Chapter Two
It was Saturday, two days after the volleyball match, and Sam was standing in the kitchen of the house she’d grown up in, spinning slowly in a circle, wondering where to start.
Her mother had passed mere weeks ago after a long illness, and Sam was home to settle her affairs.
And that included selling her childhood home.
The house wasn’t really anything special.
The siding was old and made of aluminum, with pieces threatening to fall here and there.
The roof was approximately three decades old, had been poorly patched in a few areas, and was likely to leak in a downpour.
The window and door sills badly needed paint, as did most of the rooms inside.
The house may have had good bones, but it was in subpar cosmetic condition, at best. Years of updates had been pushed aside for things like Sam’s education, a new car when Sam had fallen asleep during an overnight drive home and run into a ditch, and eventually, her mother’s medical expenses.
Sam let out a shaky breath and flopped into a chair at the counter.
She wrapped her hands around her mother’s favorite mug—a chipped, cracked, and glued Boston University mug she had gotten for her first year.
That felt like a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime ago, given that one of the lives was now gone.
She smiled softly as she remembered the pride and joy on her mother’s face when she gave her the mug.
Even though she had never quite said the words, the fact that she had used the mug every day since Sam gave it to her when she started at Boston University, and had repaired it repeatedly when it broke so she could keep using it, said everything to Sam.
The pent-up emotion from the last year bubbled up in the back of Sam’s throat.
Her mother’s illness. Her slow and steady decline.
The constant trips back and forth between her apartment, her mom’s house, and the hospital.
Taking her mother from one specialist to another.
Having hope, only to lose it again. The breakup with Tegan, cheater extraordinaire, was in the middle of all this.
The last three months had been the worst. Her mother developed pneumonia over the winter.
She went into the hospital and never came back out.
Sam had been forced to make some tough decisions all on her own.
She lived with the guilt and uncertainty of those decisions every single day.
That was the part that haunted her so much.
Sam shook her head, clearing it of the memories, as she tried to focus on the task at hand.
She pulled out a notepad and began to make a list. First, there were years upon years of accumulated stuff to sort into trash, donate, or keep piles, and she knew that part wasn’t going to be easy.
Then she had to think about the cosmetic and structural repairs the house would need before putting it on the market.
As she scribbled, the list just grew longer and longer.
This was going to take coffee. And a lot of it.
She drained the last of her cup and got up to pour herself another when she thought she heard a knock on the door.
She paused with the pot in her hand and cocked her head.
Jordan wasn’t due to help for another several hours, as he had work to finish up in Pittsburgh before he could make it down.
She wasn’t expecting anyone else. Maybe she was hearing things.
Another moment passed, and there it was again. This time, the knock was louder, more insistent. Sam moved around the doorway until she could see outside into the driveway. A silver SUV she didn’t recognize with out-of-state plates was sitting in the driveway.
Sam wasn’t feeling very social and was already having a hard time facing what was sure to be a long day.
She really wasn’t in the mood for company.
If it were one of the neighbors, they would have knocked once, then tried the door.
So, this had to be a stranger, which she definitely didn’t want to deal with.
As she stood debating, she heard another softer knock on the door.
She sighed, finally deciding that she should probably let them in.
“I’m coming!” she called, replacing the coffee pot and setting her mug back down on the counter.
She glanced briefly at her reflection in the microwave door.
Damn, she looked a mess. She made a half-hearted attempt to pull her hair back in a messy ponytail, then tried to smooth the wrinkles in the shirt she had slept in.
She made her way to the door, pausing a moment to prepare herself mentally before she opened it.
A woman of a slight build stood poised at the top of the stairs with her back turned as if making her way to leave. At the sound of the door opening, she paused, her shoulders creeping slightly up toward her ears.
She didn’t turn around at first, but Sam didn’t need her to—she would have recognized that hair anywhere. It was shorter now, falling just below Alex’s shoulders, but as she had observed at the volleyball match, it still looked just as soft and silky as it always had. Maybe even more so up close.
Sometimes, what Sam missed most about Alex was the innocence of their initial friendship—when they were just two girls, playing with each other’s hair on the bus ride home from Quiz Bowl.
Sam remembered how tangled and messy Alex’s hair had always been, how she would work her fingers through the snarls for what felt like hours.
If she had to guess, it probably still smelled the same—like citrus and spice.
Just like her reaction the other night, Sam felt her heart stutter in her chest. For a moment, neither of them made a move.
Sam let her eyes wander over Alex’s frame, noticing the subtle differences that had come with age.
They had been roughly the same size in high school, but Alex had always seemed more feminine than Sam.
Alex hadn’t been an athlete like Sam was.
She wanted to be a doctor and had always had her nose in a book about science or the human body.
Sam had a more muscular, athletic build, while Alex was softer with more curves.
But as an adult, her body had changed. She was much thinner and more angular.
Her jeans fit her loosely, as if the weight loss was relatively recent.
Sam found herself wondering what might have brought about that change.
Whether it was from hearing the door opening or feeling Sam’s eyes on her, Alex seemed to steady herself, taking deep, shuddering breaths and pulling her shoulders back down. She turned around, slowly pulling her eyes up to meet Sam’s. Sam nearly shivered as the ice-blue eyes met her own.
“Hi,” Alex said softly, lifting her shoulders back up in a shrug.
Sam nearly laughed at the simplicity of the greeting. Hi. After a dozen years of silence, that’s what we’re going with? After what was said the last time we spoke, that’s how this conversation is going to start. After you ripped my heart out and threw it away, “hi” is all you have to say?
The look on her face must have given her away because Alex blushed a deep crimson and looked down at her feet again. “I know,” she said, shaking her head. After another moment, she pulled her eyes back to meet Sam’s. “I just didn’t know what else to say.”
“Well, you’ve always been honest, if not anything else.” Sam’s tone was steel. She turned to go back into the house.
“Sam.” The soft, pleading voice made Sam pause in her tracks. “Wait. Please?”
Sam turned back to Alex and weighed her options.
She could close the door and shut the woman out of her life for another twelve years, or she could let her in and get answers to some of the questions that had haunted her all that time.
Against her better judgment, she chose option two. She held the door open. “Come on in.”
Alex smiled weakly. She caught Sam’s eyes again but quickly looked away, this time, a faint blush staining her cheeks.
She pushed past Sam to make her way into the house.
“Thank you,” she whispered. As she made her way past, Sam couldn’t help but notice that her suspicions were confirmed—citrus and spice.
She groaned softly as memories she had worked so many years to repress came rushing back at her.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen!” Sam yelled.
She shut the door and leaned against it, her head swimming.
There were a million ways she could handle this situation, and after all this time, she didn’t know if she wanted to get it right or wrong.
Alex had hurt her very, very deeply. But that was then.
They had what they had when they were barely more than children.
They were adults now. She could be civilized, couldn’t she?
She pushed against the door and made her way back into the kitchen.
Alex was moving around the kitchen, pulling a mug out of the cabinet over the sink, then reaching for a drawer to retrieve a spoon.
Of course, she still knew where everything was.
She had practically lived in the house when she and Sam were together.
And now she was acting as if she had never left.
She paused briefly when Sam entered the room to walk over to the counter and push a white box toward her that Sam hadn’t noticed she had been carrying.
“Mom made pie. Black raspberry. Your favorite.” She looked sheepish. “It is still your favorite, right?”