“And you’re good with spending the holiday there?”
I wasn’t—not even close—but I needed to see my grandmother. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s just . . . ugh, I don’t know how to talk about this.”
“Start small. Explain why you don’t want to visit,” he said.
“I’ve told you—my family doesn’t like me,” I said. “And before you interrupt because I see you trying, please know that I’m not exaggerating. They refuse to accept that life exists beyond the family industrial complex.”
Sam chuckled and stirred his coffee. “I don’t know that I’m supposed to laugh at that, but you have me envisioning some kind of gyro factory run by children.”
“And that wouldn’t be inaccurate,” I said. “When my sister got married, she had fourteen bridesmaids, but I wasn’t one of them.”
“Shannon and Erin haven’t talked in—hmm.” He glanced at the ceiling. “I want to say six or seven years. Erin did some . . . some terrible things, and Shannon retaliated, and I often wonder whether there’s enough salt in the world to thaw that ice. But I know for a fact that Shannon would drop everything if Erin ever truly needed her, and Erin would do the same.”
“Yeah, no,” I laughed. “That isn’t even close to the case with my family. Sam, they’reembarrassedby me, and not just the stupid teenage marriage thing. I’m convinced they believe I play on subway platforms and survive on the loose change I earn there.”
“And you know that’s bullshit, right?” he asked. “Families don’t make for the most objective witnesses.”
“I just have to survive a few days,” I said. Sam folded the napkin in half, then folded it again, leaving it in a smooth rectangle on his thigh.
He gestured toward me, confused. “I still don’t understand why you don’t call it out. Put it all on the table.”
“Because it won’t solve anything, Sam. It’s just standard family dysfunction, and there’s no sense stirring up drama.”
“I’m all for conflict avoidance,” he said. “But I really believe you should try to work it out. You have two living parents, and it might not seem like a blessing when they’re openly intolerant of your choices, but I know there are a lot of things I’d say to mine if I could spend the holiday with them.”
The crumbs wiped from my fingers, I reached for another macaron. “I understand that. Really. But their passive rejection is easier to handle.”
He watched as I tasted the cookie. “I’m not trying to make it worse.”
“You know that saying, ‘you can never go home again’? There are times when I realize how frighteningly accurate it is. Whatever home once was, it can’t be that anymore, and it makes me wonder if it was ever there to start with.”
Sam nodded, his gaze still trained on my mouth. “There’s a Welsh word for that,” he said. He reached for his coffee, his expression moving between pain and pleasure with each sip. “You know, I’m trying to be mature and have a fucking conversation with you but you’re sitting there, licking that thing like it’s the head of my cock. I swear to you, I’m going blow in the next minute if you don’t stop.”
I glanced at the cookie and smiled. Sam and I enjoyed a lot of sex, but he stopped me every time I moved to taste his cock. There was always a mediocre excuse—he wanted to be inside me, he wanted to come on my breasts, he wanted to lick me—and he’d gone so far as to bind my wrists to the headboard after I tried to wake him up that way.
I had to wonder whether there was a bigger reason for the oral lockout. Maybe he only liked blowjobs when they came from random girls in semi-private settings. Or, despite his commentary, he wasn’t excited about getting head from me. I wanted to know, and if eating these cookies forced his hand on the topic, I was going to keep on licking.
“A Welsh word? I thought you only tossed around archaic English.”
“Hiraeth,” he said. “It’s the homesickness you feel for places of the past.”
“Yeah. That,” I said, and reached for the last cookie. “So now you just know random Welsh words?”
“I saw it a few years ago, one of those paintings with typography overlaid. It just summed up everything I was going through, and I contemplated getting it inked somewhere.”
I thought about all his other tattoos. The assortment of Celtic knots. The doves. Those shapes that related to some equation. The cluster of trees just below his waist. The Iron Man helmet under his watchband. “Really? You don’t have any other words.”
“Hmmm, yeah.” He handed his credit card to the waitress without looking at the bill. I’d stopped offering since he got so pissy whenever I reached for my wallet, but it niggled at all my righteous values. He’d also told me he appreciated my values, but he’d still be paying. “I haven’t found any I like better than shapes.”
Dragging my lip between my teeth, I nodded. I didn’t want him tattooing any homesickness. I didn’t care that it was a cool word. He was already carrying enough reminders of the things he’d lost. “Like I was saying. I’ve changed, I know that, and it makes sense that I can’t experience home the same way I did when I was younger, but it doesn’t make it any less sad.”
“You want me to go with you?” I sent him an aggravated glare. “What?”
“I don’t think bringing an Irish boy home with me is going to solve any of my family problems,” I said. Sam being successful and sexy and generally perfect wasn’t changing anything; my family’s issues were with me.
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I know,” I said, sighing. “And I’ll probably text you the entire time I’m gone and you’ll be trying to get rid of me again.”
