Love, Suburban Style (11 page)

And I will. Just as soon as she makes her fake move on me.

“Go for it?” Meg echoes, and bites the edge of her lower lip, looking up at him alluringly.

Or maybe she doesn’t mean to be alluring.

She just is.

“Right,” he tells her, “just do whatever you would do if you were interested in someone.”

“And you’re the someone, right?” She takes a provocative step closer.

“Right. I’m the someone,” he informs her in a voice that suddenly resembles his own, a good twenty-odd years ago. When it was changing.

He clears his throat.

Which, as it turns out, doesn’t matter, because he isn’t going to be speaking again for a bit.

He won’t be speaking because his mouth will be otherwise engaged.

Kissing Meg.

Or rather, letting Meg kiss
him.

That’s how it starts, anyway.

She rests her hands on his shoulders, stands on her tiptoes, and plants a kiss that is both bold and gentle on his lips.

“There,” she says softly. “That’s what I’d do.”

That’s it.

There.

No preamble, no pretenses.

Sam pulls her closer; they kiss again.

His mouth comes alive at the slightest brush against her lips. He closes his eyes and allows himself the pleasure, however fleeting, of kissing a desirable woman, after all these years, after all he’s been through.

He might have forgotten what that’s like, but he gets the hang of it fairly quickly. His body responds of its own accord; he pulls her closer, holds her against him; at once thrilled and dismayed by his own rigid need.

This is as far as it can go. Kissing. Tonight.

This is all he’ll allow himself.

Tomorrow, they’ll be nothing more than next-door neighbors again, and she can go back to her hiatus, but tonight—

Meg breaks the kiss and stiffens abruptly in Sam’s arms as downstairs, a door slams and footsteps tap across the hardwood floor.

Now my imagination is getting into the act,
he realizes, still a little unnerved by the inexplicable slam they heard earlier.

Then a voice calls, “Mom?”

Heart still pounding from the unexpected kiss and what she thought was another haunting, Meg hurries to the top of the stairs with Sam on her heels.

She peers over the banister to see Cosette and Geoffrey, bags in their hands, looking up at her.

“Do you know how hard it is to find an onion ring in this burg?” Geoffrey demands. “Enough hummus, organic produce, sushi, pinot grigio, and espresso to supply a nation of soccer moms for a hundred years, but if you want—”

He breaks off, looking over Meg’s shoulder, where Sam has presumably become visible.

“Hello,” Geoffrey tells him politely, and casts a bit of a smug grin at Meg. She knows he’s thinking about her New Year’s resolution—and that he suspects she just violated it.

To Sam, Geoffrey says, “And you must be…?” with obvious irony, as Geoffrey has no way of knowing who Sam must be.

Meg dares to dart a glance at Cosette and is surprised to see that she looks merely intrigued. And… impressed?

Looking over her shoulder, Meg can see why. Sam, with his shaggy hair and ruggedly handsome face, is…

Well, pretty much a total hottie, to borrow a favorite phrase of Cosette’s. Or is it Geoffrey’s?

No matter. It’s been a while since Meg has personally encountered a total hottie, but Sam Rooney definitely fits the bill.

Which is exactly why she should have run in the opposite direction.

Instead, you just kissed the living daylights out of him,
she reminds herself, trying to fend off the sensation that what just happened between them was a dream sequence in some bizarre production.

“I’m Sam Rooney, an old friend of Meg’s.”

Startled back to reality by that unexpected—and basically untrue—introduction, she nods in vigorous agreement. “Sam was helping me move stuff.”

“Really,” Geoffrey says dubiously.

“Yes. All those boxes are so heavy that I couldn’t get them up the stairs, so Sam… helped.”

Never mind that there are no actual boxes on the second floor yet, which might lead Cosette and Geoffrey to wonder exactly what Meg and her hot old friend were doing in the bedroom.

“Sam,” Meg says, heading down the steps with him right behind her, lest the newcomers venture up, “this is my daughter Geoffrey and my friend Cosette.”

“Um, Mom? Hello?” Cosette waves a hand in her face as she arrives at the foot of the staircase, “
I’m
your daughter;
he’s
your friend.”

“Oh, right, whatever.” Meg is becoming more discombobulated by the second—much, she sees, to Geoffrey’s silent amusement. She prattles on, “Sam has a son your age, and he’s going to play soccer with you.”

“That’s funny, I thought
Sam
was about my age,” Geoffrey cracks.

“I was talking to Cosette.”

“That’s even funnier, because I told you I’m not playing soccer,” Cosette retorts.

“Yes, you are. She is,” Meg assures Sam, without looking at him.

She isn’t particularly anxious to gauge his reaction to her daughter, who more closely resembles Edward Scissorhands than the mythical all-American girl next door.

“It’s great to meet you, Cosette,” Sam says so easily, she’s relieved. “I think I’ll be your soccer coach.”

“That’s nice, but I’m not actually playing. My mother is deluded.”

“Cosette!”

“Mom!”

Fuming, Meg glares at her daughter. “You’re not allowed to speak to me that way, and you’re about to lose a privilege.”

“Too late. I’ve already lost them all, now that we live here. Guess you’ll have to figure out another punishment.”

“Believe me, I will,” Meg mutters.

“On that note,” Geoffrey says after an uncomfortable pause, “I think I’ll toddle back to civilization.”

“And I’ve got to get home,” Sam pipes up, following Geoffrey toward the door.

There, he pauses to ask, “Meg, do you want to spend the night? You and Cosette,” he adds hastily, and tacks on a gratuitous, “because you don’t have anyplace to sleep here.”

“No, we’ll be fine,” she says reluctantly.

His offer is tempting for reasons other than the lack of sleeping accommodations here, but she isn’t particularly anxious to further expose him to her sulky fifteen-year-old at this point.

He’ll get to know Cosette soon enough. Unfortunately.

“Well, holler if you need anything. See you at soccer,” he calls over his shoulder as he makes his exit.

“Definitely,” Meg shoots a daggered look at her daughter as she returns with false cheer, “See you at soccer.”

Chapter
6

S
tanding in the sunlit kitchen listening to morning birds chirping outside the screen and waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, Sam does his best to think of a good reason to go into the den.

Does he want to reread one of the dog-eared novels that line the built-in shelves?

Not particularly.

Does he need to pay a few of the bills stacking up in the basket on his desk?

Yes, but he can’t. Not until after school starts next week and he resumes getting regular paychecks.

You could… um… dust!
he tells himself triumphantly.

Yes, every room in the house can use a thorough dusting; he can’t afford the Molly Maids service during the summer months. While he’s fairly good about staying on top of the laundry, dishes, and vacuuming—a daily must with Rover shedding all over the place—he never pays much attention to the furniture.

Sheryl was always big on that. She’d bustle from room to room with a wad of dust rags and a can of lemon-scented polish, spraying and swiping, making everything gleam and smell great.

Sheryl would want you to dust the den,
he assures himself.

Yes, but not for the reason he’s so eager to dust the den on this particular morning.

It happens to be the only room in the house—aside from Ben’s room upstairs, where Ben just retreated after returning from his morning run—with windows that look directly over the old Duckworth place.

Rather, the new Addams place.

Yes, Sam is hoping to catch a glimpse of Meg again, somewhere other than in his own head. Last night was a restless one, and not just because he never sleeps well when one of the kids isn’t tucked safely under his roof.

But when he finally did doze off, he dreamed of Meg.

Of kissing her, and…

More.

He woke up predawn feeling like a teenaged boy again: incredibly turned on by an erotic dream and frustrated as hell to realize that it wasn’t real.

With a jingling of dog tags and toenails tapping on the hardwoods, Rover materializes in the kitchen.

“Good morning, boy.” Sam reaches over to pet his head. “Hungry?”

Rover nods.

Well, not really. But master and mutt have been a team long enough for Sam easily to interpret the dog’s needs.

He opens a can of Alpo, fills Rover’s bowl, and sets it on the floor. “There you go, pal. Knock yourself out.”

The dog fed, he remembers to turn his attention to filling a plastic cup to water the potted geranium on the windowsill. He bought the plant at the nursery on Mother’s Day, when he took the kids to buy flowers for the cemetery.

When Sheryl was alive, they did that at his mother-in-law’s grave every Mother’s Day. Devoted daughter, devoted gardener, Sheryl would kneel in the dirt beside the granite headstone, crying and digging with her trowel as Sam and the kids and her father stood by helplessly. When she was finished, the bare earth was transformed into a blooming landscape; purged of her grief, Sheryl would brush herself off and move on.

Sam knew he had to take over the yearly ritual on her behalf, and he does. On the second weekend of May every year, he and the kids and his father-in-law cry and dig and plant. It’s cathartic.

And every year, Sam buys an extra large geranium to brighten the kitchen window, the way Sheryl always did.

He’s no gardener, but he’s learning. He had to.

He still remembers the day they were packing to move here and Katie, sobbing hysterically, came to him carrying a clay pot filled with dusty clumps of dirt and a withered brown stalk.

It was the miniature rose she had proudly given to Sheryl for her birthday the month before she died. Then, it was covered in shiny foliage and delicate pink blooms. Sheryl tended to it daily.

Sam never even thought to water it after she died. It was all he could do to keep getting up in the morning with the kids, keep them fed and clothed, keep helping them with their homework and filling out the endless backpack paperwork, keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That was then.

These days, he has all that other stuff down pat. And he remembers to water the geranium on the windowsill a couple of times a week. No more, no less.

Ironically, the first year, he watered the geranium every day and watched the velvety leaves turn yellow, curl, and drop. Concerned, he watered it twice a day. It died anyway.

It turned out he had drowned them; the nice lady at the nursery—who fondly remembered Sheryl and always smiled sadly at the kids—told him geraniums don’t like to be soaked.

“Why don’t you try a different kind of plant for your windowsill?” she suggested. “We have some nice low-maintenance Melampodium over here…”

Low-maintenance.

She didn’t think he could do it.

He was determined to prove her—to prove everyone—wrong.

It had to be geraniums.

It hasn’t been easy to get it right: to water them just enough without flooding or forgetting.

This year, though, the big plant in the clay pot on the sill has made it through the summer with plenty of red blooms and curly deep green foliage.

He might just have the hang of it now. Sheryl would be pleased with the blooms in the kitchen and the garden on her grave.

Tossing the plastic cup into the sink, Sam yawns and checks the glass coffee carafe again: a mere two inches of fragrant brew in the bottom and a good couple of minutes before it’ll be full.

It only takes a couple of minutes to dust a small room. Sheryl used to say that, back when she was irritated with his ability to overlook layers of dust along with other household blights.

How many times did he wonder, in the wake of losing her, why they had wasted all that time bickering about unimportant issues?

Yes, all married couples do it.

All husbands take their wives for granted at some point or another; it’s human nature.

But now, knowing what he knows, Sam will never take anything for granted again.

There’s guilt, too.

Guilt because their marriage, as good as it was, didn’t entirely live up to his expectations.

He loved Sheryl. But in the year or two leading up to her death, he had begun to wonder if he was really in love with her.

They were best friends back in college; a friendship based on a number of elements. They were both secondary education majors; they lived in the same dorm; they were both athletic and had mutual friends, similar tastes in music, movies, books, sports.

Friendship eventually led to fooling around. That happened back in college. You had a few beers, you wound up kissing girls who were your friends and lived under your roof. Fooling around led to coupledom. That happened, too. It was convenient to have a girlfriend who was part of your group of friends, as opposed to some of his buddies, who were trying to maintain doomed long-distance relationships.

Coupledom eventually led, after graduation, to living together, to engagement, then marriage. That was the rhythm of life; it all made sense.

Sam did balk at getting engaged, when the time came to sink or swim.

But she gave him an ultimatum. She wanted to move on with their lives, or with her own.

It was either marry Sheryl or let her go.

Sam wasn’t willing to let her go. They were too close, too entrenched in each other’s lives. Everyone around them wanted—no, expected—them to get married. Their friends, their families, kept pointing out that there were so many reasons to stay together.

Meanwhile, Sam couldn’t think of a compelling reason to break up.