16
I wander downstairs the next morning, and the house is eerily quiet.
Mom’s car’s not in the driveway, and neither is Tennyson’s, Maryanne’s (thank God), or Oliver’s. I wonder where they’ve all gone without me but feel in the same breath an air of gratefulness to not have to deal with anyone’s shit first thing.
I round the corner, and sitting on the kitchen bench with a bottle of water in his hand is Sam Penny.
He has bedhead, messy and inviting, and the way his shoulders fall forward in the mornings when he’s tired is so attractive to me. I think because I can tell he’s entirely unaware of how beautiful he is—which is endearing, because it might be the only thing he isn’t aware of. And I do mean beautiful, like, pricks-you-in-the-heart, painfully beautiful. And then, at the same time, with those shoulders and that jawline and those hands that I want so badly on me, he’s so tall and so broad, like, you know how sometimes you want to feel that a guy can toss you around? He could toss me around like a rag doll. And then he’s got those eyes you could dive into and that mouth that always looks bitten and that strange gentleness about him that somehow never makes him seem less strong.
I fake-yawn as I walk in so it’s less obvious that I’ve just been staring at him for the last three seconds out of view, and he looks up and smiles.
“Hey.” His shoulders go square unconsciously.
I smile more than I want to, but for the love of God, I don’t let myself show teeth. “Where is everyone?”
He shoves a hand through his hair as he walks over to me. “Ol went for breakfast with your aunt.”
“Ah.” I nod, glancing around. He’s standing quite near to me. Not invasively near, but it seems like an aimless sort of closeness. Which is fine, I suppose; it’s not like my heart is actually going to flatline from the thrill of it. It’s just, an aimless closeness is—in my experience—quite rare but very human.
Which he is. Which we all are and tend to try to avoid embracing, but not Sam Penny. Sam Penny is human. He wears it like a badge of pride.
I glance around the empty room. “And everyone else?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know.” Then he pushes his hand through his hair again and tilts his head so we’re eye to eye, and his look is a tiny bit hopeful. “But can I take you to breakfast?”
***
We’re sitting outside at some place called First Watch in Bluffton. It’s new since I’ve left, and I’ll say it: they serve a fucking good waffle. Sam and I, we’ve been talking about nothing in particular. Flirting, mostly, and I’ve intentionally not asked him my hard-hitting, nosy questions up until now, but I still want to know everything about him, so I decide to dive right in once he’s on his second coffee.
“What’s it like being an addict?”
He drops his head as he laughs, then looks back up at me and the light from the sun makes his eyes look like little stars—or maybe the light’s just coming from inside of him?
“I miss it,” he tells me with a solemn nod.
I blink. “Really?”
“Fuck, yeah.” He laughs, shaking his head at himself. “All the time.” He swallows—he’s telling the truth. He does miss it—he actually misses it a lot, I think.
I lean in toward him. “So you started drinking because of your mom?”
He stretches his head upward and strokes under his chin absentmindedly. Unconsciously self-soothing, that little cutie.
He makes an “mmm” sound that I love, but it’s a considering sound; he’s not sure. “Kind of.” He shrugs. “I liked drinking before Mum died, but once she died, I liked it more and more.”
“Were you hurt in the accident?” I frown.
He looks over at me again, but his eyes are lost in time. He gives me a weighty smile. “I was, yeah.”
My heart sinks. “Badly?”
The memory of pain flashes across him, and the way it splays on his face makes my bones sting, which I find strange because my bones never sting for other people, and I begin to wonder whether perhaps Sam Penny isn’t “other people.” Maybe Sam Penny isn’t “people” to me at all.
“I was in a coma for a week.” He juts his jaw forward. “Fractured four vertebrae, broke my femur”—he touches his right leg—“broke my fibula”—he touches his left leg—“scapula and clavicle, on my left side—”
“Sam,” I sigh on his behalf, my stomach all tense for the pain he’s had, but he’s still going.
“Couple broken ribs—and a big shard of glass pierced my left kidney.”
He lifts his shirt to show his scar and I swallow so heavily, because holy God—and then also, shit—because he catches the look on my face, and then his face twitches with a subdued delight. He definitely did that on purpose. He knows what his body looks like. I hadn’t seen it yet (though I could have imagined it), and him sitting there slumped back in the restaurant chair casually lifting his shirt to show me the scar that runs down a little left of the center of him is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. So much so I might actually burst into actual flames.
He lowers his T-shirt back down, and I give him an unimpressed look that is really a very thinly veiled very impressed look. He fights off a smile.
“And then modeling and then coke,” I say to him, making sure I have it all in order.
“Modeling, then coke, then other stuff, then more coke.”
I nod a few times, then pause to look over at him. “Do you think you have an addictive personality?”
This is a test, obviously.
He shakes his head quickly and dismissively. “I was just sad and didn’t want to stop.”
“So why did you, then?”
“I overdosed when I was twenty.” He squints back in time. “My sister stopped speaking to me.” He’s frowning as he recalls. “It fucking sucked—I woke up and she was sitting there fucking fuming and then she left.” His shoulders do a little shrug, but so does his mouth. He hates this memory. “Left me alone in the hospital. She just didn’t come back. I was filthy at her for weeks after… But then, without her talking to me, I guess after a while I got it. That after everything—after losing Mum, and then kind of losing our dad too because he just never came back to who he was before she was gone—” He swallows heavily. That hurts him to think about. “We only had each other, really—and I knew that, and still, I was like, this flippant little fuck, gambling with the life of the only family she had left—” He sighs, annoyed at himself, but I’m staring at him, starry-eyed.
“Just because I fucking lacked the motivation to heal properly after what happened to our mum—so I pulled my head in.” He shrugs. Like it isn’t the biggest deal in the world.
I need you to listen to me when I say this: I could not be more attracted to this man if I tried.
“Whoa,” is all I say, and I wonder if I’m going pink just looking at him, because he tries to squash a smile. Doesn’t really work though, so I’m just looking at him with big round eyes, unsure of what to say, and he’s sort of smirking at me because my big round eyes aren’t just big and round; they are dilated as fuck.
I clear my throat. “Are you and your sister okay now?”
He nods. “Yep.” He smiles. “Best friends.”
That makes me happy.
He pulls out his phone and flashes me a photo of a little girl. “That’s my niece.” He looks so proud of her, and it’s so cute and so sexy.
I stare at her sweet face: really blond hair, but big blue eyes, a bit like his. “She’s beautiful.” I smile at him. “Do they live in Los Angeles?”
“Yeah, sort of.” His face lights up a bit. “They’re in Dana Point. So pretty close.”
“You see them a lot?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Every week.”
He smiles again after he says that, and I love how much he loves them. I wonder what it’s like to feel that about your siblings. And it’s so unlike me, but I’m not thinking about how my face is presenting; I’m thinking about him.
And then, under the table, Sam kicks me gently. “What’s that big smile you’ve got there?”
I straighten my face right out. “No big smile. This is a regular smile. I’m happy for you.”
He smirks. “Are you?”
“Mmhmm.” I nod. “Because you were a wayward soul who turned his life around, and now you have a precious relationship with your niece and sister, and it’s—”
He cuts me off. “Precious, is it?” He’s smirking again.
I roll my eyes. “Stop.”
He nods his chin toward my face. “It’s a fucking big smile…”
“Nope.” I shake my head, stubbornly.
“You have a big smile for me,” Sam says, way too pleased with himself.
“Yeah, well.” I shrug a bit aggressively, because I’ve gone petulant now. “You lick your bottom lip every time you look at me, and your pupils are dilated, so—”
“Yeah.” He nods, interrupting me again. “They are.”
I swallow heavily, because I know he knows what that means, and I’m quick-as-I-can trying to figure out whether he meant what I think he just might have implied.
And then, from behind me:
“Well hello,” says my mother’s voice.
“Mom—” My head pulls back, and if I were paying attention to my body better, I would have noticed I careened a little bit in Sam’s direction. “—What are you doing here?”
She waves her hand somewhere behind her. “Prayer group.”
Sam nods a couple of times pleasantly, and her eyes fall on him for a few seconds before she flicks them back to me.
“You two have been spending a lot of time together,” she says, and how she says it, it’s neither sharp nor cold—it’s just a statement. But she shifts her shopping bags in front of her, creating a barrier between us.
She’s uncomfortable, and I don’t know whether it’s me or Sam who makes her uncomfortable. Potentially both? Sam is a reformed alcoholic, and my mother could write a thesis on why Carter girls can’t be with men like him, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that that makes Sam Penny all the more dangerously sexy to me.
“I suppose we have.” I give her a tiny shrug. “I’m just being a good host.”
“Mmhm.” She purses her lips. “How good?”
“God,” I scoff. “Mom—”
“Sit,” Sam tells her suddenly, interrupting us as he kicks out a chair for her.
She looks a bit alarmed but sits anyway.
Her face is so poised. It’s fake. The poise, I mean. And parts of her face, but mostly how poised she is. It’s always poised, but it’s also always fake. Keeping up appearances is of the utmost importance for Southern women, and the women in the South talk. People live in each other’s pockets, know all your secrets, all your business… You have to look together all the time, even if you aren’t, because if you don’t, the world may as well go to hell in a handbasket.
I don’t know what it was like after they sent me away. I wasn’t here to see any of the fallout or how it affected her or Dad or their social standing in this weird little place. I was already banished by the time Mom saw Oliver kissing the exchange student by the water one night, but it would have killed her.
Not out of parental empathy, but because it was a social hit.
Everyone knew about me and Beckett because Maryanne made sure everyone did, and there were whispers about Oliver all of his life that Mom not only squashed but misled to dispel.
I overheard her telling her prayer group that they needed to pray for Oliver because she found him with a girl in his room with the door closed, which was either a flat-out lie or I was the girl. Regardless, it was an intentional misdirect and my first peek into the psyche of acceptable sins according to my mother.
She’d rather Oli be a heterosexual fornicator than a gay one. I was a heterosexual fornicator and I too was banished, but that isn’t wholly her fault, I’ve concluded over time, because society has massively different sexual standards for men and women that were imposed onto her too, not just me. She just reacted from those impositions.
“Where’s Oliver?” she asks, looking around.
“He’s with Vi,” I tell her, and she fusses with the hem of her skirt.
Sam nods his chin at her shopping bags. “What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”
“Oh.” She bats her hands. “The girls from church are taking me shopping.”
“Yeah?” He smiles at her. “For anything in particular?”
He’s making an effort. Holding eye contact intentionally. What’s he trying with her for, I wonder?
My mom looks at him for a second longer than would be normal, probably because she’s wondering the same thing, and then she shakes her head. “Browsing, probably.”
“Well, I like that color on you.” He motions toward her dress.
Boat neck, cream, sleeveless.
Then Sam Penny smiles at her, and her eyes soften a bit. I wonder how he’s so disarming all of the time, because I’m pretty sure that if I said that exact thing to her, she would have rolled her eyes and said, “Listen Georgia, you don’t have to like it, only I do.”
My mother looks at me, pats my hand. “What are you wearing tomorrow, darling?”
It’s not a tender pat. It’s more like tapping me back to a consciousness I didn’t know I’d lost.
“I don’t know yet.” I give her a tight smile.
“Nothing to…” She trails. “You know.” She gesticulates with her hands as she gives me a look, then clearly decides that’s too vague an instruction. “Why don’t you borrow something of your sister’s?”
I feel the contempt flash across my face.
She gives me a look. “Your sister always looks so lovely.”
“And I always look…?” I leave it open-ended for her.
Her mouth twitches, but she says nothing. “And while we’re talking about this, make sure Oliver doesn’t wear something too…” She leaves it hanging for a second, then leans forward and whispers, “Camp.”
She looks around self-consciously, checking if anyone heard her say her version of the C word.
“Oh shit,” I sigh, ruefully. “I think he only packed his sparkle rainbow suit.”
She rolls her eyes all impatient before she arches her brows. “Is everything a joke to you?”
I open my mouth to say something, but Sam stands up quickly.
“We’re running late.” He eyes me. It’s intentional and communicative: Let’s go.
I copy him. I don’t know why. It’s a reflex, I guess?
He stands, I stand. He tosses a fifty-dollar bill on the table.
“We’ll see you this afternoon, Margaret.” He gives her a gentle smile and then he does something I’m not even remotely expecting: he throws his arm around me and leads me away.
Unfortunately, by “away” I mean just back to the car, not to France or like, a cabin in woods where we have crazy around-the-clock sex, but it is away from my mother, which is something enough, I suppose.
My car’s parked around the corner, and when we get to it, he takes the keys from me and then opens the passenger door, waiting for me to get in. I do, and then he does the next thing I’m not expecting: he crouches down next to me.
“Are you okay?” He watches me closely.
His concern for me is becoming less and less masked by the second. The progression of his mannerisms toward me since Monday make me feel like I’ve swallowed a beehive.
At the start of the week, the night he came to my room, it was the way his eyebrows creased and dipped that made his concern transparent to me, but now I don’t need to read bodies to read him. Now his whole face is chiseled with concern. Brows low, head tilted, mouth parted and tongue pressed into his bottom lip, and I’m so jealous of that lucky tongue because I’d quite like to be pressed into his bottom lip too.
I give him a quick nod and drop his gaze, because I know how my eyes look right now too, and I probably look high as a fucking kite.
Sam’s mouth twitches as he tries to conceal a smile, and then he closes my door. He sits in the driver’s seat.
“Why’d you do that?” I ask. I nod back in the direction of the diner.
“Dodge you getting in a fight with your mom?”
I nod again.
He starts the car and shrugs as he peels out onto the street. “Two reasons.” He glances at me. “Today isn’t the day you’ll get her to see the world the same way you do. And also, her husband just died, so you should be nice to her.”
“Well, my dad just died and she’s not nice to me,” I tell him with tall eyebrows.
He gives me a look like, really? But even then, he throws me a bone. “Yeah, I know…”
I cross my arms over my chest. “But you’re on her side?”
He gives me the same unimpressed look he gave me a second ago, and I know I’m being a brat, but for some reason exasperating him gives me a rush.
He doesn’t bite though, which is annoying. His eyes just fall from my eyes to my mouth then back up again, and then he looks at the road and grips the wheel a little tighter before he lets his hands slip down to three and nine, and you better believe that I’m imagining those hands slipping down me.
“Where are we going?” I ask after a few minutes.
“Cemetery,” he tells me as he taps the Google maps on my screen.
I crinkle my nose. “Why?”
“There’s something we’ve got to do.”