“You needed them.” Lil shrugged as if it hadn’t hurt to lose them. “I had Ellie.” It was a sliver of the truth. And besides, Ellie had been great. She wasn’t an original member of their pack in college. None of them had even met Ellie until after college when she was working her way through college at Rusty’s, the bar they frequented just about every weekend.
“Okay,” Sam conceded. “You talk to them and we’ll make plans to get you a real tree.” He smiled like he had just won a long forgotten battle.
Damn. And here she thought the subject had been dropped.
Lil sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You want to help me by talking to Kane and Abe, right?” Lil nodded. “Well, I want to help me by doing something that seems normal. Going and picking out a tree seems normal. And before you try and reason your way out of it, it only seems right to go with you.” He gave her those sad puppy dog eyes she never said no to. “Please?”
Lil closed her eyes, hoping the moment of darkness would bring some sort of resolve to her mind. All it brought on were bad thoughts of the last time she had gone tree shopping. The one and only time she had gone without Sam. Instead of coming home with a tree, she'd come home with Toby Grayson. He wasn’t Sam. He was far from it. He was scruffy and slightly dangerous. He was a diversion. An escape from the hell she was going through. He was a shoulder to cry on. He was a one-night stand she regretted ever since.
She had to buck up and do this for him. She told him she’d help and now he was asking. Besides, what were the chances Toby would even be there? Slim to none, she figured.
She opened her eyes and nodded at him. “All right, we’ll go.”
Sam beamed at her. His smile made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Great! Is Wednesday good for you?”
Lil laughed. “Been thinking hard on this, huh?”
Sam blushed. It was cute and endearing and really, really sweet. “I just thought that it wasn’t too soon for us to see each other again, yet it wasn’t next weekend either.”
“Wednesday is good, Sam. I was only teasing. Do you want my cell number in case something comes up?”
“Already have it,” he said.
Lil straightened. Could that mean he had saved her number after all this time?
Sam leaned back and pulled his phone out of his front pocket. “Good thing technology hasn’t changed much in the last three years. At least I know how to work an iPhone.”
Lil let out a nervous laugh. Her mind was still reeling from the fact that he had her number.
“I called the number I have in my phone for you. Your phone is sitting on the bar so I heard it vibrating when I called. So when you see a missed call from a number you don’t recognize it’s me.”
Lil’s heart soared. He had kept her number? After all this time, he still had her programmed into his phone? Lil had so many questions, none of which he could answer. Yet.
“Oh,” Sam said, holding his phone. Lil could hear the vibrating sounds of the device he held in his hands. “It’s Chloe,” he said.
“You should take that. I’m sure she’s worried.”
Lil stood from the couch, stepping past Sam to give him some privacy. “I’ll give you some time,” she said. “You want me to take your coffee cup?”
“Lil,” Sam said, lightly touching her wrist as she reached for his mug. His expression was sad, his eyes pleading with her.
“Sam, take the call. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Lil tried not to listen to what Sam was saying. It wasn’t that hard considering he did a lot of humming and giving one-word answers.
~~~~
Lil walked back to the living room where Sam stood by the door, gathering his coat.
“She’s not coming home?” Lil asked him.
Sam wouldn’t meet her eyes. He shrugged.
“Sam?” Lil’s voice was firm “Can I just say that for someone who loves you so much she sure has some nerve to leave you to deal with this on your own.” Her words wavered with an icy chill.
“Is it wrong that I don’t care?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
“Lil, I don’t know her. She can’t help. All she can do is get in the way.”
“Did you tell her to leave?”
He shook his head no. “I didn’t tell her anything. She told me she was leaving. I just said, okay.”
Lil’s body slumped. “Sam,” she practically whined. “How do you expect to marry her in what, almost two weeks, if she isn’t here to see you get better?”
“I only have the memories in my head to work with, Lil. She isn’t in them. If I don’t remember I’m not going to marry her. If I do, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”
Lil wanted to throw something at him. This is what she feared. Him not remembering and him remembering. If he didn’t remember did he think that they would rekindle their relationship? Would he expect that? And if he did remember, would he hurt her all over again?
Lil was at a fork in the road and she wasn’t sure which was going to be the easiest path. It seemed whatever direction she went, someone was going to get hurt. The odds were stacked against her.
“I’m going to take off,” Sam said. “I think a good night’s rest has helped me clear my head.”
“What are you going to do?” Lil asked. She shouldn’t wonder, she shouldn’t care, but she couldn’t help but feel the way she did. She wanted to make sure he was going to be okay. That he wasn’t going to drive around town moping.
“I’m going to head to the condo and shower. Maybe try and make sense of things around there. Then I might go and visit my dad.”
Family was good. Paul would be able to handle this ten times better than Lil could.
“Okay,” she said. “Drive safe. The roads look nasty.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, leaning into her only to pull back. He
was going to kiss her and all Lil would have done would have been to stand there and let him.
Dodging that awkward bullet, Lil nodded. She saw that he made it to his car in one piece and drive away with no problems. The cold air drifted into her house so she shut the door before she caught a cold. The blanket and the pillow she had lent him were neatly folded on the recliner. She’d put those away later, she told herself.
Her cell was where she had left it the night before. On the kitchen bar just like Sam had said. And true to his word, she had one missed call. The number would be familiar to her, she knew this. As she looked at her missed calls, there at the top of the list was a name she thought she’d never see again. Even after all this time, she hadn’t been able to completely delete him out of her life.
CHAPTER 10
After Sam left Lil’s house she decided to go into work and wrap up a few last minute projects she had been working on. With Christmas nearly a week away, people were depending on her to have their pictures ready for the holidays. Nothing screamed Merry Christmas quite like a family picture. Several of Lil’s clients had called for extra prints as gifts for those relatives that decided to come to town at the last minute, or those they had left off of their shopping lists.
It was quiet in the office without Ellie around. Lil was able to be more productive without her pecking away on her keyboard or gossiping about people they once knew.
Lil typically avoided answering phone calls when she wasn’t working under normal business hours. So when her cell phone rang she considered ignoring the call without even looking to see who it was. But then she thought of Sam and how he had her number and what it would be like to see his picture flash across her screen.
Lil picked up the phone and her gut clenched. She felt stupid for getting her hopes up that it was Sam. Instead, the photo of Ellie and Lil at the beach stared at her. She knew why Ellie was calling and it was useless to postpone the call. She had to face the inquisition sooner, rather than later.
“Hello, dear friend,” she said in greeting.
“My, you sound positively chipper today!” Lil could only pic
ture the smile Ellie had on her face.
“If you call waking up and being alive reasons to be chipper, then consider me downright giddy.”
Ellie laughed. “Oh, someone has something to tell. Let me guess, Sam stayed the night and the two of you rekindled that old spark and shot flames into the night sky?”
Now it was Lil’s turn to laugh. “You’re right on one account.”
Ellie gasped loudly in Lil’s ear. “Oh my gosh! You slept with him?”
“Good God, Ellie. No!”
“He stayed the night? Why? If you didn’t get it on like Donkey Kong, what was the point?”
Lil rolled her eyes. Leave it to her best friend to be crass.
“Because it was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping.”
“Yeah, I could see bags under his eyes last night. Poor guy looked like hell. But on that same note, he’s still hot as sin.”
Lil didn’t need reminding. “You should have seen him this morning,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Damn. Lil should have kept her mouth shut and those thoughts in her head where they needed to stay. “You had wild monkey sex with him this morning? You go girl! The two of you always had undeniable chemistry.”
“Ellie, remind me again why I kept you over Kane and Abe?”
“Because I have better fashion sense than Kane and I’m not as big of a bitch as Abe? Spill the details. What happened this morning? That sounds like the juicy part. We’ll get to last night in a minute.”
Lil sighed. Images of Sam shirtless in her kitchen still danced in her head.
“He was walking around half naked in my kitchen, helping himself to coffee.”
“Oh my! Is he still ripped?”
“You have no idea.”
“Shut up! Are you serious? Man. I hate that I missed that show.”
How wrong was it of Lil to hope for a repeat performance? No. She would not go there. No more slumber parties with the ex-boyfriend.
“Did you talk to him? Don’t leave me in the dark. I’m dying, do you understand me? Zach had to tie me to the bed last night so I wouldn’t come spy on you.”
Lil relayed the conversation with Sam, the phone call with Chloe, and how they were going to shop for a Christmas tree on Wednesday night.
“You sure you’re ready to go back there? Did you tell him about Toby?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I didn’t tell him. How does that conversation even begin? ‘So, um, Sam listen, I’m not really sure it’s the best idea that we go to Grayson’s. See, I sorta slept with Toby not long after you up and left me, and I really don’t want to run into him again. Oh, you remember Toby. Mr. Grayson’s creepy great nephew? The one who walked around with his mud flap hat on? The same one that we were sure owned more flannel than Abe?’ Yeah, Ellie, not a topic I wanted to broach right then.”
“But if you see him there don’t you think it’ll be weird and that Sam will catch on? The guy had a sixth sense when it came to other guys checking you out.”
Lil remembered. Sam wasn’t the kind of person who started trouble if a guy looked at Lil like he wanted to test drive her, but he could sure pick up on them the instant their eyes roamed over her body. Toby Grayson was no exception.
“I’m doing what he’s asked of me. I told him I’d help and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Lil’s first plan of action in helping Sam was going to take place tomorrow. She knew where she could find Kane and Abe on a Sunday, a week before Christmas.
“Besides, I have my own idea on how to help him.”
“Lil,” Ellie said in a dead serious tone. “Opening up your bedroom door will not only help him; it’ll help you too.”
“Get off me and Sam having a sex for one second.” Lil shook her head. “Listen, I have a mission tomorrow.”
“Oh!” Ellie’s excitement spread through the phone. Lil herself was actually excited about tracking down the boys. “What is it? Can I help? Is it a mission that involves super tight black pants and shirts? I can really rock some black, Lil.”
“No,” Lil said laughing. “It’s a one woman job. Sorry. Besides, it’s something I need to do for me, just as much as I need to do it for Sam.”
“Uh-huh,” Ellie said. “I’m telling you, you’re going to get laid.”
~~~~
Lil found herself at The Shoppes of the Village early Sunday morning, Fair Haven’s attempt at a shopping mall without being too commercial.
It was snowing outside and there was something old fashioned about walking down the cobblestone streets from boutique to boutique with the rest of the holiday revelers.
The Shoppe’s were encased in a U shaped center. In the middle of it all was a giant twenty-foot Christmas tree decorated to the nines with ornaments and lights. Bows hung from the branches and a beautiful five-pointed star adorned the top.
The first place anyone passed as they entered the U, as the locals called the shopping village, was the coffee shop. Like everyone else out and about doing last minute Christmas shopping, Lil stopped in for a pick me up. She spent the next hour browsing the stores and buying last minute gifts.
Lil loved the holiday season because of the gift giving. It was the only time a year she enjoyed buying for others rather than herself.
If Kane and Abe were creatures of habit, Lil knew she’d find them amongst the shoppers. They always spent the last full weekend before Christmas in the U. Kane, being the responsible man he was, usually had his shopping done by Thanksgiving. Abe ordered things online because he hated the crowds. But it never failed; this weekend was the time when they would brave the crowds for a nice shirt for Abe to wear to Kane’s family’s holiday gathering. Flannel wasn’t something a man of taste sported to a Ryker family get together. Besides, Kane always bribed Abe with lunch at The Sushi Sioux.
Lil strolled down the path into the next store. Nick’s Knacks was new in the U so she decided to see what kinds of knacks Nick was selling.
She browsed antique tea sets and costume jewelry. Nothing unique caught her eye until she spotted a lone rabbit’s foot in a velvet box under the glass counter. She fingered the glass, thinking she knew someone who might appreciate the irony behind this good luck charm. She signaled for one of the salesmen to help her. When he brought the dusty white foot out of the case, she knew she had to get this for Sam. It was perfect for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it would serve as a reminder of her time helping him when his memories resurfaced.
With her purchase tucked away in a brown paper bag, Lil was out of the store and on her way to finding Kane and Abe.
She passed a men’s upscale boutique and scanned the people inside through the window display. There inside was one of the men she had come looking for.
An older gentleman held the door for her as she walked through. With a nod of her head and a thank you from her lips, she walked into the store, and through neatly folded tables of scarves and ties. In the back, fingering through crisply starched shirts, was her old friend Kane. Stealthily, Lil walked behind him, a smile on her face.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
In slow motion, Kane turned around, his eyes as round as the moon. His hand went to cover his gaping mouth. Lil’s smiled widened.
“Are you real?” he asked in barely a whisper.
“Every bit of me,” she replied.
In the blink of eye, he had her in his arms, crushing her to his chest. He stood almost as tall as Sam did, so that his chin rested on the top of her head. He pulled back and looked at her, his mouth slowly forming a smile.
“You look fantastic,” he said.
Lil shrugged one shoulder and acted as if those words didn’t mean more than they should. “Eh, like a fine wine I only get better with time.”
Again, Kane pulled her to him, his body vibrating with laughter. “My God, Lil. I’ve missed you. So damn much.”
“Me too, Kane,” she said into his chest.
When they pulled apart, it looked like tears were
forming in his eyes. She felt awful. She should have never pushed two of her best friends away from her. She should have accepted any kind of condolences and offerings they had for her.
Seeing Kane look so torn up about seeing her, Lil couldn’t help but feel her own eyes water. Her lips quivered when she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said in a firm voice. “I don’t want to hear it and neither does Abe. Speaking of…” Kane craned his neck, moving it from side to side and over the crowds of people in the store.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice said from behind Kane. “What do we have here?”
Lil looked around Kane, the start of a smile on her face. “Abe,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“You’re damn right, sister. Now, get your sweet ass over here and give me a hug. It’s been too damn long.”
Lil obliged and wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too.” He pulled back, grabbing her wrists and holding on to her hands. “Now, are you here to spring me from this joint? He promised me sushi two hours ago and he’s yet to deliver.”
“Jesus Christ, Abe.” Kane groaned.
“Yes, it's his birthday we'll be celebrating, dear. And you know damn good and well you’re just going to buy whatever shirt you like so you might as well pick it out so we can go have lunch with our girl.”
“Oh no,” Lil said. “I don’t want to impose.”
Abe waved off Lil’s comment. “The blue one looked nice, Kane. Get that one and meet us outside.”
Abe looped his arm through Lil’s and escorted her out of the store. A park bench not far from where they stood was vacant. He led her over there to wait for Kane to pay for his purchase.
They sat, their bodies turned in, facing one another.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.
“Please,” Abe said. “Don’t be. You did nothing wrong. Kane and I have talked about this until we were blue in the face. We should have been more demanding with you. We should have made you talk to us.”
Second Rate Chances Page 7