lie to me → s.d.

.03 | an old friend

Theodora stared at her knuckles holding the doorknob, and when she blinked, they had faded into a pale, throbbing white. She forced herself to take a breath and glanced over her shoulder, as if she would see her dead ex there, too, standing in her living room. He wasn't there; he was outside the door.

She opened it again and looked at Sam over the cheap, gold-colored chain barely hanging on to doorframe. His head was tilted to the side like that of a curious dog's, chapped lips parted slightly, and he watched her as if they were children again playing some kind of game. "Th-"

The door closed again. Opening the only cupboard on the other side of the refrigerator that didn't whine when the hinges swung, she quickly rummaged through expired spices and tuna packets for the slim object sitting against the farthest wall. She produced it from the small space and stepped backwards against the island, revealing a black, rigged handgun to the all-seeing eyes of the empty apartment. She glanced up at the door again, hand shaking slightly like a lone leaf in autumn, and flipped off the safety.

It simply wasn't possible that Sam Drake was outside her front door. It couldn't be him just now, knocking again. It must have been a stranger that looked like him; had the same moppy hair that brushed his shoulders, the same thin lips and eyelids that were shaped like curved, upside-down L's. Nathan, his own brother, said he watched him get shot during their escape from the Panama prison. She saw the documents herself in some dusty old office, buried his things in Massachusetts far, far away from the orphanage. No, that had to be someone else. It couldn't be her Sam.

Theodora found herself hesitant to open the door for a third time, as if she might undo the lock, swing it open, and find that no one was there the entire time. Maybe it was time to get in touch with a shrink of some kind.

The chain lock pulled taunt as she eased the door open, resting her temple against the peeling frame and sticking the pistol's barrel just past her hip. He was still standing there, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other like he was waiting for something to happen. He looked up when she came into view once more, smiling, and allowed his gaze to flicker down to the firearm. Some kind of nervous laugh escaped his throat and he leaned close enough for her to catch a whiff of nicotine and a rainy-smelling musk. It nearly brought tears to the corners of her eyes, but she restrained them and kept them at bay.

"That a gun, or you just excited to see me?" Sam asked. He chuckled at his own joke, arm extended to scratch at the back of his neck, and his smile faded in what seemed like slow motion when her face didn't so much as twitch. They stared at one another for a moment before he sniffed and cleared his throat. "Can, uh... can I come in?"

"...No." Theodora wondered if this could be some kind of trap. She made some enemies during her career as a bodyguard, specifically in clients themselves who weren't satisfied when she told them they were probably only paranoid, and even more before that when she still romped around in the wilds with the Drake brothers. Yes, she had a few people that were maybe still a little bitter with her, but who would pull some kind of fucked up trick like this?

The barrel of the gun lowered, if only an inch or two, toward the ground. "Sam," she said, and his name slipped like a nostalgic nightmare from her tongue, "I thought you were dead."

"Ah," he said and flashed her a Cheshire-like grin, "almost." Lifting his shirt and the denim of his fleece-lined jacket, he gave her a generous view of his abdomen, now marred with a trio of marks she didn't remember being there before. Scars from bullet holes. They were pale pink patches surrounded by diamond-shaped tissue, a few inches above his waist, and they were grouped in a small, obtuse triangle. Her eyes wandered from the scars to the faint lines of the muscles beneath his skin. "Went straight through. They stitched me up and threw me right back in." He dropped his shirt and when he looked at her again, her handgun was hanging lamely at her side. "I know I ain't usually this cheesy, but, uh... I sent you letters. They told me they went out."

Theodora shook her head as well as she could, trying to keep the slew of emotions in her throat from bursting like a powder keg. "I never got letters," she said. "Hence, you being dead and all."

          Sam raised a hand to rub at his right temple and mumbled something or other about a guard he pissed off, and she took a moment for herself to really look at him. He looked like a retro model of someone she used to know; more stress lines, a thinner build, purple half-moons stamped beneath his eyes. The arms of a tattoo on his neck peeked out from beneath the collar of his jacket, and his hands seemed perhaps just a fleck or two more unsteady than they once were. But there were also things about him she knew to be just the same as all those years ago; the smell of cigarette smoke that clung to him like a thin fog, the single dimple that prodded his left cheek when he smiled. The dark irises surrounded with a brown so deep and clever, so proud and defiant. It was most definitely the man that used to be her Sam.

          She opened her mouth to ask another question, a seeming half trillion sitting on her tongue, when Roger stopped in the hallway behind Sam and paused. Her boyfriend's gaze drifted between the stranger and the gun in her hand, and two of the keys in his left grasp slotted between his fingers like claws. "Hey," he greeted, a silent question to them both. "Who's this?"

          Sam took a step back and drew himself to his full height, like a bird puffing out its chest, and he leaned his head to the side nonchalantly. "I'm her boyfriend. Been a little tied up lately."

"No, he is not." Theodora quickly closed the door and her fingers worked the lock quicker than she thought was humanly possible. The last thing she needed was to let them out of her sight for a few seconds and find them both half-dead in the hallway. That would suck; mostly because someone would complain to the HOA about the mess. She flung the door open again and leaned out to grab Roger with her free hand. "Get inside. Come on."

A boot wedged itself in the doorway as she tried to close it, and she looked up to find Sam leaning his arm over her head on the frame. Face brought close to hers, she was able to see the fine details of his features, little things she must have forgotten as time went on. "Listen," he said, voice low to a tone that reached only her ears. "I need your help."

"My help?"

"Tomorrow mornin', at the docks," he instructed, and his words engraved themselves in the side of her brain, whether she wanted them to or not. "First light. Nathan'll be there, too. I need to talk to you guys."

Like a child trying to ward off another from intruding on their fortress, Theodora kicked his foot out of the way and shut the door - hard. Handgun resting against her leg, she placed her forehead against the grainy wood and took a deep, drowning breath. "I thought you left," she said to the presence standing behind her.

"I forgot my wallet," said Roger. His footsteps clunked closer and he squeezed in beside her to poke his head toward the peep hole. "Who the hell was that?"

How did she begin to describe Sam Drake, she thought, especially to him? He was certifiably a dead man, a treasure hunter that explored the hidden crevices of a world their tiny apartment made seem like a galaxy; here, there were four walls, a pre-laid floor, and a popcorn-ceiling roof. Out there, where he lived, where he belonged, there was the endless stretch of horizon, the call of the unknown he hollered back to in just as big a voice. He was a thief. A charmer, a playboy that had broken his habits the first night their eyes met in a way they hadn't before. He was her first love. Her...

"An old friend," she answered at last. Her thumb nudged the gun's safety back on and she stood up straight, face pale and the glistening sweat on her chest gone.

Roger said something more, but she didn't hear him through the church bell-ringing in her ears and the rushing of hot blood through her veins. She placed the gun on the counter and lifted a hand to her face, trying to calm the nerves bouncing in her stomach as if her guts her a trampoline. A chill climbed its spider-like way up her spine and she retreated back to the door, staring through the peephole into the hallway that looked so much brighter now.

Sam was gone.