I fold up his paper and hand it back to him. “Why are you here, Sam?” I sit back and wait.
“I didn’t want you to see that and think…anything.” He fidgets.
“Why does it matter what I think?” Tap. Tap.
“Because I care what you think.”
I shake my head. “What I think doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” he protests. He turns his head and whispers a curse. Then he looks back at me. “It matters to me what you think of me.”
“How many other women did you go visit to make this declaration?” I feel bad the moment that comes out of my mouth, but I can’t take it back.
He folds the paper and stuffs it into his pocket. “You know what?” he bites out. “Never mind.” He gets to his feet and hitches his crutches under his arms. He hops two steps and turns back to me. “Do I matter to you at all?”
My hand shakes as I brush my hair from my face. “What do you mean?”
“Do you care about me at all?” he asks. “Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” I scoot to the edge of the sofa.
“I don’t know how you feel,” he says quietly.
“We don’t even know each other…” I begin. But I don’t know how to finish.
“I want to know you.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Do you want to know me?” he asks quietly.
“Sam…”
He hobbles his way toward the door.
“Sam!” I call, because I feel bad, and I feel like something important is about to walk out the door.
“What?” he snaps, turning to face me.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to take you on some dates.” He shrugs. “I want to learn about you, and let you learn about me. I like you. A lot.”
“I’m not your kind of girl,” I say quietly.
His eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
I point toward his pocket. “I’m not like…them. I’m just…me.” I shrug my shoulders.
He hobbles back toward me and stops when he’s right by my face. With him on crutches, I come up to his nose. It’s strange meeting a man who’s taller than me.
“I like talking to you,” he says. He points toward my sticks. “Even when you’re tapping, although I’d like to find out what that’s all about.” He kisses my cheek really quickly, and I can feel it all the way to my toes. I cover my cheek with my hand. His voice goes soft. “I really like kissing you. And I’d like to do it some more.”
“But…”
“But every time I call you, you don’t answer. When I come to see you, I can’t get past the front desk.” He throws up his hands. “If you don’t want to see me, please say so. I won’t like it, but I’ll go away.”
I want to see him. I want to see him so badly. “Sam…”
He lifts a hand to my cheek. But then his phone rings. “Hey, Henry,” he says. He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll tell her.” He hangs up his phone. “There’s someone downstairs who wants to see you.”
“Why did Henry call you to tell you that?” Why didn’t he call us?
“Your security took her out of the building, but she’s waiting outside for you.”
“Who?”
“That woman who was in the lobby.”
“The drunk?” God, she smelled awful.
He nods. “She was someone who once knew you. She wants to reconnect.”
She knew me? “Who was it?”
“She said she was your mother.”
My knees go weak, I drop my sticks, and I sink onto the sofa. Sam sits down beside me.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“M-m-m-m—” My mother. I want to say my mother, but the words won’t come out.
“Sign it,” he says, and he lifts my hands from my lap.
My mother was here?
He nods.
What did she want?
“To talk to you.”
How did she look? Even after all this time, I still care. I shouldn’t care.
“Strung out.”
She always was.
“She’s sitting outside. They can’t make her leave the street. She’s waiting for you. Screaming that she’ll wait all night.”
I drop my head back on the sofa. I’ll leave and go to a hotel. I can’t just stay here and wait for her to invade my life. Trapped like a rat in a cage.
“Come home with me,” he says. He looks hopeful, his eyes skittering over my face.
No, I sign. It’s a quick slap of my first two fingers and my thumb.
“No one will find you there. If you go to a hotel, the wait staff could rat you out. The paparazzi will be all over the place.”
I heave a sigh.
“Come home with me. I have a spare bedroom, and I live alone.”
The bedroom doors open, which makes me think my sisters were listening all along. I’m pretty sure of it. “You should go,” Star says to me. “You’ll be safe there.”
I have other choices.
Wren comes around the sofa and puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “You should go,” she says.
I can go to Emilio and Marta’s, I tell her.
Star shakes her head. “She knows where they live.”
I jump to my feet. “H-how d-does sh-she know th-that?”