Page 40 of Hold on Tight

Sam was looking from her face to Jake’s, trying, she guessed, to read a foreign expression on his mother’s face. She composed herself and handed him the sandwich.

Jake swallowed hard, which made her feel better.I’m not the only one.

“So tell me about your work,” he said. A stab at bringing this back to small talk and a picnic lunch and two people who were supposed to keep some distance between them. “What do you do?”

She explained to him about the app she’d designed and how she was adapting it to work with the new company’s website.

“That sounds pretty interesting.”

“It’s okay. It’s a job. The best part is the shoes.”

“The shoes?”

“We sell shoes. I’m—well, honestly, I’m kind of obsessed with shoes.”

He tipped over and peered under the table.

Today, she was wearing a pair of Converse-style high-tops with black and white, Escher-like drawings all over them. She found herself wishing they were something sexier, like her chunky-heeled sandals with a big flower on the toe.

Also, she hoped her ass looked half as good in her jeans as his looked in his.

“Those are pretty cool,” he said. “I don’t know anything about shoes, and I don’t give a crap, personally, about my own. I guess that’s a good thing.”

Silence.

Oh, right. He probably didn’t do a lot of shoe shopping, given that he was still relearning how to walk. She gave him a sideways, slightly sheepish smile, and he said, “Don’t worry about it. If I had a quarter for every awkward moment, I’d be rich. I don’t care. You can show off your shoes to me. So your company sells shoes?”

“Yeah.” She thought about her boss with a pang of anxiety. There had been no further tensions, but she felt on edge. Like she was on probation. Not unlike how her father had always made her feel, like it was only a matter of time until her less positive traits burst through.Like your mother.

“Hey. Way back, you know, before—”

She nodded.

“You wanted to be an illustrator. Of kids’ books.”

“Yeah, well. That never happened. For kind of obvious reasons.”

He frowned. “You ever draw and paint anymore?”

“Nah. No time.”

She’d showed him her work once, watercolors she’d done for a book that seemed, nearly a decade later, to be infantile in its simplicity. She hadn’t thought much about the illustrating lately, but he was right. Once upon a time, it had been all she’d wanted to do.

She remembered so clearly: He’d looked at her drawings and paintings with such seriousness. No one had ever pored over her stuff like that, like it was beautiful, like it meant something. Like he was trying to figure out everything she’d been thinking when she’d put pencil and brush to paper.

She didn’t even think she’d unpacked the box with her art supplies in it. She doubted her watercolor paints were any good anymore. Maybe she’d think about picking up some new ones. Maybe she’d dabble a little.

The sun filtered down in dribs and drabs and a breeze rustled both men’s hair. She had never thought of Sam as a man until she had seen him with Jake. Jake made it possible to imagine who Sam might become. He made it easier to see who Sam was, to see the balance between the lighthearted Sam, an echo of Jake at eighteen, and the serious Sam, an echo of this Jake.

Jake made Sam make sense.

“This sandwich is really good,” Jake said.

“Thank you.”

He’d rested both elbows on the picnic table and she admired the ridge and groove of his biceps, the way the muscles bunched and released.

“I haven’t had anything home cooked for so long. I eat a ridiculous amount of Progresso soup and beans and tuna fish.”

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