Love, Suburban Style (21 page)

Lying against the cushions, Sam’s head cradled against her breast, his fingertips playing lightly up and down her hip, Meg realizes that
this
is as good as it gets.

“Still afraid?” he asks, lifting his head and flashing her a lazy Sam smile.

“No.”

But that’s a lie.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’s more terrified than ever. But coherent thought is held at bay by shimmery ripples of afterglow.

“We should sleep,” she tells him drowsily after a while.

He responds with a deep yawn and snuggles her against his chest. “I know.”

“But not here… not together.”

“No. I know. You have to go upstairs.”

“I will.” She begins to disentangle herself from him.

“Wait.” He pulls her back and kisses her deeply.

A new ache promptly makes itself known.

“I have to go,” she protests, laughing a little.

“I know. And you can. Just… not yet.”

The first light of dawn is creeping into the house by the time Meg climbs into Sam’s bed upstairs… alone.

Yet as she sinks her head into the pillow and pulls the sheet around her shoulders, his scent billows up to envelop her like a hug.

Her final thought before she goes to sleep is that for the first time since she moved back here, she really does, at last, feel like she’s come home.

Chapter
11

J
auntily whistling an old Van Morrison song, Sam slips a spatula beneath the edge of an oversized chocolate chip pancake on the griddle. He flips the raw, holey side facedown into sizzling butter beside the other three he’s just turned.

Then, hearing footsteps creaking on the stairs, he drops the spatula, turns down the flame, and sticks his head out into the hallway.

“Hi, Daddy,” Katie says cheerfully, appearing in her usual summer morning getup of shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops.

“Hi, sweetie.”

He kisses her on the head, hoping he didn’t sound disappointed when he realized that it was only her.

He probably shouldn’t have been expecting Meg; she went upstairs pretty late. She’ll probably sleep for a while longer.

Even Ben seems to have slept in today. He’s usually up bright and early most mornings to go for a run. Sam often finds him in the living room catching up on last night’s scores on ESPN.

Not today. No sign of Ben up and about. And Sam just got up himself about fifteen minutes ago. He grabbed a quick shower, then decided to make a decent breakfast for a change. Cold cereal is the norm in the Rooney household.

“Pancakes?” Katie grins. “Yay! Why are you making them? Is it somebody’s birthday?”

“No. We have company.”

“Where?” She looks around as though expecting to see that someone has slipped in and pulled up a chair at the table.

So she didn’t notice that somebody was sleeping in the bed above her.

“They’re upstairs. Cosette and her mother, from next door.”

“Meg is here?”

He nods reluctantly, remembering all the reasons he wasn’t supposed to do what he did last night.

Ah, the cold cruel light of day.

“Where
upstairs
?” Katie asks excitedly. “And why are they here?”

He chooses to ignore the why. “Meg slept in my room—I slept on the couch,” he is compelled to add hastily, “and Cosette actually slept in the extra bed in your room.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. You were sound asleep, so—”

“There’s nobody in the bed above mine.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was just crawling around up there, looking for my brush.”

“Why would it be on the top bunk?”

“Because I looked everywhere else,” says Katie, whose cluttery habits, even as an eight-year-old, used to drive neatnik Sheryl crazy.

Sheryl.

Sam hasn’t allowed himself to think of her all morning. Nor did he think of her last night, when he was with Meg.

He waits to be seized by guilt, but it doesn’t happen.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you okay?”

He looks up at Katie. “I’m fine. I’m just wondering where Cosette went if she didn’t spend the night in your bunk.”

“Maybe she spent the night, but she already got up.”

“Maybe. But where would she have gone?”

“Home?”

“I doubt that,” he mutters, remembering the so-called haunting.

But where else could Cosette be?

Maybe she crawled into his bed with her mother.

He doesn’t feel comfortable knocking on the door to check.

Instead he strides toward the den, to look out the window and see if he can spot any sign of activity next door.

Hmm. The door to the den is closed, which is unusual.

Sam opens it to peek in… and is greeted by the last thing he ever expected to find.

“They were
what
?” Meg sits up groggily in Sam’s bed, rubbing her eyes in the bright morning sunlight.

“Kissing.”

“Wait…
who
was kissing?” she asks, just to be sure she heard right.

“Ben and Cosette. In the den. On the couch.” Sam sits gingerly at the foot of the bed.

He’s clean-shaven, his wavy hair slightly damp, and he’s wearing gray jersey shorts and a navy T-shirt with faded white lettering that reads GLENHAVEN PARK BULLDOGS.

“I opened the door,” he tells Meg, “and there they were.”

“What did you do when you saw them?”

“Nothing. I closed the door and left. They didn’t even know I was there.”

Meg tries to digest what he’s telling her, but she’s as caught off guard by his appearance in her bedroom—no,
his
bedroom—and by the recollection of just what happened between them last night—as she is by the news about her daughter and his son.

“I mean, it’s not that big a deal,” Sam says, getting up and pacing across the bedroom as though it is,
indeed,
a very big deal. “At least it was broad daylight, and they weren’t doing anything else.”

Unlike their parents.

Pushing that disruptive thought from her head, Meg asks, “Are you positive they were really kissing?”

“Unless one of them almost drowned and the other was giving mouth-to-mouth—but only after changing them both into dry clothes—yes,” he says dryly, “they were kissing.”

She shakes her head. “That’s so… bizarre.”

“Yeah.”

For a moment, they’re both silent, digesting the facts.

“I mean… they just don’t seem to have much in common.” Meg sits up straighter, pulling the sheet with her to cover herself in her strappy pajama top, which she realizes is almost laughable, considering he saw much more than her shoulders and a hint of cleavage a few hours ago.

“Yeah, well, they’re both fifteen, attractive, and hormonally charged. I’d say that’s something.”

She smiles. “Thank you for saying that.”

“For saying what?”

“
Attractive.
Underneath all that black, Cosette really is a pretty girl. Most people don’t see that, though. Not that she cares what anyone thinks of her. For over a year now, she seems to be doing her best to make sure that she looks as hideous as possible.”

“Why is that?”

“I have no idea. I gave up on trying to figure her out. I decided I should be glad she’s a nonconformist.”

“You should be.”

“I would be if it didn’t seem to make things even more painful for her.” She briefly describes the bullying incident, all the while acutely aware of what happened between her and Sam last night.

How is it that she can possibly be sitting here carrying on a coherent conversation while a series of steamy fantasy images parade through her head?

“We take stuff like that really seriously at school,” Sam tells her. “If Cosette has any problem at Glenhaven Park when she starts, we’ll be on it right away.”

“That’s good to know. Hopefully that won’t happen again.”

“I hope not. And at least I’ll be around to keep an eye on things for you.”

Those words—
I’ll be around
—send a shiver of contentment through her in one moment, and dismay in the next.

He’ll be around…

But he doesn’t mean it the way you wish.

Wish? Does she actually wish Sam were talking about a long-term relationship?

Well, maybe.

But he isn’t. He means he’ll be around for Cosette, as a faculty member at school.

That should be reassuring. It should be enough to make her feel a little more at ease about staying here in Glenhaven Park.

Before last night, she was filled with doubt about it.

She’s just so stressed by all that needs to be done with the house…

But you did order furniture and unpack a few more boxes,
she reminds herself.
And you should ask Sam for the name of a good handyman.

Well, it isn’t just about the house. It’s about the latest visit from the resident ghost…

Although Sam seems convinced that was her imagination, and in the bright light of day, she can almost convince herself it might have been.

Well, regardless of any of that, Cosette is miserable here…

Yes, but now that she’s kissing the boy next door, she might perk up considerably.

Generally, though, the fresh start isn’t what Meg hoped it would be. She’s lonely, and overwhelmed, and rapidly going broke.

And yesterday’s meeting with the insufferable Flickingers didn’t help matters.

Sophie isn’t tone-deaf, exactly… but she’s hardly the next Maria Callas. Then again, both she and her mother have the prima donna persona down pat. By the time they left, Meg was thinking that she’d rather wait tables for a living than give voice lessons to the likes of Olympia’s daughter.

But not all her prospective students are going to be like that… are they?

Thinking of the Fancy Moms she met on the bleachers at soccer practice the other day, she doesn’t feel particularly optimistic.

“What do you want to do about this?” Sam is asking.

“I have no idea,” she replies, and she isn’t just talking about the apparent fledgling romance between their kids.

“Well, I don’t think we should acknowledge that we know what’s going on.”

“Right.” Looking at him, she’s back to remembering last night… and wishing it could happen again. Right now.

“We should probably just… keep an eye on them.”

“Right.”

“It’ll probably fizzle right out anyway,” Sam goes on, and her heart sinks fleetingly before she realizes that he’s talking about what’s going on between the kids.

Oh… good.

Then again… he might as well be talking about the two of them, as well.

Because this can’t go any further. And she doesn’t expect it to.

Just for tonight
—that’s what she told herself it would be.

And now, the night is over.

She had her glorious encounter with Sam.

There won’t be another one, because that would lead to her wanting more, and more… and ultimately, getting hurt.

She saw the pain in Sam’s eyes, heard it in his voice. He came right out and told her he was terrified.

No, he’s not any more willing to invest in a relationship than she is.

When Sam returns to the kitchen, Ben is pouring two glasses of orange juice. Cosette is nowhere in sight, but music is coming from the den. One of Sam’s CDs.

Sam asks, in a low voice, “What are you doing?”

“Pouring juice.”

“Two glasses?”

“One’s for Cosette.”

“Oh.”

Ben refuses to look him in the eye, but Sam sees his hand shaking a little as he returns the Tropicana carton to the fridge.

Poor kid. He’s trying to be cool about whatever it is that just happened. He doesn’t need his old man giving him a hard time.

“Hey.” Sam lays a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Where is she?”

Ben tilts his head toward the den. “We were just… listening to music.”

“Yeah? That’s good. You like the same kind of music?”

“Yeah. Why? Does that surprise you?”

Sam shrugs. He tries to think of something else to say, but can’t.

You’re the one who told him to give her a chance,
he reminds himself, watching his son return to the den and close the door.

And, hey, aren’t you also the one who was supposed to keep Meg away from Katie?

He just passed his daughter on the stairs. She said she was going to go change her clothes before breakfast, but he has a pretty good idea that she’s hoping to run into “the Mom next door.”

Meg’s in the shower now; he can hear the water groaning in the pipes overhead.

Sam’s body reacts promptly at the thought of her, naked, lathering herself under a stream of spray.

Before he left the bedroom upstairs, she said she’s going home after breakfast.

He was disappointed when she told him that, but now he thinks,
the sooner, the better.

He offered to go back over with her, just to make sure everything is okay.

She turned him down.

“I’m sure everything is fine,” she said, and added wryly, “But don’t worry, if I see any ghosts, I’ll holler.”

“Make sure you do.”

He hopes that she doesn’t, though.

Not just because he wants to spare her further trauma, but because he wants to spare himself further temptation.

Pancakes at the round table in Sam’s sunny kitchen.

Meg can’t help but notice that Cosette seems to have undergone a vast transformation since last night.

Of course she still isn’t wearing makeup, and her dark hair falls becomingly in loose waves around her face. The jet-black color seems less intense without the thick jet-black eyeliner to enhance the dramatic effect, and her skin seems more porcelain than pallid. She’s still wearing her summer pajamas, which consist of a pale lavender sleeveless cotton top and boxer-style shorts in a lavender print. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t be caught in pastels outside the house, but she seems to have forgotten what she has on.

For that matter, she seems to have forgotten anyone exists in the room other than Sam’s son Ben, and vice versa.

He’s looking at Meg’s daughter the way his father looked at Meg just hours ago.

As for Sam, he’s made a conscious effort to avoid eye contact altogether this morning. A wall seems to have gone up between them again, more impenetrable than the overgrown hedge border on the property line.