Tell Me Not to Go

by Victoria De La O

  As I step off the plane, a lady with a stroller bumps into me, and her bag goes flying onto the dirty gray carpet. I’m almost happy for the distraction. A little less time for me to think about the fact that I’m uprooting my entire life to move to a city I’ve been to once. Of course, it’s not so much that I’m running toward this place. More like I’m scurrying away from another, with my tail between my legs.

  I bend down to help the woman pick up the random items that have spilled from her purse—hairbrush, pacifier, romance novel, wallet.

  “Thanks,” she says, as a man comes up behind her and puts his hands on the stroller handle.

  “Your purse is twice as big as it used to be,” he says to the woman as she stands up.

  She smiles at him and puts one arm around his waist. The gesture is casual but loving, and I try to ignore the funny feeling in my gut.

  That could have been my life—almost was, four years ago. Somehow that makes me feel guilty and relieved all at once, but I let those feelings go. My sadness sticks around longer, though.

  I leave the happy family behind and wind my way through the crowds to the baggage carousel. As I stand and wait, my phone pings. It’s Mom, already calling to check on me, so I let it go to voice mail.

  I take my one oversize duffel bag and head outside to the curb where Lizzie is waiting.

  I haven’t seen her in a while, and she looks different. Her face is maturing—no longer the round face of a girl, but the leaner face of a woman. Plus, she has a certain glow. When I lean over to hug her, I’m surprised by how comforting it is.

  One thing hasn’t changed: Lizzie talks my ear off all the way to her place. I smile and nod in all the right spots, but she knows me too well.

  “Am I talking too much?” She tries to look at me sideways as she drives.

  She’s still in the beat-up Honda she’s had for ages. I, on the other hand, need a bigger car. Preferably American. It killed me to sell the truck I drove in Utah—that thing was a workhorse. But I don’t need it out here. I’ll be damned if I get one of those little hybrid cars that looks like an egg, though. I’m buying an SUV, first thing I can.

  “My ears are bleeding, but other than that . . .” I laugh.

  Lizzie parks in a garage, and we walk across the San Jose State campus to her suite. The February skies are overcast, but it’s dry and snowless—already an improvement over Utah. Students are hustling to and from classes, some of them still in shorts and flip-flops. They seem carefree and happy, even though they’re probably all stressed out and overly scheduled. Little do they know that school is nothing compared to working full-time and being out in the real world.

  “I’m so thrilled you’re moving here,” Lizzie says, her voice quiet and soft. “You’re bringing a piece of home with you.” She steps in front of me and gives me a proper hug.

  This girl kills me. She has since the day she was born. I may only have been three, but I knew I’d met my match the moment I saw Mom holding Lizzie in the hospital.

  “I’m happy, too.” And for once I’m not saying that out of habit. I’m proud that I took a chance and made a change. But that’s going to take a while to sink in.

  Lizzie’s place looks like it did last time I was here, which is strange because it’s a different suite. I guess all the rooms in this building are the same. Sort of like my life in Utah: Everything was a variation on a single theme.

  “How come you never moved off campus?” I ask.

  “Too much hassle and just as expensive. And Sam likes being close to her classes.”

  Yes, Sam. Dark hair, bottomless brown eyes, and the personality of an angry rhino—only less charming. Except . . .

  “You sure Sam’s okay with me staying here?” I ask Lizzie as I throw my bag in her room. “It shouldn’t be for long. I already put some apartment applications in.” I should have gotten a hotel, but Lizzie made a big deal about it.

  “Absolutely,” she says, way too quickly. “What neighborhoods do you want to look at tomorrow? There are some cute areas outside of downtown that you might like.”

  “I’m open to wherever I can afford the rent. I mostly want to learn my way around.”

  “With your fancy job, I think you’ll do fine.”

  Life at a VC firm isn’t as stable as Lizzie thinks, but I’ll leave her to her optimism.

  We both flop onto the couch, which is industrial gray and almost as comfortable as it looks.

  “How are things with you?” I ask.

  She smiles at me—carefree and happy in a way I’ve never seen her before. I know her new boyfriend is responsible for that.

  I chuckle. “Ah, enough said. Speaking of Mr. Wonderful, will Jude be around while I’m here?”

  “He’s coming over for dinner tonight.” Lizzie’s voice contains a twinge of nervousness.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Lizzie looks down at her hand and plays with her nail. “I know you weren’t thrilled about the Ryan and Jude situation.”

  She’s not wrong; I don’t love that Lizzie is dating her ex-boyfriend’s brother. I met both brothers last time I visited, and Jude seems like a handful. Plus, even though Ryan gave Lizzie and Jude his blessing, I can’t help but feel that the situation will get messy once Ryan gets home from wherever he is.

  “I sure as hell shouldn’t be giving you advice about relationships. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “I really am.”

  There’s a whole world in Lizzie’s smile, and a lot she’s not saying: that she loves Jude, that she wants to jump in with both feet and never look back, that he’s the one. I know my sister.

  “That’s written all over your face, baby girl.”

  “Yeah, probably.” She blushes a little. “I’m bringing Jude home during spring break.”

  Our father is extremely traditional. He had a shotgun propped up by the door every time Lizzie brought a new guy home—just in case. I used to think that was excessive until Lizzie’s college boyfriend. I know he hurt her in some way; she won’t tell me the details, which is how I know it was bad. “Let’s hope Dad doesn’t shoot him.”

  She shakes her head. “That would be a shame.”

  We both laugh, but the sound dies in my throat when the door opens and Sam walks in. She is as beautiful as I remember. Her magnificent ass is encased in yoga pants, and she wears a sports bra that accentuates every curve. Honestly, that’s all secondary to her huge doe eyes, which are her best feature. But I can’t look at them right now. I can feel my heart sputtering to a grinding halt, so I take a deep breath and remind myself that we don’t like each other. Or I think that’s what we decided. Hard to know, because at the time, I was spilling my guts like a baby and putting my tongue down her throat. Must have been temporary insanity.

  Maybe she’s softened toward me since then.

  “Hi, Jeff,” she says, beating me to the punch. “Good to see you again.” Her smile is ice cold and one hundred percent fake. So, her opinion of me hasn’t changed.

  “Hi. Nice to see you, too,” I say with the brightest smile I can. Two can play this game.

  “You just go for a run?” Lizzie asks her.

  “Yeah. I’m going to jump in the shower. We doing dinner here?”

  My brain is stuck back at the word “shower.”

  “Definitely. I’m going to take Jeff to look around, but we’ll be back by six.” Lizzie motions toward me, which snaps me out of my fog.

  “Cool. I hear you’re staying with us for a little while.” Sam’s looking in my general direction, but not right at me.

  “Yep. Thanks so much for offering to let me stay.”

  My exaggerated tone is not lost on her. She’s observant, this girl. Her eyes flash for a second, because she and I both know she doesn’t want me here. Maybe it was because I sounded like a total idiot the night we met. Or maybe it was that kiss. Either way, I’m not going to bend over backward to be nice to her if she’s still holding a grudge.

  How nice it is
not to have to be nice for a change.

  She recovers quickly and gives me that beauty-pageant smile again. “Oh, anytime.”

  As she walks away, I swear she shakes her ass at me. What kind of mixed message is that? My jaw goes tense. I may be an easygoing guy, but she just waved a red flag, and right now, with this woman, I feel like a bull.

  She wants a challenge? I’ll give her one.

  San Jose is a huge sprawl of a city—more than I can explore in one day. Lizzie takes pity on me and stays relatively close to downtown, since that’s where I’ll be working. By the time we get home, I’ve seen Japantown, Little Italy—which was extremely little—all of downtown, and a few nice neighborhoods just beyond.

  This town needs to be big, because it holds all kinds of people—old, young, families. They’re all moving fast, like they’re trying to keep up. I guess you have to swim hard in Silicon Valley waters.

  When we get back to Lizzie’s place, she tells me to make myself at home while she cooks dinner, so I grab stuff to set the table.

  I’m getting a fork into the correct position when Sam comes out of the kitchen with some drinks.

  She looks at what I’m doing and smirks. “You do a mean place setting. I bet you were a Boy Scout.”

  “I was, actually,” I say, managing to keep my voice calm. Looks like Sam’s inner bitch is dying to come out again. Bring it on. “Made me good at all kinds of interesting things.”

  That sounded a lot more sexual than I meant it to, but this girl rattles my cage. Maybe because the minute she met me, she acted like I was a dickhead, which is unusual. I am, without a doubt, the good guy. The one you want to bring home to Mom. The guy who helps you put your coat on and cares about your feelings. But Sam looks at me like I’m the husband that’s going to screw the nanny—like I’m unpredictable and a tad dangerous. No one has ever looked at me that way before. It’s so annoying, and so incredibly hot.

  She can’t think of an immediate reply, and I’m pleased that my sudden confidence flusters her.

  “Yes, I bet,” she says, donning her mask. “Helping old ladies cross the street. Frolicking with other boys through the woods. That kind of stuff?”

  You’d think I’d be above rising to that bait. Nope.

  “Um hmm. And always being prepared for long, hard tasks.” I move closer to her. She takes a step back, but I follow. Turns out I like the chase. “Riding things out until I get the job done. Learning how to be thorough.”

  She puts her hand on my chest to stop me from moving closer, and I realize I’ve gone too far. Partly because I might be scaring her, and partly because her touch is like a defibrillator to the heart.

  I close my eyes and shake my head. Never in my life have I been disrespectful to a woman. My parents would disown me. I’m about to apologize, when I hear her chuckle.

  “I should have known,” she says.

  “What?” I finally look her straight in the eye, and it’s as devastating as it was the first time. Maybe more.

  “You’re like Lizzie. Soft exterior, balls of steel.”

  Seeing her lips form the word “balls” makes my stomach tighten. “Yeah, family trait. We don’t like to back down when it counts.” I don’t give her the satisfaction of telling her that I’ve never been this confrontational with other women.

  When Sam smiles—really smiles, not that cynical bullshit smirk of hers—it’s like an invitation to a party. The corners come up first, followed by her lips, until her cheeks lift and her eyes spark. Her tongue pokes out the tiniest bit between her teeth, and the effect on me is insane—starbursts and synapses firing and Fourth of July.

  She almost makes me forget who I am—the guy voted “Most Dependable” in high school—and I want to drag her into her room and give her the ride of her life. Who are we kidding? Of my life.

  I’m still standing there, slack-jawed, when Lizzie walks in with a heaping bowl of pasta. Sam recovers faster than I do, maybe because I don’t affect her, or maybe because she’s a better liar. Either way, I’m thankful. Maybe remembering that Sam is my sister’s best friend will help me stop acting like an idiot.

  There’s a knock on the door, which is a handy excuse for Sam to make a getaway. She answers it, and Jude comes strolling in. Jude’s the kind of moody, insanely tall GQ guy that most men would be threatened by. Except me, because he’s dating my little sister. So it’s my job to make sure he’s the one who’s intimidated—or at least mildly concerned.

  He surprises me with a firm handshake and a warm smile.

  “Hey, man,” he says. “Good to see you again.”

  When I met Jude, I thought he was so completely screwed. I’m not sure why it was so obvious to me and not everyone else. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lizzie, even though she was dating his brother—like he was desperate. At the time, it made me super uncomfortable. Because Lizzie is my sister, because I felt a little sorry for him, but also because—despite the fact that I’ve been in several long-term relationships—I had never wanted a woman that way before.

  Now though, Jude seems more relaxed. His eyes still follow Lizzie as she sets the food down on the table, but there’s a confidence there. Like he knows she’s looking at him the same way. Which she is.

  “Just in time,” Lizzie says, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close. She is trying to hold back, but she kisses him anyway.

  “You ever notice we’re in this situation a lot?” I ask Sam. This gets another smile out of her. Which means she remembers the night we met.

  It may have been over a year ago, but I remember it, too. In vivid detail.

  “Yuck, I can practically feel them making out through the door,” I had said.

  This had forced a laugh out of Sam—the first one I’d gotten from her all night. I didn’t blame her: Lizzie had forced us on a double date, and we knew nothing about each other. “Yeah. But I’m happy for her.”

  Except she hadn’t looked it. She seemed—heartbroken. It was reflected in her eyes and the set of her shoulders, and the way she was almost huddling into herself. To me, her emotions were hidden behind a pane of glass so thin it may as well have been nonexistent. And it became vital to me that I make her feel better.

  “Then how come you look so sad?”

  That stirred up her pride, and she tried to make her face expressionless. I remember admiring her effort.

  “It will pass.” She headed for her room, but there was no way I could let her leave.

  “Sam . . .”

  “Yeah?” She turned around and stiffened up, like she was ready to do battle.

  It was so damn frustrating, because I wanted to smash through her puny shield—crush it under my heels until it was powder. But I didn’t know how. Because clearly some guy had gotten to her before me and done a number on her heart.

  “Whoever he was, he was beneath you, and you’re better off without him.”

  She shrugged. “I already figured that out. It’s living it that’s hard.”

  Had I ever felt that way? I wondered. Were any of the women I’d been with so necessary to me that I’d felt broken when they’d gone? I already knew the answer.

  “You must have really loved him.”

  “That’s the bitch of it, isn’t it?” she said. “Once you really love someone, they have the power to hurt you forever—even if it’s only in your memory.”

  I’m pulled back into the present by Lizzie and Jude, who finally sit down at the table. We pass around Lizzie’s shrimp pasta as I avoid looking at Sam. Even the memory of her packs a wallop.

  “What places are you guys looking at tomorrow?” Jude asks.

  “A couple high rises downtown and an apartment in Santa Clara. It would be nice if any of them had more than a cubic foot of outdoor space, but that seems rare,” I say.

  Jude passes me the bread. “A guy I know is leaving his place in a few weeks. It’s a studio in the back of someone’s house. It’s small, but it has a yard and it’s close to downtown. Want me
to hook you up?”

  “That would be great, thanks. Kind of weird how once I decided to leave Utah, all the pieces fell into place.”

  “What finally made you decide to take the leap?” Jude asks.

  “It was a hard call because I loved my job, and my family is there.”

  But there was this constant itch under my skin to do more. But everything had begun to feel routine. But I looked up one day and realized I was boring as hell—dating the same type of woman over and over while trying to sidestep my parents’ expectations.

  “It felt like time,” I say. “I needed some breathing room. I’m not sure how to explain what it’s like being the oldest of five kids in my family.”

  Jude laughs. “No explanation necessary. I’ve heard the stories. And I know how it is being the guy in charge.”

  I should have realized Jude would understand, since he raised his brother after their mom died. Kind of petty to be complaining about how much responsibility I had at home, all things considered. Makes me examine Jude in a different light.

  Sam looks puzzled. “I don’t get it. I’m an only child.”

  “Jeff always had to behave,” Lizzie says. “No fighting or tattoos for him. My parents were constantly saying, ‘Your brothers and sister look up to you. You have to be a good example.’”

  I nod in agreement. “Don’t get me wrong; my folks are great. But even now they expect a hell of a lot out of me.”

  “But you’re a grown-ass man,” Sam says.

  Glad she noticed. “True. And that’s why I’m moving here. To have some fun.” I look directly at Sam as I say this.

  She swallows hard. “Well then, Boy Scout, you better make it good.”

  We all toast to that.

  Chapter 3: Sam

  Are you okay? the text asks.

  Three little words that roll through me like thunder. After all this time, now Luke decides to care about my well-being? As though he has a right to ask, or even to use my number. I would have thought he would have deleted it from his phone by now. But then again, I haven’t deleted his.