Premiere: A Love Story (18 page)

“That’s beautiful, Peter. Well written. I will always care about you, but what we had was rooted in this place, our past. You can’t handle our past, or your past, and I won’t survive when you decide to turn and run again. Thinking you need me and sticking around to have and hold me are two very different things.”

Peter said nothing and Sam laughed a little to keep from crying.

“I’ve done a little self-help too.”

“I’ve made something of myself outside of who I was here. I’ve figured some things out. I think I can do this. I mean. Shit. I want to do this. Can’t we take it slow and try? Sam, I know you can still feel us, I see it when you look at me. I know I screwed up, but give me another chance. Come to New York with me for the weekend. Let’s be together, spend time together.”

He stood.

“You haven’t dealt with any of it. You’re trying to make amends with this place, with what happened between us through the right words, your play. Do you think that’s going to work? Write everyone’s lines and walk through all the scenes and, it’s better? Peter, your father’s death, that was real. I am real, not a supporting character in your story. I’m not going to run off to New York so you can hide. What happens when I bring reality with me, when I remind you of your past, and it doesn’t work? Do you shut me out again? Let me help you answer: no. No, I will not allow it. I can’t be the one left behind, rejected.”

“I didn’t reject you, damn it. I loved you. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

He took her shoulders and pulled her up off the swing.

“Sam, what we have is . . . give me a chance.”

He kissed her and Sam felt herself spin. That familiar spin. Four years wiser and she still melted. Pulling back, she opened her eyes.

“Peter, you need to go.”

“Sam.”

“I’ll lock up. You need to catch a flight to New York, don’t you? Drama Desk Awards. I hear you’re nominated. Congratulations.”

“Sam, were you listening? We can do this. I’ll find a way to . . .”

Sam touched his face, and he knew she wasn’t going to let him in.

“Peter, I thought I’d let it go, then you came back, and I went a little nuts. But I’ve got my head back on straight now. I care about you. You left me alone, to love alone, and I won’t risk it again. I can’t. I’m sorry. Can you understand that? That I wouldn’t survive?”

A tear trailed down her cheek.

Not for the first time, he felt the force of what he had done. He should have loved her when he had the chance. She trusted him and he let everything else get in the way. There was nothing he could say, there were no words to make it right. He had come home to reclaim something, yet by being here he was hurting her all over again. He could see it in her eyes. She was right. This was still all about him and his damn issues. Even after four years he still wasn’t enough. He couldn’t promise her the crap of his life wouldn’t hurt her again.
Who am I kidding?
Peter wiped away the few tears that sat on her perfect cheeks and gently kissed her lips. As if she felt it would be the last time, Sam opened to him and returned his kiss.

“I am so, so sorry,” he whispered across her lips.

“Peter, please leave.”

He kissed her forehead, lingered one beat longer than was bearable, and walked toward the lobby doors. He looked back and Sam turned to walk backstage.

When she heard the doors swing closed at the back of the theater, Sam could not catch her breath. She ran her hands over her face and slid down the wall backstage. The pain was instant. He needed her, loved her, but no matter what came out of his mouth, they were only words. How could she love him so much and be so deathly afraid of him at the same time?

Chapter Eighteen

S
am pulled into her driveway. Grady was sitting in a chair on her side patio, under the glow of the outside light. She grabbed her bags, got out of the car, and walked toward him.

“Grady?”

“I’m here for a confession, damn it. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but since I spoke to Peter about thirty minutes ago, and he was boarding a plane without you, I think it’s time I give it the old college try,” he said leaning back with his legs crossed in front.

Sam really wasn’t in the mood for this.

“Yeah, well I’m not taking confessions tonight, sorry. Have you been drinking again?”

She moved in closer, smelling for alcohol.

“Nope. I’m actually sober, and you’re going to want to hear this confession.”

“Oh, really? Well, I hope it a juicy one. Are you coming in? Coffee?”

“Sam, I said I’m not drunk. Let’s not push it with the choir boy coffee on a Friday night thing. Wine?”

Sam laughed and opened the door.

“I can do that.”

Grady was still in his suit, jacket off, tie loosely hanging around his neck. He looked spent and Sam knew Grady’s tie always came undone when it was time for conflict or a debate. As she turned the lights on, put her things down, and grabbed the wine, Sam was caught in another memory.

Grady majored in history at Stanford, much to his father’s chagrin, but he did put in a fine speech to his parents freshman year that ended with the phrase, “Mom, Dad, how can we possibly understand and guide people into the future if we don’t know our past?” Grady’s parents eventually let him out of majoring in political science once he explained he was not mocking his father by referencing George Orwell’s
1984.
Grady slept through freshman literature, so he had no clue what his father was talking about when he’d retorted, “Riffing on a party slogan from Orwell’s
1984.
Are you mocking me?” As the story goes, Grady quickly excused himself to use the bathroom and called Peter to find out who the hell George Orwell was. Peter talked him through it, and he returned to his parents with an effective response. Grady was allowed to major in history.

Many people would be surprised to know that underneath his gorgeous party boy image hid an expert on the history of the United States—and Europe. He was a complete geography nerd, too. Grady was a smart man, but not always a thinker, as Sam’s father had once pointed out.

“So,” Sam began, handing Grady a glass of wine and joining him in her living room.

“Okay, what do you have to confess, my son?”

She mocked him, making the sign of the cross with her wine glass.

“Well, I’m not a very good friend, and I’m starting to think I am, what’s that phrase, a big fish in a little pond.”

“Okay. Did something happen that brought you to this conclusion? Did you try to steal someone’s girlfriend?”

Grady hesitated.

“Wife?”

Sam laughed, still not taking him seriously.

“Something happened years ago, and then something happened recently. And I was a jerk years ago, but I’ve tried to make amends lately. But maybe I’m too late. Then I got to thinking, I’m not that damn powerful, and maybe what I said years ago didn’t mean as much as I thought it did. And then I thought I’d go get drunk, but then I thought it was time I was a good friend to at least one of you.”

Sam felt her jaw open at some point because she had no idea what he was rambling about.

“Um, let’s break this down into smaller pieces. What did you do or say years ago?”

“Ah, that’s the hard part. Can’t we start with the good vibes I’ve been putting out lately and work our way back?”

“Spill it.”

“He trusted me, and I wasn’t a good friend. Keep in mind that I was younger, and, at the time, I didn’t understand. I honestly thought it would pass, but Christ, four years later and it’s still all over him.”

Sam was now getting a little anxious.

“Grady, what are you talking about? Who’s he?”

“Peter. I need another glass of wine.”

Sam poured, Grady slipped his tie off and leaned forward as if he were going to explain something very complex.

“Peter? He trusts you. What does this have to do with Peter?”

“Sam, please listen. I made him feel like he would never be good enough. I guess in a way I told him to go make something of himself. I mean I suppose we always knew he was going to leave, didn’t we?”

Sam didn’t answer, so he continued.

“I feel like maybe I had something to do with him feeling like he needed to prove himself.”

“You can only make a person feel like they’re not good enough if they let you. Peter . . .”

“Yeah, thank you Miss Psychologist. Listen, please. That night, the night after you two went to the gardens. The
big night.
”

Grady put his fingers up to make quotes.

Sam was shocked. Grady knew she and Peter had been more than friends and that he left her, but the way he was phrasing it—”the big night”—made her think he knew about her in the gardens and the rain, with Peter. She hadn’t told him, so that left one person.

“He came to my house and told me he loved you. God, he was shaking and sick over it. He told me that he’d always loved you and you were the one. I wanted to be happy for him, I wanted to help him come up with a plan, but we were finished with college and it felt like the end and . . .”

“Oh, God.”

“It was so weird and I didn’t know what to say, but I knew he was going to New York, and I was going to lose him. I tried, but I couldn’t be happy for him. He was going to take you with him and then you would both be gone. Which I know sounds ridiculous now, but at the time you two were all I had.”

He must have read something on Sam’s face. Grady raked his fingers through his hair.

“See, told you. I’m a shit, right? He was so damn empowered and in love. I was a jerk, and I asked him what he had to offer you. I told him we were all friends and he should’ve left it that way. I told him he would never be good enough for you. I said a lot of things that a manipulative spoiled ass would say to get his way. I’m sorry, but it was a long time ago and . . .”

“What else did you say?”

Sam’s heart was pounding.

“I said you, you were happy here, and he would ruin all of that if he convinced you to go with him to New York. Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t want anything to change. He said I was probably right, that he needed to make something of himself and anything else was a distraction. He left that night deflated and we never spoke about it again and then he . . .”

“Left.”

She was numb, but he couldn’t honestly blame himself for what happened between them.

“Okay, so you acted like a jerk, but I seriously doubt that’s why things didn’t work out. You’re persuasive and all, but if he loved me as he said, he would have found a way to be with me and . . . well, he didn’t. So, you feel horrible, I agree it was a crappy thing to do to a friend, but you’re forgiven. We have all survived and moved on. I’m amazed you’ve been able to keep your mouth shut over the last few years. Impressive.”

“Sam, it’s not a joke. He loves you. Always has, but . . .”

“But? See, it always lies in the ‘but’ with Peter. He loves me, but . . . He wants to be with me, but . . . Grady, thank you for coming over to clear your conscience. You’re absolved, and it truly doesn’t change the fact that Peter can’t be trusted. He wants things the way he wants them. He asked me to go to New York with him. I can’t do it again, I don’t want to try. My life is perfectly fine here.”

“I don’t think that’s true. That leads me to my second story, the one where I wasn’t a jerk. About a year after he left, while you were such a mess, I went to New York, we had lunch, and I apologized. Not quite in the same drawn-out way this has unfolded, but I told him that I was an ass and what I said was shitty and untrue. He forgave me too. You guys were always great friends.”

Sam laughed, it was better than crying.

“He said it probably worked out for the best and that things would never work between the two of you.”

She swallowed hard and continued to listen.

“I told him that was crap, and he said that when his father died, it messed him up, closed him off, so it was for the best. I told him you were already in, you know, in his heart, and how was he going to let that go? He said he’d gone through it all and his life in New York was fine. See, he used the same damn word you used . . . fine. Fine sucks, Sam. Anyway, as you know, we’ve kept in touch since he’s been gone, and I’ve been to see him a couple of times. His life in New York is great, and he’s a success, but he needs you Sam. I told him when he first got here that he was warm when he was around you.”

“You told him he was warm?”

“Yeah, shut up. I can be sensitive.”

“Clearly.”

“Anyway, the point is he came back for you, he’s sorted out whatever stuff he was dealing with. He knows never to listen to me, so what’s the problem? You were never going to make a go of it with that . . . mountain of a man, Brian.”

“That may be true, but I’m not making a go of it with Peter either. I’m fine, really. This has been good for me. I’ve been able to say a lot of things to him, and it feels healthier to leave it this way.”

They sat in silence for a minute. Sam traced the top of her wine glass with a finger.

“Do you love him?”

She looked at Grady and told the truth.

“I do. I will always love him. It’s not enough.”

“Remember when we were kids, and my parents put in the diving board?”

She nodded wondering where this was going.

“Remember how all three of us were afraid to go off the board, so we came up with the thing that we only jumped in threes. Remember? So when the other kids came over we were like this cool trio and eventually we really did kick ass, doing cannonballs and flips. Remember?”

“Yes, Grady. I remember, but what’s it have to do . . .”

“You’re scared, Sam. Not in a weenie weak way, but in a real, terrified way. Scared that you’ll let yourself love him again, and he will leave you. You’re afraid to get too close, to let anyone get too close, and you can’t control yourself with Peter. You love him too much. He loves you too much, too. I’ve known you both my whole life, and I can see it, feel it, anytime you’re even in the same room.”

Sam could barely form words. Grady was pleading for their love better than either of them could.

“Maybe I am scared, but you don’t understand. I lost myself when he left. I will never give that kind of power over me to anyone again.”