And definitely not a date.
I mean, yeah, Sam did open my car door for me but that’s just because he’s polite. And, yes, we’re both dressed a bit nicer than our usual Sunday afternoon Tastee Freeze trips—Sam in slim dark blue shorts and a white, short-sleeved button-down, his damp hair combed back and drying into perfect waves. Me in a snug, short, floral print skirt, strappy sandals and a lime-green tank top with a web of crisscrossing straps in the back, my hair straight.
I tell myself Sam wore that outfit to church with his family and didn’t have time to change—conveniently ignoring the fact that he’s obviously freshly showered. Just like I tell myself the only reason I’m wearing a skirt is because all my shorts are in the dirty laundry.
Okay, most of my shorts.
I give myself an epic inner eye roll. Technically only two pair of my shorts are dirty, but they were the only ones I wanted to wear, and since I couldn’t, I chose this skirt. And this is the only shirt that looks right with it. It’s not like I wore it because it’s Sam’s favorite color. Or because it shows off my back and shoulders. Or because this shade of green brings out my eyes and looks really good against my pale skin.
Those things are just coincidences. I did not dress up for Sam. This is not a date.
Just an extremely awkward, nerve-wracking, so-far-tensely-silent jaunt to the local Tastee Freeze with an insanely attractive, incredibly appealing boy who makes me forget everything, including, but not limited to, how badly he hurt me, how I responded to that pain, and all the many reasons why we shouldn’t give this whole more-than-friends things a try.
I’m soooo glad I agreed to this! It isn’t uncomfortable or terrifying in the least!
Tugging on the hem of my skirt, I slide a very casual glance at the speedometer. Thirty-two mph. That’s not too fast. Not fast enough to do any major damage should someone…oh, I don’t know…jump out while we’re rounding a curve or something.
Hypothetically speaking.
But even as I reach for the door handle and remind myself to tuck and roll, a teeny tiny voice inside of me suggests that perhaps bolting out of a moving vehicle isn’t the best option.
Or the best way to prove I really do have faith like I told myself I’d have when Sam tossed out his I’m still in love with you yesterday morning in my kitchen.
I curl my fingers and rest my hand on my lap. Having faith is a lot easier said than done.
No wonder I haven’t tried it before.
Sam slows and turns into the Tastee Freeze parking lot. It’s packed, all the lined spaces taken, and we inch along, passing the dozen or so people in line to place their orders, then a few cars and two motorcycles parked at the edge of the grass. We drive behind the building and I see the picnic tables are crowded with people. Kids and dogs run around the grassy area.
Stopping by for a cone or sundae on a lazy, sunny, summer Sunday afternoon was such a freaking fabulous idea.
Sam’s waiting for a pickup to back out of a space, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, when someone pounds on the back of the car, scaring the crap out of me and making Sam swear under his breath. A moment later, a grinning Graham appears at Sam’s side of the SUV, arms raised in victory. “Sammy!”
Graham has spotted Sam out in the wild. Back pats and high fives all around!
Sam nods at his friend then looks straight ahead, as if watching some guy take three times longer to exit a parking space than it should is the most riveting thing he’s ever seen.
Graham, though, will not be ignored.
He’s clueless like that.
“Sam-me, Sam-me, Sam-me!” Today’s chant is accompanied by raps on Sam’s window to the beat of a cha-cha.
Better than a hip thrust any day of the week.
Sam keeps looking out the windshield as if Graham hasn’t lifted his shirt (he has) and isn’t rubbing against the glass like a pasty human squeegee (he is).
“It’s like he’s made of play dough,” I say, horrified and enthralled as Graham does a full body roll, his stomach rippling against the glass. “I want to look away, but I can’t.”
Sam laughs, a short burst of sound that startles me. Makes me realize I haven’t heard him laugh in a long time.
Makes me want to hear it again.
He faces me, turning so his shoulders block most of the circus act outside his door. “Better?”
Graham now has his wide-open mouth on the window, like a fish stuck to the glass, and is puffing up his cheeks, his wiggling tongue in full, disturbing view. I wrinkle my nose. “Not really, no.”
Sam glances behind him then sighs and finally rolls down his window. “Dude, how many times have I told you not to lick my car? You’re washing off that spit mark.”
With a whatever flip of his floppy brown hair, Graham leans against the open window, arms crossed against the ledge. “Come on, we’ve got a table near the creek.”
“I’m with Hadley.”
Graham flicks a surprised glance my way, as if just noticing me sitting there.
Because I’m so hard to miss, what with my bright red hair and even brighter green shirt.
“We can make room for her,” he says with a shrug.
After an eleven-month banishment, I’ve once again been invited—with as little enthusiasm as possible, I might add—to the cool kids’ table.
Hooray.
The pickup finally vacates the parking spot and Sam pulls forward Graham, still leaning against the window, walks with us as we move. “I’ll save you a spot in line,” he tells Sam then straightens and gives the SUV one more slap before loping off.
Sam parks but leaves the engine running. The we Graham referred to at the table near the creek is Jackson, Travis, and Kenzie, Kenzie’s younger brother Ethan and Rachel Gerring, Melanie Reece and Wyatt Smith.
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.
Whitney’s a new addition to that gang, sitting between Rachel and Kenzie, and she waves, all cheerful and smiling and, after our conversation yesterday morning, in full possession of many of my secrets.
That thought doesn’t terrify me like it should. Whitney is too honest, too honorable and just too nice to tell anyone what I told her in confidence.
Or maybe I’m delusional and she’s already told the entire table.
Guess we’ll find out.
At the moment, I’m going with me being a great judge of character. We’d hung out last night—me and Whitney. She’d insisted on coming over so my telling Sam I had plans with her wasn’t a lie. We hadn’t done much. Just watched TV and played with Taylor, but it was fun.
No, Whitney won’t tell my secrets. They’re safe.
Sam clears his throat. “We don’t have to sit with them if you don’t want to. We can eat in here.”
Eat in the Car of Silence? No thanks. I’d rather join the others. At least with them, I know what to expect: Everyone but Whitney will ignore me and I can eat my three scoops of mint chocolate chip in relative peace.
There’s no peace here. Not with Sam so close, smelling so good. Not when he’s acting so weird.
“I don’t mind sitting with them,” I say and his mouth thins. “Unless you don’t want to.”
He shrugs.
But he doesn’t get out. Doesn’t move except for his thumb, which is rubbing back and forth across the steering wheel.
“We don’t have to do this. Be” –I gesture between us— “here. Together. Like this…”
“You’re not changing your mind,” he says when I trail off. “You told me you’d give me a chance.” Leaning toward me, he takes my left hand. “Don’t back out on me now.”
My heart races. He’s still afraid I’ll run from him, and while I may have briefly considered doing just that, I wouldn’t have gone through with it.
And not just because it would have meant jumping out of the car.
I’ve spent the past seven years running from Sam, from how he makes me feel. It hasn’t worked.
Maybe it’s time to try
something new.
Time to have that faith for real.
“I’m not. I haven’t.” I stare at our hands. His is so big and tan. So warm and steady. But his touch still has the power to unnerve me. To thrill me. “I thought you changed yours.”
“Are you ever going to trust me again?”
I lift my head. “What?”
“I told you I came back for you,” he reminds me, his quiet tone laced with an edge I don’t understand. He pulls his hand free and I have the strongest urge to grab it. To hold on to him. “Christ, Hadley, I told you I’m still in love with you! Did you think I was lying? That this is some game to me?”
“No! It’s just…you didn’t say a word the whole ride out here and you’re acting like you don’t even want to be here. You won’t even get out of the car!”
“I’m nervous! I don’t want to say or do something that will give you an excuse to be pissed at me again. You told me you want to take things slow so I’m trying not to push too far, too fast, but this?” He waves his hand to indicate the building, the people. “This isn’t what I want. I don’t want to be with Graham and Travis or any of those guys. I don’t want to be reminded of how you and I used to be. I don’t want to go back, Hadley. I want to move forward. And I need to know if that’s what you want, too. Because if it’s not, then there’s really no point in us doing this at all.”
His words are quiet.
And so final they shake me to my core.
For months I thought I was over him. Told myself that I was okay with him being out of my life. But now that he’s back, now that I know how he feels about me?
I can’t let him go.
He’s right. This whole afternoon was a way to remind us of how we used to be. A way for me to keep us in the friend zone. I knew exactly what would happen if we came here. It’d be Sam and Hadley. Hadley and Sam. Two best friends together again.
Just like it used to be.
But we’re not those people anymore. We aren’t friends. Haven’t been friends for almost a year.
We can’t go back.
It’s time to move forward.
It’s time for something new.
In the console, Sam’s phone buzzes. He checks it. “Graham wants to know what we want him to order for us.” When I don’t answer, he glances at me. “Mint chocolate chip?”
This is it. My leap of faith. Who knew it’d involve ice cream?
“No,” I say.
Typing his reply, Sam stops. “You always get mint chocolate chip.”
I lick my lips. “I know. I just…I think it’s time for something different.”
Something new.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I continue in a rush. “We could go somewhere else. Somewhere we haven’t been before.”
It takes him a moment to process what I’m saying, what I mean, but when he does, he grins, slow and swoon-worthy.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”
He sets his phone in the console then backs out of the spot without looking. Someone honks and Sam brakes and lifts his hand in an apologetic wave, waits while they pass, then finishes backing up.
“Hey!” Graham’s shout reaches us as Sam rounds the far end of the building. He keeps driving, though Graham is jogging our way, waving both arms to get Sam’s attention. “Sam! Where’re you going?”
I turn in my seat, look at the picnic table to see everyone watching us, Travis on his feet, Kenzie shading her eyes with her hand. Whitney grinning.
“Changed our mind,” Sam tells Graham as he taps on the brakes at the edge of the parking lot. “I’ll catch you later.”
And then careful, law-abiding Sam Constable floors it, darting out onto the street with squealing tires. Barely slowing, he takes a sharp right onto Hillside Road. We fishtail, but Sam corrects it then speeds up once again, going so fast the houses outside my window pass in a blur.
It’s so unlike the Sam I know, being rude to anyone, blowing them off. Going fast, acting even the slightest bit reckless. And I realize with a sharp pang, that’s because I don’t know him. Not anymore. He’s changed.
The Sam I used to know no longer exists. He’s gone, replaced by this new Sam. The one who spent eleven months on the other side of the country in a different time zone. He’s had experiences I wasn’t a part of. Hung out with people I’ve never met.
He isn’t afraid to look me in the eye and tell me how he feels. What he wants.
Time for something new.
I roll down my window. The wind catches my hair, whips it around my face as we drive farther and farther away from the Tastee Freeze and his friends. Our hometown. Away from our past.
Time for something new.
Time to stop looking back.
26
Between the two of us, we’ve been to every decent diner, restaurant, takeout place and ice cream shop in town, so when Sam suggests we keep driving until we come across somewhere neither of us has been before, I’m all for it.
Time for something new.
While we drive, Sam has me get his phone and I play DJ, picking songs from his playlist. His taste has always run to the classics—rock and roll mostly—but now his phone is filled with new songs, from alternative to rap. When I mention my surprise, he says he got into a lot of different music while in LA. The music scene out there is obviously bigger and better than Nowhere Pennsylvania.
Old Sam listened to Rush and Ozzy Osborne and Nirvana.
New Sam listens to Bryson Tiller, Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper.
And the changes just keep coming!
Half an hour later, we end up at Mary’s Trading Post, a burger and ice cream place overlooking the dam. It’s as busy as the Tastee Freeze was except no one in line, at the tables, or working behind the order window knows who we are, is aware of our history as friends and then not friends, or wants our attention.
Being with Sam again, at an unfamiliar place, is different, and I wonder if this is how it’s going to be between us. Him quiet and nervous and afraid to say the wrong thing. Me anxious and unsure and scared of letting him hurt me again.
Great. We’re both completely messed up. Sounds like the basis for a strong, steady, healthy relationship.
In keeping with the Try Something New theme we’ve got going, I decide to get a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sundae instead of three scoops of mint chocolate chip. Sam follows suit and instead of his usual hot fudge sundae, he tries the mint Oreo cyclone, Mary’s Trading Post’s version of Dairy Queen’s blizzard.
Look at us, branching out in our ice cream choices. So brave! So bold!
Okay, not all that brave. Not completely bold, because Sam orders onion rings and French fries for us to share—like always.
I’m willing to give new and different a shot, but some things should never change. And that’s eating hot, greasy, salty onion rings and French fries after we’ve finished our ice cream.
It’s sort of our thing. A Sam and Hadley tradition.
And him doing it, placing the order like he always did, knowing it’s what I want, too, makes me less anxious about being around New Sam. Surer we can move forward, leaving the past behind.
Takes some of the edge off my fear that this is a huge mistake.
We sit at a picnic table near the edge of the wooden deck overlooking the murky, fishy water. There are no waves, no crashing surf, and the pebbly area to our left is the closest thing we have to a beach unless you want to drive ninety minutes to Presque Isle at Lake Erie.
But it’s still a popular spot. People are wading and splashing around in the roped-off area of water. A bunch of college-aged guys are playing volleyball near the concession stand and kids and moms are at the small playground next to the parking lot.
Old Sam always sat on the opposite side of the table. New Sam is next to me, straddling the bench and facing me, one leg bent and resting between us.
Boys. They love taking up as much space as possible.
I inch back
, all casual like. Being close to New Sam, yes, even to just his knee, isn’t good for my equilibrium or state of mind. And I’d like to enjoy my ice cream in a state of relative peace, thanks all the same.
We eat in silence. My sundae is soft serve vanilla covered in a thick, creamy peanut butter sauce and sticky, sweet marshmallow fluff.
But it’s not mint chocolate chip.
Ice cream regret is the worst.
“Don’t you like your sundae?” Sam asks.
One more thing that hasn’t changed. Sam reading my mind.
Or else he noticed me staring at his minty, chocolate concoction with what I’m pretty sure is lust in my eyes. Either way, the boy still gets me better than anyone else ever has.
“No, I do.” To prove it—and, yes, maybe to prove he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does, to show I’ve changed over the past eleven months like he has, and there are new, hidden depths to me he’s yet to discover—I take another bite. Speak around my mouthful. “It’s good.”
He smirks. He knows what I’m doing. Not lying, exactly.
Just not telling the truth.
Story of our lives right there.
“But it’s not what you really want?”
And that is a dangerous question, especially when asked in Sam’s deep voice, his gaze on mine. When I know he’s asking about more than ice cream choices.
He’s asking about us, about our previous friendship. How I was content to settle for it when I wanted so much more.
He’s not the only one with a strong ESP game.
“No.” Time for more of that faith. “It’s not what I really want.”
It was never what I wanted. It was what I thought I deserved.
I’m still not so sure I deserve more, but I’m going for it anyway.
He puts his leg down. Scoots closer. “Want to switch?”
I eye the cup of ice cream he’s holding out. “Did you order that because you knew I’d like it?”
“Maybe.” He skims his gaze over my shoulders, down my chest before oh-so-slowly dragging it back up again to my eyes. Despite it being a million degrees and the sun burning down on us, my insides get shivery. “Did you wear that shirt because you knew I’d like it?”
The Art of Holding On Page 18