Chapter 8
It’s a bit odd waking up in a room with two men, especially knowing they stayed out late partying. I’m kind of wired to think of others—sometimes it turns into my downfall—so I try to be quiet when I wake up and sneak from my tiny rollaway into the bathroom. I’m certain Sam and Justin need their sleep. After we all came back from the radio station event, I called Bryce and went to bed, but Justin and Sam went to the hotel bar. I woke up briefly when I heard Justin come in around one. I woke up again when Sam stumbled into our room hours later. But now, as I tiptoe out of the bathroom, he is sitting up at the edge of his bed. He’s bent over his knees, with his hands covering his face.
“Sorry if I woke you,” I whisper. “I’m heading out to do laundry so you guys can sleep.”
Glancing at me through splayed fingers, he shrugs.
I grab my card key and quietly exit the room. At the bus, I give Gary a bag of bagels for meeting me and opening the bus, then drag our five half-full laundry bags to the laundry room, which is in the far recesses of the hotel. Given our limited clothes supply, I’m planning to take advantage of the washing machines at every hotel stop, even though we’re barely four days into the tour. Just as I finish dropping each bag in front of a machine, Sam waltzes in with two steaming cups.
As I stand there surprised, he holds out a hot coffee. “Thought you might like some company and some coffee.”
I practically snatch the drink from his hand. “Thanks,” I say, and take a long sip of the caffeinated goodness. Did he remember that I like it black? Or was he just guessing? Though I was planning to head to the exercise room for a half hour on the treadmill once the machines were going, Sam’s offer of company is too thoughtful for me to turn down. Besides, I’m only half awake.
After gulping down more coffee, I dig quarters out of my pocket and make a pile on the counter. “I was going to wash them all in cold. I planned on dumping them in without separating colors.” I wrinkle my nose. “I’m not touching dirty man underwear.”
Letting out a laugh, Sam sets his coffee down on a chair. “Sounds like a plan.”
We load the machines with clothes and quarters, then sit together sipping coffee in the line of plastic chairs. Water blasting into the machines fills the silence. I try to think of something neutral to talk about, something that doesn’t have to do with the past. Then I think, Screw that. Maybe it’s better to stop pretending there isn’t a past between us—well, except for that one night. That is so off-limits. But if we’re going to get along for real, pretending we weren’t friends just isn’t going to work anymore.
“So how is Seth doing?” I ask nonchalantly, and notice Sam’s grip around his cup tightens.
“He’s all right.”
“Is he at the University of Michigan?” Both Sam and Seth were supposed to go to school in Ann Arbor, which was why I’d dropped my purse freshman year when I saw Sam in the commons at our university. I’d never expected to run into him at college.
“No.”
“Where’d he go?”
“He went to the U of M for a semester and came home.”
“He isn’t going to college?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Seth found out college isn’t for him.”
“But he was so excited when he got accepted.”
Sam shrugs.
His short or lame responses are starting to get on my nerves. “Is he working, then?”
He shifts, turning halfway toward me. “He cooks at a diner on Main Street. Why are you still interested in Seth?” he asks evenly.
I put my hand up, palm toward him. “Don’t. I’m not hung up on Seth. How could I be after the way he treated me? Almost everyone who lived within a hundred-mile radius of the party where we broke up thought I was a cheating skank or a whore slut. In the months before all that happened, he’d turned from the perfect boyfriend into a jealous, possessive nut. I should have broken up with him months before that night.”
“Don’t call him a nut, but since you’re bringing it up—why didn’t you break up with him when he was treating you like that?”
The nut reference must have hit a nerve. I decide to ignore his response. “Besides the fact I wasn’t the most self-assured girl then, it was hard to let go of the Seth I knew at the start. The boy who showed up at my school with flowers. The boy who threw pebbles at my window and sang to me at midnight. He was the first boy who ever really liked me.”
Sam’s confused gaze searches mine. “What are you talking about? Every guy in our group wanted you at the first party Jill brought you to.”
Suddenly, I’m confused. Did Sam want me? He had never acted like it until maybe that ill-fated night. “I’d been—overweight through most of high school. The summer before we met, I lost over thirty-five pounds. The guys at my school who’d never looked at me didn’t change their minds, even after I’d lost the weight.” My thumb absently rubs the side of the coffee cup. “If I’m being honest, I have to admit that Seth’s attention went to my head.”
He studies me. “The guys at your school were idiots even before you lost the weight.”
I smile at that. “I liked to think so.”
He watches me with a slow burning gaze. “I wonder if you’d never . . .”
“What?”
With the shake of his head, his gaze returns to normal. “Nothing. No use wondering over the past. So your new boyfriend doesn’t have any issues with you being on tour with four guys?”
“He wasn’t super keen on the idea, but he trusts me,” I say, feeling a little uncomfortable talking to Sam about Bryce. Still, I did ask about Seth, so I guess we’re opening the floodgates. Kind of. “Plus, he’s on the baseball team, and will be gone for half the summer anyway.”
“So, what, if he wasn’t busy all summer, would you still have come?”
I tap my cup on my knee and seriously consider the question. “Probably. I’d like to work in the music business as a journalist eventually. This opportunity was perfect for me.”
“So your career comes ahead of your boyfriend?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it like that. I like him a lot but we’re not engaged or anything. There wasn’t some dramatic choice involved. It wasn’t like coming on this tour would mean us breaking up.”
He tilts his head in something like a half nod, and then the room is filled with the sound of whirling water as both of us stare at the washing machines.
“So you like our album?” he asks, breaking our silence.
“It’s good,” I say with a smile. “Real good. I’ll admit I was surprised. The mix of folk, blues, and punk really works.”
“Except for the surprised part, I’ll take that as a compliment coming from you.”
I nudge his arm with my elbow. “What surprised me was the complexity of the music. You guys go to my school. You’re a band from mid-Michigan. It’s just unusual to find such awesome talent so close to home. When I first listened to the album, it seriously impressed me.”
“That just came out. You never came to see us before we released it?” His tone is incredulous.
“Once,” I admit, then decide to be totally honest. “It was the U-Palooza at the beginning of sophomore year, and I still wasn’t over the whole Seth thing. When I saw you playing onstage, I kind of went into shock. The only band member I’d heard about in advance of the show was Romeo. I made sure not to go to any more shows.”
“Hell,” he says, running a hand through his messy curls. “You must have been really hung up on Seth.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t actually about Seth. It was more about me. The whole thing hurt me more than it should have, probably because I was so vulnerable from the start. The whole weight thing . . . and finally getting attention . . .” I don’t finish. I’ve said enough. A conversation about my body image and self-esteem issues? We’re just not going there.
He stares at me for a long moment. “Well, that sucks. I’m sorry. I never meant . . . Things were a bit tense after that—that night.”
We stare at each other and emotions churn in my stomach, both from the release I feel from talking honestly and because his confused frown makes me want to reach out to him.
The whirl of a washer halting its spin cycle fills the sudden silence between us.
He stands and tugs a rolling wire cart over to a machine.
I get the other cart and push it next to his, filled with fresh resolve that it’s time to get over the past. “It’s been nearly four years,” I say, opening a washer while trying to separate my emotions from the facts. “We were all kids. Somehow, after seeing you at the U-Palooza, I started feeling ready to let go of the what-ifs.”
Without looking at me, he heaves clothes from the washer into the cart. “Yeah, it’s better for you to move on. I guess with things fucked up between Seth and me, I didn’t consider how much everything might have affected you.” He pauses, pulling out more wet clothes, and focuses on me. “It’s just that when you showed up at my door before the tour, all that shit resurfaced, and I went into dick mode.”
Nodding, I reply, “For one quick second, I was overwhelmed with the past too when Romeo called me. I’m just not that person anymore.” My lips press together as I glance at the wet pile of clothes in the cart. “I never was the person Seth made me out to be after that night.”
I glance up and he’s frowning at me. “Peyton, for what it’s worth, I never thought you were that person.” He rolls the cart over to a dryer.
I’m left standing there, staring at the muscles of his back move as he shoves clothes in a dryer. Sam should be the one person who was aware I wasn’t a slut. Usually virgins aren’t considered sluts.
I too toss wet clothes into a dryer while my mind churns in confusion. If he knew I wasn’t a lying, slutty bitch, why all the condescending glares over the past years? Why so much silent hate? I slam the door of the dryer.
Maybe because you came between him and his twin brother, Peyton?
The thought hits me like a bolt of lightning. Like Sam, I’ve been regarding what happened through how it affected me. I’m not entirely dense. I was aware to a certain degree that night pitted brother against brother—but I never considered how it might have torn two brothers apart who’d once been inseparable. Maybe the rift had even sent Sam to a different college. Instead, I imagined him hating me because his brother did. Not because of what happened afterward or how it changed his life.
The past, the fallout, my hurt, everything suddenly shifts, and the laundry room feels like it’s on a tilt as I push my cart back to another washer that just finished its spin cycle. Though I hadn’t been a lying, slutty bitch, I may have been a bit self-centered. Or maybe a whole hell of a lot. Less than an hour ago, I wanted to confront the past head-on. Now scared that night might have ruined Sam and Seth’s relationship, I’m thinking Screw that. At the same time, I’ve learned that denial just prolongs things, makes them fester. I don’t want to be a coward any longer.
I open a washer as Sam moves to the machine next to it. “So you and Seth are still close, right?” I ask.
The tumble of clothes in the dryers becomes loud. I clench the wet clothes in my hands when I glance at him. As I take in the bleakness of his gaze and the tightening around his mouth, which convey complete sadness, the wet clothes drop to the floor. “Sam?”
His gaze snaps to mine and his expression clears. He reaches into the washer and jerks out a wad of wet clothes. “We talk every day, and I go home about every other month. We’re fine, good.”
I’m not a coward about probing a little more, but as he drops the clothes into the cart, pushes his shoulders back, and turns the cart toward a dryer, his body language clearly signals he’s done talking about Seth.
My mind stuck in a knot, I pick wet clothes up off the floor and stuff them into a dryer. Apparently, if Sam’s body language means anything, things aren’t right with the brothers. After all this time, I’m sincerely hoping their issues have nothing to do with me.
I’m starting to wallow in that old guilt when I’m swept off my feet and my butt lands in a wire cart.
Lips brush against my ear as he says, “You ready for a ride?” He shakes the cart like he’s revving up an engine.
“No!” I yell, my voice garbled with laughter.
Sam pushes me across the small laundry room.
“Stop!” I try to shout, but I’m breathless with giggles. Before I crash into the wall, he spins me around and around, again and again. My vision swirls. “Ahhh, stop or I’m going to puke on you!”
He spins me faster.
“Sam!”
He halts the cart suddenly and hauls me out. I take a shaky step and almost fall against his muscular chest. His hands wrap around my waist to steady me.
Looking up at him and leaning like the Tower of Pisa, I laugh. “You’re an idiot.”
He grins at me. “What’s that saying?” His square chin angles as he pretends to think. “Takes one to know one?”
My fingers grip his shirt as I lean the other way. “The saying is false.”
Sky-blue eyes crinkling, he laughs.
Suddenly, Gabe pops his head into the room. “Hey, we’re all meeting for breakfast.” His mouth curves into a knowing smirk at the sight of our near embrace. “To go over the set for tonight.”
I push away from Sam and stumble against a dryer.
Gabe looks to Sam. “You coming?”
“Yeah, we need to finish loading the dryers.”
Snorting, Gabe shuts the door.
Sam wheels the cart toward the last washer that contains our clothes.
“I can finish,” I say, regaining my balance while trying not to get peeved about Gabe’s knowing look.
“One more load and we can both go to breakfast.”
“Just grab me a muffin or something.” I tow his cart closer to me. “But you need to go.” I wave my hand toward the door like I’m dismissing him.
He lowers his chin and peeks at me through his lashes. “You want to touch my underwear in private?”
The joke wipes away my irritation. With a buttload of concentration, I keep my expression neutral. “How’d you know?”
“I’m good at spotting closet perverts.”
I whip a wet shirt at him and he catches it. He’s about to toss it back when his phone goes off. His grin dies and he drops the shirt into the cart.
Reaching into the pocket of his flannels, he says, “I’ll stop back with the muffin.” Then he answers his phone sharply with “What’s going on?” and walks out the door.
I don’t know why, but I’m saddened at the thought of him having such an awful girlfriend.