What Matters

by Gracie Leigh

  “You’re staying?” In all the bleak scenarios Eddie had imagined, not once had she pictured Sam staying on at the café after it was sold.

  “Might as well. We didn’t sell the flat, and I kinda like rolling out of bed five minutes before work.”

  “Jesus.” Eddie leaned heavily against a nearby wall. “I thought you’d be long gone the moment the sale went through.”

  “I wouldn’t leave my grandparents,” Sam said, and then silence stretched on and on before he spoke again. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, ’cause I gotta go. Pops just wanted you to have all the information so you could make decisions.”

  Eddie found her voice again. “That’s very considerate of him. Thank him for me, will you? I know it’s none of my business, so I appreciate the thought.”

  She hadn’t meant it to sound so loaded, but even as she uttered the words, she heard the unspoken accusation, loud and clear. And apparently Sam heard it too. He chuckled coldly. “You know what, Eddie? Fuck you. If you’d come over when you said you would, I’d have told you everything. Shame you didn’t show up, yeah?”

  He hung up before Eddie could respond.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Oh, he didn’t. Eddie stared at her phone, fury and comprehension racing through her in equal measure. So that was why Sam had been so angry with her. Not because she’d got up in his business and shouted in his face, but because her absence the night before had convinced him that she didn’t care.

  Bloody idiot, and Eddie meant that for herself as much as Sam. In all the self-inflicted drama over the sale of the café, she’d completely forgotten that she’d stood Sam up in favour of falling asleep on the couch with Martha.

  Perhaps Sam would’ve forgotten it too, if he’d had nothing important to tell her, but that didn’t mean much now. Sam was as much in the wrong as Eddie, but she couldn’t deny that she’d let him down.

  Her thumb moved to call him right back—apologise, call him a dick, then apologise some more…whatever it took to heal the rift between them—but at that moment, the orchestra director summoned the string section back to work, and it was gone midnight by the time Eddie and Martha took a cab home.

  Eddie didn’t tell Martha about the development at the café, and when they got home, they went their separate ways. Sam remained on Eddie’s mind, and she desperately wanted to call him, to hear his voice if nothing else, even if he was still angry with her, but a dawn wake-up alarm to head back to rehearsals sent her straight to bed. As much as she wanted—needed—to speak to Sam, she was so tired that she was sure she’d be asleep before he’d so much as told her to get lost.

  The next morning, she cracked and called him on her way to uni. He didn’t answer, and when she called the café, no one answered that phone either. Defeated, Eddie shoved her phone in her bag and forced herself to focus on the full day of rehearsals ahead.

  The orchestra broke for lunch around one. Eddie checked her phone, expecting to find a blank screen. A missed call from Sam stopped her dead. She rang him straight back, but it went to voicemail.

  Disappointment duelled with excitement—and more than a little apprehension. She was thrilled that he’d returned her call, but the likelihood that it was only to tell her to piss off was so high that she couldn’t help wincing as she tried him again. Just one more time.

  No luck. Voicemail again. With a world weary sigh, Eddie pocketed her phone and went back to work.

  It was early evening by the time she got a chance to look again, and she’d missed two more calls from Sam. Encouraged, she rang him back, and finally—finally—he picked up.

  “Hear me out,” Eddie blurted before he could speak. “Please. Let me talk, and then you can tell me to go away.”

  “Go away? When have I ever been that polite?”

  He had a point. Sam’s choice of phrase was often far more colourful, but the fact that he was taking the piss out of her gave her hope that perhaps he really was willing to listen.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Everything—for standing you up, not listening, raging, making assumptions about your life when I had no place to do so, even after I’d learned not to.”

  “That’s all, eh?”

  “Well, I suppose I could swing for more, but I’d rather just tell you how I feel.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to tell me how you feel? Why does it matter?”

  Eddie sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Sam. It just does, okay? It all matters to me, and it always did. I didn’t mean to stand you up. I passed out on the couch with Martha, and then I forgot, and then all this…shit happened at the café, and everything fell apart.”

  “I thought you were fucking that greasy stiff from the city.”

  “What? Ian? Why on earth would you think that?”

  Silence, and then Sam’s sigh echoed Eddie’s. “’Cause in my experience, when most girls stop showing up for dates, they’re usually boning someone else.”

  “I’m not most girls, Sam. And I don’t bone anyone.”

  Sam chuckled, though he suddenly sounded profoundly tired. “Oh I know that…and I probably always did, but it took Pops ripping me a new one this afternoon to make me really see it.”

  “What’s your grandfather got to do with this?”

  “He likes you better than he likes me,” Sam said dryly.

  Eddie smiled, and warmth spread through her blood, soothing her rehearsal-weary bones. “You’d never tell.”

  “No? You think he makes a habit of hauling damsels in distress off the street and giving them a job?”

  Eddie had no answer to that. She picked up her violin case and left the orchestra pit, making her way to the entrance hall. She found a seat in a quiet corner and slumped, throwing her feet up on a nearby table.

  It felt odd to relax her body so much while her brain and heart were working a million miles an hour, but she went with it—had to—because everything that truly mattered seemed to depend on this conversation.

  Dramatic, much? But it was true. Sam mattered, even if he was as much of an arsehole now as he’d always been. I don’t hate him anymore.

  “Eddie? You there?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “You went all silent on me.”

  “Not nice, is it?” Eddie quipped before she could stop herself, but Sam merely chuckled, reminding her that this was how their dynamic worked when they actually communicated—a healthy mix of banter, sarcasm, and heady sexual tension.

  “So…” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m still waiting for you to tell me how you feel.”

  “I feel like I want to kiss you.”

  “That it?”

  “No, there’s more.” Eddie crossed her legs and considered how she truly felt at that precise moment. “I feel like I want to see you more—outside of work, I mean—and hold you, and be there for you, and do all the things you’re probably going to say you don’t need…or want.”

  “What makes you think I don’t need those things?”

  “Because you’re a stubborn arsehole.”

  “So are you, but you need those things too, right?”

  A few months ago, Eddie would’ve disagreed, but though she’d only had a taste of how those things could be with Sam, she wanted more…she wanted it all. “I want to be with you.”

  Silence, and then Sam sighed. “I’m not very nice, Eddie. And I’ve got nothing to offer you that you haven’t seen already. Waiting tables, frying eggs…partying at a dirty metal club—it’s pretty much all I’ve got.”

  “And you don’t think that’s enough? You think you’re less of a man than some city lawyer or banker?”

  “No, I don’t think that. But you might, deep down.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? Eddie, you don’t know any better.”


  The resignation in Sam’s tone made Eddie sit up. She planted her booted feet on the floor and shook her head, even though Sam couldn’t see her. “You might’ve been right a few months ago, but not now. I see you, Sam. And it’s you that I want.”

  “Not Dylan? He’s more your type than me—nice, successful…business trips abroad, and all that shizzle.”

  It was hard to tell if Sam was joking, so Eddie answered the question honestly. “I like Dylan, and I liked fucking him, but it’s not him I think of when I’m alone every night. Not him that I’d give anything to touch right now, and I couldn’t give a shit what either of you do for a living.”

  “I wish I could see you.”

  Sam’s voice was husky, and Eddie closed her eyes, the tension in her shoulders easing slightly. “I wish I could see you too, but I’ve got rehearsals all day tomorrow, and Friday, before the first concert in the evening.”

  “And then you’re playing all weekend?”

  “Yes…hey, why don’t you come to opening night? I’ve got a family member’s ticket. I was going to give it to Martha for her brother, but he’s not coming.”

  “What about your family?”

  “They’re not coming either.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dad’s busy, and my mum’s a self-centred bitch, so I told her to fuck off. That’s kinda where I was when I stood you up. She showed up at the flat in the afternoon.”

  Eddie didn’t add that her invitation to her father had bounced back with an “out of office” email. Or that her single phone call to him had, like most of Sam’s, gone unanswered.

  And Sam let it go. “Just tell me where to be, and I’ll be there.”

  Eddie fiddled nervously with the hem of her borrowed dress. In years gone by, she’d gone all out and bought herself at least two brand new outfits to choose from before each end of year concert, but there’d been no money for that this year, and she was glad of it. Martha’s black lace fit like a dream, and left her plenty of time to worry about things that actually mattered.

  Like Sam, and if he’d managed to pick up the ticket she’d left him at the door. For the millionth time, Eddie cursed the orchestra director who’d decreed that phones were banned from pit on performance days. Eddie hadn’t spoken to Sam all day, and she was getting twitchy.

  What if he doesn’t show?

  Strike the getting. She was twitchy. Because Sam showing up tonight felt like a commitment to so much more—even Dylan seemed to think so now that his phone had finally found some service. “He’s stressing about what to wear, Eddie. What the fuck have you done to my boy?”

  “He’s my boy now.” Eddie had teased back, but was that really true? Could Sam be tamed? Did he even want to be? If he didn’t show tonight, Eddie reckoned not.

  “He’ll be here,” Martha murmured, appearing at Eddie’s side like a ghost. “Stop fretting.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Liar.”

  Eddie poked her tongue out at turned away. She’d filled Martha in on all that was Sam—including the sale of the café—on the way home the night before, and Martha had been suitably excited. And ridiculous. “I knew he loved you.”

  He doesn’t love me. Of that, Eddie was certain, though she couldn’t deny that she was perilously close to loving him.

  “Places, please!”

  The orchestra director called the musicians to the pit. Eddie filed out with the first violin section and took her seat, feeling the swell of anticipation as the choir followed suit on the stage above. The audience couldn’t see them yet, but it wouldn’t be long, and Eddie wondered if she’d be able to concentrate knowing that Sam was watching. Aside from that one night at the café—the one that had led to her falling into bed with him and Dylan both—he’d never heard her play.

  Until now.

  The curtain rose. Eddie felt the heat of a thousand eyes on her and a prickle at the back of her neck. Was that Sam? The ticket hadn’t had a seat number on it, so he could be anywhere—front or back. A few feet away from her if he’d got there nice and early.

  Eddie didn’t dare look, sensing that a glimpse of Sam would be enough to fritz her focus, because it had always been that way with him—his scent, his broad shoulders, the thralldom of his molten gaze. It was a wonder Eddie had made the first section at all with Sam Nowak in her life.

  The concert played out, and it was flawless. Eddie was flawless, even in the fleeting solo that she’d been given at the last minute. She drew her bow across the strings a final time, basking in the cloud of resin, her eyes fixed on the conductor, and then it was over. Thunderous applause filled the venue, and the orchestra rose as one. Eddie finally looked out over the crowd, searching, her chest full to bursting with pride, excitement…and love. Where are you?

  But she couldn’t see Sam, and she tried not to be disappointed as the orchestra left the stage. There were a thousand people in the audience. She’d find Sam outside, by the oak tree, where he’d agreed to meet her after if she didn’t find him first.

  Eddie packed the Stradivarius away at record speed and fled the rowdy staging area. She hurried outside to the courtyard and scanned the milling audience members for any sign of Sam. There was none, so she ran to the oak tree by the gates, but he wasn’t there either. A call to his phone went straight to voicemail, and the longer Eddie stood alone beneath that damn fucking tree, the clearer her reality became.

  Sam wasn’t there.

  There were no words to describe the bone crushing disappointment Eddie felt as she rode the bus back to Vauxhall. Sam’s phone remained turned off, and her messages went unanswered. He hadn’t showed, and Eddie reckoned she knew why. As the bus rolled into her stop, she fired off a final text. Thanks for not showing up. Message received, loud and clear.

  There was no reply, but she didn’t expect one. It was obvious that Sam had decided that he didn’t belong in her world, or him in hers, and he wasn’t interested in proving himself wrong. Well, fuck you, Sam Nowak. My world matters as much as yours.

  Eddie got off the bus and went straight home, bypassing her usual route past the café. At the flat, she chucked her phone on the floor and threw herself onto her bed, fully intent on spending the rest of the night tossing and turning, and silently telling Sam Nowak just where he could shove his job at the new café.

  But of course, she fell asleep, and her mind was blissfully blank until an insistent noise from her phone woke her sometime later.

  Stumbling in the dark, she lurched, chest first, out of bed and grabbed it, answering the call without looking at the screen. “Hello?”

  “Eddie? You awake?”

  “Dylan?” Eddie hauled the rest of her body out of bed, tripped over the dress she’d fallen asleep in, and landed in a heap on the floor. “What’s up?”

  “Is Sam with you?”

  Eddie snorted. “No. Why would he be with me?”

  “Because of the concert. I assumed you guys would go home together.”

  “Well, you assumed wrong. He didn’t show up.” Sleep-addled as she was, Eddie fought hard to keep the bitterness from her voice.

  She lost. Not that Dylan seemed to notice. “What do you mean, he didn’t show up? Did he call?”

  “No, Dylan. He didn’t call. And he didn’t answer when I called him, so I’m going to assume that he had a better offer. That all right with you?”

  “He wouldn’t just not show up.”

  “Of course he would,” Eddie retorted. “I was an idiot to think he’d be interested in coming in the first place.”

  “Nah, it wasn’t like that. He was chuffed that you’d asked him.”

  Eddie took a breath to argue, but the worry in Dylan’s tone stopped her short. “What are you trying to say? Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Eddie, I don’t know, but he hasn’t answered his phone all day, and now it’s off, and I can’t reach Artur either.”

  “Artur would’ve gone home by now. He closes the café earlier than Sam.” Ed
die rubbed her eyes and scrambled to her feet. “And he knows Sam’s supposed to be with me tonight, so he wouldn’t think to check on him.”

  Shit. Eddie had noticed from the beginning how Mr. Nowak often popped his head upstairs in the evening, just to check that Sam was okay. Always called the café when he wasn’t working. Just to check. Dear God, why hadn’t Eddie done the same? “I’m going over there.”

  “Good. Listen, Eddie, I might be really fucking wrong about this—I have been before—and if I am, you have my blessing to barge in there and punch him in the face, but if I’m not, you need to call me immediately, okay? I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “Okay. I’ll call.” Eddie grabbed a pair of nearby boots and yanked them on, tearing her stockings with her thumbnail. “Wait, though. If he doesn’t answer the door, how am I going to get in? The café’s closed.”

  “The alleyway,” Dylan said. “And don’t bother knocking. Just go up the metal stairs and get the key from behind the gas metre. That’ll get you into the landing, and you know where the flat key is, right?”

  “With the napkins.”

  After promising again to call Dylan back as soon as possible, Eddie hung up and dashed out of her bedroom, swiping her coat and keys from where she’d dumped them on the coffee table, and charging out into the night. It had begun to rain while she’d slept, that heavy, muggy summer rain that left huge puddles in every indent of the pavement.

  Eddie ran through them, splashing dirty water up her legs, and raced the five hundred metres or so between her flat and the café. On any other night, the pitch dark alleyway would’ve given her pause for thought, but she ignored the danger and hurried through until she reached a small yard she’d only ever seen through the storeroom window.

  She pounded the metal steps with her boots and retrieved the key from the gas metre cupboard. Inside, she knocked over the box of napkins, scattering packets everywhere.

  Frantic, as she was now painfully certain that Dylan was right, she tossed them aside as she searched for the second key. Gotcha! She snatched the Judas Priest keyring and stuck the single key in the lock, kicking the door open and shouldering her way inside.