souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 132: sadie hawkins

"Sam?"
She turned her head but she couldn't see over her shoulder. She held there for a second with her veil over her shoulders and the bouquet down upon her lap.
Whoever it was that came from behind her strode up next to her. She peered up into his round face and those dark sunglasses which obscured his eyes from her view as well as the afternoon sun. His curls had been shorn away into a short buzz cut about his head, but she still recognized him by the little cleft in his chin.
"Mind if I join you?" Charlie asked her in a low voice.
She moved the skirt of her wedding dress over a bit so he could have a seat next to her atop the rock.
Charlie took off his sunglasses and looked over at her with squinted eyes. He never said anything, but she sighed through her nose.
"I just couldn't do it, Charlie," she confessed.
"Are you still in love with him, though?" he asked her.
"Of course. I just can't do the whole big wedding thing, though. Joey sure does, though."
He frowned.
"It's funny—that always strikes me as something that girls dream of from when they're children, you know? Like I remember when Marla and I were together, she mentioned her dream wedding to me a couple of times."
"And you obviously never went through with it," she pointed out.
"Nah. I fell for another woman."
Sam sighed through her nose. She couldn't hardly shake the image of the tears in Joey's eyes. No clue what to think of or what to say to Charlie right then.
"I fell for another woman—but she didn't feel that way for me," he continued.
"Really?" asked Sam.
"Yeah. Rose just—she wasn't interested. I couldn't help it, though. I was in love with a woman who was unavailable. But I was in love with her for a time."
"What'd you do?"
"For her or myself?" He frowned at that.
"Both."
"Well, for her, I wrote her a letter and I confessed to her that I had feelings for her. I also confessed to her that if she ever changed her mind or she wanted someone else to run to in a time of need, she could come to me."
"Isn't that a bad thing, though?"
"It can be, but she went with it, though. I also told her that I didn't want to be like... creepy or anything like that, you know? But she—she was totally fine with it, though. As for myself, well, it's all a matter of getting more and more used to things like sleeping by myself and having much more time to myself."
Sam peered out to the pond before them. The songbirds had left the trees on the other side, which in turn left the entirety of the quiet place under a blanket of sheer silence.
"So—you are still in love with Joey," he remarked.
"Yeah—but I'm—" She stopped right in her tracks.
"You're what?"
"I love someone else," she confessed to him in a low voice. Charlie shifted his weight and bowed his head.
"Well—if you have the courage to do so, don't make the same mistake I did," he advised her. "That's the best thing I can say to you. You left him at the altar, so the best thing I can say to you is—try to explain it to him as best as you can if and when you get the chance. You know, don't make the same mistake I did when I called him and said he was out when I really didn't mean that."
"Just tell him straight up that I'm not ready for marriage," she said in a soft voice.
"Literally, that's all you need to tell him. You're still very in love with him but you simply just can't do it because you like someone else as well."
She sighed through her nose again and nodded her head.
"Thank you, Charlie—I needed this," she told him.
"It's my pleasure, Sam," he replied with a shake of his head. "I had a feeling you'd be over here, too. Just because it's—this is our place. It's where I first took you six years ago."
"It's the place you go to where no one knows," she said.
"Would you like a ride home?" he offered her.
"Nah, I can take it from here," she assured him as she turned her head towards him. Even in just his sport coat and nice slacks, he looked as though he could be her groom instead. She thought back to that hoary old fantasy she had had when she first met Charlie and Marla and she wanted to laugh at that.
"Well, remember, if you need anything—anything at all—you give me or Frankie a call, alright?"
"Of course."
She stood up and then she put her arms around him. He buried his head into her shoulder and let out a soft groan. He then lifted his head and gazed up at her through the warm afternoon sun: glints of gold appeared in the finest pieces of his hair at the crown of his head.
He showed her a little smile and the dimple in his chin became more prominent.
"You may wanna talk to Marla, though," he pointed out, "'cause she's not too happy with you."
"I would think so," she confessed to him in a low voice. "She was the maid of honor after all."
"Come on—I'll walk you back to your car, though."
He stood to his feet and led her out of the quiet place and back to the street. The warm springtime sunshine shone upon their heads: even though he had shed his own little crown of curls, Charlie's hair still had those little golden glints and a gentle sheen about the top. He gave her one last embrace before he let her go back to her car: she still saw him standing there at the curb in the reflection of the rear view mirror as she drove away from there and back to New York City.
A few hours worth of a drive and she returned to the old familiar apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Marla hadn't returned home yet and thus that gave Sam a bit more time to herself. She parked the car up the curb a bit and then, with one hand on her skirt so as to lift it up as she walked up the steps, she took her seat at the very top and she waited for Marla's return. She thought about Alex and what she would say to him when she saw him again.
The look of bewilderment on his face when she hurried away from the altar, but there was something else however: a look that she couldn't hardly shake from memory the very second she saw it. The feelings were there with him: it was all a matter of coaxing them out into the open and reassuring them that she meant it well and true.
She would always love Joey, but Alex brought her somewhere else.
She took a glimpse up to the sky overhead: still pure blue in spite of the city skyline, which had begun to bring in some low haze from the sheer amount of traffic to go about. If there was one thing she would always relish about upstate New York and the outer regions of California, she knew in her heart to be the nature of it all. The vastness and the wide open spaces. The feeling of calmness around her as she gazed on at the black glassy waters of the lakes near Joey's hometown or the great wide unknown of the Pacific Ocean.
Sam peered down at the sidewalk at the little green sprigs in the sidewalk cracks: she thought of Cliff and the yellow tulips. All the yellow tulips in the world could not replace the Cliff shaped void in her heart even though they blossomed from such a place.
A few passersby strode on past and nodded her wedding dress, and she nodded back at them. One of them whispered to the other that it was her, it was Samantha Shelley, and she thought of Scarlett right then.
A moment later and she recognized Marla's car on the far end of the street. She parked right before her and, even though she had sunglasses on, she could see the look of disgust upon her best friend's face. Marla climbed out and shook her head at her, to which Sam fetched up a sigh.
She knew she was about to receive an earful for all this.
"Sam, what the hell?" she demanded once she came to the bottom of the steps and took off her sunglasses.
"I know, I know," she assured her. "I had a long talk with Charlie about it. I'm going to talk to Joey about it once I see him again."
Marla fumed. "You know—you do know that Joey's back home right now, right?"
"I'm not at all surprised about it, to be perfectly honest with you, Mar," Sam said in a soft voice.
"And after all this time, I was sure that you and him were deeply in love with each other," Marla confessed with a shake of her head.
"I thought we were, too," Sam admitted to her, "but I can't do marriage, Mar. I can't do it."
Marla folded her arms across her chest and sighed through her nose. She closed her eyes and bowed her head a bit.
"I wish I could explain it better but—I just can't. I love Joey but I can't marry him. It's—It's not in me. I know, I feel like I've wasted your and everyone's time with it all, but there's no denying the truth, though. I'm sure you know the whole deal with the truth."
"Well—yeah," Marla replied in a soft voice.
"There's just—there's no denying how I feel about things."
Marla lifted her head and reached into her purse for the apartment key. She still carried that disgusted and sour expression upon her face as she ascended the steps to the front door and stood right next to Sam.
"C'mon, Mar—you're a New York girl," she pointed out. "You guys are all about directness over here. It's not like back on the West Coast where everyone and their dog is polite. You guys have guts over here. Everyone on the West Coast has guts, too, but you guys are harder, though. You roll with the punches better over here."
Marla unlocked the door and then she reached down to help Sam up to her feet.
"There's a sense of politeness on the West Coast?" Marla asked her, bewildered. "Where?"
"Closer to the coast—like the San Francisco Bay Area where Testament and Exodus and Metallica are all from, and also up north into Portland and Seattle. Remember how nice everyone was over in San Francisco?"
"Oh, yeah. And I hear a lot of good things about the people down in San Diego, too."
"L.A.'s kind of hit and miss, though," Sam pointed out, and the two of them walked into the front hallway of the apartment complex. Marla pressed the button on the elevator and she stood there in silence.
"I will tell you this, though," Sam started again.
"What's that?"
"The vixen in me is still alive and well," she assured her. "I might be in love with someone else."
Marla raised her eyebrows at that.
"Who?"
She nibbled on her bottom lip.
"I won't say," she told her in a soft voice.
"Aw, c'mon, Sam."
"Nah, it's—it's pretty scandalous," she said, "for all I know, he's probably taken."
"He probably isn't," Marla assured her. "If you know him, you probably know if he's involved with someone else."
The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside: Marla picked up one side of the skirt so it wouldn't catch in the doors. The two of them huddled in the corner of the elevator car and they ascended up to the old apartment.
"You should talk to the guys from Testament, too," Marla advised her. "They should know what's going on, too. If nothing, have a little drinkie with them."
"A drinkie?"
"Yeah. I'm guessing you didn't catch Chuck and Eric with their flask back at the wedding, did you?"
"No," she chuckled.
They reached the floor and, with Marla's hand still on the skirt, they padded out to the hallway and down to the apartment. Marla unlocked the door and she held it for Sam, who strode into that familiar comfort like a princess who just lost her crown.
And then it dawned on her. She gaped at Marla once she shut the door behind them.
"What?"
"Oh god, my parents," she moaned.
"Yeah, you better tell them about it, too," Marla pointed out. "You should've seen the look on your dad's face."
"I did," she recalled and she shook her head at that. "I can't hardly get it out of my mind."
Marla set her purse down on the kitchen counter and she turned to the fridge: she returned to the living room with two bottles of hard pink lemonade.
"Yeah, I'm really gonna need a drinkie right now," Sam confessed as she took her seat on her couch.
The two of them sat there on the couch and made a toast to each other. No sooner had Marla taken a couple of sips when the phone rang. She hurried over to it there on the kitchen wall, still with the bottle in one hand.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Charlie. What's happening?" She turned to Sam. "Yeah, she's here right now." She returned to the body of the phone. "Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure she does. They were engaged, I'm positive about that." She paused. "Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll tell her." She paused again. "Alright. Buh-bye."
She hung up.
"Joey's back home," she told Sam, and she stood up and walked on over to the phone. She set the bottle down on the kitchen counter and dialed his number.
"If nothing, I'll just leave a message," she told Marla, who nodded her head as she took a sip of her hard lemonade.
It rang once, twice, four times.
The answering machine picked up and Sam cleared her throat. She pictured Joey there in the living room, still dressed for the occasion and in utter shambles for what she did to him. She had to brave it with him. She had to face him even if he couldn't stomach it for himself.
"Hi, Joey," she started, "it's Sam. Listen—and I know you're listening right now, too. I know you're right there by the phone. I know what I did was—completely fucked up beyond belief. I know that it feels like I wasted everyone's time, including yours. I know that you gave your heart to me and I know how much it hurts. But I want you to know that—I will always love you. I really will. I'll always love you regardless of what happens between us. I'll always love you. I'll always want you. But I just—I can't marry you. It's not in me. It's—nothing against you. Trust me, it's not. I just can't bring myself to it. If you're going to blame anyone for all this, blame me. I take the blame—and I always will. But know that it's all because I still love you and I always will love you. Know that it's because I realize I'm not a kid anymore, I'm a woman and that's just—part of growing up. Taking the blame and moving past it, all because I love you. I hope you and I can reconcile in the future because—you know I would love to. You take care of yourself in the mean time, okay? I can't bear to see you in a complete and utter wreck like when we found you—laid out at your house with a needle. I love you. Good night."
She hung up and Marla put her arms around her.
"Was that good?" she asked her.
"That was perfect," Marla assured her. Sam ran her fingers through her dyed blonde hair and sighed through her nose.
"Now, how am I gonna tell my parents," she muttered.
"Tell them when you can," Marla told her as she handed her the bottle on the counter. "That's what I say."
Sam fetched up a sigh again and took a sip from the bottle. She then doubled back to the living room to take off the dress when she realized she had no clothes there in the apartment. She returned to Marla, who had already unzipped her dress.
"Where are Testament staying?"
"Back upstate—like Syracuse," Marla duly replied. "Why?"
"I wanna see them."
"Right now?" Marla was stunned. "'Cause I don't feel like driving all the way back up the road at the moment, Sam."
"At least before they leave," Sam pointed out.
"You could go if you want." Marla stripped her dress off and let it fall to the carpet, and thus she stood before Sam in her underwear. "I'm kinda bushed."
"It's been a long day. An understatement, I know."
Marla chuckled.
"What?"
"You sure West Coast people don't roll with the punches as well as New Yorkers do?" she asked.
"We can," Sam assured her. "We're just a little more emotional about it, though. We don't get Nor'easters or shit from the surrounding area or anything like that."
"You guys get earthquakes," Marla remarked as she stepped out from the dress on the floor.
"Earthquakes and the Santa Ana winds and Indian summers in like—fucking October," Sam corrected her. "Diablo winds as they're called up in Nor Cal."
"El Diablo—" Marla set her raised index fingers upon her head and Sam chuckled at that.
Another sip of hard lemonade and she turned back to her purse on the couch there.
"Yeah, I'm definitely gonna go up there by myself," she told Marla, who then embraced her once more despite being in her delicate lacy underwear.
"Drive safe," she advised her. "They're staying in that one hotel you see when you're first driving in from the western side of town."
With that, Sam picked up her purse and headed back outside to her car. She all but stuffed her skirt into the driver's seat.
It was still light out by the time she returned to the highway back upstate. She thought about Joey every step of the way: she kept on picturing him there on his couch with a whole horde of alcohol next to him. She shook her head at the very thought, but there was no denying it with him. The poor man drank down his sorrows when it all went wrong. At the same time however, therein lay her reason.
She couldn't marry Joey because she couldn't stand to see him in that position whenever things went wrong. She would have been more than happy to be next to him for the rest of their natural lives, but that right there, that was the thing that turned her off from him.
Another three hours through the lush creeping forests of upstate New York and within time, she recognized the skyline of Syracuse as it rose up against the late afternoon sky. The sun hung low before her and at that point, she was ready to curl up in the back seat of the car. She forfeited marriage to Joey for the possibility of sleeping in her car that night.
Indeed, she spotted the hotel in question, a two story complex of ranch style buildings nestled against the base of the skyline, as the road widened out to four lanes and she merged over to the far right.
She wound her way down to the street and she recognized Alex in his little suspenders next to Eric and Louie at the sidewalk. His black hair streamed behind his head and the little plume of gray stood over his brow like a little crown jewel.
But as she came closer to them, she realized that wasn't Louie there next to them. Sam rolled up to the curb before them and she rolled down the window in the meantime. Eric stooped down to her with his black hair spread over the crown of his head like that of a combover.
"Uh, yeah, I'd like a medium chocolate milkshake and a large curly fries, please?" he joked with her, and Alex let out a big hearty laugh at that.
"You get your own milkshake," she teased him, "do you fellas know how to get to Albuquerque from here?"
"Yeah, go all the way down to Harrisburg and make a left," Alex quipped and the third boy laughed at that, a giddy little laugh like tinkling glasses.
"I wanna hang out with you guys for a bit," she confessed to Eric.
"Gladly!" he declared. "C'mon in, we're having a powwow of sorts at the moment."
"I'll be right back—" She then headed to the driveway and took the first parking spot right underneath the tree there. She climbed out and those three boys stopped right in their tracks at the very sight of her skirt and the dress itself.
"Your majesty." And then she realized that other boy next to them was Lars. She didn't recognize him without his bangs.
"All my clothes are back at Joey's place," she told them as she closed the door behind her. "Where are you guys staying in?"
Eric and Alex both gestured to the doorway closest to her, and Louie and Chuck poked their heads out at her.
"Hey, there she is!" the latter proclaimed, and Sam spotted the beer bottle in his hand.
She had already had a bit to drink but she knew that she could resist it for a bit, especially given Alex walked in right behind her.
"Gotta love how he's walking so close to her," Greg pointed out: he lay flat on his back on the bed closest to the bathroom wall and with his hands tucked underneath his head. Sam whirled around which in turn stopped Alex right in his tracks. His deep steely blue eyes stared back at her with amazement.
"Like what you see here, Alex?" she teased him.
"Uh, yeah, that's a very lovely dress, Samantha," he told her.
"Don't think it was from the dress," Louie pointed out. Sam ran her tongue along her bottom lip and Alex nibbled on his.
"Can I tell you something?" she asked him.
"Yes?"
She gestured for him to come closer to her. Alex moved his head in closer to her and she brought her lips to his ear.
"I wanna squeeze and slap your ass while I'm giving you head," she whispered right into his ear.
Alex gaped at her and Chuck burst out laughing.
"What—?" Eric sputtered, and Sam shook her head at that.
"Nah."
"What'd she say?" Chuck asked him. She turned to Alex, who backed away from her with his face as red as a cherry tomato.
"C'mere, you—"
She grabbed him by the waist and pulled him close to her. She slipped her tongue deep inside of his mouth and she tasted the hops from the beer all the while. There was in fact something there. Something hot and lush, but it was either the booze in her system or the fact it was so late in the day, such that it made him retract a bit. She pulled back and gazed right into his round face and the baffled expression that came with it.
"Oh, yeah!" Lars declared. "Some live porn!"
Eric and Chuck burst out laughing at that, but then she turned to him.
"C'mere, you—"
She put her arms around Lars' waist and she pressed her lips onto his. He looked on at her, baffled, and the five of them gasped at that.
"What on earth was that for?" he demanded in a broken voice.
"I just—think about how sweet you were towards me after Cliff passed," she told him. "Where are you staying tonight?"
"Here," he replied. "Well, not in this room per se. I'm a few doors down from here. Why?"
She ran her tongue along her bottom lip.
"You wanna do something this weekend?" she offered.
"Like, a date?"
"Do it, Lars!" Chuck encouraged him in a hushed voice. "Do it! Do it!"
"You're asking me out on a date?" Lars showed her a sweet grin, complete with rounded little cheekbones and twinkles in his green eyes.
"Yes!" Sam declared.
"I would—be honored," he jovially replied. "My dear Deborah and I have been decreed divorced since January first therefore I am free to do so." He flashed her a wink and then kissed her on the cheek, a sweet little pat on the skin. "You have good taste."
To which she shrugged.
"I would hope so," she confessed.
And all the while, she knew Alex still lingered right behind her, even after she had done that with him.