Page 29 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

“Do you hang around with me to piss your brother off?” he blurted.

She turned toward him in the car. The streetlight shone on her cheek, glinted in her eyes. She ran a hand through his hair and gave him a gentle smile that he felt clear through his bones. “When I met you, I was ready to give up on everything. My friends all left me and my own brother didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. So to be honest, at the beginning, yeah, I was attracted to you being a badass. But Lukas, you’re really the worst badass I’ve ever met.”

He narrowed down his eyes. She was smiling. Smiling!

“I mean, you look the part, okay?” she said. “But you don’t drink, you don’t party, you don’t do drugs, and you don’t get into trouble. Really, from a rebel standpoint, you’re kind of a huge disappointment.”

Maybe so. But he’d seen firsthand how drinking could shatter a family, and he vowed never to be like his parents, who’d both been destroyed by alcohol. “Well,” he said, cupping her face in his hands, “since we’re being honest, you suck at being a rebel, too. So be who you are.” He wrapped the scarf around her neck and kissed her.

It went without saying she was a terrible rebel, and he often made fun of her for it. She volunteered at a nursing home, helped her grandmother with blood pressure screenings, and wherever they went, she said hi to everyone in town. She was simply too good-natured and loving to be disaffected for very long.

Her one sore point was college. They talked about art all the time but she refused to discuss applying to art school. She’d decided on business, she said. UConn, an hour away. The plan was her brother’s doing, he was sure of it.

Still he refused to bring her back to his apartment. He was too afraid, not so much of the temptation but for himself. Once he made love to her, their relationship would be different. His heart would break for sure when she left him, which he was certain would happen. She’d find someone better, smarter, a college guy.

He came home from work one afternoon in March on his birthday to find that she’d gotten the key from Mrs.Clinker and decorated his apartment with paper streamers. She’d cooked a pot of chili for him and even bought him a fancy cake from the bakery. Then she’d put a bow on her own head and begged him to take her to his bed. Samantha with a bow on. The perfect birthday gift. How could a hot-blooded male refuse that?

That night they’d gotten naked together for the first time and he’d made her cry out his name, just like all those times he’d dreamed it, and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, but he would not have sex with her.

To get him back, she tortured him, grabbing his cock and demanding to know what he wanted her to do with it. She had this joyfulness for everything, a freshness he never tired of. Her touch was velvet, and what she lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm, and he’d never felt so happy in his life.

A big part of him worried he was just a phase she was going through, that she’d be bored of him by the time college began.

In the spring, the Clubbers all got busted when Reggie turned in a recording of their latest cruel escapades in exchange for getting himself off the hook for some other trouble. Monique lost her Dartmouth admission. Sam seemed more than relieved to leave everything about high school behind in the rearview mirror.

In the fall, Lukas got promoted to head mechanic and Sam went off to school. He thought for sure she’d meet a college boy and forget about him forever. He tried to think of ways he could better himself. His garage band was getting more gigs, weddings, mostly, which was fine with him since Sam was gone most weekends now.

Over Christmas she brought him a skinny little tree and a box of ornaments from the dollar store. They tossed down a blanket and turned on the single string of lights and lay there in the dark in each other’s arms, staring at the multicolored reflections.

“I bought you a present, too,” he said, handing her a rectangular package he’d wrapped himself.

She didn’t need any encouragement to open it. She tore into it, finding an art tablet and a fine set of charcoal pastels.

“Wh ... what’s this for?” She was tearing up. He hadn’t meant to upset her.

“Well, they’re like crayons. You draw with it on paper. Like this, see?” He picked one up and held it to the paper.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be funny.”

“It’s just that maybe it’s been long enough, you know? I thought maybe you missed doing art.” He shrugged. “If you give it up for them, they win.”

There was a long pause, and he worried he’d been too presumptuous. She hated being told what to do and maybe he’d crossed a line. But a second later, she leapt into his arms and threw her own arms around him, hugging him tightly. He was immediately inundated by the smell of her shampoo, that clean citrusy scent she favored that he couldn’t get enough of. “I love you, Lukas,” she whispered. “Make love to me now. Real love. Please.”

She looked at him with those big green eyes. They were full of excitement and happiness, a far cry from how she was months ago when he’d first met her. He threaded his hands through her hair, reveling in the abundance of thick silky curls. “Sam—” He started to talk, but she cut him off with a kiss. He’d never understood before what it was to be happy, but he was certain from how swollen and full his heart was and from the sheer pleasure of holding her in his arms that this was it.

He kissed her back with all he had, pressing his lips over hers. She wrapped herself around him, her hands roving through his hair and up and down his back. Their tongues tangled, their kisses grew deep and hungry. He wanted and needed her so badly and he simply couldn’t get enough.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I started the pill,” she said. “I’ve never been more sure.”

They made love under that skinny little tree, but it may as well have been the tree at Rockefeller Center for how awed he felt. He used condoms because he wasn’t taking any chances. He wanted to do right by her. He loved her.

The months that followed were happy ones. They were both busy with their own lives, but they made many trips back and forth to be together on weekends between where she went to school in Storrs and Mirror Lake.

Sam had lost her anger for good. Probably because she’d made a whole new set of friends, many of whom Lukas had met and liked. That spring he got another raise. They’d been dating for over a year. It was time he picked her up for a real date.

He bought flowers and a button-down shirt that was not black and showed up at her house. He even took out his nose stud. As he neared the door, he heard the sounds of two people arguing.

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