Stranger

by Megan Hart

  Shelly stared a moment, then nodded. “Good. Because Jared’s worth a lot.”

  “I know he is, Shelly.”

  She paused in the doorway to stick her head back in. “Not that you care what I think, but so’s Sam.”

  I knew that, too.

  I tossed around the idea of making Jared a partner, but the idea was too overwhelming to think about all at once. I’d worked hard to build up my business and make improvements. A partner would mean I’d have help to share the burdens, but would also have to share the decisions.

  I was just getting used to the idea of having a romantic partner. I wasn’t sure I was ready to take on a business partner, too, no matter how much I liked and respected Jared. The only person I could really count on to help me decide was my dad, and I was pretty sure he’d blow a gasket at the mere suggestion.

  It was almost enough to make me offer Jared the partnership right away.

  Chapter 18

  Sam greeted me with a kiss that made the whole daybetter, and it hadn’t been so bad to start.

  “How’s tricks?”

  I filled him in on the whole story as he set up the stage the way he liked it. He’d been the regular “wallpaper” on Thursday nights at the Firehouse now for a couple months, and the owner liked him enough to offer him an open-ended contract. I didn’t make it to hear him play every Thursday, but I went as often as I could.

  “Can you grab me a beer?” Sam adjusted his chair the way he liked it, just under the single spotlight. He was an acoustic player and didn’t need to do much preparation, but he had an almost obsessive ritual about how to set everything up.

  Including beer. I brought him one, though, and one for myself. I didn’t ask him how many he’d already had, though his kiss had tasted of hops and barley. He finished the one I’d brought in record time and gestured at the bartender for another.

  “You’re going to drink your entire paycheck.” I meant to tease, but Sam shot me a look that hovered on the edge of being a glare.

  “It’s part of my paycheck,” he said.

  “Sorry.” The apology tasted bad. I don’t have a problem saying I’m sorry when I should, but it rankles when I didn’t do anything wrong.

  Sam shrugged and went back to adjusting the height of his microphone. The doors would open for dinner in about half an hour and he was scheduled to play for the night, starting at eight.

  We had an hour and a half to spend together before he had to work. I thought we might wander down to one of the other places along Second Street and grab something to eat, but Sam had other plans.

  “Come in the backroom with me.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  I glanced at the backroom, which stored extra tables and chairs and various restaurant junk. “Uh-huh. I don’t think so.”

  “C’mon.” He took my hand and kissed the palm. “It’ll be quick.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” I tugged my hand away and looked around, certain the bartender was eavesdropping. “Quick is good for you. Not so much for me.”

  “What are you talking about?” He leaned in to nibble on my ear. “You’re like a bottle rocket.”

  I laughed, ducking away from his tickling touch. “I’m not a machine.”

  “So, you don’t want to do it because you’re afraid you won’t get off?” He was frowning again. “Fine. Forget it.”

  This was unlike the persistent but charming Sam I knew. “Sam, this isn’t the place, you know? Later.”

  He shrugged, the line of his shoulders angry as he gave me his back. “Sure. Whatever.”

  Oh, no, he was not giving me attitude because I wouldn’t fuck him in the backroom of a public place. “Hey.”

  Still frowning, he turned. “Let me finish this up and we’ll go do what you want to do.”

  “What’s with the bitchface?” I asked, hands on my hips. “C’mon, Sam, if you’re mad, just tell me.”

  We stared at each other for a minute until he softened and pulled me closer for a kiss. “I’m not mad. Just a little nervous.”

  “About what? Playing?” Mollified, I looked at the stage. “You’ve done it a thousand times.”

  “Yeah. And I get nervous every time.” Sam shrugged and kissed me again, then finished off his beer. He took the empties to the bar and brought back another. “Did you want one?”

  “No.” I watched him sip at his. “Are you really nervous?”

  He shrugged without looking at me. I sat next to him on the stage as we both drank our bottles. He finished his third as I drained my first and then stood and offered me a hand up.

  “C’mon. Let’s hit the Sandwich Man or something,” he said. “Unless you want to eat here.”

  I liked the food at the Firehouse, but not so much the prices. “A sandwich is fine.”

  At the Sandwich Man, Sam dug into a steak sandwich and I had a tuna sub. He seemed in a better mood than he had earlier, but I couldn’t stop thinking it had very nearly been our first fight. A milestone, one I wasn’t really that jazzed about reaching, but one that seemed significant nevertheless. I made sure to hold his hand extra tight on the walk back to the Firehouse, and to kiss him with extra passion before we went inside.

  “What was that for?” Sam asked, eyes bright.

  “So you won’t be nervous.”

  He smiled and kissed me. “Thanks, honey.”

  The endearment gave me giddy shivers up and down. “You’re going to be great tonight.”

  Sam waggled his brows and touched the tip of my nose with his finger. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I meant inside.” I swatted him.

  “There, too.”

  He hugged me tight. With my face pressed against the front of his coat, a button scratching and the smell of him filling my senses, I wanted to cry from a rush of sudden emotion. I loved him. I loved this man, Sam, who played the guitar and had Seven League legs and who made me laugh.

  Sam kissed the top of my head. “Gotta go in. Clap for me.”

  “I always do.”

  Together, we went upstairs where Sam took the stage to a lot of clapping that didn’t come from me. Not wanting to take up an entire table to myself, I found a place at the bar where I nursed a beer. Sam had another, I saw, from which he sipped from time to time.

  About half an hour after he’d started playing, someone tapped my shoulder. The crowd had grown and I’d had eyes only for Sam, so I hadn’t noticed anyone standing so close to me.

  The tap startled me, but when I saw who’d done it, I broke into a grin.

  “Jack!”

  I got off my stool to hug him and step back to look him over. He looked good, but then, could Jack ever look bad? A few seconds too late, I noticed he wasn’t alone, but the girl with him wasn’t glaring at me. She held out her hand, instead, and we shook.

  “Sarah,” she introduced herself.

  I recognized her, of course. The blue hair and the metal in her face weren’t hard to forget.

  She was the girl who’d been talking to Jack the time we’d been here together. I gave him a look, and he responded by putting his arm around her shoulders. Sarah beamed, her hand going into Jack’s back pocket.

  “I started school,” Jack said. “Full-time.”

  “Good for you,” I said sincerely.

  I heard Sam saying something onstage, and laughter, but I’d missed most of it.

  “See? She is ignoring me.”

  I heard that and turned to see most of the audience looking at me. Embarrassed, I gave a little wave and did my best to send Sam a mental vibe to stop talking about me. He must have got it, because he started plucking a new song, leaving me to wonder what exactly I’d missed that had made everyone look at me.

  Sarah invited me to join her and Jack at their table, and though I hesitated, she insisted.

  There didn’t seem a graceful way to refuse, so I ended up sitting with them. Jack left to use the restroom, and I waited for awkwardness to fall over us.

  Sarah wasn’t a
wkward. “I think it’s great you’re cool with talking to him,” she said cheerfully, if a bit out of left field.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She laughed. “Well, you’d think someone who’d had a dude’s dick in her mouth wouldn’t be all freaked about saying hi to him in a bar, but you’d be surprised. And they sort of act like

  ‘how dare he be here’ when hey, here’s a free country and it’s not his fault they’re embarrassed by what they did.”

  The stream of words left little room for a reply, but I laughed. “Um…”

  Sarah laughed, too. “It’s cool. I just thought it was nice you seemed happy to see him.”

  “I was happy to see him. I like Jack very much.” I drank some beer.

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  We smiled at each other.

  “He told me you told him to ask me out,” she said after a second. “So…thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” The conversation was a little surreal, and not because of the alcohol.

  Sarah lifted both hands to give me devil horns with her fingers. “Also, thanks for, like, teaching him manners and stuff. I’ve known Jack a long time and he’s positively suave now. It’s awesome. You rock.”

  “It was my pleasure, really.”

  Sarah tipped her head back in raucous laughter. “Oh, I believe that!”

  We laughed together until Jack came back to the table and we tried to stop, but a look at each other sent us into gales of giggles again. Jack just shook his head and sat between us.

  Sam’s singing sounded a little hoarse, but that didn’t stop the crowd from loving him. He played some covers and a few originals, all songs I’d heard him play half a dozen times. It wasn’t that I was ignoring him. It was just that…well…talking with Jack and Sarah was fun, and Sam’s music was in the background.

  Before I knew it, though, he was finishing up and it was time to go. Jack and Sarah both hugged me goodbye at the same time, making a sandwich until I shooed them both off, laughing.

  They left, and I waited for Sam to finish putting away his guitar.

  I was sitting at the bar again when he came over to me. He gestured for a beer, but I put out a hand to keep him from taking the bottle. “You have to drive.”

  Sam lifted my fingers from his wrist and took up the bottle. “I’m fine. Let me finish this last one and we’ll go. It’s late.”

  It was late, and the sort of night I suspected would end in me getting a death call in the wee hours simply because I hadn’t gone to bed at a normal time. That was often the way it worked. Still, Sam’s attitude concerned me.

  “I think you shouldn’t, Sam.”

  “Well,” Sam said. “Too bad you’re not me.”

  I blinked and took my hand away. Took my entire body away, as a matter of fact, creating a physical gap between us on the bar stools. Sam hunched with his elbows on the bar and lifted his beer to his mouth.

  “How many have you had?”

  He didn’t look at me. He didn’t answer, either. I waited, but he said nothing, ignoring me.

  A dozen responses to his silence filtered through my mind, but none of them seemed worth the scene. Instead, I got up and put some money on the bar to cover my bill and a tip, and I walked away.

  Sam caught up to me on the sidewalk outside. I’d pulled up the collar of my coat against a brisk late-September breeze, but Sam had no coat. He shivered and bumped my leg with his guitar case. It didn’t hurt, but I stepped aside with a pointed look.

  “Am I coming over?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered coolly. “Are you?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “You can if you want.” I started walking toward the parking garage, my stomach a knot of toads and my throat tight.

  We were going to have a fight, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I felt it as surely as anything. Tension hung between us like a sagging laundry line hung with clothes the soap didn’t quite clean.

  Yet once again, Sam backed off. He kissed my cheek and hugged me with one arm. “I’ll meet you there.”

  I nodded stiffly. “I’ll be in bed. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Lock it when you come up.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Sam hesitated, kissed me again and headed off in the opposite direction toward his car. He’d parked on State Street.

  My anxiety eased on the ride home. Every couple had disagreements. It was part of being a couple. Even when you loved someone, you could be angry with them. There wasn’t anything to worry about. It was, in fact, a good thing. It showed we were comfortable enough with each other to express our opinions and emotions.

  Fuck. I didn’t want to fight with Sam. I didn’t want to lose the fresh and new feeling of this. I didn’t want us to become just another couple. Not yet.

  Hell, not ever.

  I showered and got into bed, but without Sam there I couldn’t sleep. I tried not to look at the clock, but each time I did the minutes had ticked by. The drive from Harrisburg took forty minutes, and even if he’d left a few minutes behind me, he should’ve been there already.

  I tried counting the number of beers he’d had, but couldn’t be sure if it was four or five.

  He hadn’t acted drunk, but he could’ve been pulled over. He could’ve been in an accident.

  I shot straight up in bed, a hand clapped over my mouth to hold back a sudden wave of nausea.

  Oh, God. He could be dead.

  I got out of bed to pace, wishing again I smoked or knitted or liked to do sit-ups. Anything to take my mind away from a vision of blood on the asphalt and a windshield starred and broken.

  When the doorknob of my apartment door turned I gasped aloud and jerked open the door before Sam could finish opening it. “Sam!”

  He blinked at me. “Last time I checked, yeah.”

  My eyes watered at the stink of beer on his breath. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I had to make a stop.” Sam lifted a six-pack missing all but one of its members.

  Anger replaced my anxiety, so harsh my legs shook with it. My teeth chattered until I slammed my jaws together. I slammed the door behind him.

  “I was worried sick, Sam! Are you drunk?”

  Sam held up a hand, seesawing.

  “Fuck you,” I told him, and turned on my heel. “Sleep on the goddamn couch.”

  I slammed the door to my bedroom, too, so hard a picture fell off the wall. Breathing hard, my stomach pitching, I paced at the foot of my bed. I knew he liked to drink, but this…

  Instant doubt assailed me. Was I right to be pissed off? Sam was an adult. I didn’t own him.

  But he was my boyfriend, didn’t that give me the right to expect certain things from him?

  Fuck.

  I didn’t want to be the sort of girlfriend who ruled her boyfriend. I liked Sam the way he was. I didn’t want to change him, or own him or tell him what to do.

  Then again, since we got together he’d pretty much done everything I wanted him to do, so how did I know anything different.

  “Pissflaps,” I muttered, and sank onto the foot of my bed.

  Sam hadn’t even knocked. Maybe he’d left. Maybe he was, even now, driving drunk down the road and into the path of a tractor-trailer—“Sam!”

  I flung the door open to stare at an empty room, and my heart leaped into my throat again.

  Until I heard the snoring and my gaze followed the sound to where a pair of long legs dangled over the edge of the couch.

  He was asleep in his clothes. His mouth parted with each breath. Anger and anxiety tumbled around in my guts, refusing to quell themselves until I took a few swigs of pink bismuth liquid.

  I sat in the chair opposite the couch and watched Sam sleep. What if he puked in his sleep and choked on it? What if he’d drunk so much he had alcohol poisoning?

  What if he got cancer? Pneumonia? Tuberculosis? The flu? Leprosy? The plague?

  Oh, God, what if Sam, my Sam, died and left me? W
hat if I had to be one of those women who had to choose what casket he should be put into the ground in, the suit he’d wear, what to say on his memorial card?

  But I’d have no rights to make any of those choices because I wasn’t Sam’s wife but just a girlfriend. If Sam died, I might be the one who missed him most, but I wouldn’t be the one who got to mourn him the loudest. I’d fallen in love and there didn’t seem to be much hope of falling out of it.

  My sobs must have woken him. A shadow loomed over me, and big hands pulled me onto a lap with plenty of space for me to curl up. I sobbed into Sam’s chest with the smell of beer and his cologne surrounding me, and I breathed in, over and over, forcing my exhausted brain to hold on to that smell. To remember him, his smell and the feeling of his hands, the texture of his hair.

  The length and breadth and width and girth of him.

  Of Sam, whom I could not bear to lose.

  It had sort of been aborted, but was our first fight anyway. It made a difference between us for a couple days, in which Sam seemed to try extra hard to make me laugh and I tried extra hard to let him, but soon enough we were back to the way it had been before that night. At least almost.

  My heart still clutched at odd moments when I thought of all the things that could happen to Sam. Every person I took care of, each heart attack or, God forbid, suicide, even the peaceful face of Mr. Rombaugh who’d passed away in his sleep, wore Sam’s face for a minute or two while I prepared them.

  “I’ll be glad when I finally get my license,” Jared said as we went through the embalming procedure on Mr. Rombaugh. “Then I can do this without supervision.”

  I looked up, grateful for the conversation to take my mind away from its melancholy.

  “Have you thought about my job offer?”

  Jared nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, Grace. A lot.”

  I didn’t want to pressure him. “Your internship’s over at the end of the month. You know I’d love to have you come back when you’ve passed your test.”

  He nodded again. “I know.”

  “I know you’ve had other offers. And I understand you have to do what you think is best, Jared. I won’t be mad or anything.”