Chapter Twenty
“I really am sorry,” mumbled Samantha as she set out a fresh towel for Matty on the bed in the spare room.
He was staying with her for the next few days—or maybe even weeks—while the insurance companies were assessing the damage to the house.
“And I promise I’ll pay whatever the insurance doesn’t cover. That’s what savings are for.”
Matty, who was leaning casually against the doorframe with his arms over his chest and a smile on his face, nodded.
“I always knew you’d end up destroying my house somehow.
I just didn’t think it would be on such a large scale.
I always thought you might leave the tap running or something. Not set my house on fire.”
Samantha scowled. “That’s a very rude thing to say, Matty.
” Her voice was rising in pitch. “I said I was sorry, alright. How many more times can I say that I’m sorry?
” Her senses were on high alert. Twice this morning she had cried thick tears when her cellphone rang only to be a spam caller.
Not to mention whenever she looked out of the kitchen window only to see the charred remnants of her mistake, her airways constricted, and she couldn’t get a breath in.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Matty as he walked into the room and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
He steered her toward the bed and they both sat down at the edge.
“I was just joking, Sam. Really. I know it was just an accident and I’ve got great insurance.
I’m sure they’ll pay out everything and you can keep your savings. ”
She nodded solemnly. It was an accident.
A very big fricken accident. How had the trick gone so terribly wrong?
One minute she was throwing the staff up in the air and the next her focus was on her and Angel’s weekend trip and how she was planning on telling Angel that she loved her, and before Samantha knew it, the flaming staff flew across the sky onto Matty’s roof.
But it didn’t matter how the trick had gone wrong.
Samantha was done with fire dancing. Earlier that morning, she had packed all of her fire dancing equipment into a box, including the half-burned staff Frankie had found in Matty’s attic yesterday, and taped it shut.
Instead of keeping it in the closet where she would be tempted, she had driven the box to the furthest Goodwill center in the city and dropped it off.
It was better that way. Safer for everyone.
“I’m done with fire dancing,” muttered Samantha before she took a deep breath in. The lingering smell of charred wood still sat thick in the air. “I’m never doing it again.”
“I’m sure Angel will be happy about that,” chuckled Matty. He wasn’t yet aware that Angel had broken up with Samantha. Heck, Samantha herself was still in shock.
Experiencing the familiar feeling of tears building up behind her eyes—she didn’t expect to have any left after all the crying she’d done over the last twenty-four hours—Samantha blinked and stood up.
“Angel doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore,” she said matter-of-factly and walked over to the other side of the bed to plump up a pillow that didn’t need any plumping. “She ended things yesterday.”
“Oh.”
“She said I was a danger, and she can’t associate herself with someone like me.”
“Is she wrong?” joked Matty with a low chuckle, but quickly changed his face when Samantha not only sent him a sharp, glaring look but also tossed a pillow in his direction. It missed his head and nearly collided with the standing mirror.
“But I’m fine,” sniffed Samantha. “It’s probably for the best. I don’t even think about her that much, so that’s saying something.
” It was a complete lie. Angel was constantly on her mind.
It was as if her face was sewn into the fabric of Samantha’s thoughts.
All she could do was think about her, about the way she had so coldly looked at Samantha yesterday, her green eyes darker than they had ever been before, and the way her voice had been ice-cold daggers stabbing Samantha in the heart. Please don’t call me again.
“I doubt that.” Matty picked up the pillow and tossed it back onto the bed. “You love Angel. You even said so yourself. And love doesn’t just disappear overnight.”
“Maybe it does.”
He raised his eyebrows to the ceiling and pressed his lips thin. “Do you want me to talk some sense into her? Maybe Angel will listen to me. It’s my house that burned, after all. I can tell her you tossed the staff up there under my instruction.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’ll only make things worse.”
“Or will it?” he winked.
Thankful for Matty trying to lighten up the mood, although it wasn’t possible, Samantha sniffed again.
She blinked away remnants of tears and pointed to the closet.
“I’ve emptied it out for you. And the second bathroom is all yours.
Just promise me that if you decide to bring a date over, you tell me about it so that I don’t accidentally bump into a naked woman in the hallway in the middle of the night. ”
“I won’t bring anyone over,” said Matty matter-of-factly. “I’m a gentleman.”
“Ha,” she scoffed and, with a glance back over her shoulder, through the window, to Matty’s house, she took a deep breath in and headed to the living room.
Matty followed her like a well-behaved dog.
Living with him would be an adjustment, especially considering that they both worked from home. But it was her fault, and she’d have to suck it up for as long as was needed.
“So, what do you want to do today?” asked Matty cheerily.
Considering that Samantha was supposed to be on a road trip with Angel to Big Bear Lake at this very moment, there was very little she wanted to do.
Drowning her sorrows in a big tub of Ben & Jerry’s was probably the closest thing she’d get to comfort.
And maybe even a soppy rom-com that took her mind off Angel and instead put it on the protagonists and their problems.
Samantha walked like a zombie to the sofa and when she hit the side rest, she flopped forward into the cushions. “Petrify,” she mumbled. “Like a dead leaf.”
Matty laughed out loud. “How about we go to the beach and watch people? You love people watching, don’t you?”
Samantha very much loved the art of people watching.
But what if she was sitting on the beach, the sand tickling her toes and the sun warm on her head and then Angel showed up?
What if she saw Angel bounding along the shore in those tight shorts of hers, showing off her lovely legs?
Or what if she saw Angel with someone else?
A picnic with another woman. Another redhead.
It was ridiculous, of course, and too soon for Angel to have moved on, but Samantha wasn’t thinking rationally. Actually, her thoughts were completely irrational.
“I don’t know, Matty,” she sighed. “I just don’t know if I deserve the beach. The beach is a place for good and responsible people. And I’m clearly neither.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Samantha could see Matty shake his head and roll his eyes. Yes, she was being dramatic, but didn’t Angel breaking up with her warrant a little bit of drama?
“How about a movie, then? We can close all the curtains and blinds and make it properly dark in here. It will feel like we’re at the cinema, and—”
“Don’t you have to work?” interrupted Samantha. She wouldn’t mind grieving by herself.
Matty grinned like a naughty schoolboy. “Nope,” he said as he lowered himself onto the other sofa and brought his ankle up to rest on his opposite knee.
There was an angry scar on his shin from when he had bumped into the coffee table as he ran out of his house shouting ‘FIRE!’ At least he hadn’t needed stitches.
Samantha was sure he would’ve made her pay for the medical bills since it was, after all, her fault that he had to run in a panic out of his own house.
“Work has given me the week off to sort out my house,” continued Matty. “Great, right? They’re so thoughtful. And that means I dedicate my first day to you. You should feel honored. Now get up and make us some popcorn.”
Pressing her face into the sofa cushion, Samantha grunted and then slowly rolled off the sofa in a comical display of laziness.
But it wasn’t laziness, but rather a grief-stricken roll of someone whose heart had been torn into a million little pieces and scattered amongst the wreckage of Matty’s house.
Once Samantha was up, she dragged her feet to the kitchen, passed her cell phone lying on the counter, and stopped dead.
Maybe if she called Angel and tried to explain, they could work things out.
Maybe if she could just get her on the line, she could beg Angel to give her another chance.
But then again, Samantha had already left a troubling number of missed calls on Angel’s phone and had received no reaction.
Not even a text message or two. She was ghosting her so hard that Samantha could feel a cold, ghostly slap on her cheek.
Turning around, she faced the counter and flattened her palms on either side of the phone.
It was so tempting. Just a little phone call.
It couldn’t hurt, could it? Maybe Angel didn’t mean it when she said that she didn’t want Samantha to call her again.
Maybe she had been hyped on adrenaline and wasn’t thinking clearly when she had made the decision to break up with Samantha.
Spreading her fingers out, Samantha touched the side of her cell phone with her thumb and considered adding another missed call to the already huge number of missed calls.
“What are you doing, Sam?” asked Matty. He was now leaning forward, his elbows digging into the flesh above his knees. “Are you thinking about calling Angel?”
She shook her head.
“How many times have you called her already?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes widened. “That many times?”
“Ugh!” She exhaled loudly and pushed herself away from the counter, away from temptation. “This is so annoying. Matty, maybe you should just take me to the fire station. If I can just speak to her. Just apologize and explain things. You know, sort things out.”
“No way, Sam.” He was up quicker than lightning. “You’ll make it worse by going to the station. She only broke it off with you yesterday, didn’t she?”
It felt as if a vast amount of time had passed between yesterday and today.
She nodded gravely.
“Well then, you need to give her some space. Let her figure things out before you bombard her at her work. It will probably make it worse. I’d hate it if I just dumped someone, and they showed up at my place of work the next day. Give her space, Sam.”
“You sound like a man,” she huffed.
“I am a man,” he said proudly. “But I’m also just another person who would want space from someone who really upset me.”
He was right. Everything Matty said was true.
It would make things worse. It would aggravate Angel, and she needed no further aggravation.
Still, Samantha’s fingers ran across the marble counter toward her cell phone.
But before she could grab it and call Angel, Matty hurried into the kitchen, threw one arm around Samantha’s shoulders and another around the back of her thighs, and hoisted her up, carrying her effortlessly to the sofa.
“Hey,” protested Samantha weakly. “Put me down. This is kidnapping.”
“Nope, and this is the opposite of kidnapping.” He dropped her onto the soft cushions of her grandmother’s sofa. It had the original framework and stuffing but was recently upholstered in stone-colored corduroy.
“What does that even mean?” frowned Samantha. She didn’t particularly enjoy being scooped up without permission.
He shrugged and picked up the remote to switch on the TV.
“When my sisters had their hearts broken, they always watched Princess Diaries. I can’t quite remember what it’s about, but I assume it’s about a princess and her diary.
What do you think, Sam? I’ll make popcorn and you can find the movie and we can just chill here for the rest of the day. ”
It was at that moment that Samantha experienced a deep appreciation for her neighbor Matty. She owed him, not just a new roof but for always being so kind and good to her, like an older brother she never had.
“Thank you,” she muttered softly. “And while you’re in the kitchen making popcorn, I could do with some chamomile tea.”
His eyelid twitched faintly. “Any other requests?”
Samantha shook her head and Matty was just about to spin on the spot and head to the kitchen when she lifted her hand like she was back in junior high school ready to tell her biology teacher that bananas could be classified as berries, but strawberries couldn’t, and said, “Wait.”
“What is it, Sam?” he asked, his patience clearly waning just a little.
“I made brownies the other day. They’re in the freezer if you want to just pop them in the oven. I put little marshmallows in them too.”
His face broke into a big, beaming sort of grin. “Now you’re talking.”