Chapter 10 #2
She has a plastic cup in one hand. Her cheeks are flushed, but her eyes are too focused when they land on Sam. Then she sways toward me like she's walking on one of those shifting carnival floors in a fun house.
“Brooks,” she says, dragging my name out. “You vanished.”
I step back before she reaches me. “Go inside, Luci.”
She ignores that and presses her palm to my chest. “You’ve been running yourself ragged. Somebody has to take care of you.”
I catch her wrist and remove her hand. “What the hell are you doing?”
Her mouth parts.
I'm doing my best to keep track of whatever horror show is happening before me while keeping track of Sam in my periphery. Sam, who's went very still, watching the same horror show I'm watching and no doubt interpreting it from a very different angle.
Luci lets out a soft little laugh. “Don’t be like that. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
The crate slips slightly in Sam’s arms. Glass clinks against glass.
I drop Luci’s wrist like it burned me. “Go. Inside.”
Sam is already moving.
“Sam, wait.”
She sets the crate on the ground with careful hands and walks out of the alley.
I follow.
She makes it as far as the side of the building before turning on me.
“Don’t,” she says.
"I don't know what that was, but it's definitely something I didn't want."
She snorts. “Congratulations, Brooks. You’re finally where I’ve been for two years.
The ‘I don’t want any of this’ phase.” She turns, her eyes flashing.
“Tell me, which part did you not want? The part where she crawled all over you, looking for all the world like she’s done that exact thing before, or the part where I saw it? ”
"Sam, you can't think that. She means nothing to me."
For a minute, Sam's mouth trembles and I think for one horrified second that she might cry. I should know better. It only takes one second for her to get control of her face. "Weird that she means nothing when she's the one getting everything I've wanted for two years."
"Sam, no?—"
"She's out in the field with you. Sitting beside you.
Getting your jokes out there when you're lassoing the monster.
She's the one coming back with you, laughing, after a chase, feeling like the world is hers.
She gets to stand beside you and have it all while I get to sit at a desk and wish it was me getting just an ounce of the same attention from you she gets. "
"God, Sam, you can't think?—"
“Tell me, Brooks, when I told you to turn right before that storm nearly caught you the other day and you took Luci’s advice over mine, were you thinking, Let me take this one last thing away from her. That’s what will finally push her away for good?”
"I never wanted you to leave, Sam. Please?—"
"If you wanted to hurt me, Brooks, if you wanted to punish me, congratulations. You have excelled."
The last thing. That's the last thing I wanted. I wanted to protect her, to keep her safe.
"I messed up, Sam. I messed up so badly that I don't even know where to start."
"I do," she says, her voice so quiet I barely hear her.
She looks down at her hand. I've watched hundreds of horror movies over the years. Many of them with Sam draped against me. None of the scenes from those movies can compare to the horror of the moment when Sam grips the ring on her finger and pulls it off.
"Sam, please."
“I know why you changed after the miscarriage,” she says.
My chest hurts. The world tilts like I'm about to go down the hill of the worst roller coaster that life can conjure.
“What?”
Her eyes come back to mine. “You blame me.”
I stare at her.
For a second, I'd swear that everything stops. My heart. The earth's rotation. All of it.
“What?” I say again.
“You don’t have to keep pretending.”
“Sam, no.”
“Every single thing you did told me.” Her hand presses to her middle, not dramatically, just like she's holding herself together.
“You stopped trusting my judgment. You stopped trusting me in the field. You treated me like I was fragile and reckless at the same time. Like I was something you had to manage.”
My pulse pounds so hard my injured arm throbs with it.
“That’s not why.”
"I wanted to go with you that day. You told me you weren't sure, but I pressed the issue. You think it's my fault."
"Sam, that's?—"
"You think I did it. And part of you must hate me for it."
I move toward her. "Please, listen to me, Sam."
But she's too far gone now. Her eyes have shifted in a way that tells me she's looking straight through me. She's no longer in this moment. She's in a hell of the past's making.
I reach for her, as if I can pull her into the present with me.
The words are right there. If I'd followed the call that she made that day, all three of us would have come home. She would have been safe. I wouldn't have nearly lost her. And our baby would be a toddler now.
We would be having an entirely different experience now if I'd just listened.
She takes my hand and puts the ring in my palm. Her fingers are cold.
"I'm giving you what you really want, Brooks," she says, and her voice breaks on the words.
I close my fist around the ring.
"Sammy Girl." The only two words I can seem to manage because I'm certain my knees are about to go out from beneath me.
“No,” she whispers. “You don’t get to call me that.”
She walks away.
This time, my feet don't move.
I stand beside The Funnel Cloud with mud on my boots, rain in my hair, and my wife’s wedding ring cutting a circle into my palm.
The ring is so small in my hand.
I close my fist tighter until the edge bites skin knowing that everything I've ever tried to protect just walked out of my life for the second time.