Chapter 13 Night Swimming #2
Bex walked back over and bent down, and Sam lifted up from the water to meet her kiss. “I’m your constant,” she said again. “You can plan on it.”
“I will.”
Sam watched her disappearing into the house, already talking to Vic.
It was time for her to go home.
When Sam got there, she was surprised to find it so quiet. Fergus usually kept late hours. She guessed they’d worn him out today.
She husked off her clothes at the threshold of her bathroom and took a shower in the dark.
Her limbs were leaden. As she soaped, she found new hurt places on her body.
Her skin throbbed along her bra line where the costume she’d worn for the reshoot pressed uncomfortably.
The tender crease at the back of her knees felt pebbled against her fingertips.
Contact dermatitis. Sam wasn’t sure what she’d touched, worn, or rubbed against that her skin hadn’t liked.
It stung at the slightest touch of her fingers.
She padded on damp feet, navigating from her bathroom to her bedroom in the pitch-dark. Her body knew how many steps it was from the sink to the closet hook where she kept the T-shirt she liked to sleep in. She shrugged into it and collapsed into bed.
She’d put a downpayment on this sleek house, with its sharp corners, glass, and views, after Bex had used her first real money from Craven’s Daughter to buy her home ten minutes away via a hiking trail.
Sam could admit she bought her house as a gateway to Bex’s.
When she wasn’t on set, she’d passed most of her time with the Simons, eating, playing with the girls, and mostly, spending every minute she could with Bex.
The years they were estranged after Craven’s Daughter had led, in large part, to Sam’s large career.
She hadn’t wanted to be here if she couldn’t pull on her tennis shoes and ball cap and walk through the chaparral, sage scrub, and oaks to spend a few hours flopped on Bex’s giant sectional, reading scripts or listening to Bex sing in her practice room.
She’d signed on to every project that took her away or required long days on tough sets.
Her rising fame made a different kind of cocoon for her to rest inside of.
She thought about Ramona’s bungalow in West Hollywood. It was a home only for herself and the people she loved. It reflected the life she’d made.
Had Sam made a cold, expensive life that she didn’t want to live in?
A lot of people looked at her every day, just as she’d hoped they would when she was a little girl, from a chaotic family, who only wanted to be seen.
But it didn’t feel the way she’d imagined it would.
Sam didn’t know any of the people looking at her.
What they saw was a mirage made of flashbulbs and sequins.
She arranged her pillows under her head, afraid that her thoughts and the events of the day, her worry for Ramona, would keep her awake. But she fell into a black sleep almost instantly.
When she woke, the room was gray, the rain a gentle sound between rumbles of thunder.
Sam was standing in front of her glass-front refrigerator, still in her pajama T-shirt and some vintage cotton bloomers she’d found on the floor of her bedroom, when Fergus came in.
He appeared fresh as a daisy in what looked like the black-tie version of zip-off hiking pants and a blue T-shirt that still had the fold lines in it.
He reached around her to open the fridge and began pulling out a stack of items. “Sit down. I’ll make you Caesar’s eggs.”
“For real?”
“I stopped for groceries last night. I don’t know if you noticed, but I ate all your food. I still remember how to make them.”
Every Saturday morning, their dad had made what he called “Caesar’s eggs” in a huge skillet that was always on the stove and fed them to whichever of his children were at home.
It was the only all-hands family tradition they really had.
Sam watched Fergus break eggs into a pan, adding green olives and lots of shaved Parmesan.
After he put the plates down on the table and sat down, he rubbed his hands together.
“What’s on deck for today?”
Sam shoveled in a bite of almost-too-salty, delicious eggs. They hit her homesick button hard. “Your deck doesn’t involve meeting with suits in Malibu?”
He looked right at her. “Sam, this is the most real, meaningful time I’ve spent with you for years. Yesterday, and just yesterday, is the L.A. trip I’ve wanted for a long time, but my little sister’s hard to pin down.”
Her pulse picked up. “Oh.”
“Oh.” He pushed her shoulder, gentle but firm. “I’m not so boneheaded that I don’t already have a location in mind to rent. I have a guy in Malibu doing the legal heavy lifting. But you really think I came out here to eat your food, wander around Malibu Beach, and then ask you for money.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
He took a bite of his eggs, the tight movements of his body signaling the change she’d caused in his emotional weather. Fergus hadn’t been an angry kid, but he was intense, and it had always seemed like he needed big views, big water, big sky to take up his feelings.
If someone had asked her, Sam would’ve said Fergus wasn’t intense like that anymore. She’d been watching him yesterday, though, and the attention he had paid to the situation—to their feelings and what he needed to do—was just as tightly focused.
The last time he’d visited her was nearly a year ago, before the Craven’s Daughter reunion.
That visit was when her brother had come out to her as ace.
Understanding this identity had given him tremendous peace and a lot of room to contemplate what relationships he wanted to give his heart to, which was a couple of lifelong close friends and his family. Her.
Her cheeks heated as she admitted to herself that she hadn’t taken him seriously. She’d believed he said it on a whim, and he’d forget all about her once he left L.A. They hadn’t spoken about it again. She’d more or less forgotten.
And now Fergus was making her Caesar’s eggs and driving her and her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s kid sister around in an expensive electric truck that Sam had not purchased for him.
She couldn’t remember the last time he’d said more to her about his business than that it was doing “well.” He was understating.
Because Sam had a habit of underestimating him.
“You’re really moving here to be near me,” she said.
“I told you I wanted to.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He grimaced. “Right. Well, don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said.
“Caesar’s an okayish dad, but I don’t think it ever occurred to him to maybe give his five kids with five different moms a little goddamn guidance on how to be a functional family.
Every one of us just spun off in a different direction. ”
“You think?”
“I know. Take Primus, now on marriage number three. I wish him well, even though he’s an asshole.
Then we’ve got Magnus, and he and Katie seem solid, so I guess monogamy is working for him?
But if he gets any farther off the grid, I’m going to have to start sending him letters by Pony Express, and that worries me.
Rasmus and Amber already have seven kids, and now they’re talking about foster-to-adopt like one of those families that ends up on a reality show. ”
Sam covered her mouth with her hand, shaking her head. “It’s possible that some of my fears around getting what I want in a relationship are about avoiding even the slimmest possibility of getting what I don’t want, given Dad’s example.”
“Oh, so walking down the aisle so many times you wear a hole in the carpet’s not good enough for you?” Fergus reached over and pulled her hair. “You know what Dad says. ‘Life’s an adventure.’”
“He’s a periodontist in Oakland.”
“But you couldn’t ever claim he was a man who doubted.” Fergus lifted his eyebrows.
“Might have been good if he’d been plagued with a few doubts. Like if his youngest, motherless child might need to hear a little more than ‘Way to go, Tiger’ at periodic intervals.”
“Yeah. And he didn’t even come up with an amazing name for you. He could’ve called you ‘Deltron’ like Magnus wanted, but no, you were a girl, so it had to be ‘Samantha.’ Probably wasn’t easy being queer on top of all that.”
Sam shrugged, and Fergus laid his hand on her shoulder, serious again. “You deserve to have people who are for you, Sammy,” he said. “You deserve the life you want. That’s why I want to be down here and be a part of it.”
“Fuck.” Sam pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Don’t make me cry.”
“You want a noogie instead?” He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled down.
“Jesus! No. Let me have a few minutes to pretend you’re my emotionally intelligent sibling.”
They separated, smiling at each other. It was good. Sam felt good. She took a drink of water. Fergus picked up the pan and shoveled the last of the eggs onto his plate.
“It’s been surprisingly nice having you here,” she said. “You were a big help yesterday.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said. “I gave Vic my number, and she’s already sent me about twenty texts this morning.” His eyes were warm when they met hers. “Would it be all right if I tagged along again today?”
“I would love that.”
“Good, because Vic’s inviting us to meet up at Bex’s in twenty minutes. She said to feed you so you wouldn’t get low-blood-sugar crabby again—her words—and to bring the truck in case we need to ‘crowd together or haul something big.’”
“Just let me get changed quick.”
Sam fortified herself with a very small black dress with thigh-high leather boots she’d been saving to be particularly shocking.
In deference to the weather, she threw on an oversized wool cardigan in the colors of the lesbian pride flag.
Eggs in her belly and double-take fashion meant that when she and Fergus arrived at Bex’s house, Sam felt fully human again.
“Hi.” Bex sat at her dining room table with perfect, obedient red ringlets. There was a notebook and an array of highlighter pens, colored tabs, and glitter Post-its surrounding her spot at the table. She had also fortified herself.
“Hi.” Sam hovered in the doorway, soaking in the sight of her. “Are you ready for today?”
“I have a plan,” Bex said with a brisk nod. “It came to me while I was diffusing my hair, and I refined it while my face steamed. I want you to know that I have already noticed your boots. I know what they mean. I will cash that check after we find Ramona.”
Sam lifted one eyebrow. Flirting with Bex was something she’d practiced for years. She liked to strike an erotic match across a situation just to see it flame, and Bex was unfailingly receptive to her moves. “I’ll hold you to it. What have you got?”
Bex pinched a tab that stuck out of her notebook and flipped to the page she’d bookmarked. Sam moved to sit across from her at the table. Before she could pull out a chair, the door to the patio banged open.
“I hate it when L.A. gets weather in May. No one knows what to do. It’s just rain, people!
We circled at LAX for a thousand years. I felt like I was the dice in a Yahtzee cup from all the turbulence.
” Frankie Simon dropped her bag on the floor and raked her hand through her short dark curls, spraying raindrops onto the tile floor.
“Frankie?!” Bex’s voice was loud. She moved to stand up, then sat down again. “But you’re in the Ozarks!”
“Haris is in the Ozarks.” Frankie pulled off her black hoodie, revealing a black tank that matched her black cargo pants and combat boots.
Sam hadn’t seen Frankie wear anything but tech black since she was a freshman in high school.
She was backstage to her core. “I guess he wanted to sleep at night instead of lying awake listening to me talk about Ramona Watts after a full day of driving that I spent talking about Ramona Watts. He put me on a plane in Tulsa and said he’ll drive the rest of the way on his own. ”
Sam couldn’t help but note the unaccustomed thread of swoon in Frankie’s tone. She glanced over at Bex, who clearly had also noticed.
“Shut up,” Frankie said cheerfully. “You’ll get nothing else on that topic from me. One hundred percent of me is for finding Ramona.”
“Frankie!” Vic burst into the room and ran to Frankie, throwing her arms around her, hilariously a foot taller than her big sister. “Never leave me again.”
“Franks!” Fergus stepped into the room behind Vic. “Back from the Big Apple!”
Frankie cast her eyes at the ceiling, trying to extricate herself from Vic’s tight grasp. When she failed, she dragged her sister, still clinging to her body, over to where Fergus was and gave him a hug with one arm. Vic grabbed tightly to both of them.
“This is everything I wanted,” she said.
Sam swallowed over a batch of inconvenient tears.
It was everything she wanted, too.