Layover Rules

Chapter Twenty



Two weeks later, on a Thursday evening, I turned on my TV and saw Sam being interviewed on the local news. I had tuned in to catch the report about Trevor’s plea deal, not even expecting to see Sam, but there he was.

Seeing him and hearing his voice made me realize how much I missed him, but I’d resisted contacting him, and I’d already kept it up for three weeks, so I knew I could go longer.

I had two conversations with my parents, one after the plea deal was struck, and one after the news broke that Trevor had been sentenced to seventy years in prison.

I never told them about the night he was arrested outside my apartment building. The matter was over, and I didn’t need to burden them with any more stress about my life.

Late one afternoon I finally opened Sam’s book and looked at the inscription again: “For Blair” he’d written, even though at the time I was still under the impression that he hadn’t figured out that I’d lied to him and that my name wasn’t Claire.

I smiled at the memory of that night, the beginning of what turned out to be the best relationship I’d ever had.

I lay on my side on the bed, running my fingers over the inscription, feeling the impression his pen had left in the paper. I turned the page to the table of contents, read through them, and turned the page to Chapter One.

Finally, after all this time, I was reading Sam’s book.

I’d always been a big reader, but never a fast one. A book that would take most people a couple of days to finish would take me a week or so. I liked to read slowly, mostly because if I really loved a book and its characters, I didn’t want it to end. The more time I got to spend with characters I liked, the better.

But I read Sam’s book fast, finishing in just under four hours. I didn’t put it down once, not even when I went to the restroom. I just couldn’t stop reading. When I turned one page, my hand would be on the next, ready to find out more and more about him.

His book was all about perseverance, and he told story after story about the obstacles he’d overcome throughout his entire life as it related to baseball, including the funny childhood story about the two balls in the glove.

I learned about his high school and college years, sat in rapt attention as I read about life on the road with a minor league team, then finally to the major league, right up to his vivid and heartbreaking description of the injury that ended his career.

I felt like I was getting to know all the things I would have learned if we’d had a “normal” relationship. But these were all things in the book that thousands of people had already read. I wished I’d gotten to know Sam deeper than that, and directly from him.

When I came to the end, I closed the book and faced two undeniable facts.

First, I felt more strongly for him than I’d let myself admit.

Second, in hiding the truth about Trevor from him, all in an attempt to get what I wanted and get it my way, I had done to Sam exactly what Trevor had done to me.

I hadn’t been fair to him, and to a less important extent, I hadn’t been fair to myself.

I had created the entire situation.

I had only myself to blame.

And I had only myself to count on to fix it.

Simple as that.



. . . . .



I texted Sam: Please call me.

Maybe he was on a plane, going somewhere to broadcast a baseball series. Or maybe he was heading back to the city. I’d stopped paying attention to his schedule, and had even blocked ESPN from my TV channel listings.

I turned on my iPad and searched for the baseball broadcast schedule, unsure of what I was supposed to be looking for. I finally found a site that listed all of the games being shown on ESPN, along with the announcers who would be calling each game.

I scrolled through the list, finding the current week, then started checking each listing. Finally, I found his name. He’d been in Houston the last three days, the final game of the series played the night before. I checked the next couple of listings, and saw that he wasn’t due to broadcast again for another six days.

That meant he was either on his way back to New York, or he was already in the city.

Now, how to find him?

Google is your friend….

Sam had mentioned the street he lived on in the city, but not the exact address, so that was useless to me. I also wasn’t about go all the way to Bristol, Connecticut, the ESPN headquarters. He said he almost never went there anyway, plus it was about two hours away, involving different trains and a rental car.

I called there instead, asking if they could tell me how to locate Sam Vonn.

The receptionist said, “I can give you his email address.”

“I need to speak with him.” Should I lie? Hell, yeah, I should. “I’m a close friend of the family and there’s been an emergency.”

“Hold on a second.”

I listened to the hold music and regretted what I’d just done. Was she calling him to tell him there was a family emergency? What the hell would he think of me doing that? What would I say if they connected my call to him?

I was on the verge of hanging up when the receptionist came back on the line. “We can try to get in touch with him. If you give me the information—”

“Wait. Never mind. I’m sorry. Thank you for your time.”

I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d gotten a little crazy, and I just couldn’t introduce more lies into anything related to Sam. I’d find him, somehow.

I picked up my phone again and scrolled through to Alicia’s name and called her. I’m not sure why. Maybe looking for insight or something.

She answered, saying, “I swear, the next person who asks me about gluten is going to get a meat thermometer stuck in their eyeball.”

“Working?”

“Yep.”

I clicked on to Sam’s publisher’s website. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I’ll let you go.”

“No,” she said. “You’re fine. And of course I’m exaggerating my stress a little. It helps for some reason. What’s going on?”

I clicked through to a page about updates and news regarding Sam’s book. “I don’t know,” I said, distracted.

“You don’t know what’s going on? What do you mean?”

“I didn’t know. But now I do.” The webpage told me all I needed to know. “Let me call you later.”

“Okay,” she said. “This is the weirdest conversation I’ve had in a while so you better call me and tell me what happens.”

“I will. Gotta go.”