Chapter 16 #2
It can’t be true, it can’t be… But even as Sam thinks that, he knows it’s denial.
Of course it’s true. Of course Jake wrote that stupid review, the one which almost destroyed Sam’s business.
Of course he did! It’s a concept that, if anything, makes everything make more sense, not less.
That’s why Jake was so horrified when he realized this was Sam’s deli, and that’s why he wouldn’t accept any payment for his work, and that’s why he’s been doing the work at all!
It wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart or, as Sam had allowed himself to think in his sappiest moments—and, as it turns out, his most foolish ones—because Jake wanted the excuse to spend time with him.
But no! Of course not! Jake wanted the excuse not to feel like a terrible person, and Sam’s an idiot, a perfect idiot, for letting himself imagine otherwise.
It is at this point, naturally, that Jake comes outside.
He looks… bad. He’s shaking, a distant part of Sam notes, sure that’s something he would normally care about; he doesn’t.
All he can see when he looks at Jake is all the opportunities he’s had, over the last few months, to say something to Sam, to own up to that damn review.
All the time they’d spent alone together, comfortable and easy, talking with no pressure or stakes like they were still just kids, and Jake hadn’t said anything at all.
Sam, too angry to summon a single word of greeting, nods and then walks right past him, continuing along his pacing route as though he didn’t see Jake step outside.
“Please, Sam,” Jake says. His voice is small. He looks small, all at once, in a way he never has to Sam, even though Sam’s always been the taller of the two of them, broadly built where Jake was limber and lithe. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what, Jake?” Sam demands, stopping without turning around and throwing his hands in the air. “Or should I say Norman? What are you sorry for? For writing it in the first place, or for lying to me about it?”
“Technically,” Jake starts, in wheedling tones, “I never actually—”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Sam snarls, rounding on him.
“Absolutely I’m not doing that, what do you take me for, are you kidding?
If you’re going to come at me with ‘technically’ right now, you should just go, man.
Forget it. I’m not going ten rounds just to get you to admit you know what a goddamn lie of omission is. ”
“Okay,” Jake says, looking ashamed of himself, holding his hands in the air.
“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be coming at it like that, and I know I should have told you, I just…
I really didn’t know it was your place when I reviewed it, and the situation with Kiss of Death was…
is… It’s all pretty complicated, okay? And a really long, messy story, and once I realized what I’d done, I was afraid you might react, well.
” He looks at Sam and winces. “Like this? And there was all the stuff about the accident and we hadn’t talked about that either and then it was all happening so fast, and I—dinner!
” he cries, interrupting himself and jabbing an index finger in Sam’s direction in excitement.
“Johnny’s! Tonight! That’s why I asked, because I was going to tell you, and then if you got this mad about what I’d written, at least we’d have until dessert to—”
“You think I’m angry,” Sam says, molasses-slow with fury, “about what you wrote in the article?”
“I mean,” Jake says, and grimaces. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am!” Sam nearly shouts this; it’s so loud that a few nearby pigeons, normally implacable, scurry hastily away from him, although they aren’t quite frightened enough to go to the trouble of flying off.
“You were horrible! You nearly killed my family’s restaurant!
You suggested we were infested with vermin when I know for a fact you’d never set foot inside!
You said you couldn’t imagine why the place had stayed alive so long, and that whatever it was that had kept it around, we must have semi-recently taken it out back and shot it!
You said—God, no, wait.” Sam gets a grip on himself, reins it back in, because: “This isn’t the point.
I am angry about that, of course I am, who wouldn’t be?
But if it had just been that, if you’d just come to me before all of this and said, ‘Sam, listen, I’m sorry, but a few months ago I decided to tear down your family business for kicks, and—’”
“It wasn’t for kicks!” Jake both sounds and looks near tears of frustration.
“I really needed the money, okay? And I didn’t know it was your place, and it really sounded like—look, I’m not saying I didn’t make some really bad decisions, I did, but I was misinformed!
I didn’t know what I was talking about, and I wouldn’t have written it if I did, and I’m sorry.
I know that I should have told you. I wanted to tell you, but—”
“Oh, what?” Sam snaps, abruptly disgusted with Jake, with this whole conversation.
“What was it that stopped you? Was I too generous in feeding you, is that it? Too willing to pick things up where we got cut off? Is it my fault that you kept this from me, that you slept with me without saying anything, because I said you shouldn’t move out that very first day you—”
“I’m a coward, Sam!” This bursts out of Jake at a volume that, if the pigeons had not already scuttled away, might have startled them into actual wing usage.
“Okay? Is that what you want? I’m just a coward.
I couldn’t get over myself and ask you out like a normal person in high school; I couldn’t tell my parents the truth about the accident; I couldn’t bring myself to make you hate me!
Over an article I didn’t even want to write in the first place! I was scared!”
“Then you should have done it scared.” Sam’s not yelling now.
His voice is quiet and cold, and the flat, unamused laugh that slips out of his mouth is even colder.
“What do you think we’re even doing here?
This”—he gestures around himself in a broad, encompassing way—“is your life, Jake! And my life, not that that seems to matter to you one way or the other, but it’s still life!
Real life! It’s all for keeps; you don’t get to wake up one day and decide you’re off the hook for your choices just because you’re scared, or you’re sad, or you’d rather they didn’t count. It all counts!”
Hell, Sam’s eyes are swimming suddenly, but his voice doesn’t betray him; it stays even and razor-edged as he snaps, “And sometimes, Jake, do you know what? Sometimes you try your best to do the right thing, you do the very best you can do with whatever you’ve got, and you still get it wrong.
You get it wrong, and you have to live with that, and without whatever it’s cost you.
A mistake—a mean review—I could have forgiven that, if you’d tried to do the right thing.
” He forces himself to look Jake dead in the eyes, even though he knows his own are glittering with held-back tears.
“But you didn’t even try, Jake. You didn’t even try to tell me. Not once.”
“Tonight,” Jake tries, sounding desperate in a way that, just an hour ago, would have twisted Sam’s heart in his chest. “I said—dinner! I was going to tell you at—”
“Sorry,” Sam says, bitterly sarcastic, “but all I have to go on there is your word, and it turns out that’s mud, so.”
Jake reels back half a step, looking as though Sam’s struck him. For a second Sam thinks he’s going to… to do something. To start screaming, or burst into tears, or, if previous times Sam’s seen this expression on Jake’s face are anything to go by, get drunk and steal an expensive automobile.
Sam finds, to his detached amazement, that he almost wishes Jake would.
This has already gone too far—Sam has already said a dozen things that he will regret saying later, no matter how deeply Jake’s hurt him—and yet he’s almost hungry for an escalation, for the tension to reach such a devastating snapping point that it tears them both in two.
It might feel good, Sam thinks, in the way there are certain things that only can feel good when you feel very, very bad.
A root canal, for example, is something nobody wants, right up until the minute they need one—then it’s the thing they desire most in the world, to be rid of that ruined, agonized nerve.
But on the other hand, maybe escalation isn’t necessary.
After all, Sam feels in pieces already, every bit as crumbled inside as the slice of Swiss he crushed.
He can’t fathom what Jake’s thinking—what a fool he’s been, to ever imagine he could—but the man certainly looks less whole than he did in Sam’s bed just this morning.
Jake sounds it, too, when, blankly, he says, “Oh. Mud. Right.”
Whether it’s Jake’s hollow tone or the thought of this morning, and the associated cognitive dissonance of realizing that was mere hours ago, all the fight drains out of Sam.
He’s exhausted, suddenly; he feels almost sick, as though expending so much emotion at once has burned out some critical internal engine, and nothing can run without it.
“Just… go,” Sam says, putting a hand over his eyes and gesturing towards Jake’s building.
“I don’t want to see you right now. Please just leave.
” Then, all but snarling it in his abrupt anger at remembering it’s necessary, he adds, “You can send Joey our social passwords, by the way. Thanks for all the help.”
“Sam,” Jake says. It’s the smallest voice Sam’s ever heard him use, and for a second Sam wavers, wanting to fix things.
Wanting to make this okay for Jake somehow, except…
except, Sam remembers, resolve washing over him again, it’s not his job to make things okay for other people.
Especially when those people have made things far, far less than okay for him.
“Fine,” Sam says, tight. “I’ll go, then.”
He turns around and walks into the deli without looking back.