20. Sam
CHAPTER 20
SAM
I woke up and felt like I was still dreaming. It wasn’t quite morning yet, but not full night either, the sky graying up along the horizon. In the pale light I picked out Lana’s form, the curve of her shoulder, the fall of her hair. She’d curled up with her back to me some time in the night, and stolen most of the covers, leaving me bare. But it wasn’t the chill that had stirred me from my sleep. It was my phone, buzzing, obnoxious. Setting my pants jiggling where they hung on her chair.
I held my breath, praying it wouldn’t wake Lana. Yesterday had been big for her. She needed her sleep.
My phone buzzed again, loud in the silence.
Lana shifted and muttered, but didn’t wake up.
My phone did a half-buzz, then my voicemail picked up. I closed my eyes, then it started again.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Dad. Who else would it be? He was the only one who’d call me this early, who’d even be up at the butt crack of dawn. I’d told him a million times, people sleep when it’s dark.
Buzz. Buzz. Bu ? —
Lana moaned, unhappy. I eased myself up. Dad wouldn’t stop calling, and I was awake. Lana didn’t need to be, because Dad had no manners.
Buzz.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” I swung my legs off the bed. Stood as smooth as I could, not to jostle Lana. She burrowed deeper into her pile of stolen covers. I grabbed my pants, phone and all, and snuck out to the hall.
“Dad, what’d I tell you about dawn wakeup calls?”
“Dawn? What dawn? I’m having my breakfast.”
“It’s quarter to stupid. What do you want?”
Dad huffed down the line. “I’m calling with good news. You could be half-civil.”
I glanced back down the hall. No sign of Lana. Fingers crossed, I’d grabbed Dad before he could wake her. I made my way to the kitchen, wriggling into my pants.
“Sorry,” I said. “Yesterday was the relaunch. We were run off our feet all day, so?—”
“That’s why I’m calling. No, I’m not done with that. Grab me some cream? I’ve got this new maid, did I tell you? She’s always clearing the table while I’m still— No, the cream . Hold on, would you?”
I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to hold on, or his new maid. Whoever she was, I felt her frustration. I zipped up my pants and worked the button one-handed, and went to the fridge to grab some OJ. Dad was still messing around with the maid, explaining the difference between cream and… cream? Two kinds of cream, maybe. I tuned him out. His attention to detail had made him successful, but it also made him annoying as heck.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sam? You still there?”
I gulped down my orange juice. “Yeah, Dad. I’m here.”
“Excellent. I’m looking at the press from yesterday’s relaunch. You really made good on that human interest angle, with Lorna’s dead mother, with?—”
I spluttered. “Wait, what?”
“The piece in the Globe about her big comeback. How some knitting club pitched in, oh, it’s all fluff. But the point is, you’re trending. You’re a success. Which brings me to my good news: congrats. I’m convinced.”
My head was still spinning, trying to catch up. How did the Globe know about Lana’s mother? Had Mrs. Schneiderman said something? Her knitting club?
“It’s Lana,” I said. “Not Lorna. And?—”
“Didn’t you hear me? It’s time for you to step up. To be the big swinging Elkins in the Elkins Group.”
“The big swinging… what?”
“What?” Lana echoed.
I spun on my heel and saw she’d come up behind me. She was standing in the doorway with her hair all mussed, a sheet draped around her and pooled at her feet.
“I can explain,” I said.
“Explain what?” said Dad. “Aren’t you hearing me? I’m saying I’m impressed. You went out like I said and got straight down to business, and showed me you know how to build something from nothing. I’m handing you the keys to my empire. The big CEO seat. Isn’t that what you want?”
Lana took a step back. She shook her head. She’d lost her sleep squint, and her eyes had gone narrow. Her lips were pressed into a tight, bloodless line. I started after her.
“Lana, wait!”
“Oh, she’s right there? I forgot you were roommates.” Dad chuckled down the line and I wanted to smack him. “Tell her hello from me, and congrats on her shop.”
“She heard you,” I said. “I have to go.”
Dad started to say something, but I hung up. Lana took another step back, then another. She bumped into the far wall and clutched her sheet to her chest.
“Who even are you? Did he call you Sam?”
“Yeah, but I?—”
“That was your father?”
“Yeah. Look, I’m sorry. He’s a jerk, but it’s not what it?—”
“He called you Sam.” Lana’s eyes darted sidewise. I realized she was gauging how fast she could run. How far she could get from me before I caught up. Lana was scared of me, and… yeah. That made sense. I raised my hands in surrender and backed away.
“You had people who vouched for you.” Her voice was small. Shaky. “I was going to do a background check, and you gave me those names. So they just… they lied for you? Why are you here? Did you… like, stalk me here?”
“No! No, God, no!” I backed up so violently I banged into the fridge. My funny bone twinged and I dropped my OJ. The glass smashed on the floor and I yelped. Lana shrieked. She took two running steps from me and tripped over her sheet. For an instant, she flailed, then she went down hard. Her knees slammed the hardwood and she cried out in pain. I ran to help her, not thinking, and she scrambled away, one hand on her sheet, the other warding me off.
“Don’t! I don’t know you!”
“What? No, I’m… me.” I’d heard of hearts breaking, but I’d thought that was just poetry. Just a figure of speech, a catch-all for sadness. But I felt it when mine broke, a physical tightening. A harsh bolt of pain under my ribs. Lana was scared of me. Truly afraid. She thought I might hurt her — I’d hurt her already. All the trust we’d had only hours ago was gone, up in smoke.
“I was going to tell you today.” My voice had gone rough. Lana stared up at me, fear turning to rage. She looked down at her sheet, where her scraped knee was bleeding, dotting the fabric with pinpricks of blood.
“I hurt you,” I said.
“So, it was all lies?”
“Not all lies. One big lie, but what I felt was?—”
“Don’t.” The sharpness of Lana’s tone cut me off dead. She got to her feet and drew her sheet closer, and the look on her face made me wither inside. Her anger had soured into disgust. She was looking at me like I was a cockroach, and I felt like one. The lowest of the low.
“What’s your name?”
“Sam Elkins, but can we sit? Can I get you?—”
“Just answer my questions.”
“Anything you want, but I swear, I can?—”
Lana held up her hand. “Why did you come here?”
“My dad, uh…” I swallowed. Where to even begin? “There’s no way to tell you this where I don’t sound?—”
“I don’t care how you sound. I just want the truth.”
So I told her the truth, starting with my big meeting. My big meeting, which ended up being just me and Dad. I told her how Dad had sent me out in the world, and how chance and Craigslist had brought me to her. Lana just stared at first, like I was an alien, but she’d stopped darting glances toward the back door. She stood tense at first, one hand raised against me, but she slowly lowered it as I went on.
“So you didn’t stalk me? You’re not, like, some creep?”
“Not that kind, at least.”
“So if I google the Elkins Group, if I google Sam Elkins…” She cast about for her phone, but of course she didn’t have it. I unlocked my own and handed it over.
“Do it,” I said.
Lana tapped in my name. Her eyes flared with anger. “You said you’re a carpenter. Was that lies as well? Is Rex’s deck going to cave in the first time it snows?”
“No! I mean, yes. I mean, I’m not— it’s a hobby. But Rex’s deck, I promise you, it’s all up to code. All the work I did out here, I know how to do. I did Dad’s deck six years ago. You can ask him, it’s fine.”
Lana’s expression was pure disbelief. “You want me to call up your billionaire father and ask how his deck is?” A raw laugh burst out of her, making me jump. “I guess he could afford anyone and he went with you.”
“I swear, Lana, I’d never?—”
“So, what was I? Some peasant to slum with while you wait out your exile? Or was it pity? I’m your project, your?—”
“ No! ” I lurched toward her, unsteady with shock. I bumped into the table and shouted in pain. Lana watched me coldly, clutching her sheet. I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“Listen… I mean, please listen. Let me explain. If you only believe one thing, please believe this. Please believe what I feel for you is entirely real. And I’d never have lied to you if I could’ve known. If I’d known I’d fall for you. If I’d known you at all. At the time, I thought — and please know, I know this sounds stupid — but I thought, how is this worse than any other white lie? Like when you put five years’ experience on your CV when you only have three. Or you say you have no pets, because what’s one little hamster?”
Lana’s eyes widened. “You brought a hamster in here?”
“No, no, no hamster. But that kind of lie. I thought, what’s one little fake name if I still pay my rent? I thought… Yeah, you’re right. What was I thinking?”
Lana didn’t say anything, but her expression had softened.
“I should’ve said something sooner. I wanted to. I?—”
“Yes, you should.” Lana hitched up her sheet. “But I’ve told lies like that before. Lies that felt white. At my grant interview, I talked up our fun run. I implied I had experience with community fundraising, which unless you count going door-to-door selling Girl Guide cookies… yeah. I don’t. Total lie.” A slight smile graced her lips, then died away. “That doesn’t mean I forgive you yet, or I’m not angry.”
“But you said ‘yet.’ So you might forgive me?”
Lana’s smile twitched back to life, a sad little smile that made my chest hurt. “You’re still leaving,” she said. “Did I hear that right? You’re going home to take over the Elkins Group.”
My heart did a swan dive. I’d half-forgotten that part. Lana let out the ghost of a sigh.
“You did all of this for your father’s approval.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. She was right, and we both knew it.
“I get that,” she went on. “Wanting to make your parents proud. But what do you want? No, don’t answer that.” She held her sheet to her chest and ran her hand through her hair, then laughed again, soft and rueful this time. “I went to sleep last night thinking I’d ask over breakfast if maybe you wanted to set up shop here. Start a little life, maybe, but you have a big life already.”
“I still want that,” I said. “A life with you in it. I can’t leave my job, but I’ve been thinking as well. We could still make it work.”
“What, long-distance?”
“No, not long-distance. At least, not forever. I do have to go now, with Dad retiring, but… we saved your shop, didn’t we? Didn’t that seem impossible, and we made it work? We’re a team, if you want to be. We can do this together.”
“I won’t leave here,” said Lana. “You know that, right?”
“I’d never ask that of you.” I stepped a bit closer, and she didn’t back away. “I want you to have everything, your shop. Your home. The community you have here, that treats you like family. I want you to have that, and have us as well. If you still want us. If you want to try.”
Lana looked past me a moment, out at the sky. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking from the look in her eyes. Then she came up to meet me, and took my hand.
“I’m angry with you. And I don’t want to lose you. Maybe I’m being stupid, but I can’t help what I feel.”
Tides of feeling swept through me, relief and shame. Hope for the future, fear and regret. I didn’t want to be apart from Lana, not even for a little while, to figure this out. Without me around, she might see reason. She might see I’d swept in and upended her life, and then swept out again with no plan, just a promise.
“We’ll talk every day,” I said. “Work on building our trust back.”
“Every day? You’ll have time?”
I pulled her hand to my chest and held it there tight. “I’ll always have time for you. No matter what. Let’s make a deal: we’ll always say good morning and goodnight. The first and the last of the day will be ours, no matter what chaos comes in between. If Dad’s on my case?—”
“If Wiener breaks in?—”
“We’ll still talk every morning and every night.”
Lana laid her head on my shoulder. I held her in my arms. I didn’t know how, but we’d figure this out. We’d do it because we had to. We couldn’t lose this.