“Shut up. C’mon, you’re going to treat me to lunch for subjecting me to the last two hours of torture.”
“Hold on, I have a dry t-shirt I want to change into.”
I lead us into the deserted field house behind the carnival. Sam crosses her arms and watches as I shake out my hair and tug my shirt off overhead.
“WHOA! Warn a girl, will you?”
I shake my head and bend down to riffle through my bag for my dry shirt. I take an obscene amount of time. Sam fidgets and groans, and eventually she bends down and yanks the bag out of my hold.
“Here, just let me.”
We’re so close, and I realize now that Sam’s not completely dry either. She’s been standing next to the booth all morning getting splashed. Her white t-shirt clings to her body the same way mine did. I can see the outline of her pale pink bra, the curve of her breasts.
“You’re dripping on me,” she says, though her voice has lost all of its edge.
“Sam—”
“Hold on, I’m going to find it.”
She thinks my gruff tone is from annoyance, but she’s wrong. I’m seconds away from peeling that shirt off over her head. Any other time, I’d do it, but there are students just outside. The timing isn’t right.
“Ah, here it is!”
She stands and holds the shirt out to me with a proud smile. I force my gaze north of her neck.
“That one’s for you. I knew you’d get wet, so I brought two.”
She’s perplexed. Her head tilts to the left and her soft mouth is so fucking close to mine.
She’s hesitating, so I pinch the hem of her shirt and shoot her a look: May I? For a few moments, she doesn’t move. She’s calculating her next move, playing out every possibility in her mind. I know she’s envisioning me taking her right here. I resist the urge to bite my lip. Eventually, she raises her arms slowly, and I peel the material off fluidly over her head. For a few brief seconds, she’s standing there in pale, pink lace and shorts. I can see everything from her neck to her navel. Her bra conceals nothing. Her creamy skin is damp. Her stomach is quivering. She’s cold. Goose bumps bloom across her shoulders. My hand reaches out for her waist and my fingers grip her, hard. A war is waging within me. I want to push her up against the concrete wall. I want to dip my fingers beneath the waistband of those shorts and press her cold skin against mine. I could warm her up so easily, fill her up so easily.
But, I don’t want to be friends with benefits. I want more. Before my resolve cracks, I tug the dry shirt down to replace hers. She’s suddenly covered from neck to thighs. Her arms are hidden underneath. She looks like one big black armless blob. Good.
“Cute. Now let’s go get you some lunch.”
If I think I’m going to get any chance to discuss things with Sam during the carnival, I’m sorely mistaken. We’re surrounded by teachers and students the rest of the morning and early afternoon. Sam insists on eating a barbecue plate and then a funnel cake and then, while wiping powdered sugar from her lips, she asks if I think it’s a good idea for her to get a deep-fried Snickers.
“I think you’re getting dangerously close to the competitive eating zone.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not dangerous, just means I’m getting to my sweet spot. Pun intended.”
It’s true, she can eat a lot of sugar, but I think she’s using carnival food to bury the mix of emotions swirling inside her. My suspicions are confirmed when she is suddenly way too interested in playing all the carnival games. She aims a water gun and throws darts at balloons and tries to land hoops around bottlenecks. She loses at everything and whisks right on to the next activity. I know she’s doing it on purpose. She knows we have to eventually address the elephant in the room.
I want us to be more than friends.
Sam wants to continue living in delusion.
By the end of the afternoon, we bike back to her apartment and she’s quick to tell me she needs to nap and shower and get ready for the dance. Sugar is crystalized on her bottom lip. Her eyes are wild. If I wrapped my hand around her wrist, I’d feel her pulse pumping a mile a minute.
“Sam, you can slow down. Nothing has changed.”
She’s already squeezing herself through her half-opened door, pushing it closed behind her.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that. Okay, well bye then! See you at the dance!”
Then the door is slammed shut in my face.
I’d completely forgotten about the dance, to be honest. Back when I signed us up, it was my way of ensuring I’d spend Valentine’s Day with Sam even if I wasn’t technically with her. Pathetic, I know.
I work out and shower, but there are still a few hours to kill. I decide to FaceTime my parents, which I immediately regret because they only care to talk about one thing.
“TELL US ALL ABOUT YOU AND SAMMIE WAMMIE!”
“She doesn’t like that nickname,” I remind them.
My mom rolls her eyes, pushes my dad out of the frame, and gets so close to the camera that I can see up her nose. “Did you take her out to the Olive Garden yet?”
Why is it that all parents eventually start adding “the” before every single business name? It’s just Olive Garden.
“No.”
“Well you’ll bring her home for Sunday dinner soon right?”
“We don’t do Sunday dinner,” I remind her. “Also, you guys live four hours away.”
“Well I’m thinking of implementing it, especially if you start dating Sam!”
“There’s a good chance she just wants to stay friends,” I say, breaking the news to them and myself all at once.
My dad grunts, steals the phone from my mom, and then I’m treated to a close-up of his ear canal. I’m not sure he realizes this is a video call. “Listen here, son, if you need some tips and tricks, you need to listen to your old man, not your mom.”
I wipe my hand down my face. Calling them was a mistake. I’m going to start being one of those kids who only talks to his parents at holidays and funerals—weddings too, if I’m feeling generous.
“I gotta go, guys. Bad connection.”
“We can hear you just fine, sweetie!” my mom insists.
I hang up and toss my phone across the couch.
This is a complete disaster. I’ve thought a lot about how I would transition my relationship with Sam from friends to…more. I was going to do it slowly, carefully. She’s like a rabbit, timid and jumpy and mostly wants to be left alone so she can eat in peace. She’ll talk herself out of anything if you give her long enough to think about it, and above all, she fears change. Last year, they swapped her classroom and she cried about it for a week. Then, for the next month, she kept accidentally going to her old classroom instead of her new one.
“I’ll never learn! This is ridiculous! They can’t just move me three rooms down!”
She even typed up a multipage essay outlining why it was important for her to get the use of her old classroom. She printed it out and had me read it aloud over dinner. I made it halfway through then proceeded to rip it up over the trashcan and tell her she was crazy.
We didn’t talk for two days.
Eventually, she realized she was being unreasonable.
Another time, I tried to convince her we should move West Wing Wednesdays to Tuesdays because I wanted to check out this new trivia night at a bar down the street.
“But it’s an alliteration, Ian. West Wing Wednesday—get it? Without the Wednesday, it’s anarchy. I won’t abide lawlessness.”