Stranger (38 page)

“Am I coming over?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered coolly. “Are you?”

“If you want me to.”

“You can if you want.” I started walking toward the parking garage, my stomach a knot of toads and my throat tight.

We were going to have a fight, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I felt it as surely as anything. Tension hung between us like a sagging laundry line hung with clothes the soap didn’t quite clean.

Yet once again, Sam backed off. He kissed my cheek and hugged me with one arm. “I’ll meet you there.”

I nodded stiffly. “I’ll be in bed. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Lock it when you come up.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Sam hesitated, kissed me again and headed off in the opposite direction toward his car. He’d parked on State Street.

My anxiety eased on the ride home. Every couple had disagreements. It was part of being a couple. Even when you loved someone, you could be angry with them. There wasn’t anything to worry about. It was, in fact, a good thing. It showed we were comfortable enough with each other to express our opinions and emotions.

Fuck. I didn’t want to fight with Sam. I didn’t want to lose the fresh and new feeling of this. I didn’t want us to become just another couple. Not yet.

Hell, not ever.

I showered and got into bed, but without Sam there I couldn’t sleep. I tried not to look at the clock, but each time I did the minutes had ticked by. The drive from Harrisburg took forty minutes, and even if he’d left a few minutes behind me, he should’ve been there already.

I tried counting the number of beers he’d had, but couldn’t be sure if it was four or five.

He hadn’t acted drunk, but he could’ve been pulled over. He could’ve been in an accident.

I shot straight up in bed, a hand clapped over my mouth to hold back a sudden wave of nausea.

Oh, God. He could be dead.

I got out of bed to pace, wishing again I smoked or knitted or liked to do sit-ups. Anything to take my mind away from a vision of blood on the asphalt and a windshield starred and broken.

When the doorknob of my apartment door turned I gasped aloud and jerked open the door before Sam could finish opening it. “Sam!”

He blinked at me. “Last time I checked, yeah.”

My eyes watered at the stink of beer on his breath. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I had to make a stop.” Sam lifted a six-pack missing all but one of its members.

Anger replaced my anxiety, so harsh my legs shook with it. My teeth chattered until I slammed my jaws together. I slammed the door behind him.

“I was worried sick, Sam! Are you drunk?”

Sam held up a hand, seesawing.

“Fuck you,” I told him, and turned on my heel. “Sleep on the goddamn couch.”

I slammed the door to my bedroom, too, so hard a picture fell off the wall. Breathing hard, my stomach pitching, I paced at the foot of my bed. I knew he liked to drink, but this…

Instant doubt assailed me. Was I right to be pissed off? Sam was an adult. I didn’t own him.

But he was my boyfriend, didn’t that give me the right to expect certain things from him?

Fuck.

I didn’t want to be the sort of girlfriend who ruled her boyfriend. I liked Sam the way he was. I didn’t want to change him, or own him or tell him what to do.

Then again, since we got together he’d pretty much done everything I wanted him to do, so how did I know anything different.

“Pissflaps,” I muttered, and sank onto the foot of my bed.

Sam hadn’t even knocked. Maybe he’d left. Maybe he was, even now, driving drunk down the road and into the path of a tractor-trailer—“Sam!”

I flung the door open to stare at an empty room, and my heart leaped into my throat again.

Until I heard the snoring and my gaze followed the sound to where a pair of long legs dangled over the edge of the couch.

He was asleep in his clothes. His mouth parted with each breath. Anger and anxiety tumbled around in my guts, refusing to quell themselves until I took a few swigs of pink bismuth liquid.

I sat in the chair opposite the couch and watched Sam sleep. What if he puked in his sleep and choked on it? What if he’d drunk so much he had alcohol poisoning?

What if he got cancer? Pneumonia? Tuberculosis? The flu? Leprosy? The plague?

Oh, God, what if Sam, my Sam, died and left me? What if I had to be one of those women who had to choose what casket he should be put into the ground in, the suit he’d wear, what to say on his memorial card?

But I’d have no rights to make any of those choices because I wasn’t Sam’s wife but just a girlfriend. If Sam died, I might be the one who missed him most, but I wouldn’t be the one who got to mourn him the loudest. I’d fallen in love and there didn’t seem to be much hope of falling out of it.

My sobs must have woken him. A shadow loomed over me, and big hands pulled me onto a lap with plenty of space for me to curl up. I sobbed into Sam’s chest with the smell of beer and his cologne surrounding me, and I breathed in, over and over, forcing my exhausted brain to hold on to that smell. To remember him, his smell and the feeling of his hands, the texture of his hair.

The length and breadth and width and girth of him.

Of Sam, whom I could not bear to lose.

It had sort of been aborted, but was our first fight anyway. It made a difference between us for a couple days, in which Sam seemed to try extra hard to make me laugh and I tried extra hard to let him, but soon enough we were back to the way it had been before that night. At least almost.

My heart still clutched at odd moments when I thought of all the things that could happen to Sam. Every person I took care of, each heart attack or, God forbid, suicide, even the peaceful face of Mr. Rombaugh who’d passed away in his sleep, wore Sam’s face for a minute or two while I prepared them.

“I’ll be glad when I finally get my license,” Jared said as we went through the embalming procedure on Mr. Rombaugh. “Then I can do this without supervision.”

I looked up, grateful for the conversation to take my mind away from its melancholy.

“Have you thought about my job offer?”

Jared nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, Grace. A lot.”

I didn’t want to pressure him. “Your internship’s over at the end of the month. You know I’d love to have you come back when you’ve passed your test.”

He nodded again. “I know.”

“I know you’ve had other offers. And I understand you have to do what you think is best, Jared. I won’t be mad or anything.”

He looked up with a small grin. “I know. I know, okay? And I want to take the job. I’m just worried about the test, that’s all.”

“You’ll pass. You’re good at this.”

Together we finished with Mr. Rombaugh. I was looking forward to Jared getting his license, too, if it meant I might get a break once in a while. The emotional ups and downs of the only job I’d ever considered were as upsetting to me as the reasons I was having them.

Jared shrugged. “I hope so.”

“Listen, Jared…about the partnership thing. I haven’t really had time to think about it. I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t considering it.”

I’d turned to the sink to wash my hands after stripping off my latex gloves, but Jared didn’t answer. I thought maybe the sound of the water had garbled my words, but when I turned to repeat myself, his expression stopped me. “Huh?”

Shit.

“I thought Shelly would have mentioned it to you by now…” I trailed off. It’s hard to speak with a foot in your mouth.

“About a partnership?” Jared looked momentarily pleased before his brow furrowed.

“Shelly talked to you about making me a partner?”

Double shit.

“Um…yeah. She did. Last week. I told her I’d have to think about it. And I have,” I added hastily. “But I haven’t made a decision yet.”

Jared shook his head, his jaw setting. He finished up what he’d been doing and stripped off the apron he’d used to cover his clothes. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t believe she’d talk to you about something like that and not tell me.”

“I’m sorry I said anything.”

He shook his head again, harder. “No. I’m glad you told me. Are we done here?”

“I can finish up.”

Jared looked upward, his gaze probably shifting through the ceiling to find the bottom of Shelly’s desk just above us. “Would you mind if I took Shelly out for a long lunch?”

Instead of having them battle it out here? “Sure. Go ahead. It’s been pretty quiet. I’ll page you if I need you.”

He nodded and left the room without another word.

One more reminder of just how complicated relationships could be.

The perfect occasion for Sam to meet my family arose in early October when my brother, Craig, came home to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Because he came home so rarely it was more of a party for him than for my mom, but we were going to have dinner and cake and presents.

Hannah had planned just about everything and given me a list of tasks to complete, which I was more than happy to do, since it took most of the pressure off me.

“And you’re bringing your friend, right?” This came over the phone.

I hadn’t seen my sister much since the day she’d dropped off her kids with me. She’d always been too busy to have lunch with me. I thought I understood, even if I didn’t want to dwell too long on what she was doing with her time.

“Yes. My boyfriend.” I paused for her reaction, but while admitting what Sam was to me meant a lot to me, it didn’t seem to register so much with her. “Sam.”

“Sam. Right.” I heard the scratching of a pen on paper.

“Hannah, are you making place cards? Please tell me you’re not making place cards.”

“Relax,” Hannah said. “I’m just making a grocery list. Geez, Grace, since when did you get so uptight?”

“Pot, have you met kettle? I think you have a lot in common.”

My sister, to my vast surprise, laughed. “Ha, ha. Very clever. Did you read that off a gum wrapper?”

“You’re in a very good mood,” I told her. Unusual for being in the midst of planning a party.

“Let’s just say I’m learning to let a lot of things go.”

Hmm. I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch that one. “Well, good. E-mail me what you want me to pick up.”

“I’ll drop it off on my way to the library with the kids for story time.”

“Here?” Again?

“Yes. There. It’s easier for me than e-mailing. Not everyone lives their life online, Grace.”

“Okay by me.” I wasn’t going to tell her I was surprised.

“Oh, make sure Sam wears a suit and tie.”

“Hannah!”

“Just kidding,” my sister said, and hung up with a laugh.

When I broached the subject of the family party with Sam, it was in the shower while he soaped my back. And my front. He didn’t miss my sides, either. In fact, Sam was being so thorough in his attentions, I had to repeat myself because he hadn’t been paying attention to my words.

“Sam.” I put my hand over his. “You’re not listening.”

He tore his gaze away from my suds-covered breasts and looked into my eyes. “I was listening. You want me to go to a party with you at your parents’ house.”

“Yes. Will you?”

“Of course.” He shrugged. Water splatted down between us, wetting my hair but only reaching Sam’s chest. “If you want me to.”

“Why would you think I didn’t want you to?” I grabbed up the net sponge and the body wash and made him turn around so I could scrub his back.

Sam looked over his shoulder at me. “Because we’ve been together for a couple months now and you’ve never introduced me to your family. I thought maybe you were ashamed of me, or something.”

“Oh, Sam.” I poked his side. “Stop it.”

He laughed and leaned forward to put a hand on the glass brick wall. “That feels good. Not the poking. The washing.”

I scrubbed a little harder. “Like this?”

“Yes. Oh, yes,” he said in a thick pirate accent. “Purr, purr. That be nice.”

I moved lower, from behind, slipping a hand between his legs to fondle him. “How’s that?”

“Purr, purr, that be nice, too.” He hummed and shifted his feet wider apart, but a moment later his entire body jerked. “Shit! What the hell?”

I dropped the sponge and stepped back before he could slug me in the face with his elbow.

Sam turned, holding out his hand. A deep white slice welling with crimson crisscrossed his palm.

He held it out under the shower spray and blood spattered under the force of the water.

“Hold it under the water for a minute while I get a towel.” I reached to grab one from the hook near the shower and brought it in as I turned off the water. Sam held out his hand for me to wrap in the absorbent fabric, but blood had dripped onto the shower floor. It dotted his legs and stomach, too. I pressed the material hard onto the wound and together we eased out of the shower and onto the floor mat.

“Sit down.” I pushed him to sit on the toilet while I rifled through my medicine cabinet for some gauze pads. “The same thing happened to me a few months ago. It must be a crack in the glass.”

He hissed when I pulled away the towel, but the cut had mostly stopped bleeding. I cleaned it with peroxide and bit back my laughter when he yelped. I blew on the wound to ease the sting, then bandaged it.

I kissed it gently. “There. All better.”

Sam took up a lot of space in my small bathroom. With him sitting on my toilet, his knees nearly hit the opposite wall. His shoulders almost filled the small toilet alcove from side to side.

Naked and wet, his skin humped with gooseflesh and his wounded hand laid out faceup on his knee as if he was afraid to touch it, he looked as if he belonged there.

“I would never be ashamed of you, Sam. I hope you know that.”

He touched my cheek with his unhurt hand. “Give it time.”

I
laughed off what he’d said, though it lingered with me. I’d never been ashamed of Sam, just wary about introducing him to the people I cared about in case things didn’t work out. Like most things, it had been all about me.

In front of my parents’ house we sat in Sam’s car with the engine running. He wore a shirt I’d never seen before, tucked into khaki cargo pants instead of his familiar jeans. He looked presentable and teacherly, even with the glinting earring and feathery spiked hair. I missed his big, clunky brogans and his layered shirts and the worn black leather belt. Still, it was obvious he’d made an effort, and I leaned over to kiss his cheek.