52
Tennyson actually followed me to the hotel, which was sort of (objectively) sweet of him. All the way into the hotel, even.
He kept his distance, didn’t speak to me in the elevator—watched me go into our room, then left and went back to Oliver, I guess.
And good. He needs him, I don’t.
Being alone right now though, it’s not a good feeling. But I feel quite sure I deserve it, so I sit in it as though it’s some sort of self-prescribed penance for my sins. And listen, we’re all sinful, but I think it’s a lie that all sins are equal. Not all of them are. Not all of them could be.
I think sins are weighed by their intent and their destruction. Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family isn’t the same as Scar killing Mufasa and letting Simba think he did it.
So while my intentions weren’t ill, I didn’t try to pull back, I didn’t try to not love Sam. And I didn’t just fall into loving him; I leaned, willfully, over the barrier. Some might even say I pole-vaulted over the barrier. That, and my destruction radius? I’m fucked. And I can pretend sitting in my bad feelings all alone is enough, but the truth is, I know what I need to do.
It’s a little past 3:00 a.m. when I hear the hotel door open.
“I’m just going to shower down here, and then I’ll go back upstairs to him,” I hear my oldest brother say.
I hear the man I love breathe out, tired. “Thanks, man.”
And then my bedroom door opens, and Sam Penny fills the doorframe.
I’m sitting in the center of my bed in my pajamas, legs balled up under me. His face sort of lights up when he sees me, and it makes me want to cry.
“Hey.” He gives me a tired smile.
I swallow, because I’m nervous. “Can we talk?”
And he knows immediately. The smile disappears and he gives me a steep look. “Don’t—”
“Sam—”
He starts shaking his head. “Georgia, don’t—”
“Penny, this has to end!”
“No,” he says loudly as he rushes toward me.
“Yes,” I say louder back.
“No! We’re not doing anything wrong.” He says that slow and steady, but also annoyed.
He’s pissed off. Not at me though—I can tell it’s not at me, and I think that makes it all worse.
My shoulders drop. “Are you insane? Did you not see my brother tonight? What seeing us together did to him?”
“It’s just a fucking weird situation.” Sam covers his eyes with his hand, then wipes it down his face, tired and exasperated. “And yeah, it’s shit. I’m not saying it’s not shit, but we’re not doing anything wrong—”
“Sam, there is no way you could believe that that’s true.”
“But it is true, Gige.” He holds my arms. “It’s a shitty situation, but it doesn’t mean that—”
I stare at him with round, heavy eyes that want so desperately to be vindicated in my poor decision-making.
Sam swallows before he pivots tactics. “What is it that we’re doing that’s so wrong?”
“Hurting him!”
He shakes his head quickly. “We’re not hurting him on purpose.”
“That doesn’t make it okay! We’re still hurting him! Didn’t you see his face?”
And Sam looks crushed at that, like he knows it’s true. “Georgia.” He breathes out my name, and it feels heavy this time.
“We can’t keep doing this, Sam—it’ll kill him…”
“This’ll kill me!” he snaps accidentally, and his eyes go wide after he’s said it. He presses his hand into his mouth and steadies his breathing. Four breaths in and out of his nose. “Georgia—fuck.” He swallows heavily. “Please don’t do this. Please.”
His eyes go glassy, which is some strange signal fire to my body to let a traitor-tear slip out of my eye. I smack it off my face before he can reach for it.
“Sam…”
“No, don’t ‘Sam’ me—just don’t—” He licks his top lip, presses a finger into his mouth—self-hushing. Then he shakes his head at himself and swallows again, then squares his shoulders as he stands tall.
“I love you,” he tells me, resolute. “I’m in love with you.”
It hangs there for a second, bold and awkward and shiny, like a disco ball with the lights on full.
My lips pinch and I give him a reluctant look. “…I know.”
He lets out a single dry laugh. “Fuck,” he says as he shoves his hands through his hair while simultaneously shoving away the tension that was there between us just a second ago. He sits down on the edge of my bed, then leans back. “How long you been sitting on that for?”
I twist my mouth as I sit down next to him. “I’ve suspected it since Saturday but was definitively sure by Monday night.” I swallow. “When did you know?”
“That I love you?” he clarifies.
I nod.
“Last Tuesday,” he tells me, gaze unflinching.
I roll my eyes. “We met last Monday.”
“Yep.” He flicks his eyebrows up, daring me to question him. “So don’t pull this shit with me, Gige—there’s no failsafe for loving you. Once you’re in, you’re in, and I’m in.”
I tuck my chin, suspicious. “You’re sounding like an addict.”
“I am an addict,” he tells me, sure.
“You’re not meant to be addicted to me.”
“I’m not addicted to you, I’m in love with you,” he says matter-of-factly. “I don’t need you, I want you. And I want you because I know you.” He searches for my eyes. “I know you, Georgia, and I know you’ve spent your whole life shouldering other people’s pain and their secrets, usually at a massive cost to yourself, and now I’m here, and I’ll help you shoulder some of it, but because I love you, I’m also going to help you draw some lines, because for a psychology major you have some real fucking shit boundaries with your brother.”
I toss him a look because I didn’t love being called out like that, but I wonder if it stings because it’s true? “Sam, we—”
“Georgia—no,” he says, firm now, then he gives me a cautious look. “Unless it’s what you want. If this is about you, if you don’t want to be together anymore, then it’s a different conversation…” He lifts a cautious eyebrow. “Is that the conversation? Is it what you want?”
I give him another scowl. “Of course it’s not what I want, but—”
“Then no,” he says, then sort of scoops me up, pulling me on top of him. “This—stop with your martyr shit, okay?”
My bottom lip wobbles as he rests his forehead on mine. “Did you hear him?” I barely say.
Sam wipes under my eyes with his thumbs. “He’s not himself right now.”
“No, I know.” I sniffle. “Some of it’s true though.”
“None of it’s true,” Sam says very assuredly.
And I think to myself, wouldn’t it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him, my eyes all desperate. “He’s so angry, I don’t know what happens next—”
“I can talk to him,” he offers.
“And then what?” I shrug. “For him, then what? Then we’re just two more people who’ve fucked him over.”
“Gige.” Sam gives me a look. “We haven’t fucked him over—we’re just in lov—” He stops in his tracks, then gives me a frowny-cautious look. “Wait, you didn’t say it back.”
I smirk, enjoying the feeling of being a bit in control. “Do I need to?”
“Well, yeah.” He tilts his perfect head, raising an eyebrow that his hair flops forward over anyway. “That is how the typical exchange tends to go…”
I shake my head, amused and drunk with power. “So needy…”
He squints at me, looking more sure of himself.
“You love me,” he tells me.
“Do I just?”
“Yeah, look at you, how you’re looking at me—those pupils are dilated as fuck, and you’re swallowing a lot, and”—he presses his fingers into my neck—“your pulse is elevated, and—”
“Well—so?” I pout. “You love me too!”
“Yeah.” He grabs me by the waist and tugs me in closer to him. “Too fucking right.”
I smile as I rest my chin on his chest, and he squints at me again.
“Georgia…”
“Mmm?”
“Say it back. Properly.” He cocks a small grin. “Out loud.”
I shrug and roll my eyes like it’s boring and mundane, and as though the words haven’t been trying to jump out of my throat since Monday morning. “I love you.”
He tries not to smile too much, squashes it right down, but it squishes out the edges anyway. Then he rolls on top of me, looking down. “Good girl.”
I nearly die on the spot.
“Hey…” He pushes some hair behind my ears. “Can you not…do that again?” He swallows once, nervous. “Talk to me next time—talk to me anytime—but you can’t just—treat me like that. It’s not fair.” Mouth shrug. “I won’t let you.”
“Okay.” I nod, solemnly.
I say sorry, and he kisses the top of my head, and then we lie there for a bit, me on top of him, his arms tossed over me with a casual possessiveness that I could weep over.
“So—” I shift positions and wriggle into his chest. “We’re in love.”
Sam nods back decisively. “We are in love.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Now what?”