I glanced at Sam, for approval. His eyelids were still lowered, shadowing his eyes.
“Sam,” he said softly.
There was something wrong with the tenor of his voice. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but it seemed like I could feel his attention on it. My voice inadvertently echoed his anxiety when I said, “This is Olivia. Olive, Sam and I are going out. I mean, dating.”
I expected her to comment, but instead she said, “I recognize you.” Beside me, Sam stiffened until she added, “From the bookstore, right?”
Sam flicked his eyes up to her, and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Yes. From the bookstore.”
Olivia, arms still crossed, fingered the edge of her sweater but didn’t take her eyes from Sam’s. She seemed to be struggling to find words. “I—do you wear contacts? Sorry to be so blunt. You must get asked a lot.”
“I do,” Sam said. “Get asked a lot. And I do wear them.”
Something like disappointment flashed across Olivia’s face. “Well, they’re really cool. Um. It was nice to meet you.” Turning to me, she said, “I’m sorry. It was a really stupid thing to fight over.”
Whatever I had been planning to say disappeared when she said I’m sorry.
“I’m sorry, too,” I replied, a little feebly, because I wasn’t really sure what I was apologizing for.
Olivia looked at Sam and then back at me. “Yeah. I just…Could you call me? Later on?”
I blinked with surprise. “Yeah, of course! When?”
“I—actually, can I call you? I don’t know when will be a good time. Is that okay? Can I just call your cell?”
“Anytime. You sure you don’t want to go somewhere and talk now?”
“Um, no, not now. I can’t, because of John.” She shook her head and looked at Sam again. “He wants to hang out. Later will be good, though, definitely. Thanks, Grace. I mean it. I’m so sorry about our stupid argument.”
I pressed my lips together. Why was she thanking me?
John stuck his head out of the bookstore’s door. “Olive? Are you coming, or what?”
Olivia waved at us and disappeared into the bookstore with a little ding from the bookstore’s doorbell.
Sam cupped his hands around the back of his head and heaved a huge, shaky sigh. He paced a small circle on the sidewalk without lowering his hands.
I stepped past him and pulled open the passenger-side door. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Are you just camera shy, or is it something more?”
Sam came around the other side of the Bronco and got in, slamming the door shut, as if shutting Olivia and all the weirdness of the conversation out. “I’m sorry. I just—I saw one of the wolves the other day and this Jack thing just has me on edge. And Olivia—she took pictures of all of us. As wolves. And my eyes…I was afraid that Olivia knew more about me than she was saying and I just—freaked out. I know. I acted totally whacked, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. You’re lucky that she was acting more whacked than you. I hope she calls later.” Unease crept through me.
Sam touched my arm. “Do you want to go someplace to eat or just head home?”
I groaned and put my forehead into my hand. “Let’s just go home. Man. I feel so weird, not finding out what she was talking about.”
Sam didn’t say anything, but it was all right. I was going over and over what Olivia had said, trying to figure out why the conversation seemed so awkward. Trying to figure out what wasn’t being said. I should’ve said more to her after she told me that she was sorry. But what else was there to say?
We traveled along in silence back toward the house, until I realized how intensely selfish I was being.
“I’m sorry, I’m ruining our date.” I reached over and took Sam’s free hand; he squeezed his fingers around mine. “First I bawled—which I never do, for the record—and now I’m totally distracted by Olivia.”
“Shut up,” Sam said pleasantly. “We’ve got plenty of day left. And it’s nice to see you…emote…for once. Instead of being so damn stoic.”
I smiled at the thought. “Stoic? I like it.”
“Figured you would. But it was nice to not be the wishy-washy one for once.”
I burst out laughing. “Those aren’t the words I’d use to describe you.”
“You don’t think of me as a delicate flower in comparison to you?” When I laughed again, he pressed, “Okay, what words would you use, then?”
I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn’t work with words very well—at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. “Sensitive,” I tried.
Sam translated: “Squishy.”
“Creative.”
“Dangerously emo.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Feng shui.”
I laughed so hard I snorted. “How do you get feng shui out of ’thoughtful’?”
“You know, because in feng shui, you arrange furniture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.” Sam shrugged. “To make you calm. Zenlike. Or something. I’m not one hundred percent sure how it all works, besides the thoughtful part.”
I playfully punched his arm and looked out the window as we got closer to home. We were driving through a stand of oak trees on the way to my parents’ house. Dull orange-brown leaves, dry and dead, clung to the branches and fluttered in the wind, waiting for the gust of wind that would knock them to the ground. That was what Sam was: transient. A summer leaf clinging to a frozen branch for as long as possible.
“You’re beautiful and sad,” I said finally, not looking at him when I did. “Just like your eyes. You’re like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again.”
For a long moment there was only the whirring sound of the tires on the road, and then Sam said softly, “Thank you.”
We went home and slept on my bed all afternoon, our jeancovered legs tangled together and my face buried in his neck, the radio murmuring in the background. Around dinnertime, we wandered out to the kitchen to find food. As Sam carefully assembled sandwiches, I tried calling Olivia.
John answered. “Sorry, Grace. She’s out. Do you want me to tell her anything, or just to call you?”
“Just have her call me,” I said, somehow feeling like I’d let Olivia down. I hung up the phone and ran a finger along the counter absently. I kept thinking about what she had said: Stupid thing to argue about. “Did you notice,” I asked Sam, “when we came in, that it smelled out front? By the front step?”