and she….” Gloria took a deep breath and stopped.
“That’s why you don’t like me?” I asked, stunned.
“No. I don’t like you because I don’t like you.”
For some reason the honesty of it all made me laugh. Which, predictably, made her sniff and set down her vodka on the edge of the desk. She turned to Wes. “You got married without even telling me.”
“Mom.” Wes sighed. “There were reasons. We didn’t tell anyone—”
“I’m not anyone. I’m your mother.”
Wes nodded, taking that little jab on his chin, and she turned her mean eyes back my way. “Don’t you hurt her,” she said, and then she, too, was gone.
“What are you doing with my sister?” Wes asked into the long silence after his mother left, and I thought about saying something. I thought…about telling him. Not that something had happened but that something might.
Could.
Will.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Oh my God, what bullshit.” Wes laughed and I looked up at him. “Man, there has been something between you forever. I try to ignore it because I don’t like to think about it, but I’m not stupid. The first year you came back and you couldn’t tell us where you’d been, remember? That spring?”
“No.”
“Sure, buddy. You keep saying that. I’ll remember for you. Sophie had turned twenty and I saw your face when she got out of the truck.”
I looked away, out the dark window with snow melting against it.
“I saw your face,” Wes said. “And for once, and I mean once, I knew exactly what you were thinking.”
I remembered that moment, her getting out of the truck in a pair of cutoffs and a smile. The rest of it…
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Sophie? That day? What—”
“Knowing what I was thinking.” I said it and cringed. I wasn’t making sense and I shook my head. “Ignore me.”
Wes got up and walked around the desk, and I braced myself in case he was going to put a hand on my shoulder. But he didn’t. My oldest, dearest friend in the world understood my boundaries and leaned back against his desk.
“I like you two together,” he said, surprising me. “I always have. I mean, who doesn’t want his best friend at every family function? Christmas parties, backyard barbecues, raising our kids together—”
“Stop.”
“Sam. I’m telling you, you have my permission. My blessing. Whatever. But…”
“But?”
He stood up from the desk, pushed through that boundary. I tensed. “Right now, you’re hurting her. I don’t know what you did. Or what you’re doing. But you’re hurting her and you keep doing that and…you and me?”
I saw that kid on the basketball court, arguing with me about the free throw line. The one who told me not to steal from his family again. That he would help—anything I needed—but I had to ask.
“You and me will be over, Sam. I love you like a brother, but she’s my sister and you keep hurting her and you’re out in the cold.”
I was already out in the cold, I thought. Already living there. And this family… goddamn it, this family kept asking me in.
“I…tried not to hurt her,” I told him. Which was the truth and not the truth. The last few days in the warehouse, pushing her away, I’d hurt her.
“Well, you fucked it up. I suggest you figure your shit out. Quick. Because I don’t like seeing my sister look like she’s been punched in the gut.”
Neither did I.
“You wouldn’t…care?”
“The two of you?” Wes shook his head. “I’d love it. I mean…I don’t need details, but I’d love it. Wouldn’t you?”
15
Sophie
Who gets mad at a guy for saying something nice? For saying something really true? For defending me to my worst critic? My mom. Being angry at Sam didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t like I could stop it.
There was so much about Sam I just couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop being friends with him. I couldn’t stop loving him.
Which was why I was standing in the freezing cold in front of his truck in the parking lot, because I couldn’t do anything without him.
It didn’t take long. He’d had his coat and hat with him in Wes’s office and he wasn’t one to linger. Mom had left a few minutes ago, her big old Cadillac easing out of the parking lot, her taillights heading in the direction of home.
The lights were still on in Wes’s office, and as I watched, the lights blinked on in W.B.’s office and then blinked off, and then, suddenly, there was Sam, shoulders hunched against the wind and the