21. Look at Me #2
“There’s more there.” Sam indicated the bookshelf below, where several photo albums with his name on them and various dates lined the shelves. There was one for Cora. One.
“Everyone thinks it’s funny, or cute. But I don’t… I never asked for this. I actively tried to get them to stop. By the time I was a teenager I fucking hated baseball.”
“I’m shocked you went to college for it at all,” I said.
Sam dropped onto the arm of the couch. “I was good at it. That was it. And I didn’t have any other plan.”
“Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean it’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Sam bunched his brow, then looked at me. “That’s very smart, Ellie. Sounds like something a therapist would say.”
“My mom told me that, after my high school science teacher kept pushing me toward a career in medicine my senior year.”
“Ellie, you were a science nerd?”
“That’s the thing, I wasn’t. I just happened to be good at Chemistry, specifically.
I don’t really know why those equations clicked for me.
But I didn’t dream about medicine. I loved putting things together.
Working with my hands. I was good in shop class, too, but the teacher never pushed me to become an electrician. I did that all on my own.”
I felt Sam looking at me from his perch.
“Anyway. That’s when she said that. She told me she was good at working as a VP, but it didn’t mean she needed to keep doing it. Not when it was suffocating her.”
I peered at a photo of Sam and Cora together, his arm looped protectively around her shoulder. Then, at a little league photo where Sam, maybe ten years old, was poised with a bat, his eyes squinting in the sun. He looked… stressed. Which was a weird thing for a ten-year-old to be.
A line appeared between Sam’s brows. He came up and stood next to me, looking at the photo with me.
“I remember that day,” he said. “My dad was the coach back then, and had this code we made up, just the two of us, for when we couldn’t talk.
He’d hit the bat against his foot or the ground or a fence post. It was like Morse Code.
Two spaced-out hits meant ‘Look around you’.
That was to show me something like a baseman not paying attention.
Three meant ‘Look at me’. Dad usually used that one to get me to stand up straight or focus.
Four taps meant ‘Help’. That one was usually for me, if I needed him. ”
Sam stared at the boy in the photo, little Sam.
There was something familiar about those taps, but I couldn’t think of what it was. “Two look around, three look at me, four help?”
Sam nodded. “I was having a rough day that day. I wanted to sub out. I kept hitting the bat four times against my foot. But he wouldn’t listen. Or he didn’t want to.”
My heart squeezed thinking of little Sam calling for help and being willfully ignored.
I looked back at him. “Did you really not enjoy playing baseball?” I asked softly. “At all?”
He was still staring at the photo. “I think I would have, if I’d been an active decision-maker too.
But Dad’s opinions mattered more than mine.
He always knew best. Baseball was his whole personality.
” Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “The irony is, I was good enough, thanks to him, that I might have made his dreams come true. If he wasn’t so immovable about it.
” He looked over at me and smiled briefly.
“Guess I should talk to Dr. Hassan about this, huh?”
“You haven’t?”
“Nah. I’ve never really talked about this with anyone before.”
“Why not?”
His jaw flexed a little. “I don’t know. What awful childhood trauma. Being loved too much.”
My heart pinched at how he brushed all this off.
“Sam, this is bananas.” I swept a hand across the Sam-shrine.
“Your mom—she requires so much validation. I could see her spiraling tonight when you didn’t immediately say you loved her casserole at dinner.
Or respond to her comment about the weather.
” And a thousand other things she kept repeating. “And your dad—” I trailed off.
But Sam was looking at me intently, like he truly cared about my analysis.
“Well, his love for you feels totally conditional,” I said. “It doesn’t mean it is, but that’s how it comes out.”
Sam swallowed, then nodded, looking back at the wall.
I probably could moonlight as a therapist, I’d gone so much over the years. But maybe I needed to work on my delivery.
I put a hand on his arm. “Sam, love shouldn’t be a burden. It should be easy.”
Sam looked down at my hand. Then he looked at me, his eyes filled with something I couldn’t name. “You’re right,” he said. He held my gaze just long enough that my stomach went kind of wobbly.
I pulled my hand away.
He looked like he was going to say something, but then looked away, like he’d decided against it.
What? I wanted to demand. Tell me!
Sam had done this a lot in the past few days.
Every time he didn’t speak, I desperately wanted to ask him what he’d been thinking, because clearly something was running through his mind.
On the other hand, I also didn’t want to know.
Because I was terrified it might be exactly what I wanted to hear.
I had to look away.
A beat passed, then Sam said, “Want to see the rest of the house? You probably should; my mom will have a quiz after.” He smiled, looking so handsome and vulnerable my heart felt like it was stuck on a single beat, unable to move on.
“Sure,” I said.
Then he did the worst thing. He took my hand, sliding his fingers between mine.
There was nothing untoward about it. He was leading me toward a narrow hallway. But his hand fit so well against mine. Like our fingers were made to fit each other. No matter how Sam touched me, it felt perfect. Safe. Like home.