They didn’t usually hang out at his house; they normally chose neutral ground somewhere.
She wanted to see Sam because she wanted to feel connected to somebody. She had just been thinking about how high stakes every single relationship in her life felt. And it felt ... affirming but also frightening to go and be with him now.
She was going anyway. When she pulled up to the house, she viciously banished any reservations that she had, because it was Sam who she had known her entire life.
But the scary thing was, she had become a version of herself she didn’t know at all. But that was a problem for another time. She just needed her friend. Her stability. Her comfort.
“That was quick.” He grinned at her. “You must be hungry.”
A heavy weight shifted in her chest, like a well was uncovered inside her.
He was so familiar, and yet in that moment, he also felt like something new. Or maybe it was that she was looking at him in a way she had never truly let herself do before.
Every time she had started down that path, she had put a stop to it. Because certain traumas were survivable. Like losing her mom, losing her grandma, even losing Ben felt surmountable. But life didn’t feel particularly possible without Sam.
Sam was her prized possession. Once she had realized how much he mattered, she had put him in a glass case, trying to preserve their feelings for each other in that exact same place. That safe spot. So they would never wear out or get tired. So that they would never become something unmanageable. So that they would never change.
He was a collectible. She wanted him, their relationship, to stay in this mint condition forever.
But the longing inside her didn’t allow for that.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just really want some chicken.”
“And to watch sweaty men tackle each other.”
“Naturally.”
As she always did when she went to Sam’s house, she felt a swelling of pride as she walked through the neat entryway and into his living room. There was a tray of chicken wings and bowls of chips, along with two opened beers. “I love that you have this house,” she said. “It’s miraculous. All things considered.”
“Yeah. It is.”
She grabbed a plate and piled it high before sitting at the farthest end of the couch from him. Keeping distance between their bodies seemed like the best practice.
This wasn’t usually a problem, but everything just felt unstable. And with all the instability, she worried, she really worried, she would do something to jostle this mint-condition friendship in its glass case. Because she was a ruiner. If one thing was true, it was that.
She drove everyone away from her. Eventually.
She took a breath, ready to apologize for last night. She owed him that, even though he wasn’t acting mad about it.
“My dad died.”
All her problems and her apology were momentarily forgotten. She stared at him, her heart squeezing tight. “Oh, I’m so sorry. When ... when?”
“A month or so ago, apparently, but the word just got back to me. Some half brother sent me a message. He was in jail.”
“Your half brother or your dad?”
“Both. But . . . yeah. Anyway.”
“Are you . . . okay?”
“Not really. But that’s true of anything concerning my dad. My family.”
“My whole shitty family is still alive,” she said. “At least as far as I know.”
The one thing she knew about Sam’s dad was that he had once gotten angry at Sam for drinking one of his beers and had beaten himwith a shoe. Also that he was a drug dealer, and so he was often in and out of jail.
His mom was a sex worker who was hooked on the drugs his dad was dealing. She also knew he loved his parents.
