The Player's Daughter

Chapter 11

                Sam’s going home. The words that had just came out of my mom’s mouth kept ringing in my ears, the sound of them like a toxin invading my brain, unwilling me to speak. I grabbed the back of the closest chair and slid into it. “What?” I croaked out, my voice cracking and my eyes on fire, tears threatening to spill.

                She pulled me into her arms and I allowed myself for the second time this week to sob into my mom’s hold. The usual comforting feel of her grasp felt like nothing now. All I was able to feel was the sinking feeling of my heart as realization set it. “This is the end isn’t it?” I asked between sobs.

                “Cammei, don’t say that. You don’t know that. Long distance.. it can work—“

                “No mom!” A strangled cry erupted from my throat. Suddenly I hated everything: Sam’s mom, him for making me fall for him, my mom for telling me, but most of all, myself for changing myself for a guy. I lowered my voice to a raspy whisper, “Mom, you know just as well as I do that it won’t,” I paused as another sob pounded out of my chest, “love fails. Especially after the greatest of moments.”

                My mom’s fragile arms pulled me around to face her, “Love will endure under the hardest and most difficult of times, and those times are what bring you even closer and allow you to become one with each other. There is always going to be a struggle. That’s the definition of love itself in my glossary. Your father and I had one of the strangest relationships and because of all that happened, we are who we are today.”

                I allowed my eyes to close as she pulled me into a final embrace. “Does he know?” I questioned as I stood up, my legs feeling wobbly after putting all my energy into crying.

                “Yes,” she replied, “I think that’s why he did this tonight. To prove that he loves you.”

                I gulped and turned away from her, barely catching her last words as I made my way up the stairs. It’s something rare to find a boy like that.

 

                The wooden steps seemed to immerse me as I made my way up them. Not being able to focus on anything but the cracks in the mahogany. I looked up as the last step came before me. Instead of turning right to my room, I found my legs taking me left towards Sam’s. His white door suddenly loomed in front of me like a prison gate. I turned the brass knob and walked in.

                “Why didn’t you tell me?” I heard my voice ask the figure lying on the four poster bed reading a book.

                His head jerked up at the sound of my voice.

                “Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeated myself through gritted teeth and stinging eyes.

                “Tell you what exactly?” He asked, setting his book down.