Page 13 of Without You, Scotch and Sammy 2

Luc and Marc go back to prepping for our set, but Angelo remains silent for a minute, studying his hands as they fuss with his keyboard.

“Spit it out, Ang.”

His eyes come up to mine hesitantly. “You’re my best friend.”

Oh boy. “Yep.” I take another step closer to him, away from Marc and Luc. We’re all best friends. We’re all brothers. Perhaps Marc even more so, since we lived together, but Angelo is my best friend by choice. I love him like I love Alex and Britt.

“I just want you to be happy.”

“I know.”

His eyes watch me for a long hesitant minute before he sighs. “It’s time to move on--”

“Why now?” I interrupt him. “Why is this such a hot topic lately? None of you ask about my sex life for ten years. You just leave me be. Why now?”

“We’re not kids anymore, Sam.”

“My name’s Scotch! Call me Scotch.”

“Your name’s Sam!” he shoots back. “That’s the name your mama gave you, and you need to stop living up to the promises a teenage boy made to a teenage girl. Neither of those people are here anymore.”

“I don’t break my promises,” I spit out. “Even if everyone else does!”

“You’ve been with other girls since her, right?”

“That’s none of your business--”

“So your promise of fidelity is already broken.”

I step toward him as rage bubbles under my skin. Feelings I thought I’d long ago buried come rushing back; humiliation that she up and left me. Heartbreak that for some reason, I wasn’t enough. Sorrow that her vanishing act was like a death in the family. But worse. So much worse because I spent years after she left looking for her, wondering why she left, unable to find the closure I so desperately wanted. Needed. I broke no promises. She did. “I didn’t cheat on her.” My words are low and come out almost a growl. “I didn’t cheat, Angelo. She left, I didn’t.”

“I’m not saying you cheated. I’m saying good for you for not keeping promises that she obviously didn’t intend to keep herself. I’m glad you’ve moved on, but now I want you to go all the way. File some fucking paperwork, man. Grow some balls, get a damn divorce, then find a nice girl.”

“No.”

“She left you, bud! She left you a long ass time ago. Maybe she thought she was too good for us. Maybe she got cold feet. Maybe she and Snitch took off to live it up with guys just like them, but either way, she ain’t here! Do you plan to die alone? Because that’s the way you’re going.”

I turn away from Angelo and come face to face with Luc and Marc as they silently watch us. The club is still loud and pumping. People dance within feet of us, but no one notices our drama. Angelo thinks I don’t know this stuff. He thinks I didn’t spend years wondering. He thinks I’ve just let it go and that I haven’t thought about filing for a divorce. Of course I’ve thought about it. I think about it every single time I think about her, but I can’t pull the trigger. I can’t go all the way, though of course I’ve already had the papers drawn up. They simply require a signature, but for me to get her signature, means I have to find her. I so desperately want to know where she is. I’m so desperate, that I’m not sure I want to know. It wouldn’t be good for me. Not healthy.

My options, logically, are that she’s moved on and has a family, she’s happy. I don’t want to see that shit, because she was supposed to be happy with me! She made me promises. That should have been good enough.

But okay, maybe she isn’t in love with her new man and her new family. Maybe she’s dead, long ago buried. I’d rather she was living it up behind the white picket fence than dead. But I don’t want her in love with someone else either. Therefore, I don’t want to know. I prefer ignorance, which means I won’t be looking for her.

I fucking hate that she left, and if I let that hate go, then the sorrow creeps in. I don’t want that either. Hate works. For now. Hate keeps the fire alive, a fire that I knew would burn for Sammy Ricardo for the rest of our lives.

She consumes my every passionate emotion. She owns it. She owns me, and goddamn Angelo for bringing this shit up tonight. I’d rather just think about her in vague terms, remembering what used to be and not trying to riddle out the reasons she left. I spent years thinking that shit through. I wasted years of my life wondering.

Fuck Angelo for dropping me back in the deep end of painful memories.

I focus on Luc and Marcus for another second, then turn away and walk to our processor to start getting ready for our set.

“Alright,” I speak into the microphone twenty minutes later in that low voice the girls tell me turns them on. “We’ve been working on some new stuff lately, so we’re gonna start off with a song Luc wrote for his girl.” That’s a lie. Luc did write it, but he’s the biggest man whore I’ve ever met. He doesn’t have ‘a’ girl, but several dozen of them. “All you lovebirds here tonight, this one’s for you.”

– Sammy –

Choices that can’t be un-made

I slide coins into the coffee machine in the communal coffee lounge, then I watch as the mud-like liquid drips into my overpriced paper cup. Steam rises from the top of the black machine as it coughs and splutters and expels my caffeine, and though I’ve had ten cups before this one and I know it tastes pretty damn bad, I still salivate as I wait for it to finish pouring. Bad tasting or not, my eyelids won’t stay open without it.

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