Day 15 Haverhill, MA #3
A muscle twitches in his jaw, but he papers on a snide smile. “Finally wised up and realized what you’ve been missing all these years, huh? Well, I can’t blame you. He’s a good fuck.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Get the fuck out of here, Jeremy.”
For a second, he looks like maybe he’s the one who’s going to throw a punch at me. But then he spins abruptly and stalks back into the house.
Immediately, I turn to Sam. “Sammy —”
“Don’t call me that, I don’t deserve it.” Sam sits down hard on the back steps, hugging his knees to his chest and curling up into a ball, turning his face away from me.
I sit down carefully beside him and rest my hand between his shoulder blades. He makes an odd noise like an angry cat, but he doesn’t pull away, so I begin to rub gentle circles across his back. Finally, I find the words.
“You don’t have to tell me anything. But if you want to, you know I’m here for you.”
Sam sniffs hard. “You’re going to hate me.”
“There isn’t anything you could possibly do in this world that could make me hate you. You’re my best friend, Sammy, and that’s never going to change.”
Sam covers his face with both hands and his shoulders begin to shake silently, so I move in closer and throw my arm around him, resting my cheek on his back. The storm lasts for a few minutes, but at last he takes a shuddering breath, impatiently dashing the moisture from his cheeks.
“I slept with River.”
“Okay —” I reply carefully.
“Not, like — recently. And we were never together. It was just sex, maybe five or six times? The last time was right before he moved away.”
I mull this over. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. “Can I ask — why? I just want to understand.”
“I don’t know,” Sam replies miserably. He lifts his head, and his lovely eyes are red-rimmed.
“I guess — because he was just there. Because he put it out there and I didn’t have a better offer.
The first time was that party at the beginning of sophomore year, the night you hooked up with Jessie Caldwell.
I was — I dunno, drunk and stupid and horny.
Maybe a little lonely, too. So it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And then I guess it happened a few more times. ”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
“Honestly, it might have been the hatefuck aspect that kept me going back. Because he really sucks.”
“You’re not gonna get an argument from me there,” I joke, and Sam gives me a watery smile. “Coming up here tonight — the gig and staying over — was it, I dunno, a quid pro quo?”
Sam sighs. “Not exactly. When we were starting to plan the tour, it was right when Krista was hanging around a lot, and dude, I dunno if you realize this, but she was kind of a bitch to me. So one night when I wasn’t in a good place, I saw that River was online and we started chatting back and forth.
And I guess we left things kind of open-ended about what would happen when I came up here?
But after what’s been happening with you and me, obviously I didn’t want to do it anymore.
And you can see he didn’t take it well.”
We’re both quiet for a moment, each processing our own thoughts. He’s picking his fingernails again, but when I take his hand, he doesn’t object, sagging against me and putting his head on my shoulder.
“You know I didn’t even know he liked guys?” I muse. “He was always so loud about being into girls.”
“Yeah, that’s on purpose.” There’s a note of bitterness in Sam’s voice. “There are a lot of queer guys in this scene — gay guys and bi guys who are perfectly nice. But then there are guys who just want to get off and they don’t care how it happens. And that’s what River is like.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, pressing a kiss into the top of his head. “I hate that you had to put up with that kind of shit, and that you’ve been so lonely.”
“I’m a pretty fucked up person,” Sam whispers.
I tilt his chin up with my finger. “You’re not. But maybe someday you’ll tell me why you think so.”
The kiss is soft, tender, lacking the banked heat that has fueled most of our kisses over the past week. But somehow it feels like a a new beginning, a ray of light, and I hope Sam knows that I’m right here with him, and that I’m not going anywhere.
Eventually, we make it back into the house, and we take over an empty sofa, half-listening to the banter flowing around us while Sam lies across my chest, my hand playing with his hair. As one of the housemates gets up to go to bed, she stops in the doorway.
“Wait — did you guys say you were driving into Boston tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we are. What about it?” Blake replies.
“Oh, I just thought you might like to know that it’s Pride,” she explains. “So you know, some roads might be closed and traffic will be bad. You might want to leave extra time to get where you’re going.”
Sam lifts his head and looks at me, and even though we’re both completely drained, I don’t even need him to ask the question.
“Of course we can,” I whisper, and I touch the tip of his nose with my finger. “I’d be honored.”