Chapter Nine
Autumn
Iwait several days. I tell myself I'm giving Sam time. I'm not.
I'm giving myself time to decide whether I can stand in front of him and ask a question I already know the answer to but need to hear him say it out loud.
Anna knows I'm reconsidering. Before I give her a final answer, I text Sam.
Me: Are you free after close?
His reply comes back almost immediately.
Sam: Yeah. Come up whenever. I'll be here.
I stare at the screen longer than I need to.
For days, I've replayed everything I heard behind that wall until I can predict the order of the sentences.
She doesn't need me.
It's casual.
I like it that way.
It's not that deep.
I know what he thinks.
I just need to hear what he says when I'm standing in front of him.
Because some pathetic part of me still wants him to look at my face and choose differently. To fucking fight for me, for us.
The bar is mostly empty when I come in.
Tony's working. Bex isn't.
I checked.
Whatever happens tonight, I don't want Bex watching it happen.
Sam is finishing the cash when he looks up, and the second he sees me, the tension leaves his face.
He smiles.
Not the easy bartender smile he gives half the room. Mine.
Or the one I thought was mine.
For one stupid second, it almost works on me.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He looks genuinely happy I'm here, and I hate him a little for that.
"Give me ten minutes."
I nod.
Tony reaches automatically for the mezcal when he sees me at the end of the bar.
"Not tonight."
His hand pauses on the bottle.
He looks at me once, puts it back and doesn't ask.
Sam finishes the count, locks the drawer and comes around the bar.
"Come on."
I follow him upstairs.
The stairs feel longer than they ever have.
Inside the apartment, Sam kicks off his boots and heads for the refrigerator.
He takes out a beer but doesn't open it.
I don't take off my coat.
That is the first thing he notices.
"You keeping that on?"
"Yeah."
His hand stays around the bottle.
"Okay."
He waits.
So do I.
This is harder than I thought it would be, not because I don't know what I want to say, but because I know exactly what I want him to say back.
Sam leans one hip against the counter. "What's going on?"
I look at him.
At the man who knows all the little details about me. How I take my coffee, who keeps my creamer in his refrigerator and space for my things beside his sink. The one who told me I could come here and just be me whether I was okay or not.
I need that man to exist right now.
"Tell me what this is. What is this between us? What am I to you?"
Something in his expression tightens, small enough that I might have missed it if I were not watching him this closely.
"Autumn."
"No." I shake my head before he can turn my name into an answer. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Make me feel like I'm asking something impossible."
"I'm not doing that."
"You are, Sam."
I pull my hands from my pockets because they're getting damp inside them and immediately wish I hadn't. There is nowhere to put them that doesn't make me look nervous.
So I fold my arms instead.
"I don't need some giant declaration, Sam. I'm not asking you to plan the rest of your life tonight. I just need you to tell me what I am to you."
His gaze drops for a second.
"You know what you are to me."
My throat tightens.
"No. I know how you act when we're alone."
He looks back at me.
"That's not the same thing."
"It should be."
"Then say it."
I wait. God, I wait, but I'm met with silence.
"Give me something," I say, quieter now. "Boyfriend. Girlfriend. We're together. We're seeing each other and it means something. Pick the wrong word and let me hate it. I don't care. Just fucking tell me something."
His jaw tightens.
"Just don't make me stand here and pretend there isn't something that you can say out loud because saying something makes you uncomfortable."
"I'm not good at this."
I laugh once, but there is nothing funny in it.
"You don't think I know that. I'm not asking you to make it perfect."
His eyes lift to mine.
"I know you're not good at this, Sam. I've known that almost the entire time I've known you."
"Then why are you..."
"Because I kept thinking you'd get there."
He goes quiet.
The words are out now, and I can't pull them back.
"I kept telling myself you moved slower than I do. That you needed time. That if I didn't push, eventually you'd come to me when you were ready."
My eyes burn.
I refuse to blink long enough for it to become anything.
"I saw a glimmer of it at the fundraiser."
His head lifts.
"You claimed me in front of the entire room. That was the first time you ever did that in front of anyone."
I remember his hand at my waist. His mouth against mine. Everyone watching.
I tried to stay over there. I couldn't.
"I didn't ask you to do that," I say. "You just did it."
"Autumn..."
"And that meant something to me."
His mouth parts, and the distance between us narrows enough that I think I have reached him.
So I keep going.
"I watch you downstairs every night. You remember everybody. You take care of everybody. You know what Bex needs before she asks. You know when Marisol's tired. You know which regular is going to need a cab before he knows it himself."
"That's my job."
"No, it isn't."
His mouth closes.
"That's who you are. And I love that about you."
The word slips out so easily that neither of us moves.
We both hear it, and I don't take it back.
My heart is already breaking. What exactly am I protecting now?
"But sometimes I stand in that room and I can't tell if I'm different from everyone else."
Sam stares at me.
"I don't want you to be worse to anybody else." My voice cracks, and I hate it, but I keep going. "I just want something that isn't theirs too. I want to feel like I mean something to you outside the walls of this apartment. Something more than just convenient."
His grip tightens around the unopened beer.
"One thing, Sam."
I swallow.
"Just one thing that is mine alone, that sets me apart from how you are with everyone else."
The apartment is so quiet I can hear traffic on the street below.
He could cross the room.
He doesn't.
"I'm the same person with everybody," he says.
My chest hurts.
"And I don't want to be everybody."
"That's just who I am. So I don't know what you want me to..."
"I want to matter differently to you. Not more than Bex or Summer or Marisol. I'm not asking to outrank anybody. I want something between us that doesn't look like what everybody else gets from you."
Sam goes still.
The words hang there between us, and I let them.
Saying it out loud makes my face burn, but there is no point protecting my pride now. I want something with Sam that belongs to us, something I don't have to squint at and wonder whether I invented it.
Sam rubs a hand across his jaw.
I watch him looking for a way around it.
That hurts more than if he'd gotten angry.
"Okay," I say.
His eyes come back to mine.
"Then tell me something."
"What?"
"Something real."
His brow pulls together.
"About you."
"I tell you things."
"No, you don't. I know basic facts."
"Autumn."
"I know what you drink. I know where you grew up. I know you hate cilantro and you don't sleep well after inventory nights. I know you wanted Pilsen before you ever admitted you were actually trying to buy it."
His expression closes a little at that.
I keep going anyway.
"But the things that matter?"
My voice drops.
"I learn those from other people, or from things I observe."
He knows where this is going before I say it.
"Summer told me about Elise."
His jaw locks.
"Don't."
"Why?"
"Because that's not..."
"What?"
He looks away.
I feel my heart beating against my ribs.
"Say her name."
He looks back at me.
"You were married to her."
"You think I need reminding?"
"And you've never said her name to me."
"Because it doesn't matter anymore."
It isn't the sentence I overheard, but it's close enough to make my stomach turn.
"Maybe it doesn't matter to you."
"It doesn't."
"It mattered enough to change you."
His jaw sets. I hate myself for pushing here, and I hate him for leaving me no gentler place to go.
"I didn't need the whole story," I say. "I didn't need every ugly detail. I just wanted you to trust me enough to tell me one true thing that makes you you that I didn't already know because somebody else cared enough to warn me."
"Summer shouldn't have done that."
I almost laugh.
"That's what you're taking from this?"
"No. That's not what I meant."
"Then tell me what you meant."
He doesn't.
I stand there and watch him.
This is it. I know it. The last opening. He could say he was scared. He could say Elise wrecked something in him and he hasn't figured out how to put it back together. He could tell me he loves me and has no idea what the hell to do with that. He could say anything honest. Anything.
He doesn't.
Eventually Sam puts the beer on the counter and walks toward the couch.
He walks toward the couch instead of me.
He puts both hands on the back of it and looks down.
"This works."
My stomach drops.
"Sam."
"It does."
"Please don't."
"This works because it's easy."
There are sentences that hurt because you don't expect them.
This one hurts because I do.
He keeps talking.
"We don't ask each other for things we can't give. You've got your life. Summer, Jake, your career. I've got the bar. Nobody's trying to rearrange everything around somebody else."
I stare at his back.
Days ago I heard him say almost the same thing to Bex.
I had convinced myself it might sound different when he said it to me.
It doesn't.
"Look at me."
He turns.
"Is that really what you think this is?"
His face tightens. "That's not what I'm saying."
"It sounds exactly like what you're saying."
"Autumn, I'm trying to tell you what we have doesn't have to be a bad thing."
My chest caves in a little.
He thinks he's making it better.
That's the worst part.
"You don't have to promise me forever."
"I'm not saying..."
"You don't have to." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "I know what you're saying."
He takes a step toward me.
My heart jumps before I can stop it.
One step is all it takes for some stupid hopeful part of me to flare back to life. Maybe this is when he finally comes to me.
He stops.
I look at the space between us.
"I just needed you to choose me."
His jaw loosens, like the words reached somewhere he wasn't guarding fast enough. I don't know if I've ever said anything more honest in my life.
"I needed you to tell me I wasn't imagining this. I needed one thing that was mine alone. One thing you trusted me with because I'm me."
My throat closes.
"And I gave you every possible way to do it."
"Autumn..."
"Do you want this?"
This time there is nowhere for either of us to hide behind labels or explanations.
Me.
"Do you want me, and not just physically. Do you want to be with me?"
His eyes close for half a second.
When they open again, I know before he speaks.
"I can't do that."
Something in me goes quiet. It doesn't break. That already happened. This is quieter than that, the moment I stop waiting for him to save it.
I nod.
"Okay."
"Autumn."
"No." I shake my head. "Don't."
"That's not what I..."
"I asked you to tell me what this is. You couldn't."
He starts to speak.
"I asked you to make me feel different from everyone else in your life. You couldn't."
His mouth closes.
"I asked you to let me know one piece of you that I didn't have to get from somebody else."
I look at him.
"You couldn't do that either."
"I'm trying."
"No."
The word comes out sharper than anything else I've said tonight.
"You're not."
He flinches. Good. Maybe I want that to hurt. Maybe I'm allowed.
"You are standing there explaining why you shouldn't have to."
"That's not fair."
"Probably not."
I pull my hands back into my pockets because they're shaking.
"But I came here anyway."
He moves around the couch.
I put up one hand.
"Don't."
He stops.
"Just wait."
The laugh that comes out of me is tiny and wrecked.
"I have."
His mouth tightens like I knocked the air out of him. Maybe he is finally hearing the months inside those three words. I don't stay to see what he does with them.
"I'm going home."
"Autumn."
I turn toward the door. For one last second, I want him to stop me. Not grab me. Not block the door.
Just say my name in a way that means don't go because I love you and I'm done being afraid.
He doesn't.
So I leave.
I go down the stairs I've taken so many times I could do it in the dark.
Past the wall I've touched with my hand while Sam kissed my neck.
Past the landing where we once couldn't wait twelve more feet before his mouth was on mine.
Tony is stacking glasses when I reach the bar. He looks up. His eyes move over my coat, my face. Then away. He doesn't ask. I'm almost at the door when I see the envelope. Still sitting on the back bar beside the register. Exactly where I left it. Still sealed.
For a second, I just look at it. Two nights of work. Something he wanted. Something I tried to give him because that is how I know how to love people. He couldn't even open it.
I keep walking.
It's raining outside.
I don't have an umbrella.
By the time I get two blocks away, my hair is sticking to my face and the shoulders of my coat are soaked through.
I call a car.
When I slide into the back seat, I finally look at my phone.
There's an text from Anna.
Anna: Yes. Call me Monday.
I read it once. Then again. A few days ago, I asked if the offer was still open, then waited because I needed one last answer from Sam. I have it now.
Me: I'll call you Monday.
Send.
The phone goes facedown on my knee. Outside the window, Chicago smears into wet light as the car pulls away.