Chapter Eleven #3
fury fades as he gets ahold of himself and Drunk Stranger, now
flanked by two of his friends, walks off into the bathroom
muttering a barely intelligible rant about stupid frigid bitches
and crazy Long Island assholes.
Sam rolls his shoulders,
and Dave and Tuck cautiously release their hold. Sam is breathing
hard, and he staggers a bit on his feet.
"Your friend needs to
leave," bartender guy says softly to me. I look back at him, and
then back to Sam. He must have balls of steel to tell Sam he has to
go right now, even politely.
"No fucking problem," Sam
spits bitterly, and then turns on his heel, stumbling slightly, and
heads to the exit.
I am frozen in shock for
one more moment before I make to go after him.
"Uh, Pine, you should say
in here," Dave advises. Tucker nods in agreement, looking at me
with such sympathy I wonder if Sam is more than just pissed at me,
if he really just hates me now.
But he's drunk and upset,
and what he thinks of me can't matter right now. He needs someone
to look out for him. "I'm just gonna make sure he's okay," I
mumble.
"We'll go," Tuck offers,
but I shake my head adamantly. I need to see he's okay with my own
eyes. Tuck sighs and shrugs, and I run on toward the exit, after
Sam.
I find him two storefronts
down in front of a closed pizza restaurant. He turns his back to me
when he sees me, and it makes me hesitate. His shoulders heave, and
I know he's trying to get ahold of himself, but I don't care. He
can hate me all he wants, but I know he won't hurt me. I'm not
afraid of him. I could never be afraid of him.
I don't say anything when
I reach him, nor do I touch him. But he senses me, and turns around
to face me.
"What, Rory? What do you want?" Sam
stabs me in the gut with each bitter word.
"I... I just wanna make
sure you're alright," I murmur.
Sam lets out a short,
sardonic laugh. "You sure you want to be out here alone with me? I
don't want to scare you." But his words are not earnest. They are
accusatory.
"What are you talking
about, Sam?"
And then he lets me have
it. "What am I talking about?! You know what the fuck I'm talking
about! What, am I him now? I shout at some prick and you cower like I'm going
to what? Fucking
deck you next?!"
He thinks that I think
he's like Robin?
I shake my head fervently.
"That's crazy! I didn't cower. I don't think you would—"
"You flinched!" He
bellows.
I blink at him. I did
flinch, but not out of fear of Sam. The truth is that in that tense
moment I didn't know what was about to happen. What Drunk Stranger
Asshole was going to do next, what he was capable of.
"I—" I try to defend
myself, to explain myself, but Sam isn't having it.
"You fucking
flinched away from me,
Rory! Like you thought I might hit you!"
Bullshit. I never thought Sam would hit me. Not
for a single moment. "I'm sorry I flinched, Sam, but you know what?
Not everything is about you!" I cut myself off and take a
deep breath. "It was just a conditioned, natural reaction to a
raised voice. And it wasn't directed at you."
Sam's anger deflates, but
there is no relief. "Except I don't know if that's completely true.
Because the thing is... I'm not
that different," he says, only the slightest slur
to his words, as if although he's drunk, he's just had some
sobering moment of clarity.
And I get his meaning. Sam
thinks that because he's just done something violent, because he's
been violent before, that he deserved my fear. That his violence
echoes Robin's, and that of his own father, and that he is thus no
better. But, God,
why can't he see how wrong he is?
"Sam—" but he interrupts
again.
"You know I saw Schall,
too, before," he murmurs. "Got into a lot of fights—just like that
one." He gestures with his chin back toward the entrance to the
bar. "Anger issues, supposedly… and maybe they were right." He
scowls in self disgust, "Fuck, Rory, I hit your fucking father!
You've seen me lose my shit—on that
motherfucking bastard, on your dad... now
on this dipshit. That's
why you flinched, b- Rory… that's how you see me…
apparently, that's what I do."
I've been shaking my head
through his entire self-recriminating, inebriated rambling, but
somehow, I can't find the right words. I hadn't feared him. That's
the truth. But he's drunk and practically castigating himself, and
I know nothing I say right now will get through to him.
Suddenly sirens sound
faintly in the distance and a horde of people starts pushing out of
the bar entrance and spilling onto the sidewalk. I recognize our
friends and Tucker spots us, gesturing with urgency for us to join
him. He rolls his eyes when neither of us moves, whispers something
to Carl, and kisses her hard on the mouth before jogging over to
where we're standing.
"That douchebag called the
cops, we gotta go," Tuck says, and my breath catches in my
throat.
The cops?
Shit, Sam could get in trouble. I blanch and grab
Sam's bicep, trying to push him to move, to get the hell out of
here. But Sam doesn't seem scared, he doesn't seem like he wants to
go anywhere at all. Instead his gaze shoots to where my fingers
clutch his arm, his brow furrowing in that adorable way that makes
my knees buckle for a moment. His glazed, alcohol shrouded midnight
blues meet my gaze and look right through me, paralyzing me, and he
looks so confused, as if he doesn't know what to make of my
obviously desperate concern for him.
"Cap, now," Tuck urges, and I retract my
hand. Sam rolls his eyes and acquiesces. Carl comes out of nowhere
and grabs my hand, pulling me in the direction of her car, but my
feet are glued to their spot until I'm satisfied that Sam is
leaving with Tuck. He does, glancing back only once to make sure
I'm doing the same with Carl, and just like that, the night is
over.