Chapter Thirteen #2
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. This is my favorite hangover breakfast combo, and you can find it at nearly any diner anywhere.”
“I used to think Americans and their food choices were excessive, but now I do love a diner,” Dallis remarked. She also had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon, but kept her foods distinctly separate.
The three ate in companionable silence for the next fifteen minutes, stealing food from each other’s plates and teasing each other about the previous night.
Sam realized that for the first time in a long time, she felt happy.
Jordan had always been her best friend, but she felt an instant connection to Dallis and knew she had made a lifelong friend.
It hurt her to think she didn’t have people like that waiting for her back in Boston.
All her friends with Tegan had originally been Tegan’s friends, and they’d stayed Tegan’s friends after the breakup.
Sam hadn’t made many close connections of her own.
She acknowledged that it was probably because all she ever did was work.
But this—this was nice. She could get used to this.
“Now.” Dallis pushed back her plate. “Back to the situation at hand. What are we going to do about you and Alex?”
Sam let her head drop against the red vinyl on the dinner bench, and she let out a very long groan. “Who said we have to do anything about Alex?”
Dallis and Jordan both responded by leveling her with very pointed stares. Sam did her best to ignore them.
“Come on, Sam.” Jordan was the one to break the silence. “All we’ve done since you’ve been home is dance around the issue.” Now it was his turn to push back his plate and lean toward her. “Dallis here has known you for less than twenty-four hours, and even she can see it.”
“I saw it in the first five minutes of meeting you,” Dallis piped in.
Sam lifted her head and sent a scowl her way. “Traitor,” she mumbled.
“See, it’s true,” Jordan pressed, with Dallis nodding in agreement. “Again, the question is not about whether something needs to be done. It’s a matter of what.”
Sam finally nodded, seemingly in agreement, and paused to take a minute to honestly ask herself what she wanted. “Well, on the one hand,” she began, externally processing, “I’m only here for a few more weeks, at most. I have a job in Boston. I have a mortgage.”
“Yes,” Jordan agreed, “but does that even have to be true?”
“Careful, Jordan,” Sam warned. “I feel like I only have the capacity to make one major life decision at a time, and right now, I’m pleading diminished capacity on account of the hangover.”
“Fair enough,” Jordan conceded. “Continue.”
“Okay, so again, I’m only here for a few weeks. What’s the best that could happen?” Sam raised her hands in question. “A fling? You know I’m not into that.”
“Why are we limiting it to a fling?” Dallis asked. “You said that Alex is living at home with her parents. That seems like a temporary situation to me.”
Jordan tilted his head, taking that in, then nodded in agreement. “She has a point. What is Alex doing here? Is her situation temporary?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I’ve never asked her.”
“Okay then. Step one.” Dallis pretended to write on an imaginary notepad. “Figure out Alex’s situation.”
“I can do that,” Sam said.
“So, let’s say she’s open to changing her situation,” Jordan pressed. “What are we going to do with that information?”
Sam blew out a big breath. “I honestly still don’t know, Jordan.
” For a moment, she flashed back to twelve years ago, that night, and Nadine’s words.
Yeah, Nadine seemed like a changed woman now, but a future with Alex—if Alex even wanted one—also meant a future with Nadine.
Sam still didn’t trust that Nadine fully approved.
“Okay, not a problem,” Dallis responded. “Step two, figure out what you want, Sam, before you do anything. Anything else is not fair to anyone.”
Sam pursed her lips as she looked back and forth between the two of them.
In that moment, she felt it. But she also knew that she had known all along.
Nothing else, no one else, had ever felt as real to her as Alex.
She shook her head. “I think I want Alex.” She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.
“It’s her,” she said more firmly. “It’s always been her.
But how do I know that it’s me for her?” She shrugged helplessly again.
“Aw, sweetie.” Jordan reached across the table to cover where her hand was fidgeting with her napkin. “That’s where we come in.”
“Oh, yes,” Dallis said with a wink. “This we can work with.” Her eyes twinkled. “Here is what we’re going to do…”
They finished the rest of their breakfast, coming up with a plan to determine how Alex felt about Sam.
Because they were grown adults, of course, it wasn’t as simple as just asking her how she felt.
No, that would be too logical and efficient, and being direct about her emotions had never been Sam’s strong suit.
She had her boxes and they were working really well for her.
Sam did feel a little skeptical about the group effort, but she didn’t want to put herself out there and have her heart broken again, so she agreed to go along with Dallis and Jordan.
In the meantime, she was going to work on being a little more open with Alex to see where that approach would take her.