He shrugs. She waits. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Dancing?’
‘Yes, I mean no, not specifically. I don’t like not being good at something.’
‘It’s an uncomfortable feeling,’ she says. ‘I get it. But isn’t it worth it, to learn something new and stretch yourself?’
He shrugs again. Lexi didn’t have him down as a shrugger. There’s something boyish about it. It should be unattractive, but... well, it isn’t.
‘I mean, like, how about when you took over the bookshop? That must have been a stretch.’
‘I was good at it,’ he says. ‘I am good at it. I learned the basics of business from my dad– it was drilled into us. And the people stuff, I can do that pretty well too. It was just learning about the book trade that I needed to do, and retaining information is one of my skills. So...’
‘You dad must have taught you well.’ Lexi keeps her voice neutral, encouraging even. Trying not to betray just what he thinks of the head of Dickens Media.
‘Not as well as he wishes,’ Sam says, with bitterness in his voice. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘You didn’t want to go into business with him?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I wanted to be a pianist. But that wasn’t deemed an acceptable ambition. Business is the only thing that matters in our family. Already by being a bookseller I’m testing the outer limits of that. It’s not exactly the most profitable business in the world.’
‘You wanted to be a pianist?’
‘Is that so surprising?’
Lexi shakes her head. ‘No. Apart from your terrible sense of rhythm, that is.’
‘That’s different,’ he says, the sullenness back in his voice. ‘Moving your feet and your whole body is very different to a feel for rhythm when you play the piano.’
‘I know. I was teasing.’
They step onto the Metro escalator, one behind another, which buys them an excuse for a couple of minutes of silence and gives Lexi a moment to process. As they stand on the platform, she’s grateful for the eleven-minute wait until the next Red Line train.
‘Has your dad made peace with you not working with him now?’
‘Not really, no.’
There’s a forcefulness and a weight in his words that makes Lexi take notice.
‘Do you get on okay with him otherwise?’
Sam snorts. ‘His business is his whole life. He doesn’t know how to have a relationship outside of it. He barely knows how to have a conversation that isn’t about it. And when I finally got up the courage to tell him that it wasn’t for me, it was like the biggest slap in the face to him. He’s never recovered from it, and neither has our relationship.’
This seems almost unbearably sad to Lexi. ‘Maybe if he saw your bookshop and how successful it is...’ She bites her lip to keep from adding the next part– how successfully it’s threatening other businesses, just like his dad’s business does.
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I’ve given up.’
‘That’s sad,’ Lexi says.
‘Can you believe it’s another seven minutes till this Metro shows up?’
Lexi laughs, although she knows a change of subject when she hears one. ‘Yes. It’s always like this. There’d be riots in the street if this happened in London.’
‘I thought the British were too polite for riots?’
‘You might be right there. There’s a reason we’ve never had a socialist revolution like the French.’
Lexi takes the hint and allows the change in subject. For the rest of the wait and the metro ride, they talk cultural differences and whether socialism is or isn’t a bad thing and why Americans are so afraid of free healthcare. But before she gets off at Metro Center to switch to the Blue Line she throws out one last line.
