Stranger Read online

He waited. Still Life with Chopsticks. The dark arches of his brows were so perfect I wanted to run my fingertips over them. I wanted to kiss him.

  “I don’t want you to think that I just…do that.” Although I had. Although I did.

  Sam’s mouth curved the tiniest bit at the corners. “I don’t want you to think I do, either.”

  We looked at each other another moment before he shrugged and bent to his food like we’d had an entire discussion and come to a conclusion. I wasn’t convinced, but I wasn’t sure what else to say about it. I ate, too, and the food was so good I had to sigh.

  “I haven’t had Chinese in forever,” I told him.

  “That’s like a sacrilege. How can you not, like, eat Chinese at least once a week?” Sam offered me an egg roll.

  “Uh, a little thing called money?” I took it and cracked it open to let the steam out and drizzled duck sauce into the shredded cabbagey goodness inside.

  “Oh, that,” Sam said, scoffing. “Money.”

  “It’s easy to laugh about if you have a lot of it.” I crunched into the egg roll’s crispy outer layer.

  “If I had a lot of money, would that make you like me better, or worse?”

  I looked up, thinking he must be joking, but he looked serious. “Neither.”

  Sam lifted a chunk of chicken with his chopsticks and used it to point at me. “You’re sure?”

  “Why, Sam? Are you a secret millionaire?” I looked to the side, at his boots. “Because I have to say, if you are, you’re really good at keeping it a secret.”

  He laughed and drew in his legs, bumping the table. “No. I’m pretty poor, actually.

  Starving artist and all that.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “I’m wallpaper.”

  I took a minute to chew before I let on that I had no clue what he meant by that. “Huh?”

  “Wallpaper.” He waved around the room. “People go to dinner, they eat and talk. They don’t pay attention to the wallpaper. Or to the dude playing ‘Killing Me Softly’ on the guitar.”

  “I think if I heard a dude playing ‘Killing Me Softly’ on the guitar, I’d pay attention.” Not to mention if said dude was Sam, who couldn’t possibly ever blend into the background.

  Sam shook his head and looked mournful. “Not so, I’m afraid. Nobody ever says anything about the fact I change all the words, so I’m positive nobody’s ever listening.”

  I laughed at the mental image of Sam bent over his guitar, crooning different lyrics to songs while all around him people drank wine and flirted with everyone but him. Sam grinned and sat back to tip his beer to his lips. I watched his throat work as he swallowed.

  “You play guitar for a living?”

  “A living? Arguable. Do I earn money doing it? Yes.”

  “Wow.” I made an impressed face.

  Sam laughed. “Yeah. My family’s so proud.”

  The way he said it made me think that wasn’t quite true.

  “Do you think you’ll get a record deal or anything?” Not being particularly creative myself, it was pretty cool to meet someone who was.

  Sam laughed again, this time louder. “Oh…right. Hey, you never know. I’d be satisfied getting paid to play for people who actually listen to me sing, at this point.”

  “Someday,” I said, because it’s what you said to people when they shared they had a dream.

  “Yeah,” Sam answered. “Someday.”

  We both drank in silence for a moment.

  “So, about that night,” Sam said, catching me looking. “If you don’t really do that, and I don’t really do that, how come we both did it?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I’d thought he was my rentboy. “I don’t know.”

  “Fate?” He drank more beer, this time with an eye on me.

  “I don’t believe in fate.”

  “Luck?” He grinned and licked his lips and set the bottle on the table.

  “Maybe luck. But, Sam…”

  He held up a hand to stop me, and I did. He unfolded himself inch by inch from his chair and gathered up the garbage while he talked. “You don’t have to say it. You don’t want a boyfriend. You’re not into dating. You just want to be friends.”

  I didn’t get up to help him, but he didn’t really look as if he needed any. He even found my trash can in its hidden place beneath the sink. “Why would you assume I’d say that?”

  Sam washed his hands at the sink and turned. “Were you going to say something different?”

  “No.” I shook my head and stood, too. “I just didn’t like that you assumed you knew what I was going to say.”

  We smiled at each other. Sam looked at the clock, then back at me. “We can be friends.”

  “We can?” His answer surprised me. Disappointed me, too, a little, I’ll admit.

  “Sure.” Sam grinned. “Until we can both no longer deny our unquenchable passion for one another.”

  I laughed. “Is it time for you to leave?”

  “Yes.” He straightened. “I think it is.”

  I walked him to the front door, and down the stairs to the back door of the funeral home, where he hesitated on the covered porch and I pretended my heart wasn’t jumping into my throat.

  “This is kind of a pain,” Sam said.

  I thought he meant the kiss thing—should he or shouldn’t he? I was half voting for should, even though I knew it should be shouldn’t. “What?”

  “The door. You don’t have your own entrance?”

  “Oh. I do, but I don’t use it. When I started renovating the apartment I blocked off the door with the shelves in the kitchen. It’s safer that way.”

  Sam nodded, solemn. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well, good night, Grace. Thanks for letting me invite myself to dinner.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and meant it. “We should do it again.”

  “Sure. Friends eat dinner together, right?”

  I nodded and before I could stop myself, I reached to run a finger along the line of buttons on the front of his shirt. “Sam?”

  “Yeah?” He shifted, just barely, when my finger stopped somewhere in the middle of his chest and I pulled it away.

  “About that unquenchable-passion thing…”

  He smiled and jumped down the two steps to the sidewalk. “Just think about it.”

  I sighed and watched him walk away. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Keep thinking about it!” he called over his shoulder, and I went inside and closed the door.

  I thought about it, all right. Too much. It was pretty much all I thought about for the next week, but Sam never called. Not that he’d promised to call. Just that after he’d showed up with dinner, I’d expected him to. Shit. I’d wanted him to, and that pissed me off more than the fact he didn’t.

  I could have tracked him down, but I refused. I didn’t need Sam’s long legs, his shaggy hair, his big, big hands. I didn’t need his smile.

  I didn’t need Sam, period.

  Sunday dinner was neither worse nor better than I’d expected it to be. My niece and nephew romped with my parents’ dog, Reba, a purebred hunting spaniel they’d rescued a few years ago. My sister helped my mom in the kitchen while my dad and Jerry lounged in front of the television in the den. I wasn’t needed in the kitchen where the two whirling dervishes of domesticity tackled the cleaning of dishes with the precision of an army heading to battle. This left me with nothing to do but climb the stairs to the room I’d shared with Hannah.

  I meant to look for some old photo albums. My best friend Mo was getting married next year and I wanted to give her something different than just a set of wineglasses or a gravy boat. I looked around the room, which had once been papered with posters of rock stars and unicorns but now featured plain green walls hung with prints of flowers. The twin beds were the same, covered now in matching comforters with a battered nightstand between them. This was where the kids slept when they spent the night.

  I still had junk he