Chapter Twenty-Nine
Autumn
Sam zips his suitcase, stares at it for a second, then mutters something under his breath and heads back toward the bathroom. I watch from the edge of the bed.
"If you're looking for your toothbrush, you put it in the front pocket ten minutes ago."
He stops in the doorway and turns his head. "I wasn't looking for my toothbrush."
"You've checked the bathroom twice."
"I was making sure I didn't leave anything."
"Which is what people say when they're looking for the toothbrush they already packed."
Sam gives me a look before crossing back to the suitcase. He unzips the front pocket, finds the toothbrush exactly where I said it was and closes it again without comment.
I smile. "Anything you'd like to say?"
"Not particularly."
"That feels mature."
"I'm leaving the country today. Let me have some dignity."
"You lost that when you checked the shower."
"I left shampoo in there once."
"In Chicago."
"Still happened."
I laugh, but it doesn't last as long as it should.
His flight leaves in a few hours. The two extra days he asked for are over, and for the first time since he changed the ticket, there is nowhere else to move the ending. I have work waiting for me here. Sam has Vibes and Smoke waiting for him in Chicago. That was always the deal.
Knowing that doesn't make watching him pack easier.
Sam straightens and catches me looking at the suitcase. His hands go still against the handle for a moment before he leaves it and comes toward me.
He stops directly between my knees. "You told me to ask."
"I did."
"So I'm asking. Do you want me to go?"
The question catches me cleanly enough that I can't hide behind the practical answer.
"No," I tell him. "I don't want you to go. I also don't want you changing your flight again."
"I know that realistically I can't." His hands settle around my waist, warm through my shirt. "I just really don't want to leave you either. Especially when I just got you back into my arms."
The simple admission does more for me than reassurance would have.
I slide my hands up his forearms. "Good. I'd hate to be pathetic alone."
"You're handling it beautifully."
He leans down and kisses me, slow enough that I stop thinking about the airport for a while. When he pulls back, I keep hold of his shirt because letting go feels too much like starting the next part.
Sam rests his forehead against mine. "I'll see you at home."
He could have said Chicago. He could have said a few weeks. Instead, he says home like there is already a place where the two of us resume. I look at him for another second before my grip on his shirt loosens.
"Then you'd better remember the suitcase with the passport in it."
His thumb brushes behind my ear. "I have my passport. I wonder what would happen if I accidentally on purpose forgot it."
"That sounds suspiciously like another flight extension."
"Purely hypothetical."
"Get on the plane, Sam."
His mouth brushes mine. "Bossy."
"You like me that way."
"I really fucking do."
Sam kisses me again, shorter this time, then pulls back before either of us can turn it into a reason for him to miss the flight. He picks up the suitcase and checks the pocket of his jacket.
I point at him. "That better be the passport."
"It is."
"Good. Call me when you land."
His eyes come back to mine. "I was going to."
There is no careful if you're awake attached to it, no little escape hatch that makes wanting contact sound optional.
I nod. "I'll answer."
Sam leaves a few minutes later.
I don't stand at the window and watch the car disappear. I don't crawl back into bed and turn the morning into a tragedy. I shower, get dressed and go to work with the memory of his hands still warm on my skin.
By lunch, I fucking miss him enough to resent the entire Atlantic Ocean on principle.
The first time Sam calls me from Smoke, he is arguing with the front door.
The video appears sideways, then briefly shows me the pavement before his face fills the screen.
"You're very good at this. It's like video chatting with a seventy-five-year-old man."
"Seriously, Autumn. Okay, hold on." Sam wedges his shoulder against the door while trying to keep hold of the phone, and the picture jerks hard enough to give me an excellent view of one boot and approximately six inches of Chicago sidewalk.
"This is riveting."
"This fucking thing sticks."
"You bought it."
"I bought the building. I didn't personally select the shitty lock."
The door finally gives, and the camera swings into the empty room. Dust sheets cover part of the floor. Tools and material samples are stacked near one wall, and enough has been stripped away that the place looks rougher than when he first showed it to me.
Then a flash of brass catches the light near the future bar.
"Wait. Go back."
Sam stops walking. "What did you see?"
"By the wall. Next to the wood samples."
He turns the phone, and there it is, propped against a box among the tools and construction dust. The brass plate I had fabricated for him.
It looks different, and I realize why once I lean a little closer to the screen.
The space after EST. isn't empty anymore.
"You added the year."
Sam angles the camera toward it, and his thumb brushes across the lower edge of the brass. "Figured it was time."
There are fingerprints across the plate now and a streak of dust near one corner. It's there, inside Smoke, in the middle of the torn-up floor and exposed walls, exactly where it was always supposed to end up.
I smile. "First thing you brought over?"
"First thing."
I look beyond it toward the torn-up floor. "Show me the tile."
Sam turns the camera back toward himself, his mouth already pulling sideways. "Nice to see you too."
"Mmm, your beard looks yummy."
He laughs and turns the phone away from himself.
The original tile is exposed in one section near the back, worn and uneven but still beautiful beneath the construction dust. Sam crouches so I can see it better, then walks me toward the bar wall while explaining what the contractor found when they opened part of it.
He isn't giving me a presentation. He gets distracted halfway through explaining the electrical work because one of the stools he ordered has arrived and immediately decides he hates it. A minute later, I am staring at two slabs of wood while he demands an opinion on the future bar top.
"You've already decided," I tell him.
"I have a preference."
"That means you've decided."
Sam angles the phone toward the darker sample. "I like this one."
"Then why are you asking me?"
His attention lifts from the wood to the screen. "Because I want to know which one will look best with you sitting at it with your laptop."
He says it so casually that I almost miss what it costs him.
I look at both samples again. "The lighter one."
His eyebrows pull together.
"You hate my answer."
"I don't hate it."
Sam laughs and props the phone against something so he can stand both samples upright. "Tell me why."
So I do, and he listens.
We spend another twenty minutes arguing about wood, stools and a light fixture so ugly I become offended that anyone involved in the project allowed it through the door. When we hang up, I realize I have seen almost every unfinished part of Smoke.
Sam didn't need help. He wanted me in it. That starts happening everywhere.
Over the next few weeks, I get photographs with almost no context: Bex behind the bar holding a clipboard and looking furious.
A section of original trim Sam found under newer molding.
Dinner on his kitchen counter with a message admitting he remembered to eat before midnight.
Another dinner arrives well after midnight with an admission that he did not.
He tells me when Bex takes over Sundays and then, after several days, finally admits she runs them better than he does.
One morning, I get to my desk and find a message Sam sent while Chicago was still asleep.
Sam: Couldn't sleep. Wanted to talk to you, but it's morning there and the middle of the night here. Call me when you can.
I call immediately.
He answers with his voice rough from exhaustion. I tuck the phone between my shoulder and ear while closing my office door. "What kept you up?"
Sam is quiet long enough that I can hear him moving around on the other end. "Smoke. Vibes. You. Pick one."
"I have time for all three."
He laughs, tired and rough. I sit down and pull one knee beneath me. "Tell me about Smoke."
He does, but the business isn't really the problem. The permits are irritating, the timeline has moved, and one contractor is making him homicidal, but after a few minutes Sam goes quiet again.
When he speaks, his voice loses the edge it had while talking about construction. "I just miss you."
My hand stills on the desk. "I miss you too, Sam."
"The apartment feels weird without you."
"That is because I'm not there correcting everything you've done wrong with it."
"Your shoes are still under my bed."
I smile despite myself. "You could move them."
"I don't want to."
We talk until he starts sounding more tired than awake. Before we hang up, he asks about my day, and I tell him what I'm walking into without pretending everything is handled before it happens. I am still figuring out my half of this.
The distance teaches us other things too.
The first time it turns useful, it is just after nine in London and so late in Chicago that Sam has only been upstairs from closing for twenty minutes.
I am still in bed with coffee because my first meeting is mercifully late.
Rain ticks against the flat windows, the radiator knocks like somebody trapped inside it, and Sam's face appears on my screen with damp hair and exhaustion sitting low around his eyes.
He looks at me for all of three seconds before his attention drops. "Is that my shirt?"
I look down at the black button-down hanging open over my tank top. It made the trip in my suitcase for reasons I had declined to examine. "Possession gets complicated once you cross international borders."
Sam leans back against his headboard. "You stole it."