The Man I Love (The Road Trip #2)

3. Chapter Three

3

CHAPTER THREE

December

Eight Months Earlier

New York

“Don't think about making art, just get it done,” Samantha repeated the quote by Andy Warhol as she ran her hands over the cool, slippery clay. “Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.” The same quote she’d been chanting every day for four months.“While they are deciding, make even more art.”

Four months, two days, and eleven hours. But who was counting?

Taking a step backward, she swallowed the emotion that crept up her throat and stared at the piece before her. She’d spent hours lost in it. Weeks if she were being completely honest with herself.

She tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowing as she tried to make sense of the piece. The sculpture was round yet hollow, almost feminine, but there was something else. “What are you?” she whispered. “What the hell are you?” she said louder, as though believing the dark mass would open its mouth and answer her.

Her artistic growth had been stifled since she relocated to Brooklyn. Since she left everything behind for one goal—to make a name for herself.

She closed her eyes, plunging one hand back into the cloudy basin, and pulled in a much-needed breath. She fished out a sponge, letting the cool water ooze from the oceanic crevices and drip over her clay-covered fingertips.

She couldn't get used to Tristan's absence in her day-to-day life. She missed his jokes—the ones so silly she couldn’t help but laugh. The way he told them reminded her of a child telling a knock-knock joke: so self-assured, so confident. So fucking sexy she couldn’t stand it.

“Alright, Sammie, you ready for the best joke you’ve ever heard in your life?” he asked as they lay in bed, a sexy smirk on his lips that told her he’d been thinking about this joke for a while.

Sam leaned against his shoulder and nestled in. “Like always.” She grinned.

Tristan wrapped his forearm around her chest and chuckled, his deep voice sending a shiver down her spine. “Okay, so there’s this snail …”

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked back over her shoulder, “A snail?”

Tristan bit his lip and nodded. “Yeah. A snail—a really good-looking snail who goes to a car dealership and says, ‘I want to buy the fastest car you’ve got. And I want you to paint a big letter S on it.’”

Sam laughed. “Why an S?”

Tristan’s eyes twinkled. “The dealer asks the same thing. The snail says, ‘So when I drive down the street, people will say, “Look at that S-car-go!”’”

Sam laughed so hard she choked, then sat up in bed so she could breathe. “Oh my God, that’s ridiculous!”

Tristan pounded on her back but watched her with a satisfied grin. “I told you it was good.”

Sam’s eyebrows arched as she turned to face him again. “It’s not that funny.”

Tristan sat up too and leaned in close, his voice dropping to a teasing whisper. “Could have fooled me.”

The memory was dull and faded, but for a moment, she was there again, back in their home, nestled into his chest.

“Damn it.” She sighed and wrung the sponge firmly with both hands before dropping it back into the water basin.

She missed everything about him. Being in his presence, finding complete comfort in silence, waking up with her body completely wrapped in his, but somehow not feeling trapped.

“You’re living a dream, Samantha. You’re living a God-damn dream. Get it together!”

Funny, but it didn’t feel like a dream now. In fact, some days felt like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

She was being dramatic.

Yes, she was emotional, ridiculously so, but homesickness didn’t allow her to think straight. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. An experience most artists dreamed of. Move to the big city, collaborate with other creatives, and have her work seen by the masses! It was something others killed for.

Shaking away the uncertainty, she closed her eyes and picked up the sponge again. She ran the wet mass along the sculpture for a second time. Each bump, tiny hole, and flaw became evident in the darkness. She’d used this technique a thousand times. On days when she couldn’t trust her eyes to see past the doubts she’d planted deep inside. When she needed to put her faith in other things and allow her fingers to guide her.

She wished life was like that, that she could close her eyes and have all the answers present themselves like they did with her sculptures.

Was this a mistake?

Her eyes shot open, and she dragged a breath into her lungs.

Her roommates were all out for the evening, leaving her alone in the tiny apartment with only her thoughts. Usually, she welcomed a night like this, but tonight, she felt isolated. How would she get through eight more months of this? A year of artistic exploration…but at what cost?

“Go.”

She thought back to the single word Tristan had used when she’d told him of Mr. Covington’s proposal.

“Go.”

Without questions, without answers, with no guarantees of what this commitment would mean for him, or them.

“It will be for an entire year,” she’d argued.

“Go,” he repeated. “You have to.”

A gentle drip came from somewhere in the apartment and snapped her back to reality. It was soft, almost nonexistent and would’ve gone unnoticed if she was back in L.A. For the past two years, life with Tristan had been everything but quiet. It was full of commotion, noise, and adventure. She’d loved every second. He filled her soul with laughter and left little room for boredom. Now, the drips came loud and clear, even over the sounds of the city. She inhaled the earthy scent of clay and examined the work before her. She couldn’t figure it out. Her sculptures often started this way—with more of a feeling than a vision, but this was different. This felt like a puzzle of life was handed to her in clay form, and she couldn’t seem to decipher it.

Her eyes shifted to the rusty sink, where the dripping became more insistent. She crossed the room to stand before it. The concrete floors cool, even beneath her slippered feet.

This was a privilege. Beautiful, old, and wonderful—this space she was fortunate to live in.

Her hands gripped the handles of the rusty faucet and twisted hard until the soft drips faded into nothingness. A random thought slipped into her mind. Had Tristan been right in telling her to go? Had it been his insistence that made her take this leap? Or possibly her fears of missing out and always doing the right thing?

Loud footsteps immediately filled the space, and she flipped around, heart hammering in her chest. She blamed Tristan for the paranoia. He’d filled her with caution the moment she left Los Angeles.

“Lock the doors.”

“Never make eye contact on the subway.”

“Always ask for the price of a hot dog before you commit to condiments.”

The glimpse of her roommate’s fiery red hair made her calm. Margaret stumbled up the steps, followed by a tall, dark-haired gentleman who pinned her against the wall.

Samantha froze. The man’s broad shoulders were hunched over her roommate’s frame. Samantha turned away, but not before she noticed the overgrown locks peeking out of the man’s collared coat. A familiar pang shot through her chest, and longing twisted in her belly. She plunged her hand noisily back into the water to alert her roommate to her presence.

“Sam?” Margaret was startled, pushing the gentleman firmly away. “You’re up?”

Margaret waved a drunken hand in the air and staggered toward the kitchen. “This is Edward. Eddy, this is my roommate, Sam.”

Sam stared at the dark-eyed, dark-haired stranger like she’d seen a ghost. He reminded her of Tristan. He held the same unwavering confidence like Tristan. Had the same dimple in his right cheek.

Realizing she was making a fool of herself, she averted her gaze, but not before she caught him grinning at her—a sly and lopsided grin, like he’d just read every dirty thought she’d had since middle school.

He moved toward her, his brandy colored-leather boots thudding on the concrete floor. Then he un-looped the scarf from his neck. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Samantha.”

“Sorry, I...” Feeling like an ass, she wiped her fingers over her apron and tried to ignore the fact that her cheeks were hot. “The pleasure is mine,” she said, extending her hand for a shake. His movement surprised her, as he wrapped his fingers around her palm and pulled her closer. Her feet lost balance, and she stumbled forward. His eyes met hers, and his lips touched the back of her hand in a gentle kiss. “I’ve been admiring your work for months.”

Alarm bells rang throughout Samantha’s body, and she stepped backward, yanking her hand away until her bottom crashed against the butcher-block counter. “My work has only been in the window for eight weeks,” she stammered out.

“Eight weeks is two months,” he countered, making his grin widen.

A few seconds passed before he looked over his shoulder. “Do you mind?” he asked, pivoting his torso toward one of her sculptures.

She wasn’t sure what he was asking, but something in his tone caught her off guard. “Mind what?” she asked.

“Mind if I look?”

The sculpture he referred to sat in the corner of the room, covered with a clay-stained cloth that she’d abandoned weeks earlier. He moved closer to examine it, causing hairs at the back of her neck to prickle. He seemed so genuinely curious that she didn’t quite know what to say. Of course she didn’t want him to see it. The sculpture wasn’t ready, which was exactly why she’d covered it with a tarp in the first place.

A floodgate of insecurities opened inside. She shook her head, but it was too late. With one shake of the cloth, the tarp was on the ground, and her sculpture was exposed.

A violated gasp escaped her. She’d never been in the presence of someone with such nerve!

She glanced toward her roommate, wondering where in the world she’d found this guy, but his words yanked her attention back to her art.

“This is brilliant,” he whispered.

She paused, turning back in his direction. He moved around the sculpture like a cat assessing his prey––like her art pulled at some feral part of his soul.

Samantha exhaled, fighting the urge to cover the sculpture with her own body and ask him what he found so ‘brilliant’––because she couldn’t see it. She forced herself to remain quiet, to slow her racing heart, to shush the voice in her head that told her she wasn’t good enough.

“I’ve walked past The Gallery every day since the remodel,” he began again, “and every time”— his words softened as he turned to face her— “I see your sculptures in the window, and they stop me. Like some sort of gravitational pull dragging me closer.”

Her heartbeat quickened. Its rhythm, so intense, the beats were almost painful.

His words were exactly what she’d hoped for when she’d moved to the city. Her entire purpose for moving to New York. For people to stop. For them to think. To feel. In a world that was so busy with technology that they’d forgotten about the things that live and breathe all around them. In a time composed of so many filters that genuine beauty had been mistaken as flaws that needed to be erased. Laugh lines, wrinkles, and the natural texture of skin.

But hearing his words—a man she’d only met two minutes earlier—forced her toward the sink. She grabbed a sponge and immediately began scrubbing the dirty instruments in the basin. Yes, she had no damned clue what she was doing, but whatever it was, it was personal.

She gathered the water pan next, scrubbing so hard her fingertips went numb. “Thank you,” she said gruffly. She was being rude, even when nothing he said was wrong or offensive. Yet his words had awakened something inside of her she didn’t quite have the words to express.

You’ve been working for eight hours straight, Samantha. Without dinner, without a break, which was exactly why she felt so lightheaded right now.

Edward seemed to take the undeniable rejection in stride and quietly retreated. “So what do we have here?” he asked Margaret as he stopped behind her at the small fridge.

Samantha breathed easier with distance. Her lungs filled with the air she needed as she turned to hang her apron on the wooden peg. She then rested her back against the counter and dried her instruments one at a time, trying to understand her reaction.

Margaret and Edward were still in the kitchen, bent over the too small fridge, when she finally figured it out. It wasn’t Edward that made her uncomfortable. It was the way he looked at her art that did. Like he could see something she couldn’t. Like he understood what she’d mentally blocked the moment she’d moved to New York.

Despite herself, curiosity made her walk toward them. “I thought you’d be closing down the bars tonight,” she said to Margaret, stopping to sit on a barstool opposite the couple at the counter.

Margaret didn’t hide her surprise. Her eyes scrunched into tiny slits, and she shrugged. “I guess I’m over it.”

She pulled two beers from the fridge, then searched the drawer for a bottle opener. “Want one?” she asked, popping off the top and sliding the beer across the counter to Samantha.

Normally Samantha was upstairs in bed at this time, talking with Tristan until they both drifted to sleep from exhaustion. But tonight, Sam felt oddly detached as she reached across the counter, grabbed the beer, and thrusted the offered bottle toward her lips. “Thanks,” she whispered after a healthy chug.

Something had changed tonight, and she could feel it in her bones. Like atmospheric pressure or realignment of the planets. Something had shifted, and it both scared and excited her at the same time. She turned toward the window, hoping to glimpse the moon, instinctively knowing it must be full, but found her roommate Peter’s stained-glass sculptures in the window instead. Its brilliant shards reflected all the colors of the rainbow, playing and dancing against the walls in the living room. “Where’s Peter?” she asked, realizing it had been quite some time since he’d left that evening.

Margaret made a face, took another bottle from the fridge, then slid it across the counter toward Edward. “Shit,” she whispered. “I was supposed to meet him. Shit, shit, shit!”

Edward picked up the bottle, seemingly amused as he watched Margaret scurry into the living room with her phone. She plopped on the overstuffed chair, then fired off a series of texts, presumably to their other roommate.

Edward turned to Samantha, his hip pressed lazily into the counter. “Who’s Peter?”

Samantha glanced toward the living room, where she could see Margaret’s brow furrow. “Our other roommate,” she replied.

“Three of you live here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sam answered.

“And you’re all artists?”

“Yep,” Margaret interjected, putting her phone on the coffee table to include herself in the conversation.

“Painter,” he said to Margaret, “Sculptor,” he said to Samantha, plopping down beside Margaret on the oversized chair, “and what about Peter?”

“He’s our glass man.” Margaret jutted her chin toward the corner of the room, where Peter’s stained glass shone like a prism reflecting the city lights below. Light danced with every color of the rainbow, illuminating the walls as though he’d captured the colors of the city and released them in this tiny apartment. Yellows, blues, greens, moving in and out, almost like breath.

Edward smothered his hand over his mouth, assessing the apartment before he finally spoke again. “It’s beautiful.”

For the first time, Sam looked around the room, seeing the space through someone else's eyes. She had to admit, it was magnificent. Yes, the apartment was old, but that’s exactly what gave it its charm. The concrete floors were stained and abused by the dozens of artists who’d come before them. Years of divots, holes, and paint, each telling its own story, gave it its charm.

The building, which was composed of three stories, was quite unique. There was the studio where they sat now, composed of their workspace, a small kitchen and a living room which they lovingly called ‘cozy.’ Upstairs were three tiny bedrooms with barely enough room to hold a full-sized bed and dresser for each of them. But it was the first floor—Mr. Covington’s brainchild—which made moving across the US worth it. The Gallery—a five hundred square foot space that would feature each artist for a whole six months once it opened.

It would be life changing yet scared the hell out of her at the same time.

Sam cleared her throat, determined not to think about work any longer as she sat across from them on the olive-colored couch. “What about you, Edward?” she asked. “What do you do?”

He turned to meet her stare, stacking his leather boots boldly onto the coffee table. “Actor,” he said confidently as he leaned deeply into the cushion.

“Broadway?” she asked.

“I’m between casts at the moment.” He picked up his bottle. “For now,” he took a sip, “I narrate audio books.”

The twinkle in his eye piqued her curiosity. “Anything I might know?”

“Do you listen to Romance?”

“Some.”

“Erotica?”

“Maybe.”

“Then no, you haven’t heard of me.” He wrinkled his nose. “But I like your style.” He put his feet on the ground, chuckled and winked, then pushed himself to stand and walked toward the kitchen.

“If you’re insinuating all she reads is smut, you're a bigger dick than I thought you were, Eddie,” Margaret said.

He pulled more beers from the fridge. “I’m only playing around,” he said. “But I’m flattered you’ve thought about my dick, Maggie, I really am.”

Sam almost choked on her drink, spitting the mouthful all over the coffee table.

Edward set the fresh bottles on the table and began pounding on her back. “You okay?”

She wiped her mouth and nodded.

“You sure?” he asked, waiting for her to breathe normally before he walked back to the kitchen to grab a pile of napkins.

Samantha averted her gaze to her roommate, where a rush of heat made her cheeks flush. “Where did you meet this guy?” she asked Margaret. It was probably rude to talk about him when he was right there , but alcohol did that to her. Made her lips loose and her mind curious.

Edward threw the napkins on the table, swiped up the mess with a flick of his wrist, then tossed them into the wastebasket like a pro basketball player. “Tinder,” he chimed in, “ever hear of it?”

Margaret threw back her head in laughter, like he’d just said the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her life. “Are you kidding me?” She giggled so hard that she snorted. “Sam’s practically married!”

Edward paused, glancing down at Sam’s fingers. “Where’s your ring?” he asked, staring at the third one.

“Excuse me?”

“Your ring?” He sat forward, grabbing hold of her left hand and pulling her closer. “If you’re practically married—” His eyes shifted upward. “Where. Is. Your. Ring?” The words were said with deliberate punctuation, as though to prove a point.

“We’re not engaged.” She yanked her hand away, rubbing it on her clay-spattered pants.

“Why not?” he asked.

“None of your business,” she stated.

“Do you want to be?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m not in any hurry.”

“Why?” His eyes challenged her. “Is he not the one?”

She felt unsteady, unsure if it was his words or the alcohol that made her feel that way.

Of course, he was the one. Her heart had known that fact before her brain even had—yet an uneasy feeling crept inside her body like a stomach bug. Like a tree spreading its roots deep into her soul and grabbing hold of all her insecure spots.

Why didn’t she have a ring on her finger? Why hadn’t he asked her to marry him yet?

Margaret must have sensed her unease, because she slapped Edward’s knee, forcing his attention back in her direction. “Tristan is perfect,” she scolded him. “I haven’t met him yet, but he’s all Sam talks about, so I know it’s true.”

“Ahhh… So it’s him who can’t commit.” Eddy raised an eyebrow, leaning back in the seat as though he'd solved the puzzle. “He’s leading you on, isn’t he, Sam?”

She sat taller. “Why would you care if he was?” Her tone was even, though to her own ears, sounded defensive.

Edward smirked. “Are my questions making you uncomfortable, Samantha?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.” His face softened, making him appear almost harmless. “Because that was never my intention.”

Margaret sat forward again, shoving Edward’s feet out of her path as she made her way to the kitchen. “Stop harassing her, Eddy.” She laughed. “She’s young, and in love, which is more than I can say for your jaded ass.”

Samantha picked up her beer, taking a long drink before placing it on the table again. “I’m not in a hurry,” she stated. “I know he’s the one.” She nodded again, unable to stop herself from defending their relationship. “Deep down in my soul, I know it.” She pushed herself to the edge of the cushion. Her knee grazed Edward’s. “We’re building our careers right now, our foundation … otherwise…”

His eyes bore into hers. “Otherwise, what?”

“We’d be together.” Otherwise … I wouldn’t be here with you.

More footsteps hammered in the stairwell, and Sam spun to find Peter at the landing, carrying bags of groceries and looking frustrated. “Margaret, you better start ‘ splaining yourself,” he said in a mock Ricky Ricardo accent.

Margaret blinked a few times, then slapped her hand over her mouth and pushed herself from the chair. “Oh my God, Peter, I’m so sorry!”

Peter scoffed, but proceeded toward the refrigerator, Margaret only a few steps behind him as she rattled off excuses for her absence at the bar.

“Mmhmm,” Peter hummed as he began to unload the groceries into the fridge.

“I was on my way, I swear! But then I got a text from Edward. I haven’t seen him in years, and he was right down the street.”

Peter cracked open a beer and turned toward the living room. “I’m guessing you’re Edward?” he asked, finally acknowledging Edward’s presence.

“Peter,” Margaret stopped talking and jutted her chin toward Edward. “This is Edward. Edward, this is Peter—the glass man.”

Edward adjusted in his seat, his hand pushing against Sam’s knee as he helped himself to stand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Peter.”