“Oh…” I say.
“I tried to call you about it, but you weren’t answering your phone. So I just went to the dinner. It wasn’t romantic, at all. And the moment we finished our burritos, we came to find you. Trust me, Julia doesn’t have any feelings for me. We’re just friends.”
Sam looks so serious, and so honest, and so fucking gorgeous, that all I can think about is how much I want to kiss him again. We kiss for a few more minutes, until a gunshot-like crack of thunder interrupts us and we both flinch.
“Man, that was loud,” I say.
“Did you know you can count how many miles away a storm is by counting between the lightning and thunder?” says Sam.
“Is that true? I thought that was one of those mythical things. Like Santa Claus. And the Tooth Fairy.”
“Yeah, right. Like the Tooth Fairy is a myth.”
At that moment, lightning whites out the sky, and our eyes lock on each other as we both count silently. Eleven seconds later, a deafening clap of thunder makes me jump, even though I knew it was coming.
“Eleven miles,” says Sam.
“It feels like Armageddon,” I say. “Not the Bruce Willis one. The biblical one. Hey, Sam?”
“Yes?”
“Kiss me again.”
We kiss more, stopping only when I start shivering so violently in my wet clothes that I can’t kiss anymore.
Sam gives me a T-shirt with RUTHERFORD written across the front and a pair of green Dartmouth sweatpants. I go to the bathroom to change, but my skin is so cold and drenched with rain that I’m shivering too hard to dress, so instead I decide to take a quick, very hot shower. I wash my hair with his roommate’s shampoo and conditioner (Aveda, nice) and wipe away the last inevitable residue of mascara and eyeliner with spit and toilet paper.
Then I look in the mirror. My lips are chapped and swollen, my chin is red and raw with stubble burn, my hair is wet and draggly, I’m not wearing any makeup, and I’m in boy’s clothes. I’m a total mess and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter, because Sam knows who I am no matter what I look like. And he loves me.
I am so happy right now.
I look down and see an open toiletry case. Sticking out the side is an ancient, battered panda toy. Sam’s Panda. I smile, thinking about the night he told me about Panda, on the walk back from the hospital after the dinner party. It feels like so long ago.
Holding Panda, I pad back to the sofa and pause for a second, gazing at Sam. He’s changed into dry jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and is stretched out along the long leather sofa, eyes closed, arms crossed behind his head, a happy smirk on his face. God, he’s gorgeous. (And may I just say, his guns are sick.)
Then lightning flashes around the night sky, and I count in my head. One … two … three … four … five …
“Five miles,” says Sam, opening his eyes.
We stare at each other for a few long, silent seconds.
“Is there room for two more?” I hold up Panda.
“Panda! Oh, my God, he’s been dying to meet you.”
I leap onto the sofa and attack him with kisses, feeling like I’m, literally, physically craving him, like I want to lick and nibble and taste his lips for hours, and even then I won’t be satiated. Kissing Sam again, after a period of just a few minutes, feels like coming home. Like every bit of his face and lips and neck and jaw belong to me.
“We should move Panda. He’s really too young to see this sort of thing,” murmurs Sam.
I grin and place Panda on the coffee table, facing away from us.
“We kiss extremely well together,” I murmur.
“I know. Thank God. Imagine if you’d done that whole I-love-you speech in the rain and then I’d discovered you were all tongue or something.”
This feels different from any make-out session I’ve ever had, and I think I know why. He’s not grinding an angry hard-on against me. Or frantically clawing at my top or grabbing my ass. I know he’s turned on, and I sure as hell am. But unlike every other dude I’ve ever been with, I don’t have the feeling that he’s racing against the clock in the endless battle to get laid.
“Why aren’t you pawing at me like an oversexed puppy?” I ask at one point.
“Uh … do you want me to paw at you like an oversexed puppy? And how sexed should puppies be, anyway?”
I laugh, and then think for a second. “I guess not. I’m enjoying the kissing.”
“Me too.” Sam frowns for a second, as if deciding whether to say anything. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to do … all kinds of things with you. And I will. But I always told myself that if I were ever lucky enough to kiss you, I’d enjoy it as long as I could. Before sex. Before anything else.”
“You’ve thought about kissing me? Since when?”
“Oh, Angie.” Sam looks at me and smiles. “Since always. Since you stubbed out your cigarette, called me a nautical Nazi Youth, and swaggered onto the speedboat.”
I grin. “That’s so…”
“Romantic?”
“Sad, actually. Really tragic. Like, what is this, a YA novel or something?”
Sam narrows his eyes in mock annoyance. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
And boom, we’re kissing again, but this time he’s trying to torture me. Kissing my neck slowly, so slowly, until I shiver uncontrollably, his bristles scratching my collarbone. Running the tip of his tongue behind my earlobe. Kissing just my top lip, then only my bottom lip, nibbling along my jaw.…
It’s the sexiest, most excruciatingly divine thing that’s ever happened to me, and I find myself gasping, genuinely gasping for air. At one point I actually moan, running my hands through his hair, until I realize I look and sound like something out of one of my goddamn romances, and I shut the hell up.
“Everything about you feels good,” Sam murmurs a little while later. “You’re just right.”
“That’s just what I was thinking about you,” I say.
“I wanted to kiss you so badly that night we were in your bed.… God, I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there, listening to you sleep-grunt all night like a baby hippo.”
“I do not sleep-grunt! And you nearly did kiss me! The next morning … we were snuggling.”
“We snuggled? God, and I slept through it? I will never forgive myself.” Sam kisses me again. “I love your bottom lip. It’s pouty and demanding, did you know that? It never wants to be left out of anything. But then, ah, your top lip, it’s all innocent and hopeful.… It’s so hard to choose my favorite.”
“You really shouldn’t play favorites. It’s not fair.”
“I know. And God knows what I’ll do when I get to your perfect breasts, it’ll be like a sexual Sophie’s Choice. Okay, are you hungry? Wait, what am I asking. Of course you are. Come on, let’s eat.”
We head to the kitchen, holding hands. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy. I feel like I must be glowing like the goddamn sun.
As Sam riffles through the big steel refrigerator, I take a moment to gaze out at the storm still raging outside, and around the apartment again. It’s not at all what I expected from a couple of twentysomething guys sharing an apartment in Fort Greene. I figured it’d be some studio dump, all beaten-up bedbuggy Ikea sofas and dust bunnies. You know, dirty magazines and empty toilet paper roll in the bathroom and a crusty bottle of ketchup in the fridge. But it’s serene, stylish, and very clean.
“This place is totally incredible,” I say. “Is your friend Pete gay?”
“No, he’s not, he just likes to do everything right,” says Sam. He looks over his shoulder at me and grins. “How do you feel about grilled cheese?”
“I feel amazing about it.”
Sam pulls out a loaf of sourdough bread, some cheddar cheese, and a huge block of butter. Then he takes a big frying pan out of a drawer and turns on the stove.
“This is going to blow your mind,” he says, so intensely that I crack up. “Laugh it up, sweetface. Just you wait. I showed Vic how to do this th
e other day. He said it was the best grilled cheese he’d ever had, and he’s been eating grilled cheese since before television was invented. First, we brown the butter.”
“You want to burn the butter?”
“Brown it. Over low heat. You culinary philistine.” Sam leans over to kiss me. “I take it back. You’re not a culinary philistine.” Then he looks at the pan, bubbling with three giant blobs of butter. “You need to keep stirring it while it bubbles till it turns brown and you can smell … ah. Perfect. Now, the bread.” He puts four slices in the pan. “We let them hang out in there for a while. Come here again.” I grin and lean in. God, I don’t think I will ever get tired of kissing him.
After a few minutes, Sam leans back and looks at the pan. “Now we salt them, sea salt only, of course, I know how you feel about sea salt. Add some nice thick slices of cheese to two of the slices, flip the other two over as lids, and put the lid on the pan to let the cheese melt.”
“And when do we kiss again?”
“We kiss … again … now.”
Being with Sam is so sexy and giggly and easy. It feels just the way you always hope kissing will feel when you’re growing up, you know? Effortless and intimate and romantic. It’s just right.
There’s a flash of lightning, and three seconds later the thunder claps louder than ever, like a gunshot going off, echoing around the apartment. I jump at the noise and pull Sam even closer to me.
“The storm is getting nearer,” I murmur into Sam’s lips.
“Are you scared?” he murmurs back.
“Right now, I’m not scared of anything.”
Sam shifts his body slightly so he’s leaning fully into me against the kitchen counter, and something changes. He’s so much taller than me that I can barely reach up and around his shoulders. Isn’t it so weird how guys are always taller than you think they’re going to be? Or maybe I just think I’m a lot taller than I really am. I don’t know … oh man, the kissing is good.
After a few minutes, I get the inevitable crick in my neck, and I hoist myself up so I’m sitting on the kitchen counter and we’re kissing face-to-face. With my body pressed hard against his, I wrap my legs around Sam’s waist and nuzzle his neck until I feel his breath coming out all shaky. I shiver inside with joy at the idea that I’m the person making him feel so excited.
Eventually, he can’t take it anymore and pulls me hard against him with a little growl, kissing me even more passionately. This is different kissing now, it’s kissing with intent, serious kissing, kissing that’s going somewhere, and I know where it’s going and I want it so much but I’m scared, though I don’t even know why, and I run my hands under his T-shirt and wrap my legs around him tighter and let myself imagine what it would be like to be naked with him, what this would be like if we were in bed, what it would be like to—
Then Sam pulls back and looks me in the eye.
“I really do love you, Angie James.”
“I really do love you, too, Sam Carter.”
“Now we eat.”
So, somehow, we peel ourselves apart, take our grilled cheese sandwiches, and head back to the sofa. Then we eat, sitting sideways with our legs up and layered over each other like two inward-facing bookends. I’m sure he’s feeling as tingly with desire and excitement as I am. Wanting someone this much is the sweetest torture in the world.
All I can think is, God, you’re gorgeous. You’re absolutely perfect and I love you and know you and trust you, inside and out.
And looking into his eyes, I know he’s thinking exactly the same thing.
I smile and take another bite of grilled cheese sandwich, as a crack of thunder makes the building shake again.
“This is the best thing I have ever tasted in my damn life.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Told ya.”
Suddenly, I have a flashback to eating grilled cheese sandwiches with a babysitter when I was a kid. My parents came home early from a party that night, fighting, and I heard my mother saying, “Angelique doesn’t need to know!” and my father replying, “You’re overreacting! She’s a tough little thing!” and my mother yelling, “No! I mean it!” She told me the next day about boarding school, so I figured the fight was about that.
But, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she found out I knew about his affair with his secretary. And didn’t want him to make me keep it a secret anymore.
When she told me about the divorce all those weeks ago, she said that I shouldn’t be surprised “given what he’s been up to over the years.” I figured he’d finally come clean about his affairs, or finally gotten busted. But maybe she always knew about them and was trying to protect me from having to know, too. Because a child shouldn’t have to keep secrets for—or from—her parents.
Boarding school was the first time I ran away from my problems. Though involuntary, it started a chain reaction of running away that never stopped. Something goes wrong, something’s not working, and I leave. Get out. Walk away. Run. Always.
And now I’m running away from Brooklyn.
Is it the right thing to do? Or is it just what I’ve programmed myself to do as a knee-jerk reaction to every situation? Do I even want to leave now that I’ve realized how I feel about Sam? And what does he want? All he’s talked about since I met him was getting out of here, getting on a yacht and sailing away. So what happens now? Are we a couple? I mean, we are, right? But I can’t ask him. We just said I love you, but we also only kissed for the first time like an hour ago. I don’t want to sound needy, or psycho, and most of all I don’t want to break the weird spell that seems to have been cast over us tonight. The we’re-the-only-people-in-the-universe spell.
I look back at Sam and find him staring at me, that familiar intense frown on his face.
“What are you thinking about?” I say.
“Just … happy we’re being open with each other, finally,” he says. “I feel like we have a lot to talk about. I need to tell you some things.”
“Sounds gnarly. Okay. I gotta take a leak.”
“Oh, wow. You are one classy lady.”
I flick him the bird, and he pulls me across the sofa and on top of him for more kisses, until we’re interrupted by another clap of thunder.
“Really. When you gotta go, you gotta go,” I say.
“Is that from Annie?”
“I love that you know that,” I say, and lean in to kiss him again before peeling myself off the sofa, as the apartment flashes white again and the walls practically shake with thunder. The storm must be nearly on top of us. Thank God we’re safe inside.
On my way back from the bathroom, I notice that my feet are cold. So I duck into the room Sam went into earlier to get me the T-shirt and sweatpants. It’s a large bedroom with a desk in one corner and a stack of clean clothes folded perfectly in a laundry basket on the bed. I pick a pair of socks from the top, and sit on the bed to put them on.
As I go to put the second sock on my foot, it drops to the floor, and when I bend down to pick it up I see a picture frame sticking out from under the bed. Probably a picture of Katie, his ex-girlfriend, I think to myself with a stab of jealousy.
I pull the frame out so I can take a good look at her, just as the thunder and lightning finally unite, shaking the entire building with their force.
You’ve gotta hand it to Mother Nature. She has a hell of a sense of timing.
Because it’s not Katie in the frame.
It’s a photo of Sam’s college graduation.
He’s standing next to an older couple who must be his parents. Sam looks younger, yet somehow tired and unhappy. His mom has a kind-but-sad face, very tan with a white-blond bob. And his dad has the same steady gray eyes as Sam, with silvery-white hair, and—
Wait a second.
Sam said he never graduated, he said his dad was dead. But that’s clearly his father; the similarity is undeniable.
Suddenly, I realize I know that guy. It’s the rich old guy that Cornelia was with at Minetta Tavern just a few ho
urs ago. Roger Rutherford.
What the hell?
Then I look at the T-shirt Sam gave me to wear. It says Rutherford. It’s his team T-shirt. Sam’s last name is Rutherford. His dad isn’t dead and buried in Ohio; Cornelia said he’s one of the richest men in New York. This is Sam’s penthouse apartment, not some mythical roommate, and Sam isn’t a poor college dropout from Ohio slumming it as a boat boy, borrowing clothes from his roommate and trying to get to Europe on the cheap. He’s another fucking spoiled New York rich kid with no sense of right or wrong.
And he’s been lying to me. Ever since we met.
CHAPTER 34
I walk out of the bedroom, still holding the picture, my hands shaking, my heart beating painfully, my chest aching with a pain that I know is only just beginning.
“Sam Rutherford.” My voice sounds surprisingly strong and calm.
Sam looks over and I hold up the picture, just as the entire building shakes again. Outside the wind is shrieking and the rain is violently hammering against the window. But all I can see is Sam.
Our eyes meet.
And I know it’s all true.
He lied. He lied about who he is, where he was from. He lied about everything.
After everything that’s happened to me, you’d think I’d have learned that what you see is almost never what you get. That when it comes to instincts, mine can’t be trusted. That I’m always, always wrong.
But I haven’t. And realizing it again breaks me.
“LIAR!”
I throw the picture frame as hard as I can so it breaks, splaying across the floor in pieces.
Sam leaps up from the sofa. “No, Angie—”
I need to get out of here. For once, running away is the right thing to do.
Tears running down my face, I grab my purse, pull on my cardigan, coat, and shoes over the sweatpants and T-shirt, and stuff my dress and scarf in my coat pockets. I feel so hot and sick, I might pass out. Sam is now standing in front of me, desperately trying to explain.
“Angie, wait, I didn’t, Angie! No, listen, you’re overreacting, please look at me, I didn’t want to talk about that stuff, about my family—”
Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel Page 21