Love, Suburban Style (27 page)

With a moan of pleasure he reaches up to cup her bare breasts as she rocks in seductive rhythm. Their eyes are locked, bodies joined, and as Sam nears the brink, emotion surges in his soul to threaten laughter, or maybe tears. It’s something somewhere in between the two that escapes him as he skyrockets over the edge, clinging to her, taking her with him.

“Meg,” he gasps, still shuddering into her quaking flesh. An errant thought spills into his brain, then from his lips. “Oh, my God… I—”

No!

Like a dam, a shred of reservation catches the phrase and holds it back.

He can’t say
that.

Even now, with reason all but obliterated, he comprehends that it would be a mistake.

Because it’s too soon? Or because it can’t possibly be true?

Who knows?

Sam is in no frame of mind to analyze why he can’t say those three words to her; he just knows that he can’t, shouldn’t.

With a sigh, she settles against him, blissfully oblivious to his conclusion.

Her body is stretched out to fit alongside his, her head rests against his still-racing heart, and her fingertips lightly play his chest as if to accompany a silent song.

Maybe that’s why he can’t say it… or believe it.

Maybe the outpouring of emotion he overheard in her song might have triggered in Sam something more profound than raging desire.

It might have triggered something more powerful, something he isn’t capable of claiming, or sharing.

Ironic, then, that it came along now, when he wasn’t looking for it—not anymore.

Yes, just when he’s finally reached a place where his life is humming along, where his kids are functioning, where they’ve settled into a world in which they all belong… this happens to him.

She
happens to him.

But you don’t mess with stability. Not after the tempest the three of them, Sam and his kids, have endured.

Period.

Still… what if there could be something better for us? Something more than just humming along, functioning, settled?

Yeah, what if…?

Get a grip, Sam. There are always going to be what ifs
.

As in: what if you take a chance and go for it with Meg, and you turn the world upside down again for all of you?

It’s not just about what Sam wants, or needs.

It hasn’t been about that since he became a parent. As a single father, he’s responsible for three lives. He doesn’t dare take on anything—anyone—else. Not with his children’s well-being at stake.

Meg lifts her head to look at him, smiling, unaware that he just came
this close
to transporting their relationship into entirely new territory, then backed away.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

He is, he realizes as he nods. Not just hungry. Ravenous.

For food, yes, but also, still…

For her.

Physically sated, he’s wrestling with a deeper craving unfurling within him now, begging to be nurtured.

He finds himself thinking of the potted rose Katie gave her mother on that long-ago birthday.

If you ignore something, if you starve it, it will eventually wither and die.

“I’m hungry, too. Do you want to go out to eat?” Meg asks, sounding reluctant.

“Do you?”

“I’m starving.”

“We don’t have to go out,” he says, afraid that if they do, they’ll go their separate ways when the meal is over.

He isn’t ready for that yet. He wants this one night with her; one night to make love to her without reservation and hold her as she sleeps, one morning to wake with her in his arms.

This is all they have; their kids will be back tomorrow, and life will go on.

“I’ve got stuff in the fridge.” He sits up and pulls her with him. “I’ll make us something to eat.”

She smiles.

She, too, wants this night.

Does she, too, realize it’s all they have?

“That would be good,” she says, and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, bending to find her hastily discarded clothes.

Watching her, admiring the graceful curve of her spine and the sweep of her hair, he knows that tonight will never be enough.

That, without her, for the rest of his life, he’ll be plagued once again not just by restlessness—but by helplessness.

Because now, he won’t wonder what it is that’s missing.

Now, God help him, he’ll know.

Chapter
14

M
eg? It’s Mom!”

“Mom!” Breaking into a smile, she’s glad she just dropped her paint roller and flew through the house to answer the ringing telephone.

Had Cosette been here, Meg would have been inclined to let it ring right into voice mail, thinking it was going to be another prank call she’d pick up to find nobody there.

That’s been happening a lot the last few days.

There’s no breathing, no hang up, nothing like that. Just… dead air. It’s unnerving.

Especially because whenever those calls occur, the caller ID window comes up blank.

Why would—how could—that possibly happen?

It could happen if a ghost were making the phone ring, that’s how. Meg did some reading on the Internet and learned that some people—experts in so-called paranormal activity—claim that spirits can manipulate energy to affect household devices like radios, televisions… and telephones.

Meg doesn’t believe it, necessarily. She just wishes the strange calls would stop.

Cosette isn’t home on this Wednesday afternoon—she’s winding down her first day at her new school—and Meg has been anxious about her all day. Her first thought when the phone rang was that it might be about her daughter, in some kind of trouble again.

“What are you doing?” her mother asks. “Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

“I’m painting Cosette’s new room, actually.”

“Not black, I hope.” Mary Addams is well aware of her granddaughter’s recent decent into gothdom—and it troubles her.

“No, Mom, actually, she picked out a nice shade of dark green.” She glances down at her paint-smeared hands and hopes it will scrub off before she leaves to pick up Cosette in fifteen minutes.

“Thank goodness. Daddy and I were wondering how you’re settling in. We haven’t spoken to you since late last week.”

“I know, I’m sorry… I’ve just been so busy.”

“As long as you’re happy, Meg.”

“I am,” she says, with more conviction than she feels. “I mean, it’s been quite an upheaval, but I’m sure we’ll get used to all the changes eventually.”

“You will. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that after any upheaval, things right themselves again eventually. Somehow, life always goes on.”

“I know that,” Meg murmurs, thinking back over the years to when Calvin abandoned her, eight months pregnant.

“Anyway, Meg, Daddy and I were thinking we’d come up to visit you and Cosette for Thanksgiving… if that would be all right with you.”

“That would be more than all right,” Meg manages over a lump in her throat.

She had already been dreading that particular holiday. In years past, she and Cosette always spent it with Geoffrey and an assortment of good friends from their neighborhood, one of whom had an apartment that overlooked Central Park West and the Macy’s parade route. It was a tradition to kick off the holiday with coffee and bagels, watching enormous balloons drift by at window level.

This year, Meg assumed she and Cosette would either go—and not feel as though they fit in any longer—or stay here in town for a lonesome turkey dinner for two.

“Then we’ll buy our plane tickets,” her mother says cheerfully.

“I’m glad, Mom.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Meg? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Have you made any new friends? Or found any old ones, other than Krissy?”

Meg hears a familiar, disapproving note in her mother’s voice. Her parents never did like Krissy. They thought she was a bad influence.

“Not very many people I used to know live here anymore,” Meg tells her mother, wondering if she should prepare her for the drastic changes in their hometown.

“You mean Krissy is the only one?”

“Well… there’s Sam Rooney. He actually lives next door.”

“Sam Rooney… Sam Rooney… Oh! The Rooneys lived on Boxwood. That’s right, I remember them. Great family. Well, it’s nice that he’s right there next door.”

“It is nice.” More than
nice.

Actually,
naughty
would more fittingly describe the recent turn their relationship has taken.

She and her mother chat for a few more minutes, but not about Sam. Meg isn’t about to let on that he’s anything more to her than a neighbor… because technically, that’s really all he is.

Finally, she looks at the clock and tells her mother she has to get cleaned up to go pick up Cosette.

“Tell her Grandpa and I said hello, and that we’ll call back to see how she likes her new school.”

“I will, Mom.”

And life goes on.

Funny how that happens, Meg thinks as she drives over to Glenhaven Park High ten minutes later, paint scrubbed off, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It happens even after the kind of upheaval she experienced with Sam over the weekend.

That was like taking a terrific vacation and managing to forget, the whole time you’re away, that you have to go back home again.

One minute, you’re on a strange and exotic new island; the next, it’s back to business as usual, as if you never left the real world at all.

Yes.

One minute, she was making love to Sam, experiencing all the things she ever fantasized about with him…

The next, she was back home unpacking boxes and feeding the cat and arguing with Cosette and painting her room.

This is how it has to be, though.

She and Sam never said it when they went their separate ways on Monday morning, but she knew. If he wanted more, he wouldn’t have seemed so wistful when they made love that last time.

They lingered in his bed for longer than they should have, before the mood was shattered. The weather was iffy so Sam’s phone began to ring nonstop with parents wondering whether he was having soccer practice. Then his kids needed to be picked up from their grandfather’s, and the train was coming in from the city…

Sam and Meg kissed hastily and dashed in different directions, no backward glances, no promises. Nothing other than Sam’s hurried mention that he’d be happy to take a look at her wiring someday this week. That was it.

There wasn’t time to discuss what had happened between them, and maybe that was best.

What was there to say?

Soccer practice was on. Geoffrey went with her, and Sam was busy on the field. Katie was there. She spent most of her time tending to a couple of toddlers, but she also sat with Meg for a while, happy to see her. She updated her on everything that happened over the weekend, unaware, of course, that Meg had spent the best part of hers at Katie’s house, with Katie’s dad.

Meg wore sunglasses despite the overcast day, not wanting Katie or Geoffrey or the Fancy Moms to realize she couldn’t stop staring at the coach.

“Somebody’s falling in love!” Geoffrey’s singsong declaration startled her at one point, until she realized he was talking about Cosette.

Clearly, something is going on between her and Ben. Even Meg, obsessed with keeping an eye on Sam, couldn’t miss the flirtatious glances between her daughter and his son, or the way they gravitated toward each other every chance they got, on and off the field.

Cosette might be falling in love, but Meg is determined not to.

She might ease up on herself if she thought she and Sam stood a chance in hell. But he gave no indication that he wants anything more than what they shared, and she’s been down this road before, with other men. She knows the signals, the body language.

Too many times, she was the only one trying to make something work.

She’s already vowed not to do that again. Not even with Sam.

Anyway, being infatuated with Sam Rooney is old hat,
she tells herself as she slows the car in front of the school, looking for a place to park. So it shouldn’t be difficult for her to go on with business as usual. She did just that for years where he was concerned.

And now I’m right back at the scene of the crime,
she thinks, climbing out of the car and looking at the familiar redbrick school. In the distance, from one of the open windows, she can hear the last bell ringing.

Seized by nostalgia, she hurries forward.

This morning, when she dropped Cosette off at school, she didn’t even park or get out. Cosette wouldn’t let her. She barely wanted her to slow the car at the curb, and leapt from the passenger’s seat with a brief “see ya.”

Now that there’s no Cosette here to stop her, Meg can walk right up the sloping sidewalk toward the entrance. She gives a wide berth to a garbage can with loudly buzzing bees hovering above it, then passes the familiar stone bench donated by the Class of ’40 in memory of their classmates killed at Normandy, and the spot by the towering flagpole where she used to meet Krissy every morning, and the bike rack where Sam used to park his Schwinn.

Nearing the end of her memory lane, she looks up as students begin to flood from the wide double doors, abuzz with first-day excitement.

She finds herself scanning for familiar faces, and has to remind herself that this is a new generation. She’s not going to know anyone in this—

Oh, yes, you do!

To her surprise, she finds herself looking right at Mr. Dreyfus, her old drama teacher, who has emerged and is standing on the steps, talking to a couple of students. He’s aged a bit, but she’s pleased to see that his wiry, diminutive presence still emanates his trademark dynamic enthusiasm.

Smiling, Meg keeps an eye on him while looking around for Cosette. Her daughter has yet to materialize when Mr. Dreyfus finishes talking to the students and turns to go back inside.

“Mr. Dreyfus?” She hurries toward him.

He turns and his eyes widen with pleasure. “Meg? Meg Addams? Or, wait, I’m sorry, I know it’s Astor Hudson now… I’ve been following your career.”