“Mom’s okay,” Adam tells him, “but she had a little bit of a fall.”
Sam sets the pot on the coffee table. “What do you mean,a little bit of a fall?”
“She fainted in the parking lot after her doctor’s appointment.”
“Put her on the phone.”
“Sammy, I’m serious, she’s okay—”
“Put her on.”
There’s a rustling sound, and Adam is saying something Sam can’t make out. They still use the landline back at home. “I’m fine,” his mom says when she gets on. “I was flustered, that’s all. I saw a handsome doctor and just swooned away.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Of course it’s not,” she agrees. “How are you?”
Who cares how I am, Sam thinks. He feels like he’s about to cry. “I’m fine,” he says. “How do you feel now?”
“Well, honey, I have cancer.”
He makes a choked, phlegmy sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. He wants to go home and sit at the kitchen table and askher how to fix all his problems, up to and includingMy mom is sick. He wants to tell her about Fiona, bizarrely, though he has no idea what he’d say.
Instead he swallows hard. “I love you,” he tells her finally. “Put Adam back on.”
“I told you,” Adam says a moment later.
“Should I come home?” Sam asks.
“Can you afford to come home?” Adam replies, which is notOf course not, don’t worry about it, there’s plenty of time.
“Of course I can,” he lies. “Why do you keep talking to me like I’m broke?”
“I don’t know,” Adam says. “I don’t think you need to come, though. I’ll text you if anything changes.”
Sam hangs up and looks around at his ridiculous apartment, his expensive chair and douchey midcentury lamps and the signed Van Morrison guitar he bought whenThe Heart Surgeonfirst got a full-season order. He doesn’t even play the guitar. He doesn’t even like Van Morrison! He just bought it because he thought it was cool and that girls would want to talk about it when he brought them back here, which they generally do, although Fiona didn’t say anything about it either way.
Fuck, he doesn’t want to be thinking about Fiona right now.
He gets a beer from the fridge and dicks around on his computer for a while, trying to figure out how to list shit on eBay, then getting frustrated five minutes in and giving up. He has no idea why he’s so surprised that in the end she was exactly how all the memes made her out to be: moody and irrational and defensive,basically accusing him of messing around with her just to get her to do the reboot.
Youweremessing around with her to get her do the reboot, a tiny voice in his head reminds him, and he feels like the biggest jackass who ever lived.
That was why he went to see her at the print shop, maybe. But it wasn’t why he invited her out last night.
And it definitely wasn’t why he asked her to stay.
It doesn’t matter, Sam reminds himself, getting up and wandering into the kitchen.It’s over now.He opens a beer, drinking it down in three long, cold gulps without particularly tasting it. Reaches for another.
The next thing he knows it’s morning, and Erin is banging on the door of his apartment. His mouth tastes like it’s full of jockstraps. His head pounds. “Easy,” he says, swinging the door open.
Erin wrinkles her nose. “It smells like farts in here,” she says.
Sam scrubs a hand over his face. “Did you want something?”
“Don’t freak,” she says, and comes inside.
It’s the second time in twelve hours someone has led that way, and Sam doesn’t appreciate it one bit. He needs coffee. He needs water, and a bacon egg and cheese sandwich, and a starring role in an action-adventure blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg. “Why would I freak?”
