Twenty days of friendship. That's all that high school senior, Quinn Reid's ex boyfriend wants and then he promises to leave her alone forever. After some initial hesitation, she agrees to be his friend in exchange for her solitude when the twenty...
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Sam loses some of her steam when she realizes that I'm not participating in her fight scene and I see her visibly relax.
"I just..." She bites her nails and looks at me through long eyelashes. "I can't let him go."
"Sam," I say in the same voice that I'd use on my four-year-old cousin asking why I keep taking away the glue that she insists on eating. "Sometimes letting go is the only alternative. He's cheated before and now everything that he does seems suspicious. Sure as hell doesn't help that he's acting shady and actually being suspicious."
"That was ages ago, Q," Sam reminds me with a sigh. "We've moved past that."
Clearly, they haven't, but I don't want to push my luck.
I'm probably being a shitty friend by not insisting that she breaks up with the guy who's clearly cheating on her, but Sam isn't the type of person to be reasoned with when she's on a roll. We'll have to wait out this particular train ride all the way to the foreseeable wreckage.
"What do you want me to tell you?"
"I don't know." She takes a deep breath and then her smile is back. "What's going with you and my brother?"
I don't roll my eyes, although I want to. Of course, she'd want to talk about my mess instead of hers. "Nothing."
It's not entirely a lie since I really don't know what's going on with us. I have yet to dissect the final blow to our relationship that he'd delivered. Or that I'd neglected to find out? I don't know. See? I really don't know.
"Something must be happening," Sam stresses. "He's happier in the last two days than I've seen him be all year, so I'll ask you again."
"And my answer will be the same." I rise to my feet and look around for the remote. "You hungry? We could watch a movie and eat some of my mom's leftover fettuccine."
"Can you make me a sandwich instead? I don't feel like having pasta this late." Sam looks down at her stomach. "It sticks to the lining and lives there forever."
I laugh. "I'm not about to do all that. Leftovers or nothing."
Twenty minutes later we're curled up on the sofa, me biting my nails, and Sam sipping a cup of cocoa in lieu of the carbs she refused to eat.
"Can our truce last more than this one night?"
A strangled noise rises from my throat and Sam rolls her eyes. I give my fingers a break and consider her question. "Do you really think that our friendship will ever be the same, Samantha?"
She nods. "I honestly do. Come on, Q, we've come back from worse. And besides, you're the only one with a problem."
A sigh escapes before I can think better of it. "I know. I just... I need time."
"You've had a year, Quinn. Wasn't that enough?"
Another sigh. "I've had a year filled with anger and pain. That's what I need to move past. I'm not so angry anymore. Confused, maybe. And I'm also extremely sorry for the pain that I've caused you guys. Hurting everyone else just because I was hurting is just about the shittiest thing that I've ever done." And it's something that I can't help reverting back to whenever the going got tough.
Sam doesn't disagree with me, but I can sense her confusion. She doesn't get why the sudden change of heart and I don't have it in me to tell her about there being an original photo that could exonerate her brother and make me the worst person that we know.
"I've got to take a shower," I tell her when it looks like she's about to say more things that I'm not ready to deal with. "Don't forget to turn the lights off when you're done."
