The Lying Season (Seasons #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,39
hug and ask how he’d gone such a different direction than his brother. Sometimes, it amazed me that they were related.
The elevator opened on the bottom floor, and I nearly walked right into the person trying to enter before we were out.
I stopped in surprise. “Sam?”
He glanced up, and I could see that something was off about him. His hair was standing on end as if he’d been pulling it. His eyes looked lost. His shoulders were slumped forward. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen him look like that.
He frowned when he saw me and English. “Hey.” Then he stepped back to let us pass and entered the elevator.
“Going to see Court?”
“Yep,” he said tersely.
“Try to get him sober for us?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Court does what he wants.”
I tilted my head in confusion. What was his deal?
“Are you done?” he asked, nodding toward where I was still holding the door open. I hadn’t even realized.
“Uh, yeah. Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just a long week.”
“Oh…okay.”
Then the elevator door slowly closed in my face.
“Well, that was…something,” English said, sounding pissed.
“Yeah, something.”
“He was a total ass. I thought you’d said you two were friends.”
“I thought so too,” I said, stepping away from the elevator and following her toward the exit.
“See, this is what I’m saying,” English said. “You need to let Sam stay in the past. He’s a colleague and nothing more. All he does is make you miserable, guessing at his reactions.”
“I suppose.”
“One minute, he’s all concerned about your strawberry allergy, and the next, he’s all but pushing you out of the elevator to get away from you. You can do better.”
Everyone kept saying that.
And still, I hadn’t found anyone. Wasn’t sure I ever would.
16
Sam
“I think that’s everything,” Claire said from the bedroom.
I set down the carving knife on the table. I’d been whittling a piece of wood all week. It still looked indistinct to the casual observer, but I knew it was being shaped into a small, bushy owl. It just took time to get there.
“You’re finished packing?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She tipped her suitcase up onto its wheels and rolled it into the living room. “Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh?”
“You have everything in that one suitcase?”
This from the same girl who couldn’t go to visit her parents without a giant suitcase filled with shoes.
She shrugged. “I figure I’ll mostly be wearing work clothes. And the director said that we’ll do laundry while we’re there, so we don’t need as much as if we were on vacation.”
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving for twelve weeks.” I stood and stretched out my shoulders. “I feel like you auditioned for this so long ago that it just might never happen.”
She laughed softly, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. She’d been…weird all week. Distant. As if preparing herself to leave for Europe for twelve long weeks.
“Yeah. I can’t believe it’s here either,” she said.
“I wish I could go with you,” I told her. Even though it wasn’t true.
I wanted to go to Europe again. I’d backpacked with my brother the summer after college for a month, sleeping in hostels and living off of scraps. That had been a different time. Now, I couldn’t even think of Jake.
The truth was, I didn’t want to leave my job. I’d liked what I’d been doing back in North Carolina, and then the firm here had been…fine. But campaign work. It was a whole other beast. And I wasn’t prepared to give it up to follow Claire around with her ensemble. I’d already moved to New York for her. And now, she was leaving again.
“Me too,” she said a minute later.
“It’s going to be so strange, being here without you.”
She nodded and then looked away from me. “I kind of, um…wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About what?” I asked warily.
This wasn’t normal Claire behavior. She didn’t try to hide herself from me. She had no amount of subterfuge in her body. It was part of what had drawn me to her. She wasn’t like girls I’d dated before her. It was simple and uncomplicated. Something casual that had turned into more without interference or objection. It was what I’d wanted after Melissa.
But now…she didn’t seem like the Claire I knew at all.
“Well, I’m going to be gone for three months. I’ve never been to Europe before. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here. And I, uh…just think that maybe we should, um, take-some-time-apart,” she said in a rush.