The Open Road: A Second Chance Romance Page 21

  “He’s your friend?” Derek pointed to Skip. “You don’t have friends, Samantha.” Again, he completely ignored Henry.

  “Skip has an elderly short-haired cat that is blind in one eye and takes seven pills a day. Last month, when Skip went out of town to visit his sister, he let me babysit. Skip, you wouldn’t have left your cat with a stranger, would you?”

  “Mrs. Kush Kush? No way, man. She’s my whole world.”

  “Exactly. She’s his whole world. I knew that about Skip because he’s my friend. I know where Skip lives. I know his favorite strand of bud is Lemon Haze. But if his supplier doesn’t have that, he’ll settle for Northern Lights, but he thinks it’s overrated.”

  “All medicinal,” Skip said.

  “I know that he rides a bicycle because he hasn’t had a driver’s license in fourteen years. I know he loves Pedro’s Taco Truck that usually parks on Dobson Ave. I know he has three children with a woman named Margaret but they’ve never been married and she lives across town and still comes to visit occasionally when she gets horny.”

  “Whoa, TMI, Salamanther,” said Skip.

  “Hush, Skip,” she snapped.

  “Oh, so he can call you nicknames?” said Derek, taking advantage of her momentary distraction. Samantha was undaunted. She ignored him and soldiered on.

  “And do you know why I know all those things about him, Derek? Because he is my friend. How many pets do you have, Derek? I have no idea. Where the hell have you been living for the past six months, Derek? Beats me. What is your favorite taco truck, Derek? I don’t know and I don’t care. Because we are NOT friends. You are the stranger here, and I don’t want to get to know you. Not now, not ever.”

  “Samantha, please.” Derek’s tone was placating.

  “No,” she snapped again. “Let me make one thing abundantly clear to you.” She paused, sucked in a long breath, then released it slowly. When she continued, her voice was low and steady. “You and I do not have a relationship. That ended when you left me standing in the parking lot of the coffee shop. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want you to text me. Don’t send me flowers. Don’t send me candy. Don’t buy me gifts. Don’t ask me to meet you for dinner, or coffee, or drinks. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. I am done with you, Derek.”

  She could see Derek’s jaw clench and unclench as she spoke. His fists were balled at his sides.

  “Is that how you want it to be?” he asked. His voice, too, was low, almost a whisper.

  “That’s how it is.”

  “Over three years together and you just want to throw that away?”

  “No, you threw it away when you left me. Now, stop trying to drag your trash back into my house.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “But don’t expect me to be there when you come crawling back. And you always come crawling back, Samantha. It’s what you do. You crawl.” He turned and stormed back down the stairs and burst back into his own apartment, slamming the door behind him so hard the entire building shook.

  “Whoa, that was heavy,” said Skip.

  Henry had backed up until he was standing at the edge of the stairwell. He was looking at Sam as if he was truly seeing her for the first time.

  “You okay, Henry?” she asked.

  “I, um … that is … well,” he stammered as he took a step down. “Well, I just came to tell you that I, um, had another vision, and you weren’t in it. That is to say, we no longer have a future together. I thought our souls were connected, but my soul can’t be connected to your soul because well, you seem like—”

  “Is my soul carrying around a little too much baggage, Henry?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Your soul just seems to be a little … strange. I mean I can see that our souls don’t match up. It’s clear now I was mistaken. I must have not fully understood the first vision,”

  Samantha couldn’t help but laugh. The crazy, psychic stalker dude was calling her strange. “Well I’m sure that’s an easy mistake to make. Some souls might appear compatible at first and then the strangeness creeps in and boom, you realize it wasn’t your soulmate after all,” Sam said.

  “Yes, exactly,” Henry said quickly as he turned to hurry down the stairs. “I’ll be on my way. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  Samantha shook her head as she watched Henry rush down the stairs as if he couldn’t get away from her strangeness and baggage fast enough. “Wow. Alright then. That happened.” Then she turned to her neighbor and friend. “Sorry you had to witness Derek’s asshole-ness, Skip. But I’m glad you were here.”

  “No problem, Samanthastotle. Happy to help. But my old lady’s name is Maxine, not Margaret.”

  She laughed. “You’re a complicated man, Skip. I couldn’t remember every detail once I got up a head of steam. Say hi to Mrs. Kush Kush for me.”

  “Hey, what was up with that Henry fellow?” Skip asked as he scratched his head.

  “He’s just a dude looking for his soul mate,” she answered.

  “Aren’t we all.” Skip chuckled.

  “Yeah, I suppose we are. Night, Skip,” Sam walked into her apartment feeling better than she had in years.

  If Samantha thought she’d been wound up the previous night during her shift at the coffee shop, it was nothing compared to how she felt the next morning. The time between when she arrived for work at eight a.m. and when Jason was supposed to call her at noon felt like four months rather than four hours. The euphoric feeling of finally telling Derek off still hadn’t dissipated. And she wasn’t sure which was causing her nerves to feel like a jangle of wire coat hangers: seeing Derek’s face when she had told him to go crawl back into his hole or the anticipation of her twelve o’clock phone call.

  “Did you really tell him you never wanted to see him again, Sam?” Charity asked.

  “Congrats, girl,” said Jessica. “I’m proud of you.”

  “You should have seen me,” Samantha said. “I was amazing, if I do say so myself.” She mimed patting herself on the back. “And did I mention Henry showed up and witnessed the whole thing? By the time Derek stormed off, Henry was heading back down the stairs like his butt was on fire. He said he was mistaken about the vision all along, our souls really didn’t match up like he thought. Took care of two birds.” She grinned.

  “Oh, why couldn’t you have waited until I was there to see his face?” Charity pretended to wilt like a flower. “I wish I could have been there to rub it in. And to see hyena actually call you strange. Priceless.”

  “That probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. Derek already looked like he wanted to murder me. I think Skip was the only thing that saved me. You might have pushed him over the edge.”

  “I just hope he’s gone for good,” said Charity, “but I won’t get my hopes up. If I know that bastard, he won’t go away quietly.”

  “He won’t,” agreed Samantha. “But I think he knows it’s different now. I’ve never stood up to him before like that. Maybe he will eventually take the hint and move along.”

  “Speaking of moving along, are you excited about your little noon time telephone rendezvous?”

  Samantha blushed. “Thanks a lot, by the way. That was some plan. But if someone was going to make a scene by falsely accusing an innocent man of stealing lunches, I figured it’d be Charity.”

  “Oh, I wanted to, but Jessica’s been here longer.”

  “I’ve got seniority,” said Jessica. “If the plan went south, we thought I’d be less likely to get written up for accosting a coworker. Also, he’s a white male, and I’m a black female. We figured I’d be okay.”

  “I appreciate your willingness to get hauled into HR for me,” said Sam.

  “No big deal. No one likes Bob anyway.”

  “I just wish I would have had more time to compose my text to Marbles,” said Charity. “There was so much more I could have said to him … on your behalf, of course.”

  “Will you stop calling
him that?” Sam asked.

  “Not ’till he grows a bigger pair.”

  Sam’s cell phone rang at precisely twelve p.m. Luckily, Jason had been smart enough to consider the time difference.

  “Hello?” she said, answering before the first ring had even finished.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  Jason’s voice brought back Samantha’s inner butterfly army. They stood on an edge of a cliff now, waiting to make their move. If the conversation went well, they would soar. If it went poorly, they would leap over the edge and fall to their deaths.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Good, I think.”

  His voice didn’t match his words. Jason sounded tired, strained even.

  “Where are you, I guess I should ask.”

  “Sitting in the Seattle airport right now. About to board a plane to Alaska.”

  “Oh, cool,” she said. “I watched your Oregon video. The waterfalls were pretty.” Again, a picture of Samantha and Jason, walking hand in hand through the beautiful wilderness of the Northwest, flashed across her mind.

  “They were,” he said. “There were times when I was hiking, especially when it was raining, I almost felt Bethany was there with me. Like she was walking right beside me.”

  Samantha squeezed her eyes shut tightly. She knew it was horrible of her, but she had to fight back a twinge of jealousy. “Oh,” she said, her voice soft. “That’s … that’s great.” The butterflies in her stomach hesitated, quivering, unsure of how to respond. If her feelings came through in the sound of her voice, Jason didn’t comment.

  “Yeah, it was great. I met a couple hiking on the trail and gave them Bethany’s lilac. Then, the next day, I drove to Seattle. I spent yesterday morning at the fish market. I threw some fish and gave a flower to one of the fishmongers. It was fun.”

  “That sounds like a blast.”

  “Yeah, I wish…”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The pit in Samantha’s stomach grew deeper. What had Jason been about to say? That he’d wished Bethany had been there him? Had he clammed up because he knew that statement would make Samantha feel bad? Or maybe he’d been about to say he’d wished Sam had been there with him, and he was simply too afraid to finish the thought because he knew the door it might open? She wanted to press him but was scared of what he might say.

  “So, when’s your flight?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “In a few minutes, actually. I’m about to board.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I would have picked a better time for the call if I’d known.”

  “No, it’s fine. Now that I know you are willing to talk to me, we can talk all the time.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I thought you might still be mad at me for running out on you in Vegas. By the way, you can tell Charity thanks for texting me back, and I’ll be sure to have her chocolates.”

  Samantha laughed. “Not at all. So, you knew that text wasn’t me?”

  “Of course.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Just didn’t sound like you. I know you would never ask me for anything, even if it’s just dinner,” he said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “You’re too proud.”

  “And what’s wrong with being proud?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing at all. It’s just who you are.”

  “And you know that from one weekend?”

  “Well, technically, with Thursday and Friday included, it was four days. That’s actually over half of the week. And since we didn’t sleep much, each day was probably more like two days … so, really, I’ve known you for over a week if you look at it that way.”

  “Hmm, but you didn’t show up on Sunday, so it was only three days, not four,” she reminded him.

  “Ouch, you’re right. I’m so stupid.”

  “I’ve noticed the comments on your videos haven’t let up.”

  “No,” he said. “If anything, they’ve gotten even more brutal.”

  “Wonder what the internet trolls would think if they knew we were talking right now?” she asked.

  “Probably that the evil siren, Samantha, had gotten her hooks into me for good.”

  “Or that I’d fallen for Lucifer’s charms.”

  “You think I have charms?” he asked.

  “Maybe one or two, when you’re not trying to break into landfills or seducing innocent women onto terrifying roller coasters.”

  “Hard to be charming when you’re covered in pineapple vomit,” he countered.

  “Touché,” she said. Sam heard an indistinct sound coming from the background on Jason’s end of the phone.

  “That’s my boarding call,” he said. “Guess I gotta run. Can I call you when I get back from Alaska?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Anytime. Be careful, you know, with the bears and all.”

  “Absolutely, he said. “Tell Charity and Jessica I said hello. See ya.”

  “Bye, bye.” She hung up the phone and slapped a palm to her face. “Be careful with the bears? I’m such an idiot.”

  “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. It wasn’t that bad.” Samantha whirled around to see Charity and Jessica’s smiling faces leaning over the top of her cubicle.

  “Nice of you to remind him about the roller coaster, though,” said Jessica.

  “Yeah,” said Charity, “everyone loves to remember being puked on.”

  “It’s the highlight of most trips to Vegas actually,” said Jessica.

  “How long have you two eavesdroppers been there?” she asked.

  “Just long enough to know you think waterfalls are pretty,” Jessica said.

  “And there’s nothing more romantic than grown people throwing giant fish at each other,” added Charity.

  Samantha shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Have you forgotten this whole damn thing was your idea?” she said to Charity.

  “I know,” said Charity. “I just didn’t think there was any chance it would work. Now, I fear the monsters my foolish meddling may have unleashed.”

  As her friends walked away, Samantha replayed the conversation in her mind. The butterflies in her stomach hovered over the edge of the abyss, still unsure whether they should soar or fall. Samantha hadn’t known what to expect from the conversation, so she didn’t know whether she should be disappointed or elated. Jason was the same flirty man she’d met in Vegas, and their conversation was easy and light, like they’d known each other their whole lives, just as it had been in sin city. But something in his voice was sad. She hoped he didn’t fall into another funk like he’d done in Los Angeles. Now that she was getting to know him, Samantha hated more than anything to see him sad. All of a sudden, she remembered she never thanked him for the snow globe. She quickly fired off a text.

  One more thing. Thank you for the snow globe.

  Glad you like it. Can’t text any more now, putting phone on airplane mode. I’ll text you again when I land. Miss you already.

  Samantha read the last three words several times before they fully registered. Then the butterflies had their answer, and they flew.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Over the next few weeks, Samantha’s emotions went up and down as much as the vomit-inducing roller coaster in Las Vegas. She and Jason spoke on the phone every couple of days and when they didn’t talk, they texted back and forth. Sometimes they even video chatted. Most of these conversations left Samantha feeling over the moon. But, occasionally, Jason would be morose when he called and sometimes he would go a couple days without contacting her at all. When Samantha asked about it, he’d only say he’d had a bad day and didn’t feel like talking. She knew, of course, he missed Bethany and was far from over his grief, so she always assured him she understood and told him she was there for him if he needed it. Sam felt helpless and miserable after these conversations. A
nd though she tried to ignore the thought, after every conversation like this, Charity’s voice echoed in her head. Brent thinks he’s going to kill himself, drive his RV off a cliff or something.

  Samantha continued to track Jason through his video uploads. His following was growing. His latest post, from Wisconsin, had gotten almost five thousand views in just a few days. Unfortunately, the negative comments hadn’t faded away. Though most were supportive, there seemed to be a handful of individuals that simply insisted on making Jason’s life miserable, constantly calling him a loser and a phony. And they hadn’t forgotten about Samantha. She was still brought up every time a video was posted and called all manner of ugly names. She and Jason had both agreed to ignore them. There was simply no point in stooping to the level of those swine.

  And even though she and Jason continued to get on well, she was no closer to defining the status of their relationship than when she’d left Las Vegas. For her part, Samantha knew she liked him much more than a friend, but she knew he had baggage. And she had no idea if he would ever be able to let those old wounds heal or if he even wanted to. She wanted desperately to help him shoulder his burdens, not so she could pursue a relationship with him, but because she had grown to care about him. She just didn’t know how she could help from hundreds of miles away.

  If this roller coaster ride with Jason wasn’t stressful enough, Charity had finally set her wedding date—September 1st—the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. This gave the girls just over a month to finalize the preparations, which didn’t seem to Samantha nearly enough time, though she didn’t actually know, as she’d never helped plan a wedding before. But Charity was adamant she and Brent get married before he started his last year of law school, which began the following week. She wanted him to know with certainty she was marrying him before he became a rich and successful attorney. She loved him for who he was, not what he could give her in terms of money or status.

  As stressful as those two things were, they both took a back seat to the psychological battle she was waging with Derek. As anticipated, he’d not gone away quietly. But neither did he engage in his old tactics of gifts plus constant apologies eventually equals Samantha back in bed with him. The incident with the flowers had obviously shown him she was serious this time. So, instead, of badgering her with gifts and apologies, he would simply do something to remind her, every few days, that he was lurking. Usually, he would leave her notes, sometimes on her car, sometimes on her mailbox, sometimes taped to her front door. The content of the notes was poignant, but never quite ominous enough to be threatening. Derek would write a single sentence, reminding her of something they’d done together, and it was almost always something she wasn’t necessarily proud of, like when they’d made out during a certain movie or gone skinny dipping at Smith Mountain Lake. The notes never used terms of endearment, they weren’t apologetic, and they didn’t ask her to forgive him. They were just constant reminders of the hold he once had on her.