Chapter Seven #5
Sam nods at the center of
the bed where the indent of our fused bodies still wrinkles the
sheets, and I swallow anxiously. "Is that was that was?" he asks,
"a fucking booty call?" His tone is lifeless, not even angry, just…
defeated. He finally meets my gaze again, but now I look away. I
don't have an answer for him that will make any sense. Because that
was not a booty
call, but I don't know what it actually was, because we are friends. We can
only be friends. I thought he understood that.
Sam jumps up from the bed,
and tugs on his underwear and jeans. I sit up hastily, racking my
brain for the right words to fix this. But they don't exist, and so
I refocus my energy on keeping my eyes dry. Sam's socks are on and
he's shoving his feet into his sneakers as his eyes search the room
for the tee shirt I threw over the other side of the bed. I know
exactly where it is, but I don't speak up. I can't let him leave. I
need more time. I need to think of something to say!
I open my mouth, but then
he spots it, and I watch helplessly as he makes his way to the
other side of my bed. But when I follow his gaze, I realize it
wasn't his tee
shirt he found. It's Cam's. Linton Tornadoes number
twenty-two.
It's folded neatly on my
night table, next to my bed where I spent recent nights hugging it
to my chest and crying pitifully. Sam picks it up and glares at it
with an animosity that almost shocks me.
He licks his lip, his jaw
clenched tight—like he wants to say something cutting, but stops
himself. And I don't understand what's brought it on. I was
sure he was over his jealousy of Cam, now that he knows he's
dead.
Sam puts the shirt
carefully back in its place and bends down to retrieve his own from
the floor, slipping it over his head, his broad shoulders, and
finally covering my view of his sculpted body.
He doesn't look at me. He
shoves his fingers through his hair, still mussed from our recent
activities, in obvious frustration, before shaking his head vaguely
to himself.
"I'll never understand
you, Rory," he murmurs, his voice a gutting mix of exasperation and
sorrow, and then he makes his way to the door.
"Sam," I say desperately,
but I have no follow-up, nothing to stop him from leaving. I don't
know what to do, I feel trapped in a hell of my own making, and
it's killing me that I seem to have hurt Sam, the person I love the
most, all over again.
He pauses by the door, but
when I don't say anything more, he stalks out, closes the door
behind him, and I sit there, naked in my bed, utterly stunned.
I don't understand what's
just happened.
I still feel the heat of
his skin all over my body. I still feel the wetness of his kisses.
My own lips are swollen from everywhere I kissed him, my hair a
tousled mess, my bed completely undone. His scent clings to the
thick air in the suddenly claustrophobically empty room. It
happened too fast. One moment he was hovering over me, caressing my
cheek after our passionate coupling, and the next, I've managed to
piss him off with no effort at all.
The remnants of Sam's
release still lingers in me, running down my thighs, a physical
reminder of what I've just had, and lost. Again. But it never
should have been mine in the first place. All I've done is make
this whole thing harder on the both of us.
Sam's absence is a living,
breathing thing, stealing my breath, screaming at me that this is
my fault. That Sam is once again upset because of me. That I am a
cliché—a stupid teenage girl who let her hormones make her
decisions. And as usual, I've brought him nothing more than a
short, fleeting sense of pleasure that couldn't possibly have been
worth the anger and pain that inexorably follows.
I feel shameful and dirty.
Like I've just used him in the worst way, even if I hadn't planned
to, or meant to. I chose a brief physical thrill over what really
matters, and now I feel suffocated by guilt.
I loathed seeing that look
on his face. The confused furrow of his brow, the indignation at
the offending word, friend, and lastly, the resentment.
It hurts having it targeted in my direction. I've only experienced
it once before, when he'd questioned me about Cam in Miami. I
shudder at the memory. I think of all the times I've seen Sam's
resentment, or disgust, or rage, or any other ill feelings,
directed at others—many times even in defense of me. I hate being
on the other side of that.
It's still in this room,
his resentment, swirling and sweeping through the stale air, but
not disippating in the least. It stamps out what's left of the
afterglow of our passion and binds itself to the perpetual ache
alive in my chest, amplifying and expanding it until it branches
and twists its way through my entire body, forcing its brambles
into my gut and salty tears from my eyes. It conjures up a feeling
I'm all too familiar with—the sad, pitiful, resigned cousin of
hope: regret.
I never wanted to hurt
Sam. I don't want him to hate me.
But maybe he needs
to.
I'm starting to realize
that despite my internal professions of being selfless by giving
him up, I've been doing it completely half-assed. It was beyond
wishful thinking to believe that we could go from friends to lovers
and back again all in a matter of fewer than forty-eight hours.
That we could leave all these unresolved emotions just shooting
through space, without any outlet for any of it.
Because I needed his
friendship. That was the whole point, wasn't it? Giving him up so
that I don't end up losing him. But maybe even that was selfish.
Maybe what he needs right now is not to be my friend. Maybe he
needs to be angry with me. To resolve whatever feelings he has left
for me, good or bad, in whatever way he wants.
Maybe this needed to
happen. Maybe Sam needed a reason to be angry with me. He needs to
move on. It's the only way we can truly go back to our friendship.
Eventually he'll get over whatever it is he still feels, and I can
only hope that when that happens he can forgive me like he did
Chelsea.
But then I feel my pulse
race as I nearly succumb to a surge of insecurity. I don't have the
lifetime of friendship and family connection that Chelsea does, and
Sam could easily choose to forget me instead of forgive me. After
all, high school will be over in a matter of weeks, and New York is
an enormous city full of people who can offer friendships a hell of
a lot more appealing than I ever could. People without panic
attacks and overreactions, violent stalkers and manipulative
fathers.
I remind myself that Sam
not forgiving me is not the worse case scenario. Because at least
then he would be safe. And though I won't give up my hope for our
friendship—I can't—I accept that it's Sam's choice to make, and I'll let him.
Whatever he decides, I will find a way to live with it. I have
to.