Chapter Ten #2
Sam watched Alex step around the place her mother had always sat in, running a hand across the back of her mom’s chair. Her eyes welled up at the thoughtfulness of the gesture. She felt a lump form in her throat as she thought about all Alex had done for her since she’d returned.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she finally said, coming over and sitting at the table. She gestured around the room. “The paint. Feeding me on multiple occasions. Being here now. Just everything…” Her voice trailed off, and she lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug.
“You don’t have to thank me.” Alex’s face had softened from watchful and wary to something more tender. She looked down at her hands, folded in front of her on the table. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?” Sam asked quietly.
Her eyes were on Alex’s, and she held them.
Sam watched the play of emotions across Alex’s face—sadness, hesitation, and something else—before she quickly regained her composure.
Of course the oven timer interrupted the moment by choosing that very moment to go off.
Sam held her gaze a beat or two longer before getting up and heading into the kitchen.
“Saved by the bell,” Alex murmured. Her voice was so faint that Sam wasn’t sure if she heard it correctly or not. After a moment, Sam heard Alex push back her chair and follow her into the kitchen.
The food was ready, and they moved around each other easily and quietly in the kitchen.
Sam dished out the lasagna onto two plates while Alex sliced some Italian bread and spread it with butter.
She added it to the plates with the lasagna and carried them to the table.
“Will you grab the salad?” Alex called from the other room.
“Alex.” Sam’s tone was solemn. “When have you ever known me to eat salad willingly?”
“Never,” Alex conceded. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t start now.”
Sam opened the refrigerator door and reached past the salad to grab another Ommegang. “Need another beer?” She waved a bottle toward Alex.
“I’d love one, thanks.”
Sam popped the top on two more beers and made her way over to the table.
As she passed the bottle to Alex, she felt their fingers brush together.
A familiar tingle made its way up her arm, and she wondered if Alex felt it, too.
She looked up to Alex’s eyes, but the other woman’s eyes were on her plate, and her expression was unreadable.
They ate, trading off periods of silence with periods of casual conversation.
After all her ruminating back and forth, Sam was surprised to feel that things weren’t awkward between them.
It felt like the opposite. It was easy, comfortable, almost like…
coming home. The thought hit her like a punch to the gut, and she set her fork down beside her plate.
She studied her plate, thoughts racing, before looking up.
When she met Alex’s eyes across the table this time, she found herself smiling.
Alex smiled back with that dimple in full effect.
Sam saw warmth behind her eyes and something else that she didn’t quite want to acknowledge.
Sam felt a tingling low in her stomach. She felt herself blushing and wondered if Alex could read her mind.
“I think I’m stuffed,” she said, breaking the silence that suddenly felt awkward to her.
“Are you sure?” Alex’s forehead wrinkled with concern. She gestured to Sam’s plate, which was still half-full. “Was everything okay?”
“More than okay,” Sam said and stood and grabbed her plate. “It was amazing. Some of the best lasagna I have ever had.”
“That’s high praise coming from someone who lives minutes from the North End.” Alex stood with her plate and carried it over to the kitchen. “Remember that place you took me to that one time? They had the most amazing gnocchi.”
“Ah, yes.” Sam smiled at the memory. Alex’s first trip to Boston was to see Sam during her first year of college.
They shared five blissful days where they were free to be a couple out in the open.
They didn’t have to worry about whether someone might see them out on a date.
They held hands as they walked down the street.
They sat close together in cafés and kissed in the park.
They had a romantic, candlelit dinner at a restaurant in the North End to celebrate their first anniversary.
It had been everything Sam thought love should be.
“Do you want another beer?” Sam forced her thoughts back to the present and held up her empty bottle. She was at her self-imposed two-beer limit but needed something to do with her hands. “I’m going to have another.”
“Actually, I have something better.” Alex passed through the kitchen on her way to the entryway.
The packed boxes forced her to squeeze close to Sam on her way, her back lightly brushing Sam’s side as she made her way around the table’s far side.
Sam briefly felt the heat from Alex’s body through her sweatshirt.
She squeezed her eyes closed and silently counted to ten.
“This should be good,” she muttered to herself. She heard the front door open and then close softly. A few moments later, Alex reopened the door and returned to the house, holding an unlabeled wine bottle.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sam’s eyes went wide.
“If you think it’s a bottle of my Grandpa Jerry’s strawberry wine, then yes, it is what you think it is.”
“Alex.” Sam’s voice carried a slight warning edge.
She recalled another time she and Alex had indulged in Grandpa Jerry’s strawberry wine.
They ended up making out in the alley beside the fire hall while a school dance was raging inside, almost outing themselves.
What the wine lacked in flavor, it more than made up for in alcohol content.
“Just one glass, Sam.” Alex kept her tone light, almost playful, but her eyes seemed to be saying something else.
Alex had always been able to convince her of anything.
All she ever had to do was ask. It didn’t help that Sam’s brain was foggy with the two beers she had already had, and she didn’t know how she wanted to read the situation.
Was this a friendly dinner, or was it going to be more?
She could feel her body gravitating toward Alex again.
She knew the wine was a bad idea, but that didn’t stop the words from coming out of her mouth.
“Okay,” she said, finally. “One glass.”
Sam watched Alex reach into the cabinet and pull down two of her mother’s crystal wine glasses.
A bit of her sweatshirt rode up as she strained toward the top shelf, and Sam got a glimpse of skin that she knew from experience was just as soft and smooth as it looked.
She felt herself shiver. All it took was a couple of beers, and her resolve was falling.
“Do you need any help with that?” Sam moved into the kitchen and leaned against the doorframe.
Alex dropped her arm and looked sheepishly over her shoulder. “Yes,” she said, stepping to the side. “Why do people put things on the top shelf anyway?” Sam heard her mutter under her breath.
“I think it’s a global conspiracy against short people,” Sam said, reaching up to grab two glasses.
“I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” Alex busied herself, uncorking the wine and pouring it into the glasses.
“I feel like my sense of humor is all I have these days.” Sam’s voice was quiet as she said the words.
She realized only then that she could finally verbalize what she had been feeling lately.
With all her responsibilities at work and the stress of trying to settle her mother’s affairs from afar, Sam realized that she hadn’t taken all that much time to grieve for what she had lost. Looking around the kitchen, Sam discovered she was closing a massive chapter in her life by selling the house.
She wasn’t just saying goodbye to her mother—she was saying goodbye to her childhood home, her community, and all the memories and comforts that came with it.
She was saying goodbye to an essential part of herself.
As if she sensed the mood change, Alex put the glasses on the counter and came around to take Sam’s hands. She squeezed until Sam raised her eyes to meet hers. Sam felt her eyes well up as the emotions washed over her.
“You have so much more than that.” Alex punctuated each word with a gentle tug. Alex held her gaze until Sam felt herself blushing and had to look away. Her tears threatened to spill over. She squeezed Alex’s hands and then let them go to wipe them away.
Alex looked at her and sighed, seeming frustrated that the moment was over. She picked the glasses back up and handed one to Sam. “Let’s toast,” she said, holding up her glass.
“To?” Sam asked, raising her glass.
“Old friends?” Alex paused and smiled.
“To old friends,” Sam echoed, touching her glass to Alex’s.
“And new beginnings?” Alex added on.
Sam mulled the words over as she regarded Alex over the rim of her glass.
What would it mean to begin again with her?
Would it be platonic? Would it be romantic?
Did that even matter to her? Searching Alex’s face, seeing the hopefulness there, seeing the other emotions bubbling just beneath the surface, Sam decided that it didn’t matter.
Whatever happened next, she was moving forward.
“And new beginnings,” Sam agreed, once again touching her glass to Alex’s.
They each took a sip to seal the deal.
Sam was shocked to discover that the wine was surprisingly good. In high school, Grandpa Jerry’s wine was used as a mild laxative or a shortcut to an immediate buzz. But this was different. “Wow,” she said, taking another sip. “Grandpa Jerry has seriously upped his game.”
“Right?”
“When you said you had some of his wine, I was skeptical. But this is delicious.” And it was. It reminded Sam of the Frangelico she’d sampled on a trip to Italy. It was sweet, light, and easy to drink.