“Um, I don’t know.” I wanted to melt into the mattress and sleep for at least four hundred years.
Ellie and I used to host a big Thanksgiving dinner and invite stray students from Berklee. We both knew how much it sucked to be too poor—or, in my case, too disowned—to get home for the holidays, and we didn’t want anyone feeling that way.
It wasn’t anything elaborate, given that neither of us grew up in homes where we celebrated the Norman Rockwell version of Thanksgiving. My family thought turkey was best accompanied by pastitsio, souvlaki with tzatziki, and rice-stuffed grape leaves, and on more than a few occasions, substituted lamb for turkey altogether. Nonetheless, Ellie and I DVR’d every holiday episode on the Food Network, watched them repeatedly, and cobbled together some semblance of dinner for our guests.
This year, we passed the torch to a married couple who joined the faculty before Ellie went on tour. That was a big improvement over wrangling a raw turkey into submission.
“Studio time. Grading papers. Nothing special,” I yawned.
“My brother and his wife—”
He paused, glancing at me purposefully, and I swore he did it to let the word ‘wife’ simmer between us. Either he wanted me to know he hadn’t touched this lady, or he really liked that terminology. Couldn’t be sure.
“They’re having a thing at their place. You could come with me, if you wanted.” Sam grabbed the satiny duvet from where it was bunched on the edge of the mattress, and pulled it over us. “Shannon won’t be there, though. Apparently she’s going to a spa in the Southwest which seems really fucking strange, even for her.”
Snuggling closer to Sam, I ran my fingers through his chest hair, and pressed my ear against his heart. “I probably should have said something a long time ago,” I sighed. “But I don’t do families.”
“That’s good to know,” he said. “I’m only interested in you doing me, and the more I think about it, I would actually break my brothers’ arms if they got anywhere near you.”
“Charming, perv. Real charming.”
“Don’t even pretend you don’t love me,” he said, slapping my backside.
It was a playful snap, but exactly what I needed. There was some relief associated with his hand cracking across my skin, a calm pleasure I’d never tapped into before. I didn’t understand why I liked half the things he did to me, but I didn’t care.
“So what do you mean, you don’t do families?”
“I can’t—” Edgy impatience started swirling in my stomach, and I dragged my hands through my hair. I pushed away from Sam and grabbed his tank, pulling it over my head. “I’m not good with it all. I’m not the girl you bring home to meet the parents.”
I knew my mistake the second those words slipped off my tongue but before I could backtrack, Sam said, “You don’t have to worry about that with me.”
He’d shared details of his mother’s death over the past months, and it was obvious it left a huge, gaping, ugly scar on him, but he’d never talked about his father. Anytime I asked, Sam responded with, “He’s dead” and wouldn’t elaborate.
“I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” I folded my legs beneath me, staring at Sam from the other end of the bed. He looked so cozy and precious against my pillows, like he belonged there. “I’m terrible with families. A walking disaster.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re the person who seduces random people in elevators,” he said, pointing to himself. “You can convince otherwise polite, chaste men to get drunk and dance with you.” Another exaggerated gesture toward himself. “You know the life story of every barista in town. You persuade non-verbal children to play the piano, and play it well. You have more followers on your YouTube channel than the population of Wyoming. You aren’t terrible with anyone.”
“You wanted to be seduced,” I whispered. “It just took you two months to realize it.”
“You can bet your ass I wanted you seducing me,” he said. “Now get over here and tell me the real reason you don’t want to meet my deranged family.”
Sam tended toward slim, with long, lean muscles, but it never escaped my notice that he was strong, especially when he was dragging me across the bed like I was a doll. I kind of loved it.
Trapped beneath him with my hands pinned over my head, there was no easy out, and at this point, there was no reason to avoid his questions. “I’m not like you, Sam. I don’t understand big, involved families. I can’t even begin to explain my own.”
“Sunshine, I don’t understand them either. It’s more like love and tolerate,” he laughed.
“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” I said. “They’ve never tolerated me. Everything I do—moving away from home, going to Juilliard, getting married, getting divorced, being a ‘lowlife’ as my mother likes to put it—mortifies them. I’m a giant embarrassment, and unless I’m moving back to Jersey and waiting tables, they don’t want anything to do with me. I see them maybe once a year, and it’s only for funerals or weddings. I just don’t fit in with families.”
With my wrists locked in Sam’s grip, I couldn’t wipe the tears off my cheeks. I hadn’t cried about this in ages, but being there—vulnerable and exposed and completely safe—brought it all back to the surface.
“And what happens when you call them on that shit?” he asked, his thumb brushing my tears away.
An incredulous laugh burst from my throat. “That’s not how my family operates,” I said. “There’s plenty of the big, fat Greek family stereotype to go around, but we don’t have thoughtful conversations about feelings. They tell me they don’t approve, they make a lot of pained, pinched faces at me, and I do my own thing. That’s how it goes.”
His brows furrowed and he gave me a confused grimace. “You’ve never said ‘Mom, Dad, I’m really fucking talented and successful, and if you have a problem, that’s tough shit’?”
It was strange how he seemed much more comfortable vocalizing himself with his family than with me, and somehow the reverse was true for me. “No, Sam, not really.” I shrugged, my attention turning to the beautiful definition in his shoulders and biceps. “We sort of had that conversation when I decided to go to Juilliard and they weren’t digging that plan. They said it wouldn’t work out, that I wasn’t good enough for that level of study, that I was on my own. They didn’t see why I couldn’t go to the local college like everyone else. In their eyes, leaving was disrespectful to my family.”
