Page 91 of Forced Into Your Arms
The screen showed an unknown number instead.
I let it ring until it stopped.
That shit kept happening. Every time my phone went off, some part of me still expected him. Sam calling to ask where I was. Sam complaining that I hadn’t answered fast enough. Sam sending some dumb ass picture with no explanation because he knew I’d call him to ask what the hell it meant.
The silence after each call reminded me all over again that he was gone.
I finally started my truck and pulled away from the restaurant. Home was less than twenty minutes away, but I took the long route because I wasn’t ready to walk through the door. That house had been mine long before Sam started spending nights there, yet somehow every room belonged to him now.
His shoes were near the back door because he always kicked them off wherever he felt like it. There was a toothbrush in the bathroom beside mine, even though he swore keeping one there didn’t mean he had moved in.
Everywhere I looked, there was proof that Sam had existed in a place nobody knew he belonged.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, the sun was going down. I sat in the truck for what seemed like forever then forced myself inside.
The house smelled the same. Nothing had moved. Sam’s hoodie still hung over the chair in my room exactly where he’d left it, and the sight of it made me stop in the bedroom doorway.
“Man, fuck you,” I muttered, even though he wasn’t here to hear it.
The words didn’t come from anger alone. They came from missing him so much that sometimes it felt easier to be pissed than to admit how bad losing him hurt.
I walked into the room and picked up the hoodie, holding it long enough to catch the faint trace of his cologne. It was almost gone now, but I recognized it immediately. Sam used too much of that expensive shit and acted offended whenever I complained.
The memory came without warning.
“You spray that whole bottle on you?” I’d asked one night as he walked out of my bathroom.
Sam looked down at himself before lifting one arm and smelling his shirt. “You always got something to say.”
“I’m just asking a question.”
“No, you being cheap because you don’t want to buy me another bottle. This cologne smell too good just to spray it once.”
“It ain’t got shit to do with the price. You choking me.”
He grinned as he walked toward the bed. “You didn’t have a problem breathing last night.”
I looked at him. “That was different.”
“How?”
“You wasn’t wearing no clothes.”
Sam laughed so hard he nearly dropped the glass in his hand. “See? This why I don’t take your serious ass serious.”
He climbed onto the bed beside me and rested his head against my shoulder like he hadn’t just spent the last five minutes getting on my nerves. That was how Sam moved through my life. He irritated the hell out of me, then got close enough to make it impossible to stay mad.
I lowered the hoodie and sat on the edge of the bed.
That memory had happened less than a month ago.
Now I would’ve given anything to smell too much of his cologne again.
I pressed my palms together and looked toward the nightstand. A picture of us was hidden in the bottom drawer, along with a few other things I’d kept out of sight whenever somebody came over. I pulled it open and took out the photo.
Sam had convinced me to take it during a weekend trip to Miami. We were standing on a hotel balcony with the ocean behind us, his arm around my waist and a smile stretched across his face. I wasn’t smiling, but Sam always said he knew I was happy because I’d let him take the picture in the first place.
Nobody else had ever seen it.
