“I know,” I said. Silence settled over us.
“So the other day was really cool,” Sam said after a minute. “I mean, I think it was a really good idea.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
Sam took off his cap raked a hand through his hair, getting a few tufts of grass stuck in his thick, dark strands. “Hey, could I run with you for a little while?”
“You want to run with me?”
He shrugged. “If that’s cool,” he said. “I used to run track at my old school. My dad was the coach, actually.” A shadow flickered over his face.
“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t run in a while, though.” I paused. “Not since the accident, actually. So I’m not very fast.”
“Good,” Sam said. “Then you’ll be easy to beat when I race you.”
I laughed. He pushed the mower back up to the house and then jogged back down the driveway.
“You’re not going to change clothes?” I asked.
He glanced down at his grass-stained sneakers, his faded running shorts, and his sweaty shirt. “Nah,” he said.
We set off at a slow jog, and until we reached the end of the block, neither of us said a word. I was conscious of the silence between us and of my pounding heart, which was pumping blood so loudly that I feared Sam could hear it too. It wasn’t until we were at the end of the street that Sam spoke.
“So do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
Startled, I looked up at him. “Um, no,” I said. I cleared my throat and focused on my pace. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Nah,” he said. He paused and added, “I had one at my old school. But that was a while ago.”
We jogged in silence again, and then Sam blurted out, “I think we should go out. You and me, I mean.”
“What?” It sounded ruder than I’d meant it to.
“It’s what I was trying to ask you that day in the car. Before you got mad. I think we should go out. Like, together.”
I could feel myself blushing. “Really?” I asked. “Why?”
“You don’t want to?” Sam asked. I noticed he wasn’t looking at me, but his face seemed redder than it should have, considering that we weren’t jogging that hard.
“No, no, I do,” I said quickly. “I’m just not used to …” I didn’t know what to say. What, that I wasn’t used to guys liking me? That I wasn’t used to being asked out? “You don’t even know me,” I finally concluded.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I sit next to you in two classes, and we’ve talked pretty much every day for the last month and a half.”
“I guess,” I said. I didn’t know why I was being so reluctant. I was completely attracted to him; how could I not be? And I knew he wasn’t asking me out just because he felt sorry for me or wanted to gossip about how great he was for taking out the poor little fatherless girl.
“Besides,” Sam continued, “how are you going to get to know me if you don’t let me take you out to dinner?”
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow night?” he said.
I thought for a minute. “Yeah,” I said. “I could do that.”
We both fell into silence again, and as I ran, my mind swirled, thinking about the fact that at this time tomorrow, I’d actually be out with Sam Stone. Who was hot and sweaty—and really, really gorgeous—as he jogged next to me right now.
“So tell me about your little brother,” Sam said as we turned out of his neighborhood onto Long Pond Road.
I hesitated, then began to tell him about how much Tanner liked animals and video games and how he used to love searching for the prize in the bottom of the Cracker Jack boxes at ball games. And before I knew it, I found myself telling Sam about Tanner’s almost constant silence and how much it worried me. He told me that he was really scared to see his brother withdraw from everything he used to love. And I was surprised to realize that our mothers seemed to have reacted to losing our fathers the same way: by throwing themselves into their work and social lives instead of spending time with us.
“It’s like she thinks that if she just works hard enough, she can forget,” Sam said, glancing down at me.
“That’s exactly how my mom is too,” I said. Somehow, it helped to know that my family wasn’t the only one crumbling, the only one where the remaining adult had retreated rather than dealing.
It was the best conversation I’d had since the accident.
As we jogged and talked, our feet eventually carried us to my house, like that’s where we’d been going all along. By the time we got there, we’d covered everything from Jennica to Sam’s best friend Chris at his old school who didn’t call anymore to how hard it was to come into a close-knit community like this one and make friends, when everyone had known one another since preschool.
We stopped in my driveway, and as we stood catching our breath, I asked, “Do you want to come in and get some water or something?”
Sam looked at his watch. “Nah,” he said. “My mom’s probably wondering where I am. I’d better get home.”