Chapter Eight
Autumn
Ibring the envelope to Vibes before open because I want Sam to have time with it.
The front door is unlocked, and the lights are only half up. Sam is behind the bar working between the register and a legal pad, a coffee beside him that looks like it's been sitting there since he came downstairs.
"Hey."
"Hey." He finishes whatever he's writing before looking up. Even then, it takes a moment for his attention to settle on me. "You're early."
"I'm not staying. I have a call."
I put the envelope on the bar.
His eyes drop to it. "What's that?"
"It's for Pilsen."
Everything in his face stills.
"Bex told me there was a financing problem," I say before he can decide whether to be angry with her. "Nothing else. I found the rest in public records."
"Autumn."
"There's a dissolution filing from the old company that never got finished. One signature is missing, and your name is still attached to it."
He looks at the envelope again but doesn't touch it.
"The other partner has a restaurant on the north side and another location opening soon. He has a reason to want the old company gone too. There's a version of this where you call him, he signs the paper and it's finished before it becomes a bigger problem."
Sam's jaw tightens.
I keep going because stopping now would feel worse.
"I put together a sequence. Who you call first, what you offer, where to take the conversation if he pushes back. I wrote out the most likely ways he answers too, so you don't have to figure it out while you're talking to somebody you clearly haven't wanted to talk to."
Nothing.
I hate how badly I want him to pick up the envelope.
"I know what I'm doing with this stuff, Sam." I rest my hand against the edge of the bar. "Let me be useful."
He picks up the envelope and turns it once in his hand.
"Who else knows?"
The question catches me off guard. "Bex knows there's a problem. She doesn't know what I found."
"And you went looking."
"I did."
"At me."
His voice isn't raised. If anything, it's quieter now.
"I looked at a business filing anybody could find. It's public record, Sam."
"But nobody did." He sets the envelope down again. "Nobody did for three years. Then you did."
He says it in a way that makes my stomach tighten. Not thank you. Not even you shouldn't have. Like the problem isn't what I found. It's that I went looking at all.
"Because you want Pilsen."
"I never asked you to help me or to fix it."
"No. You didn't."
The answer comes out quieter than I mean it to.
A minute ago, I was standing here waiting for him to open the envelope. Now I have the strange feeling that I've walked into a room I wasn't invited into and only realized it after the door closed behind me.
Sam looks at me, then away.
"So why would you..."
He stops there.
My fingers curl against the edge of the bar.
"Why would I what?"
He doesn't answer.
The silence makes the back of my neck warm.
I know I crossed into something personal. I knew that before I came here. But I also know Sam told me about Pilsen. I know what that place means to him. I know I spent two nights trying to give him a way toward something he wanted without asking for anything in return.
Until this second, I hadn't considered that he might look at any of that and see me somewhere I didn't belong.
Sam's eyes drop to the envelope again, his jaw tight. His hand moves to the legal pad and straightens the top page even though it was already square with the bar.
"Look, I've got it. I don't need your help." His fingers stay on the paper. "I don't need you interfering in my life."
For a moment, I don't know what to do with my face.
Then I reach for the envelope.
"Okay."
I put it back in my bag and leave.
The word follows me outside.
Interfering. He actually accused me of interfering with his life when I was trying to get him closer to something that he really wants. Not helping. Not overstepping. At least overstepping would mean I had a place in his life and crossed a line from inside it.
I stop on the sidewalk with both hands shoved into my coat pockets and run the sentence through my head like a client's statement, looking for some softer interpretation hidden inside the wording.
There isn't one.
I don't need you interfering in my life.
A little over a week ago, I turned down an opportunity in London while lying in his bed because I didn't want to lose what we were building. I didn't want to lose him.
He has no idea.
Standing outside Vibes now, I know I'm never going to tell him. Not after this. There is no way to explain that choice without making it sound like I gave something up for a man who doesn't think I belong anywhere near the decisions that make up his life.
My phone rings before I can go much farther with that.
I take the work call from a coffee shop a few blocks away and spend the next ten minutes talking a label executive out of moving an announcement that will blow up in her face if she rushes it. By the time we hang up, she agrees with me and thanks me for my patience.
Being useful is rarely complicated when somebody actually wants the help.
When I get home, the envelope is still in my bag. I take it out and read all three pages again.
Nothing has changed. The filing is still unfinished. The lender is still going to care, and Pilsen is still sitting there waiting for somebody whose financing doesn't come with a dead company attached to it.
Sam could lose the place because there is one conversation he refuses to have.
I leave the envelope on my coffee table for two days. Sam doesn't call or text, and I sure as hell don't reach out either.
The third morning, I put it back in my bag.
He can be angry with me. The filing is still unfinished, and the pages are still good. I can't make myself let him lose Pilsen just because he hurt me.
The front door of Vibes is propped open for a delivery, and someone is wheeling boxes toward the storeroom when I walk in. Nobody pays much attention to me.
I leave the envelope on the back bar beside the register where I know he'll find it and walk back out.
A few days later, I go back because I left my scarf there. That's what I tell myself on the walk over.
What I actually want is five minutes with Sam. Long enough to stand in front of him and figure out whether our last conversation was one bad moment or the beginning of the end of whatever we've been doing.
I've also decided I can accomplish this without mentioning what we need to talk about, which is the kind of strategy I would reject on sight if someone at work brought it to me.
The front door is unlocked.
Inside, the chairs are still upside down on the tables, and only half the lights are on. A radio plays somewhere in the back beneath the sounds of opening prep.
I make it halfway down the bar before I hear my name.
My body stops before the rest of me catches up.
"...she's fine. She's been busy."
Sam.
I stay where I am. From behind the wall, Bex lets out a sound that needs no translation.
"Sam."
"She's got a client on fire."
"Autumn hasn't been in since you two had whatever happened, and you've been unbearable ever since. Try again."
Something knocks against a crate.
Sam's answer comes after it.
"We had a thing."
Bex repeats it flatly. "A thing."
"It's fine. It's handled."
"Handled?" There's a scrape, like she's set something down harder than necessary. "I've watched you two be a couple for months. Everybody has. You're the only one who won't say it."
My hand closes around the leg of the nearest chair.
"Don't, Bex."
"No. You kissed her in front of all of us at Lucia's fundraiser. There's snickerdoodle creamer in your refrigerator, Sam, and you don't drink it."
"It's there for her."
"Of course you know." Bex's voice drops. "So say something honest about her."
Sam doesn't answer.
I stare at my hand wrapped around the chair leg.
The radio keeps playing.
Bex waits.
So do I.
I've spent enough of my life listening to people search for language to know the difference between someone trying to find the right words and someone trying to find words they can live with afterward.
This pause belongs to the second.
Finally, Sam says, "She's got her own whole life."
Bex is quiet for a second. "That's not what I asked."
"She's got Summer. Jake. Her career. Nix O'Keefe. A hundred people calling her because they think the world is ending." I hear glass touch glass behind the wall. "She doesn't need me. That's not what this is."
"Sam."
"She doesn't."
There's irritation in his voice now, but it doesn't sound like it's aimed at Bex.
"She doesn't ask me for anything."
My grip tightens around the chair.
"She has her place. I have mine. She comes here when she wants to. I go there. Nobody's keeping score. That's why this works."
Bex lets out a short breath. "Do you hear yourself?"
"Yeah."
"I don't think you do."
Another glass goes onto a shelf.
Then Sam says, "She's never asked me to be more than this."
Everything in me goes still.
Bex answers more quietly this time. "Maybe she's waiting for you to offer."
"She isn't."
"You know that?"
"She knows what this is."
"Does she?"
His answer comes faster.
"It's casual, Bex. No strings. No labels. We aren't serious. I like it that way."
The room keeps going around me.
The refrigerator hums behind the bar. Somebody moves something heavy in the back. A car passes outside.
Casual.
No strings.
Not serious.
Bex says his name again, and this time there's no edge in it.
"Sam."
"I'm not the reason she moved here."
I close my eyes.
"She moved here for Summer. She would've come anyway."
"Does that even matter?"
"Yes."
Too fast.
Then his voice changes.
"And she's going to leave again."
Bex doesn't answer.
Sam keeps going.
"Somebody's going to offer her New York, Europe, London or whatever comes next, and she's going to take it. She should take it."
My hand slips against the chair leg.
London.
I turned it down in his bed while his arm was around me.
He doesn't know that.
"You don't know she'll leave," Bex says.
"I know her."
The words almost pull a laugh out of me.
Instead, I press my lips together.
"This works because it's easy," Sam says. "She doesn't need me rearranging my life, and I don't need her rearranging hers. Neither of us is building anything around the other."
Bex goes quiet long enough that I think she might be done.
Then she asks, "And if she wanted more?"
Sam doesn't answer.
"If Autumn stood right in front of you and told you she wanted this to be something more than casual, what would you say?"
"Bex."
"What would you say?"
The pause comes again.
Shorter this time.
Still long enough.
"It's not that deep."
For a second, I stop hearing everything else.
Not the radio. Not the refrigerator. Not the movement behind the wall.
Just him.
It's not that deep.
There is an envelope on his back bar that I built over two nights because he once told me about his dream for a place in Pilsen and I remembered.
I turned down London because fourteen weeks away felt too long to leave whatever was happening between us unattended.
He has no idea what either one cost me.
Then my brain does what it always does when something goes wrong.
It starts building the case for everyone else.
Sam doesn't know about London. He never asked me to research Pilsen. And when he says I never asked him to be more than this, he's right.
I didn't.
I was proud of that.
I told myself Sam moved slowly and that giving him room was kinder than making him define something before he was ready. I made sure he knew Chicago wasn't about him. I never asked where this was going because I thought what we were doing was enough to get us there on its own.
Maybe I made myself too easy to misunderstand.
For a moment, I can almost make that explanation work.
Then Bex's question comes back.
If Autumn stood right in front of you and told you she wanted this to be something more than casual, what would you say?
She asked him.
Plainly.
She moved every excuse out of the way and gave him the question I hadn't.
He had time to answer.
I heard him take it.
It's not that deep.
And then there's the envelope.
I stood across this same bar and said, Let me be useful.
He called it interfering.
Something hot moves up my chest and into my face. For a second, I don't recognize it. Then my jaw tightens.
I'm fucking angry.
Not asking isn't the same as not wanting.
Maybe Sam didn't know how much I wanted him. Maybe I should have said more. He didn't know about London because I chose not to tell him.
But he knew there was something here. Bex asked him. I asked him in the only language I seem to use without fear. And both times he chose the version of me that required the least from him.
My fingers loosen from the chair.
I don't know what to do with the anger once it's there. Anger wants things. It asks questions and waits for answers, and I've spent most of my life being the person who already has the answer before anyone realizes there's a problem.
I'm the one who is fine.
Standing in the half-lit bar listening to the man I turned down London for explain why I don't matter enough to frighten him, I am nowhere close.
Fuck this. I need to get out before he sees me.
My scarf is still looped over the hook beside the door. I take it on the way out without looking toward the storeroom.
I make it through the door before my breath catches.
Six steps later, one hand lands against the brick beside Vibes, and I stay there long enough to get air all the way into my lungs again.
By the time I straighten, my face feels like mine.
Somebody has to be fine.
So I am.
I go home without crying.
I don't text Summer or call Jake because, for once, I don't want anybody helping me find a kinder interpretation of something that was said plainly.
The apartment gets dark around me. Pieces of the conversation come back anyway.
She doesn't need me.
She doesn't ask me for anything.
It's casual.
But every version ends up in the same place.
It's not that deep.
Late that night, I open my laptop.
Anna's last email is still in my inbox.
She didn't argue when I turned London down. She sent three sentences and left the decision with me.
I think you're making a mistake.
I also think you're allowed to make it.
If you change your mind, call me before I fill the spot.
I don't hit reply to hurt Sam. He doesn't even know London exists. This has to be mine.
Beneath everything that happened tonight, one fact is still sitting exactly where I left it.
I wanted London.
I wanted the tour. I wanted the office. I wanted the terrifying size of the opportunity Anna had put in front of me.
I said no because I thought there was something here worth protecting.
Tonight, Sam told me what he thinks that something is.
I believe him.
Now I get to choose again with all the information.
I hit reply.
Me: Is London still available?