Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lacey was putting in her earrings when the doorbell rang.
Sam was ten minutes late, and she still wasn’t ready. Where did the time go? When she’d started getting ready, she thought she’d be early, sitting around, twiddling her thumbs. When did she get off track?
The pants she tripped over going to her bedroom door answered the question. The outfit. Most of her closet was strewn around her room. Nothing had looked right. Nothing had felt right. A baggy cream-colored sweater partially tucked into a long navy blue skirt with a daisy pattern was what she’d settled on. Lacey was worried that she looked like if Meg Ryan had taught kindergarten in a ’90s rom-com, but it was her vanity versus the clock, and the clock had won.
Sam rang the doorbell again.
“I’m coming!” Lacey shouted, not sure if he could hear her.
She combed her fingers through her curls again, trying to soften them, then half walked, half ran to the front door. She opened it right as Sam rang the bell for the third time.
“You’re so impatien—are those for me?”
Sam looked at the brown paper-wrapped bouquet in his hands like he’d forgotten it was there. “These? Oh, um, yeah. They are.” He held them straight out to her.
Lacey took the bouquet and admired it. Dahlias, roses, and daisies, in pink, white, and burgundy, and a few other flowers she didn’t recognize offhand. It was beautiful. None of her boyfriends had ever gotten her flowers for no reason before. She’d gotten the odd bouquet after a performance, but never just because.
“What are these for?” she asked, stepping back to let him inside.
“Supporting local small business,” Sam said, not moving from the doorway. “We’re going to be late for our reservation.”
Lacey smelled her flowers. Soft and sweet. “I need to put these in water.”
“We’re going to be late,” he reminded her.
“And whose fault is that?” Lacey went to the kitchen to find a vase.
Both of theirs, technically, but she wasn’t going to point that out if he didn’t notice.
“They’ll be fine if you leave them on the counter.”
“I don’t want them to die.”
Lacey couldn’t find a vase so she put the flowers in a sturdy glass in the sink with some water. Sam was still on the front porch.
“Did you need to be invited in? Are you a vampire?” She put on her raincoat. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees overnight and the sky was spitting icy rain.
“We need to go,” he insisted.
“Sam. We live in Crane Cove. It takes two minutes to drive anywhere. We’re fine.”
They were not fine.
Sam had picked a new tapas restaurant downtown called La Taberna. Because it was still new and novel to the residents of Crane Cove, the place was packed. Lacey heard the hostess tell the couple in front of them it was an hour wait for a table if they didn’t have a reservation.
“Reservation for Finch,” Sam said when they got to the host stand.
The hostess stared at him. Sam stared back.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sam Shoop?” she asked.
Lacey put a hand on his chest. “He’s a Sam Shoop impersonator. Getting the tattoos was a commitment, but it’s really paid off.”
The hostess blinked like her brain was recalibrating. “Huh…Finch?” She tapped her tablet a few times. “So, our policy is to only hold reservations for ten minutes on busy nights. It’s twenty minutes past your reservation, so we gave away your table.”
“Okay, I was joking. He is Sam Shoop. Can we have our table?”
“I, um…let me talk to my manager.”
The hostess all but ran from her post toward the back of the restaurant. Lacey looked at Sam. A deep frown creased his forehead.
“Why did you give them my last name instead of yours?”
“Because you never know who’s going to be weird,” Sam grumbled. “This is a fucking disaster.”
Lacey slid a hand into one of his back pockets. “No, it’s not. It’s tapas. What’s our worst-case scenario here? We go somewhere else? Not a big deal.” She kissed his cheek, and Sam’s eyebrows snapped upward in surprise. “Stop trying so hard. It’s just me.”
The hostess came back, trailed by a man who had to be the manager. Given the way his facial expression changed when he saw them, Lacey guessed that the hostess had said “Sam Shoop is out front” and the manager had said “No, he’s not,” and panic was setting in because Sam Shoop didn’t have a table at their restaurant. Lacey felt bad for him. He looked ready to crap his pants.
“I understand that you had a reservation,” the manager began, and Sam interrupted him.
“I know we were late and you can’t hold a table indefinitely, but we’ve got a movie in an hour. Is there anything you can do?” Sam’s tone was very gentle, especially considering he was stiffer than a brand new pointe shoe.
“I’m sorry.” The manager looked ready to offer up his first-born child as an apology. “If you want, you can wait for seats to open at the bar.”
Lacey squeezed Sam’s butt in an attempt to distract him from whatever doom spiral he might be headed towards. When he didn’t immediately answer, she did it for them.
“We’ll come back another night.”
“Are you sure?” Sam asked her, and she nodded.
“Yeah. It’s not a big deal.”
The manager scrambled to give Sam one of his cards, telling Sam to call the next time he made a reservation and he would personally make sure the table stayed available.
“I think he just wants you to call him,” Lacey joked once they were outside. Sam was still brooding like a distant storm cloud, so she took his hand and squeezed it. “You good?”
“No,” he grumbled. “Where are we supposed to eat?”
There it was. The bottom line of the eye chart expression she couldn’t make out. Sam was upset, but Lacey couldn’t tell if it was her, the situation, himself, or some unrelated fourth thing that had crawled up his ass. She worked hard to keep her expression and tone light.
“We could go to Cranberry Brothers,” she suggested, “or we could try and make it to Queens and back before the movie. Here’s a fun alternative: we have popcorn and candy for dinner. Mmm…Skittles and Sour Patch Kids.”
She smiled brightly, ready to do or say anything to get Sam to crack a smile. He rolled his eyes and her heart shriveled, then it nearly exploded when he grabbed the back of her neck. For an eternal second she thought he was going to kiss her, and the world slowed to a halt; raindrops hung suspended mid-fall, the biting wind ceased to move, and her pulse paused, waiting.
“You’re ridiculous,” he told her, “in the best possible way.”
“Ta-da,” Lacey said weakly, the world returning to normal in fast forward. Sam released her neck, and she tried not to let the crushing weight of disappointment change her posture.
“Isn’t that pizza place close to the movie theater?”
“Pete’s?” Lacey tried to recreate a map of downtown Crane Cove in her head. “Yeah, I think it is. You want to get pizza?”
“I wanted to take you to tapas.”
“Pizza is fine. It’ll be quieter too.”
“We’re supposed to be seen.”
Lacey frowned. “Why is this so important all of a sudden? We’ve been believably private for—” The door opened, and Lacey took Sam’s hand and walked them further down the sidewalk to a closed storefront. “We’ve been believably private for weeks. What’s the big deal?”
Sam clenched his jaw, not holding eye contact with her. “Your ex is an asshole,” he finally said.
“You’re going to have to be more specific. That could apply to all of them.”
“Mitch.”
Sam’s entire demeanor clicked into place, and Lacey understood why her notoriously private fake boyfriend had tried to parade her around a busy restaurant like a show pony.
“Oh yes. He is an asshole. What asshole thing did he do to get into your head?”
Sam crossed his arms and looked down at his feet. “He said some shit…”
“What kind of shit?” Lacey prompted.
“That I’m letting you tell everyone I’m your boyfriend so I can fuck you. And that the head is worth the headache.”
“If he only knew.” Lacey laughed.
“Knew what?” Sam asked, taking her hand and intertwining their fingers as they started the walk to Pete’s Za.
“That we’re not fucking, so you’re not even getting head for the headaches.”
Sam’s face contorted as he struggled to keep it straight. Pride swelled in Lacey’s chest. Making him laugh was like being able to command the clouds to part to reveal the sun.
Maybe a little head wasn’t out of the question. Sam had gone above and beyond taking care of her when she was sick. What could it hurt to wrap her lips around that gorgeous cock and slide as much of it as she could down her throat? Give them both a little treat?
Why had she even said they shouldn’t have sex? To protect herself? From what? Orgasms? What was wrong with the languid contentment that followed a particularly good fuck? Nothing. Nothing at all. It had been so damn long since she’d had good sex. And it wasn’t like Sam was an unknown quantity; she knew he could deliver exactly what she was craving.
Pete’s Za was essentially a hole in the wall. Lacey wondered what the space had been in a previous life. The white subway tiled walls reminded her so much of being in a New York City pie shop that it made her nostalgic for being nineteen and grabbing a slice for her walk home after an audition. Pizza over subway fare had been her motto back then.
They weren’t the only ones who’d decided they wanted pizza, so they got in line. Lacey leaned back against Sam, and he curled an arm around her waist. Casual. Like they did this kind of thing every day. Then his lips brushed her neck and he nuzzled the sensitive spot behind her ear, and her pussy felt anything but casual.
Sam released her when the line moved and it was their turn to order. Lacey didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay in her spot and get more kisses.
“Veggie slice, please,” Sam said to the teenage boy behind the counter. He reminded Lacey of a lemur, all long, awkward limbs.
“Make that two,” Lacey added, then looked at Sam. “I used to tell myself pizza didn’t count if it had vegetables on it.”
“It’s a complete meal if it has vegetables,” Sam agreed, digging his wallet out of his pocket to pay. “Carbs, protein, vegetables. And you can eat it and walk at the same time.”
“See, you get it.”
The pizza was delicious. Every time she had Pete’s, Lacey couldn’t believe she didn’t eat it for every meal. Who needed other food when there was pizza?
“There’s a pizza place by my apartment in New York that’s open until three in the morning,” Sam said, shaking more red pepper flakes onto his slice. “I always stop there when I record late. I need to take you.”
Lacey paused mid-chew. Did Sam know what he’d said? The way he kept eating, she didn’t think so. A slip of the tongue, or forgetting who he was talking to. He probably said stuff like this all the time to his friends.
“You know how I feel about free food,” Lacey reminded him .
“Would you ever live in New York again?”
Lacey chewed slowly, using the time to compose her answer. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for it anymore. My skin is too thin for that hustle culture, and it’s too expensive. I love the city and I’d visit again in a heartbeat, but I’m not mentally cut out to have my entire living space be roughly the size of your bedroom, minus the closet and bathroom. Maybe if I win the lottery.”
“What would you do if you won the lottery?”
“Pay off my debt.” It was a simple answer, but it was the one she had. Paying off her debt dominated all of her choices. Once she solved that problem, she’d move on to what she wanted to do with her life—whatever that was.
Sam frowned a little. “How much debt are you in?”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “Enough that I’m going to shove my mouth full of pizza and change the subject. How ’bout them Yankees?”
“I’m a Tigers fan, actually.”
“No wonder your songs are full of heartbreak and disappointment.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Who do you root for? Not the Astros, right?”
“Whoever has the cutest uniforms,” Lacey answered with a cheeky smile. Sam rolled his eyes.
“We’re fixing this. You’re going to be a Tigers fan so you can be miserable with the rest of us.”
“Misery loves company.”
Sam smiled softly. “You’re good company, sunshine.”
Lacey’s insides turned to goo. If she’d been standing, she would’ve needed to sit down. It was settled. She needed this man’s penis in or around her mouth before midnight so she could properly express her gratitude.