I’m missing you
Sam: miss you too
spending time with mom and dad
ready to go back to normal
whatever that is
Tanner: see u in Denver
Sam: <3 you
Tanner: i love you
Sam: . . .
Sam typed outsame. Deleted it. Then typed it again. Then deleted it.
Gah. She wasn’t angry at Tanner.
Resigned, sure, not angry. She still loved him, too. And Ashley.
She’d made choices, and they’d made choices. What came next? That was the big question.
Tanner loved Sam’s songs. So Sam decided to share them with Courtney. Let Courtney decide for herself if Sam had the chops for the business. Courtney believed she did, and phoned almost daily with ideas about Sam’s potential career in music. How they’d position it. Label ideas and packaging. She really believed Sam could do it.
Sam would say she nudged her in that direction, but that would be a lie. Courtney was full on shoving her. Gently, and with a plan.
Tanner believed Sam could do it, too, though they hadn’t talked on the phone.
Sam asked for space to sort out this part of her life, and Tanner, forever the good guy he was, agreed to give it to her.
Now that she’d had her time to wallow and process, she was ready to move forward.
They’d texted about mundane life stuff, and her new influx of notoriety.
He seemed to wait for her to make the first move onto something more.
Tanner did ask if he could share some of her songs with Courtney and the guys. They loved them. Bax even messaged her to stop fucking around and embrace her genius.
That had made her laugh.
Linx assured Sam that if she could still hold the pitch—which she could—then she was the real deal.
They all barely knew her, and yet they cared.
The light knock on the bedroom door of Sam’s childhood home had her looking up from her cell.
“How’s my girl?” Mom asked, standing there with a glass of orange juice Sam already knew was for her. Mom seemed to have a continued concern over Sam’s Vitamin C intake. She set it on the nightstand but didn’t force the issue.
Sam gave the juice a pointed glance, then her mom. “I’m good, Mom.”
“Keeps your blood sugar up,” Mom said with that smile she didn’t seem to shake since Sam arrived home. “Hypoglycemia isn’t a joke.”
Sam would drink it. Because it was her mom and she adored her mom.
“Is Ashley coming over later?” Mom asked.
