“Yeah. Like… he felt it too.”
“Bet he did.”
“Why’d he go and ruin it?” Turning with a groan, I hide my head in my pillow. “This never happened,” I imitate, terribly. And then, “Please just go.Asshole couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Probably so he could go and kiss someone else against a wall.”
“Actually…”
“Actually, what?”
“You didn’t see the way he looked at you.”
The hopeful, excited little puppy inside me perks up its head. “How did he look at me?”
Sam stares up at the fabric I’ve draped across the ceiling to hide the fact that I’m literally living in an unfinished shed. “Okay. You remember that dog you guys had?”
“Butterscotch?”
“Yeah, you know how Otty would purposely drop salami on the floor, and he would like go crazy wolfing it down, and your dad would drag him away, kicking and fighting, and Butterscotch would look back with that yearning in his eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s how he looked.”
“Like I was salami?”
“Exactly like that. He’s Butterscotch. You are just-out-of-reach floor salami.”
“I’m floor salami?”
“Yep,” she says with a level of certainty that calms me immediately.
“Why does he have to be like that?”
“Men.” She shakes her head.
For a long moment, we lie side by side, flat on our backs, staring up at the intricate nips and folds of fabric. After a while, I turn and look at Sam’s profile, which is almost as familiar to me as my sisters’ or my dad’s. “Where’ve you been going, Sammy? All week?”
A pause.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
Hurt swamps me, literal pain in my stomach. “Why not?”
“You’ll be mad.”
I can’t think of a single thing she could say right now that would make me mad. Not one.
So, of course, she goes and proves me wrong.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Rae
“I’M SEEING A GUY,” Sam says. “And shit, Rae, I think he’s married.”
Oh. Oh, wow. Okay, there it is. Yep. I don’t like that. At all.
I sit up. “Why would you do that?”
