Falling into Forever (Falling into You) - By Lauren Abrams Page 0,33
giggle into the phone all night like teenagers. And tell my dear husband that if he drinks another one of my good bottles without you there, there will be hell to pay when I get home.”
“Yes, ma’am. Get some sleep.”
I hang up the phone and glance at Sam, who’s rolling his eyes in exasperation.
“Let me guess. She recommended Bordeaux?”
“Yep. Sure did.”
“Bordeaux sounds like a grown up drink, and I am most certainly not a grown up. Not yet,” he says, tousling my hair affectionately. “I say we go straight for the tequila shots.”
I laugh. “Maybe later, Sam. Maybe later.”
“Well, we need to dig in to the wine, at the very least. I know you’re a total lightweight, but I would hate to risk Marie’s wrath when she returned home to find all of her bottles of Bordeaux lined neatly in a row. I know it’s a sacrifice, but we should at least drink one bottle.”
“You get the wine, I’ll get the glasses.”
“You’re a guest!” He’s mock-horrified.
“I think I stopped being a guest a long time ago, even if I never make it to New York.”
He holds his hands up in surrender and disappears into the room behind the kitchen as I reach into the cabinet and pull out two long-stemmed glasses. When he comes out, he opens the bottle in one deft movement and pours the thick red liquid into the bottom of my glass. Feeling slightly ridiculous, I swirl it around and around.
“What the hell are you doing, Ellison?”
“Um…” I’m desperately trying to remember the right words for it, from that terrible road-trip movie about wine snobs. “Letting it breathe?”
He gives me a long sideways look. “Seriously?”
“Screw you! I might be a secret wine aficionado.”
I take a long gulp of the sticky liquid and almost spit it out. So, maybe not quite an aficionado. Sam merely laughs and beckons me back into the living room. There’s an old plaid chair in the corner, Marie’s only concession to Sam’s decorating prowess, and I plop onto it and throw my feet on the ottoman. The glass rests, heavy in my hand. I take another sip and there’s an immediate lightness in my head. I’ve never been a big drinker, but it’s been a hell of a day, and I can’t begrudge myself the little indulgence. I take another sip.
“Penny for your thoughts, Ellison.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of inflation?”
The look on Sam’s face tells me that he’s not letting me off the hook. His next words, however, do buy me some time to think, which I desperately need.
“How long can you stay?”
“I have to leave tomorrow morning.”
“If you stay another day, you can see Marie. There’s a big party for Evenstar tomorrow. I know your favorite things in life are champagne and making small talk, so it should be right up your alley.”
“Oh, you know me so well. I’d rather go water-skiing with alligators than go to that party.”
“Figured it was worth a shot.”
“I’m glad you’ve kept that fighting spirit, Sam, now that you’re a big-shot music man.”
“Shut up, Hallie.”
“Gladly.”
We lapse into a comfortable silence. He knows me well enough to realize that I need some time to think.
Sam and I became friends, real friends, the kind that don’t dress everything up in fancy words and the kind that demand answers instead of asking for them, during the first summer that I spent in New York with Chris after we got back from Prague. Chris was shooting a cop movie in Brooklyn and was on set for what felt like endless hours every day. Of course, I didn’t know a soul in the city besides Sophia Pearce, and I would rather make friends with the Central Park pigeons than call her. Luckily for me, after a very long night in which we drank too much champagne at one of his parties, Sam and I found ourselves singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” and dancing a little Irish jig on his rooftop. I had found a summer soul mate.
The friendship was eventually cemented over a love of early 90s hip-hop (Jurassic 5 was a personal favorite of both of ours) and long days spent wandering around the city and long nights tearing up the dance floor. Despite his connections to Sampson and Sophia and all of the bad memories of my first trip to New York, the friendship had survived, probably because of Ben, who had been Sam’s real soul mate. Marie and I used to take bets on how long they would sit up