Truth was, I’d lost my appetite.
I’d gotten past the stage where everywhere I went, I thought I caught glimpses of Sam. I went whole days without crying over him. But I was nowhere close to being able to think about him without pain trickling through my body. I was desperate for my longing for him to disappear. I was ready to be over him. It just wasn’t happening.
I wondered if it ever would.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sam
“Coming,” I shouted at the pounding against my hotel room door. I stalked over—Jesus, room service was impatient—and slung it open only to find Angie instead of my food. Fuck. I should have checked the peephole. “What are you doing here?” I barked.
She didn’t answer, just pushed past me into my suite. I couldn’t be in the Park Avenue apartment without memories of Grace surrounding me—she’d picked out the furniture, the art. It was too much.
I let the door slam shut. “How did you find me?”
Angie sat on the couch, crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. “I’m resourceful. When your best friend disappears for eight fucking weeks, you find a way.”
“I didn’t disappear.”
“You moved out—I sat outside your door for twenty-four hours, so I’d be sure. And you stopped answering my calls.”
“You’re here now. What do you want?” I wanted to be left alone—I didn’t need Angie interfering.
“I want you to explain what the fuck you’re trying to do by ignoring my calls. Presumably you’re avoiding me ripping you a new asshole because you’ve abandoned Grace when she needed you most.”
My heart lurched at the thought of Grace needing me. I tightened my hands into a ball. That was why I’d walked away. I couldn’t open myself up like that.
“There’s no avoiding this conversation, Sam. We’re family. And family tells each other when someone’s making a huge mistake.”
Family. That was such a loaded word. It was what I’d lost when I was twelve. It was what I’d been on the verge of having again with Grace. But Angie was right—most of all it was what I’d had with her since we’d found each other in foster care.
I didn’t respond. Instead I bent over the glossy wood cabinet by the sofa and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. I poured two drinks and sat down next to her.
I tried to hand her a glass, but she knocked it away. Rivulets of whiskey coated my arm and the glass clunked as it hit the carpet.
“Jesus. You could have just said no.” I took a sip of my drink.
“It smells disgusting,” she said, folding her arms in front of her again.
“It absolutely does not. It smells like expensive whiskey.” She had such a temper.
“Well, it smells like dog shit to a pregnant woman.”
I tried not to smile. This was what she and Chas had been wanting for well over a year. “Congratulations. I’m really happy for you.”
“Fuck you.”
“What? I’m happy for you. I mean it.” Wow. Angie was having a baby. She deserved it all.
“You’re going to be the godfather, asshole.”
I pushed my hands through my hair. “No, Angie, I’m not.” I needed less to care about in my life, not more.
“I’m not giving you a choice. You’re the only person in my life I totally trust—the person who knows me the best.” She turned and looked at me for the first time since she’d arrived. “I have no one else to ask. So, there’s no disappearing out of my life, out of our lives. Do you get that? I can’t handle it. I need you.”
I stood up. “It’s not a good idea. You can’t need me, Angie. I’ll just end up disappointing you. Or one of us will die and—”
“Just stop it,” Angie said. I glanced at her and she rolled her eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”
I paused and then chuckled. In our darkest hours, Angie had always shown me the funny side.
I sat back down beside her.
“And now I need you more than ever,” she said. “I have this tiny human parasite in me and it’s going to arrive in seven months. I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m sure I’m going to melt down at least once a day. The only thing I learned from my mom was how to be a crack whore. I want to save those lessons until my daughter’s eighteen.”
“You’re having a girl?” Angie would be a terrific mother despite her start in life.
The corners of her mouth curled up. “Yeah. Can you believe it?”
I shook my head. “It’s amazing.”
“I need you, Sam.”
“You have Chas.”
“I need him, too. But don’t you get it? You’re my family. I’ve been abandoned once—don’t do it to me again.” She started to cry and I grabbed her hand. I hated the thought that I’d left her like her mother had. “And you can’t do it to my daughter, either. She’s going to need you, too.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m right here.” Angie would always be in my life, for better or worse. It was just too late to change that. She was family. “I’m so sorry for disappearing.”
“I know you are.”
Just like that, I was forgiven. We were Sam and Angie again.
“So, you ready to be an uncle to this kid?”
“Not even a little bit.” I smiled at her.
“All you have to do is love her. That’s all I ask.”
“I think you’re asking the wrong man.” I wasn’t capable of doing things other people took for granted—things like loving people. It just wasn’t that easy.
“You can’t live without love, Sam. If you try, you might as well have died in that car right alongside your parents.”
I tried to twist my hand free from hers, but she wouldn’t let me. “Don’t say stuff like that.” I knew how lucky I’d been.
“I know you don’t like to talk about them, but I also know the man you are. Not the guy people see from the outside—not what your parents’ deaths did to you—the man who’s left when everyone else except me is gone.” She leaned over and poked me in the chest. “I know what’s in here. I know who your parents created while they were alive. A man who would lay down his life for me. Loyal. Determined. Fierce. Someone who’s capable of giving great love.”
Even though they’d left me so early in life, I was my parents’ legacy. Angie was right—all the good inside me was them. “You’re going to be an amazing mother.”
“If I’m not, it’s all your fault. You convinced me I could do this. And I’m determined I’m going to do my best by this kid. I owe it to my daughter, to Chas, but most of all to me. You told me I shouldn’t let my past determine my future. But neither should you, my friend. You deserve Grace.”
I rested my head back on the cushion and closed my eyes.
“That’s what your parents would want for you, Sam. A great love. Someone who deserves you. Someone like Grace. I think they would have loved the way she loves you.”
I was sure they would have loved Grace. And she them. The inside of my nose burned as images of what might have been formed in my imagination.
“She doesn’t love me. Not anymore.” The thought hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. “And that’s the way it should be.”