Together Apart: Change is Never Easy (2 page)

Two minutes had passed. Sam pocketed her phone and left the bathroom without glancing toward the sink.
 

She didn’t want to know. Even after realizing the idiocy of her thought, she still didn’t. Something had been odd between her and Zach recently, and she was suddenly very aware that this could shatter it. She felt like the recipient of a bank deposit she didn’t remember making. She might be entitled to that money (she might have forgotten a direct deposit from long ago, after all) and she
needed
that money … but if she asked the bank, they might realize it was a mistake and take it back. Looking at the pregnancy test felt like that. Zach hated his job, hated the city, and perhaps as a result, they’d been fighting a lot more. If he found out that she’d had a negative pregnancy test (because of course she’d tell him; she couldn’t not tell him), was it possible that he might realize something that had never precisely occurred to him before: that there was nothing holding him here any longer?
 

But that was ridiculous.
Sam
was holding him here.
 

And that was a good way to think of a marriage, of course: as one person holding another in place.
 

Sam walked back into the bathroom. One quick glance, like ripping off a Band-Aid. She needed one second of strength, then she could go back to being weak if she wanted because one way or another, the bridge would have been crossed.
 

Sam saw the test sitting on its pee-dripped tissue. She thought of Erwin Schrödinger, who she had learned about in one of her college physics courses. Schrödinger, via some famous thought experiment involving a cat, said the act of observing influenced an event’s outcome. As Sam stepped closer, she felt like her own eyes and attention were about to turn that test positive or negative. It had no reality until her eyes gave it.
 

Sam, right here and now, would pop the bubble.
 

The test was positive.
 

Sam stared at plus sign, large as life.
 

She put her hand on her stomach and listened to Morphine on the stereo behind her.
 

And quite to her surprise, Sam realized she was happy.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Six Years Ago

“Really.”
 

Zach looked almost hurt. Of course he would. This was Zach. Between the two of them, Sam might have been manlier. She was also the serious one, the one who thought with her left brain and took the things in front of her as if they were (surprise, surprise) what they seemed to be. When Sam saw a rock, she saw it as a rock. When Zach saw the same rock, it could be a fossil, a skipping stone, or a paperweight. He was almost stupidly optimistic — a temperament that was a perfect foil to the darkness that, on occasion, he allowed himself to disappear into while buried in his art. Zach was the kind of guy who’d watch the “flying plastic bag” scene in
American Beauty
and say that he had to agree with the creepy kid about the beauty in ordinary things. Sam, on the other hand, was a journalism major and made fun of Zach when he said things like that. Most of the time, their back and forth was playful, but Sam had to be careful. When Zach did things that were sweet but maybe a bit over the top, she had to see the sweetness and ignore his hyperbole.

As he held the single rose, Sam could imagine a cartoon drooping as his face fell.
 

“Yes, really,” he said. “I’m giving you a rose.”
 

“A rose?”

“Yes,” said Zach, extending the flower. He pointed at it with his other hand. “That’s what this thing is. A symbol of romance. See also: hearts, chocolates, soft sheets.”
 

“Ooo-kay,”
Sam said, taking the flower. She wasn’t sure what to do with it. Was she supposed to tuck it into her pants when they rode the Tilt-A-Whirl? Right now, she wanted a funnel cake. How would she eat a funnel cake while holding a rose?

Zach stopped, making himself an island in the middle of fair foot traffic. He was holding Sam’s other hand, so she jerked to a stop and turned.
 

“What?” she said.
 

“Girls are supposed to like it when you give them roses.”
 

“I do like it. Thank you.”
 

“You didn’t act like you liked it.”
 

Sam resisted the urge to roll her eyes, reminding herself just how much Zach had grown on her over the month they’d known each other. The rose bit was a bit absurd, given why he was doing it, but it meant a lot to him. It was her job to play along, to take the intention of his gesture over its impractical reality.
 

“I love it,” she said.
 

“You acted like … ”
 

Sam pulled him forward and kissed him. A kid walking by in a green John Deere hat whistled. She held his waist, the awkward, single rose pressed into his hip in her hand.
 

“You don’t need to make gestures, Zach. I actually like you.”
 

“I like making gestures.”
 

And that was true, but it wasn’t why he’d given her the rose tonight. They’d been dating for a month, had gone out to five dinners, had hung out at each other’s dorms with one another’s roommates, had gone bowling, had seen a few movies including at least two that Sam had pretended to enjoy because they were Zach’s favorites. Tonight, though, they wouldn’t be hanging out with either of their roommates. He’d booked them a hotel room so they could be alone, after okaying it with her — following much wink-wink, do-you-know-what-I-mean doubletalk that was quite typical of Zach.
That
she found cute. The time had come for them to finally make love, but if anyone were to read a script of the actual words they’d used to set up the evening, they could just as easily be looking for a quiet place to watch
Gladiator
.

Gestures aside, Zach had picked up that rose because they were going to have sex for the first time once finished with the county fair, and giving roses was what you were supposed to do when you wanted to get laid.

“Well,” she said, “then you can gesture me all you want later tonight.”

“I like doing that, too.”
 

“You don’t know if you like it. You haven’t had it yet.”
 

She held him close, pressed together below the waist. Sam could feel a stiffening in his pants, matching the moistening she felt in her own. She wasn’t normally a public-display-of-affection sort of girl, but standing in the middle of the crowd, a rather innocent kiss still on her lips and with Zach’s bulge pressing against her, she found herself wanting to do something uncharacteristic like grind against it, maybe push him against a wall and hump on him for a while.
 

“I know I’ll like it,” he said. “I’m psychic.”
 

“I think it’s sweet that you got me a rose.” Sam softened her eyes, entering his world. Zach was an artist’s artist — the kind of man who believed passion should trump practicality. “Really.”
 

“You think it’s corny.”
 

“It is corny,” she said. “But I’m allowed to like it, too.” She felt the rose’s stem, found the thorns stripped, and dropped it down her shirt. The rose’s red top poked up from between her cleavage.
 

Zach watched, taking a long moment to gaze at her B-cups. He’d handled them plenty so far and was obsessed with them. Her light-brown hair with its loose, billowy curls spilled around the rose, framing it.
 

“That’s shockingly hot.”

Sam cocked her head with a laugh, then took Zach’s hand in hers and slipped into the moving crowd. The fair was a great place to people watch, and now that Zach had gotten her thinking (and gotten a few things revving below), she let herself slip into his headspace, where clouds could be puffy, white cotton filled with fairies or angry thunderclouds … just so long as they were
noticed
. She looked at the people walking by, then at Zach, and realized how lucky she was to have found him. He was a dreamer and a brooder to counterpoint her stable nature, sure … but she
liked
what he stirred inside her. It was as corny as the rose between her boobs, but she really had started noticing birds singing since they’d been spending so much time together. This was mainly because Zach always pointed them out. She rolled her eyes and acted above it all, then listened as if for the first time.
 

She gripped his hand tighter.
 

“What?”
 

“I was thinking of how you make me notice birds singing.”
 

Zach looked at her seriously. She looked back. They shared a moment, her bright-blue eyes meeting his brown ones.
 

“Oh, fuck you,” he said.
 

The laugh she’d been holding spat between her lips with a noise like a raspberry. He laughed, too, his own falling out the same way.
 

“You’re an artist, too, you know,” he said. “You should be glad I’m bringing some romance into this relationship.”
 

“You got me this rose because you know I’m going to take my pants off for you later,” she said. Sam had said it off-handedly, but it still sent a spark up her middle. She’d pictured her pants off, with him in front of her, his missing, too. Part of her imagined how those two pantsless people would fit together in a way that was so analytical and dispassionate, yet also sizzling hot. “I’ll bet you’ve called ahead to the hotel and asked for a portable stereo playing Michael Bolton.”
 

He made a face. “I never have sex to Michael Bolton.” Another look crossed his features. It looked to Sam as if he was wondering whether he should have said it in that way, implying that he had an individual routine for each girl he slept with. But to worry was absurd. They were both 19. They’d each had a few before, nothing serious or particularly special.
 

“Okay, I’ll bet you’re going to carry me across the threshold and lay me on a bed covered with rose petals.”
 

“Well, not now, I’m not.”
 

They walked a bit further, past a row of carnival game booths. A barker asked Zach if he’d like to win his lady a giant teddy bear. Sam tugged him forward, not allowing him to look. Zach would probably see that as a supreme act of romance: an act of Americana nostalgia so perfect it could be immortalized in a Hummel figurine. But if she could barely find a place for his rose, what the hell would she do with a bear?

“I’m serious, though,” he said when the booths were behind them. “I didn’t mean ‘romance’ like … well … like roses and stuff. There’s that, and I like the idea of doing something stupidly corny like that just because I can, but I really mean ‘romance’ in a more general sense. Like how people ‘romanticize’ the past. That usually means whitewashing, but I’m just saying … like … appreciating the wonder of every moment.”

Sam looked over at him and smiled a mischievous smile. “Are you trying to tell me you’re dying?”
 

“Oh, never mind.”
 

“No, I get it. Really. But I’m not like you in that way. I can appreciate it, but life is life.”
 

“But that’s what I keep trying to tell you, Sam. You’re an
artist
. You can’t think that way if you want to make art.”
 

She laughed, pulling him toward a giant pirate ship ride that was clearly unsafe. “I don’t make art. I ride carnival rides operated by men with six teeth.”
 

Zach looked like he wanted to push, but let it go and allowed her to pull him. She could write. Writing didn’t pay the bills, so she was working toward her journalism degree. Art made practical; ‘nuff said; what more could a girl ask for? He could try and make it as a starving artist, but she wasn’t going to. They were new to each other. He admired her creative work, she admired his stunningly emotional art. Sam thought that maybe one day, Zach was the kind of guy who could make pure art work as a career, but right now they were two kids, and earning potential didn’t matter. Sam wanted to score high marks in her classes and have fun with her boyfriend. The time for art and talk of the future was later.
 

“I don’t trust that guy,” said Zach, looking toward the carnie operating the pirate ship.
 

“The fun of fair rides isn’t the rides themselves,” said Sam. “It’s the thrill you get from cheating death. Are you really wussing out?”
 

Zach vehemently shook his head, bouncing his unkempt mop as he broke into one of his disarming, cheek-to-cheek smiles.
 

“Oh, of course not,” he said. “I love fair rides.”
 

The ride ended, the riders disembarked, and the carnie pulled back the rope to let new riders on. A group of kids ran to the ship’s ends, where you got the best action from the ride’s rocking. Zach tried to shove in with them, but Sam, still clenching his hand, pulled him forward and into the middle.
 

“Oh, come on,” he said. “The middle?”
 

“I’m scared,” she said, tipping her head down. Sam had a way of smiling she knew Zach found unbearably cute, looking at him from rolled-up eyes, with her lower lip tugged in a light bite between her teeth. She did it now, and he rolled his head back, defeated.
 

“Fine.”
 

They slid into the bench. The carnie checked the safety bar. After he’d gone by, Zach checked it, too, found it loose, and made it safe. Then, alone in the ship’s stupid middle, Sam and Zach began to sway and move, thrown back and forth into the bar as kids screamed behind them.
 

Sam crawled her hand onto Zach’s lap, then cupped his bulge and lightly rubbed it.
 

Zach looked over, side to side, then up and down. With one hand, Sam unzipped his fly. His pants were loose. It was easy to get her fingers inside, to find the fly in his boxers, and to wrap her fingers around his warm flesh.