“Want some more?”Sam asks.
“I’d better not.”
He takes my plate.When I hold up the beer and give it a little wiggle, he takes that too and says, “Nope,” and he sounds way too fucking satisfied with himself.
But maybe it’s a good thing, because all of a sudden I’m tired.Sammy is splashing around in the kitchen, and I close my eyes for a minute.
It’s like snapping off a light.
The dreams aren’t fully formed at first.The kitchen.The blare of the radio.Someone is shouting a long way off.There were lots of nights like this, but in the dream, there’s no confusion.It’sthatnight.It’s the end.
I jerk awake.
Blurred sensations.Disorientation.The dark.The smell of old upholstery.A hand is brushing hair off my forehead, and someone is saying, “It’s just a dream.”
Things come together.My eyes focus.A living room.Sam’s living room, although the lights are off, and there’s only a glow filtering in from somewhere farther back in the house.And then the rest of the night slots into place: walk-ins at WISP, and the boy who hadn’t given me his real name, and Sam bringing me here.
Some part of me thinks I should leave.Some part of me still wants to find the easiest, quickest fuck.But those are old reflexes.I close my eyes again and breathe through them as Sam keeps running his hand through my hair.Every inch of me still feels like a raw nerve, stimulated to the point of oversensitivity.Like the head of your dick after you nut.
“I know you’re awake if you’re smiling,” Sam says.
“I’m awake.”But I don’t open my eyes yet.The dream is still too close, so I let myself breathe.He didn’t kill her.That was then.This is now.Sam is still running his fingers through my hair, and it’s almost too much.Almost.
And because the dream feels like part of this world right now, because everything runs together, there’s this way nothing feels real, and I might be a kid in high school again, or I might be nobody at all, and I roll and press my face into his leg.He tenses, but he doesn’t pull away.The contact is grounding.His shorts smell like detergent, and under that is the scent of a clean male body, warm, and after a moment, he starts moving his hand again.
“You sounded like you were having a nightmare,” Sam finally says.
I nod into his thigh.
“Want to talk about it?”
I shake my head.It’s nice here.Nice to be touched.Nice to be with Sam, which tells you how upside-down things have gotten.And there’s still that sense that none of this is real, like I might wake up from this too.Which means nothing I do matters.
That’s a dangerous thought.
I sit up.Sam lets his hand fall away, but he’s still sitting on the sofa, and he looks at me like he’s trying to guess what I’m going to do.A quick glance around tells me that even though it only felt like I closed my eyes for a few moments, it’s been longer—the clock reads half-past one, and the light from the hall is coming from Sammy’s bedroom.He must have gone back there when I fell asleep.Until I started—what?Screaming in my sleep?
The embarrassment will come tomorrow.Right now, everything is still outside me.
“I should go,” I say.
Sam nods.But he says, “There’s a sofa sleeper in the basement.”
“No, I should go.”
But I don’t stand.
And Sam says, “Maybe that’s not a good idea.Maybe you need…”
He doesn’t say what I need.Maybe he doesn’t know.I sure as fuck don’t.
I push myself up, and Sam follows me with his eyes.“Thanks.I was—tonight was fucked up.”I stop, but all I can say is “Thanks.”
When I head for the door, Sam trails after me.The night has the cold taste of magnolia flowers, and goose bumps break out along my skin.I’m holding the screen door open with my arm, and I look back, and Sam’s right there.There’s something in his face, and he moves closer.Moves so close, in fact, that he’s in my space now, and he’s opening and closing his hands at his sides, and he’s barefoot, which I hadn’t noticed until now, and he’s shifting his weight in little micro-movements that I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t one big raw nerve, everything turned up to one hundred.
I haven’t let myself think about it too much until now.How much time we spend talking.How much time we spendtogether.And then the other night at the Wrox-Out mixer, and all the ways, literally and figuratively, that Sammy had showed up for me.How fun it had been to cut loose, even if it was only for a few moments, even if it was with Robin, and I knew he was asking for more than I could give him.How good it had felt to stop trying so hard to be someone else.Someone better.And then what it had felt like when Sam had cut in, and his hands on my hips, and the fact that, somehow, it had been even easier with him.So easy it was like it was meant to be.And the look on his face, like now.Like he knew what he wanted.He just didn’t know how to do it.
A red light is going off somewhere, flashing a warning.But tonight, it’s too far away.
