I was scared of what he might say, with an expression like that. I was scared of whatImight say. So I ran my hands up his arms, my nails up his back, my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck as I pulled him toward me. At the same time, I lifted my hips, inviting him to move with me. The rhythm was exquisitely slow at first, then built until the wrought iron headboard of my bed was banging against the wall.
“Right there,” I gasped, reaching up to grasp two bars of the headboard as Sam thrust into me. “Right there, Sam, oh god.”
This time when I came, it was gentler than before, rollingthrough my body like a wave. I could tell Sam was close, and I clenched around him, urging him to keep going, to fuck me until we were both strung out from it. I watched his face as he came, the way his jaw clenched and then went slack, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped air, as though he’d forgotten how to breathe for a second. I’d never done that before—watched a partner climax during sex. It had never even occurred to me to open my eyes. But with Sam, I wanted to pay attention.
He took care of the condom and then climbed back into bed, our bodies nestled close on the narrow twin mattress.
“I think we may have broken it,” I said, reaching up to rattle the headboard.
“It seems pretty solid.”
“Well, we definitely embarrassed it at least. This was my childhood bed.”
“I don’t think furniture stands in any kind of judgment. It’s inert.”
I smiled at that. Sam’s head was on my chest, and I ran my fingers through his soft hair. “I spent a lot of time in this bed daydreaming about what my life was going to be like.”
He was quiet for a moment, his breath so even on my skin that I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep. But then he said, “What did you imagine it would be?”
“I thought maybe I’d be a writer,” I said. “Or an editor. Something with books. I wanted to live in a big city, in a cool apartment like they always have on TV. One with a view of the skyline and a quirky doorman. Oh, and a cat. I always thought I’d have a cat, actually, although in my daydream my cat was more of a purring lap animal than a feral street beast.”
“Glad to see you’ve recovered from almost losing Lenore,” Sam said dryly. “What else?”
“It all sounds so generic now. It was probably the same thing every kid dreams of because we all watched the same movies. I thought I’d lose all my baby fat and turn from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. I thought that would make my mom like me more, and we’d grow up to be that mother-daughter pair who drink mimosas together at Sunday brunch.”
I swallowed. “I always imagined that I’d get at least one moment when my dad would be really proud of me, and I’d be able to tell. He never would’ve said it—that wasn’t his style—but just some moment where Iknew.”
And now I would never have that. I hadn’t realized what a different kind of grief that was—the loss of all the potential moments that would never be, not just the past moments that already were. I’d focused so hard on that past, where my relationship with my dad had been so complicated, but forgotten that I used to dream of a day when it wouldn’t be that way.
“Did he ever mention me?”
I hadn’t known I was going to ask the question until it was out of my mouth. It was so raw, there was no hiding it, and I immediately wanted to snatch it back. Of course my father wouldn’t have mentioned me, a daughter he barely spoke to, a daughter he’d probably written off.
“Your dad wasn’t a big talker,” Sam said, his voice a rumble against my chest. “As you know. But I feel like I could tell, from the way he checked his mail, that he was super proud.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Could not.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “You should’ve seen it. He’d do thisshuffle down the driveway—itscreamedthat his daughter was about to become a doctor, he was obnoxious about it, to tell you the truth—and then he’d open the mailbox and peer inside. Then he’d pull out the envelopes and start sorting them like he was reading through the paper you presented at the pop culture conference last year, the one about masculinity and monstrosity inThe Shining—”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “Wait, how—?”
“I Googled you,” Sam said. “Anyway, then he’d amble back up the driveway, his gait making it clear to the whole neighborhood that his daughter was strong and empathetic, smart and hilarious, and gorgeous. When he chucked all the mail directly in his outside garbage can, his regret was painfully obvious, that he couldn’t find a way to tell you all those things himself.”
My throat burned as I said, “All from a walk to the mailbox, huh?”
“He did it every day,” Sam said. “What can I say, I’m observant.”
I snuggled into him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “You’re sweet,” I said.
“Sweet on you.”
I groaned at the cheesiness of that line, giving him a playful swat. But the truth was that it wormed its way into my heart regardless. It made me dream, for one night at least, of something I hadn’t even dared to as a young girl lying in this same bed—that all the pink heart valentine, sappy love song stuff might be real, and be something I could have.
TWENTY-TWO
THE MORNING OFConner’s proposal dawned with about sixty-eight texts from Conner about the logistics, when I was going to pick up Shani to take her to lunch, what time we had to be at the park, even what I should wear. (I know you have a lot of goth shit, but maybe for the pictures a color???)
It hadn’t even occurred to me thatIneeded to be in any pictures. The eventual wedding was going to be fun.