“You, too,” I chuckled to myself as I shut the door; the pizza delivery guy and I were practically friends now. A few times, the person taking my order on the other end just recited what toppings I wanted and had me confirm. I made up my mind to take up cooking soon, though. It’d either be that or start running twice a day instead of once.
I locked the door and set the food on the counter, looking around the mostly empty room when I sat in my lone barstool. There was nothing but an 80-inch TV mounted on the living room wall, a couple beanbags in front of my X-Box, a floor lamp in the corner, and a stereo beneath the window of what should’ve been a dining room. Even my bedroom was bare – nothing in there but a king-sized mattress on the floor and my laptop sitting beside it. I could’ve done more, I just chose not to. In fact, I was currently sitting on $60,000 in my bank account thanks to the money my father sent when he tried to convince me to come back home in January – right before he sent Reina in to try. I sighed and shook my head at that whole situation as I walked back to my bedroom.
It still hurt like hell thinking of how out of control my life was at that time – the drama with my father, the way Sam and I ended up, and my brief run-in with the law after my ‘altercation’ with Antonio. Lucky for me, the detective in charge of the case wasn’t all that pressed about punishing me for putting him in the hospital, so she didn’t push too hard. I managed to lie my way out of it because I was careful not to leave fingerprints and there were no witnesses, which left her with nothing but a motive. A few trips to the police station and it was basically over with. I owed part of the thanks to Terrell. Despite my urging him to stay behind that night, he followed me to Antonio’s apartment anyway. If he hadn’t walked in just as I was getting ready to deliver the final blow, Antonio would be rotting in a coffin right now instead of a jail cell. Detective Jimenez might not’ve been as forgiving in that case.
The mattress didn’t give like it would’ve if I actually had a bed when I dropped down on it and grabbed my laptop. I checked the time first, noting that Karl still wasn’t supposed to be here for another fifteen minutes. He’d be staying here all summer until school started back up, at which point he’d return to Charleston with Dee, and I’d be starting school locally to buy myself some time until I figured things out. With my father no longer owning a majority share of Arata, my future was no longer as secure as I thought it’d be. There may or may not have been a job waiting on me when I graduated, so I needed to come up with a backup plan just in case.
It was strange enough being back in Fairfax, but even weirder being back here knowing that Sam was somewhere else. It felt a little less like home. Scratch that, it felt a lot less like home. She crosses my mind once every hour at least, and that’s no exaggeration. In fact, the only reason I even paid my email account any attention at all was that I hoped she’d decide to reach out one day, opting to just message me instead of calling due to the awkward way we left things at Charleston. However, those messages that I stood post for never showed. She never called, never tried to contact me at all. She was great at disappearing when she really wanted to.
Even Terrell hadn’t heard from her until late May. She didn’t even tell him where she settled, fearing that he’d tell me…which he probably would’ve in a heartbeat. He’d been pulling for us to get back together this whole time. Too bad he didn’t know like I did that it was all in vain – just like my constant message checking.
Thirteen new email messages since morning – mostly promotional garbage and crap like that, but nothing from Sam. Of course not. I scrolled down all the way just to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything, checked my junk mail too. When I switched back to my inbox, I scrolled past a familiar name a few lines up and went back to it.