitely part of her feelings about men, but it wasn’t fear of losing someone. It was the fear of losing herself.
And she developed that fear long before her mother’s death.
She also knew that her sisters thought that she needed an emotional breakthrough to get over her aversion to falling in love. They thought a great sexual experience would do it. Or, at least, they hoped so.
They were probably right that she couldn’t get close enough to a guy to fall in love if she wouldn’t get close enough to anyone to fully let go sexually. Fabulous sex required trust and the willingness to be vulnerable with another person. Falling in love required the same things.
Carmen and Abi didn’t know what held her back from that trust and vulnerability, why she was so determined to stay independent and unattached to a man.
When their mom got sick, Carmen took over everything from laundry to bill paying to keeping the schedule of doctor’s appointments and piano lessons. It kept her too busy and preoccupied to deal with what was happening to Ellen. Abi, the youngest and least able to deal with their mother’s illness, spent as much time away from home as she could with school, a crazy work schedule and a packed social calendar.
Danika had spent time with their mom.
They’d watched movies, played cards, read and talked. Sometimes Danika thought that she’d received three times the amount of motherly advice and influence since she’d been the only one there to listen.
And when Ellen passed away, Danika felt the loss the most. Her free time was suddenly truly free…and empty.
But she wouldn’t have traded that time for anything. Even though she knew that her mother’s insistence that she be fully independent, know everything she could possibly know and that she enjoy every moment, every activity where she was her own person, had jaded her in a number of ways.
Her sisters might understand, if she explained it, but it would also make them sad. So she kept it to herself.
She had to make them think she was trying to find what they had both found, what they wanted for her. “Sam’s staying with me for a few more days, so—”
“No.” Carmen was shaking her head before Danika even finished. “You can stay with me and Luke.”
“No.” Danika wasn’t going to live with her sister, the fusser and worrier. That was ridiculous. “It’s worked out fine with Sam so far.”
Carmen sighed and looked at Abi. “Great. So there you go.” She sounded mad.
“What?” Danika asked.
“I told him
one night
. I made it very clear,” Carmen said to Abi.
“I know.” Abi looked at Danika, worriedly. “But it wasn’t his fault. He did the right thing by staying with her.”
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“Bullshit.” Carmen took a drink of her margarita and angrily chewed an ice cube. “He should have just nailed her in the car and then dropped her off at home.”
“Wow,
that’s
nice,” Danika said, scowling at her older sister. “What is your problem?” She turned to look at Danika. “I asked Sam to do one thing—give you an orgasm. I didn’t ask him to take you out on the town, or nurse you back to health, or hang out with you all afternoon. I didn’t want him to be your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Danika sat forward in her seat, lowering her voice and hoping her sister would take the hint. “Last night was a series of unexpected, uncontrollable events. Sam is a good guy. He’s sweet and considerate and—”
“Shit.” Carmen sat back in her seat, her margarita forgotten on the table. She was positively glowering. “That’s just great.”
“
What?
” Danika demanded.
Carmen looked at her seriously. “You’re falling for him.”
“What do you mean? I barely know him.” Danika felt sick to her stomach and set her mostly full glass back on the table.
“This was the one problem with picking Sam,” Carmen muttered.
“So you did set me up with Sam,” Danika said.
“It was him, or one of two others. The other two were…less of a risk.” Danika sat forward. “In what way?”
Carmen glanced at Abi. “Any of the three guys I picked out would have accomplished
the goal
. I knew that you’d be safe with any of them, but you’d have the most fun with Sam. He’s funny and charming and a big kid. Unfortunately, he’s also a great guy. I just didn’t want you to find that out. I hoped that he’d…do his duty…then leave you the hell alone.”
“I… But… I didn’t…
What?”
Danika knew she sounded like an idiot. But Carmen’s words weren’t making sense. Or rather, they were making sense and Danika didn’t like any of them.
“Sam Bradford has more women in love with him than he does hairs on his head,” Carmen said.
“He’s got it all. Looks, charm, brains, interests, heart. For you, he’d be a rare find. But for him, you’re…one of the crowd.”
Ouch. Danika flinched. She knew that Carmen didn’t mean that Danika wasn’t special. She did, however, mean that she wasn’t special to Sam. And it was probably a good thing to point out, no matter how much it hurt.
Because until she’d heard it like that, Danika hadn’t even been aware that she wanted to be special to Sam.
“There he is.” Carmen stood up. “I need to have a talk with Sam Bradford.” 106
Just Like That
Danika managed to grab the hem of her sister’s dress. “You are not going over there to talk to him,” Danika said, pulling on Carmen’s skirt until Carmen sat. Then Danika stood and smoothed the front of her shirt, flipped her hair over her shoulder and wet her lips. “
I’ll
go talk to him.” Fine. She was one of the crowd. It wasn’t Sam’s fault, exactly, that women fell in love with him easily, all the time, apparently in droves. But she had her pride. Carmen was right. The less time she spent with Sam, the better.
But as long as she wasn’t going to fall in love with him, wasn’t going to spend her life with him, then what difference did it make if she lost control with him just one time?
“Danika, are you…”
“I’ve got this,” she told her sisters. “I’m all over it.”
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Chapter Seven
“Danika’s great,” Sara said, looking over his shoulder to where Danika was sitting with her sisters.
Sam didn’t look, though he wanted to. He’d seen her sisters intercept her on the front walk outside of the center and figured they’d either take her home, or talk her into coming back in.
He just hoped they weren’t taking her home and then planning on staying to take care of her.
Because that was his job.
As he would inform them, if needed.
Carmen was a formidable character though. His sister Jessica, Carmen’s superior, was called the little general in the ER, but Carmen was her first lieutenant. For good reason. Carmen didn’t take any crap.
“She is,” he agreed, tipping back a swallow of beer from the bottle Mac had given him as a sort-of apology for giving him a hard time earlier in the kitchen.
“The party came together,” Sara said.
“It did.”
“In spite of the fact that you didn’t have a place for it until I called.” Sam swiveled on his seat. “How did you—”
“Come on, Sam.” She laughed and sipped her wine. “I’ve known you for a long time.”
“So I’m a fuck-up?”
“No, you’re…you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Which means what? That you don’t spend just as much time as Jessica wondering what I’m up to and worrying about it?”
Sara smiled. “I don’t think anyone spends as much time as Jessica on that.”
“But you do think I’m irresponsible.”
She looked taken aback at the serious turn to the conversation. “But it’s on purpose so it’s not like it’s a character flaw. It’s a choice.”
Sam looked at his little sister in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Because I remember how you were before…” She trailed off. “This is a serious conversation for a birthday party.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not your birthday, or mine.” He reached for the wine bottle on the table in front of them and filled his sister’s glass. He couldn’t say why, but he wanted a serious conversation. A
Just Like That
conversation with someone who loved him, about why he did the things he did. Because for the past twenty-four hours or so he had no idea what was motivating him to act so out of character. “Okay, go.” She sighed and turned to him. “I remember how you were before Dad died.”
“How was I?”
“Like you are now. Funny, sweet, good-hearted. But you were more accountable. You were more concerned with other people.”
“Now I’m a jerk?”
“No.” Sara shook her head emphatically. “Now you’re careful.”
“What do you mean?” He couldn’t explain why this was so important right this second. He also didn’t know why he and Sara had never discussed any of this before. What he did know was that he wasn’t leaving, and neither was Sara, until she told him what she was talking about.
She took a sip of her wine. “You were only five when Mom left, so maybe that didn’t affect you as much, but when Dad was suddenly gone you changed. You still seemed happy and were fun to be around, but it was like you stopped being
there
as much.” He frowned. “I was there.”
“But you stopped being—I don’t know—supportive and helpful.” Sara shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Try,” he said shortly.
She set her glass down. “I was in junior high. I wanted to try out for cheerleading but you wouldn’t help me practice.”
“I wasn’t a cheerleader. How could I have helped?” But his stomach felt queasy.
“You helped me when I wanted to learn to make my own candles in 4-H when I was seven. You’d never made candles before either, but you helped me with that.” Her voice dropped and she looked at the top of the table, running her thumbnail along the bottom of her glass, instead of looking at him. “You used to help me with anything I needed.”
Sam scowled at the half-inch of beer left in the bottom of his bottle. It wasn’t enough and the queasiness increased. “You were getting older. You needed to do more on your own.” Sara’s eyes were sad when she looked up at him again. “You were home with me when he went over to Jessica’s apartment that afternoon. Do you remember what he said when he left?” Vividly. Sam could still see his dad standing in the doorway after instructing him to look after Sara while he went over to Jessica’s. Jessica had been living in a not-so-nice part of town in her first apartment on her own. David hadn’t wanted to take his younger children over because of the neighborhood, but also because he and his oldest daughter were in the very tenuous first stages of mending a four-year-old rift.
Sam and Sara had never talked about that evening. He’d never talked to anyone about it. He’d been fifteen and Sara had been ten.
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“I’ll be right back,” Sam said hoarsely. He swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat. “He said, ‘I’ll be right back’.”
“Do you remember how worried and then scared we got when he didn’t come and didn’t come? You tried to keep me distracted. We played five hands of UNO, which you hated. That’s how I knew you were worried and trying to keep me from asking about Dad. Then you made dinner—mac and cheese, my favorite—and then put me to bed.”
Sam remembered all of that, but was amazed Sara did. He remembered feeling so terrible that mac and cheese was the best he could do for her on what he had grown more and more certain was going to be the worst night of her life. He’d forced himself to eat the macaroni with her. His stomach still churned at the memory and he didn’t eat mac and cheese to this day.
“But I remember getting out of bed and coming downstairs and sitting with you on the couch. You agreed to read to me. You never read to me and that night you read me four books. That made me even more sure something was wrong.”
Sam felt sick. God, he remembered that night. The fear had felt like it was acid, eating him up from the inside. As the minutes and hours had gone by, he’d become more and more sure that something terrible had happened and he remembered being petrified about what that meant to him and his sisters. He hadn’t known if Jessica was okay, either. He remembered being unable to breathe, thinking that maybe he was all Sara had left. What were they going to do without their dad? How could they live? Who would make sure that Sara ate something other than mac and cheese?
By the time Jessica had come to the house, Sam had already known that he’d never see his father again. The misery over losing his father had sunk in slowly over the hours and he was nearly numb to it at that point. But he’d nearly fallen to his knees with relief at seeing his twenty-year-old sister, seeing that she was alright and realizing that she was someone able to step in and take care of things.
That night had left a hole in his heart that had never fully healed.
He never wanted to be responsible for that in someone else. Ever.
“You never make promises. Not even ones that you can definitely keep. Did you realize that?” Sam just stared at her.
“And it’s not that you always keep your promises. You never make them. Not ever. You never promise to call, you never promise to be anywhere at any certain time…nothing.” She was absolutely right. He was surprised only that she’d realized it.