“This is unbelievable,” Sam goes on, but his tone is now a little less fit for the stage. “You two dislike each other with enough passion to…oh! Oh god! No! Not passion.” Sam scrubs his hands over his eyes. “I need to wipe that from my mind. But really? You want to be together? To annoy each other on a brand new level of annoyance? To have to make the rest of us around you witness all of it? Day in and day out?”
“I would think it would provide a good source of entertainment,” Stella says dryly.
At this, I cut in. “Yes, that’s what we want.” And I’m very serious as I say it. “To give it a try, at any rate.”
Sam shakes his head mournfully. “And when did you first come up with this notion?”
“Honestly, when you told me Daryl was out of the picture.” I glance a few feet over at Stella, who is content to let me do the explaining at the moment. “I had no notion of hope before that. Just what I noticed and what I knew I felt.”
I expect, if anything, this is what’s going to put Sam in the mood to chop my balls, but he just groans again. “Now I need to scrub my ears. I don’t want to know anything else.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t tell you. We just needed to come here and let you know we’re dating now, basically right at the start.”
“Basically?” Sam raises a brow, and he’s starting to look a little murderous.
“We don’t want you to be hurt,” Stella adds calmly and sweetly. “And we don’t want to have to sneak around like robbers in the night.”
Sam’s hands ball into fists, but not dangerous fists. Just disgusted fists. “Ugh. This is so wrong.”
“It might look that way, but we’re going slow. We want to give it time, give everyone time.”
“How very mature,” Sam snorts sarcastically. “Honesty is sometimes not the best policy.”
“Yes, it is,” Stella argues. “We’re going to have a family dinner soon with everyone to let them know the good news. And we promise to go slow and be fair and reasonable and rational instead of just blundering into things or taking off at freaking light speed because we know if we mess up, it will impact more than just us. It’s a pretty big burden, but it’s also a good motivation to take the time to think instead of getting mad as well as to apologize and work on things instead of just taking the easy route out and all that.”
Sam makes a face like Stella being rational and me being mature are two very new, doubtful concepts to him. His eyes waver back and forth between us. “How’s this for honesty?” he finally sighs. And he’s not pissed. Not at all.
He looks at me first. “God knows I love you, man, but if you hurt her, I won’t murder you or maim you, but I will make your life a special variety of hell. Think of elastic bands constantly snapping your naked balls kind of hell.” Then he looks at his sister next. “And Stella, god also knows I love you, but if you hurt him, well, I really hope you won’t.” He studies both of us now. “You’re my family, both of you. This is weird, but we’ll make it if we make it, and if we don’t, please don’t leave a bloody mess for the rest of us to attempt to clean up because that would seriously suck.”
Stella is blinking hard now, trying to banish tears, but she’s also smiling, which is good. “I’m happy, Sam. Probably for the first time ever with someone else. I won’t get into a big discussion on the mistakes I’ve made in the past or how much time I’ve wasted, but I will say that—”
“It’s been all of five seconds,” Sam protests, for once the rational one. “Don’t start saying you’re happy. Give it time. You have the rest of your lives for things to go wrong.”
Stella snorts, and even Sam has to work up a little smile for us. “That’s true,” she agrees. “But we’ll stick it out because that’s a choice. Anything that’s going to come ahead will be tough. Life is just kind of nasty that way, but hopefully, that’s a long way off. This is new, and I want it to work. I want to work to make it work, and so does Hal.”
“I do,” I chime in because I figure I should say something.
Sam shakes his head for the hundredth time. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. Both of you. It’s like…I don’t even know…”
“You’ll get used to it,” I assure him in my friendliest tone. I really hope that’s true.
Sam gives me his sternest look, but I know he’s going to break, and he eventually does. “Well, I always wanted Hal as a brother, so if you guys ever get married, I guess that will be officially true. I also can’t tell you he’s not a good guy when, for years, I’ve been telling you just how much of a good guy he truly is.”