Chapter 10
Samantha
Iwoke up with the saxophone still in my head and Bella asleep on my couch.
She had arrived twelve minutes after my text, armed with a bottle of wine she had apparently been keeping for emergencies.
“Emotional emergencies,” she had clarified, kicking off her heels and settling into my couch like she had lived there for years. “Which this qualifies as.”
The debriefing had lasted two hours. She had wanted context. She had wanted the exact duration of the kiss.
“Four seconds? Four seconds? Samantha, that’s not a kiss. That’s a thesis statement.”
She had wanted the precise placement of his hand.
“Jaw? He went for the jaw? That’s not a hockey player move. That’s a romance-novel move, and I need to reassess my entire opinion of this man.”
She had wanted to know whether I could still taste the bourbon.
“I’m not answering that.”
“You just did.”
By midnight, the wine was gone, and Bella was performing a dramatic reenactment of the kiss using a throw pillow as Evan, which was both deeply insulting to Evan and the funniest thing I had ever witnessed from a woman who put criminals in prison for a living.
Now she was asleep with one arm flung over the armrest and her mouth slightly open, looking about as threatening as a golden retriever in a power suit.
I walked past her shoes and headed to the kitchen to prepare coffee.
The morning light came through the window soft and gold, the kind of light photographers called magic hour and normal people called too early. I stood at the counter and let it warm my face while the coffee machine did its work.
So. He kissed you. You kissed him back. Now came the harder part: walking into the rink in daylight.
Pretending would last about six minutes in a hockey room.
I poured the coffee. Took a sip. Burned my tongue.
That tracks.
Bella stirred on the couch, making a sound like a cat that had been personally inconvenienced by consciousness.
“Coffee,” she croaked. “Or I file charges.”
I brought her a mug. She sat up, hair defying several laws of physics, and took a sip with the dignified expression of a woman who had woken up on a friend’s couch and refused to be embarrassed about it.
“So,” she said. “Have you spiraled yet?”
“I don’t spiral.”
“You’re spiraling right now. I can see it happening behind your eyes. It’s like watching someone do long division in real time.”
“I’m thinking.”
“About him.”
“About work.”
“Liar.” She pointed at me with the mug. “You’re thinking about what it means. You’re thinking about whether he’s thinking about it. And you’re constructing an elaborate emotional argument for why the smart move is to pretend it never happened.”
I hate how well she knows me.
“Am I wrong?” Bella asked.
“No.”
“Then stop doing the math and let yourself feel it.” She set the mug down and stood, stretching like she owned my condo.
“You spent three years protecting yourself from Case Whitfield. That was necessary. But this isn’t Case.
This is a man who showed up to a rooftop bar because you asked him to, and then kissed you like he had been thinking about it for weeks. ”
Case Whitfield.
My body heard the name before my brain caught up. A hand on the back of my neck. The weight of a boulder pressed against my sternum. His voice close enough to count as breath.
You see the way no one else does, Sam. That’s why I needed those frames.
Two seconds. Then the kitchen was back. My coffee. My best friend in yesterday’s mascara.
“You don’t know that’s what…”
“Four seconds, Sam. Hand on your face. Bourbon on his breath. That man has been thinking about kissing you since the first time you pointed a camera at him.”
I stared at her. She stared back. Neither of us blinked.
And underneath all of it was the part I had not said out loud: wanting Evan was not abstract. It came with buses and bruises, trade rumors and Sandra’s clipboards, and a room full of men who would clock a change in his breathing before I finished denying it.
“I need to go to work,” I said.
“Yes, you do.” She grabbed her shoes and headed for the door, pausing at the threshold. “And when you see him, don’t you dare do that thing where you act so normal everyone within ten feet knows you’re lying.”
“I don’t do that.”
Bella slid her feet into her heels and shot me a look over her shoulder.
“Sam. You once told a barista you were ‘perfectly fine’ in the same voice people use to identify a body. That latte was complicated, and so are you.”
She paused before opening the door, as if the idea just struck her, though it had not.
“Also, Sunday at Mamá’s. My sisters, even Mack, the whole crew. She’s been asking about you, and I have no excuses left. She’ll be expecting real bakery bread.”
“Bella…”
“Not optional. And don’t bring sad grocery-store bread. Bring crusty bread that looks like it has survived something.”
“This feels aggressive for breakfast.”
“It’s family. Aggressive is the house style.”
Then she left. The door clicked shut behind her, and my condo settled into quiet.
I stood at the kitchen counter with my coffee and the very inconvenient realization that Isabela Rey was right about everything she had ever said to me and probably always would be.