SAM DRAINED MY FRIDGE AND PANTRY OF FOOD, so we moved downstairs to his place. We haven’t spoken much since he finished laying out his story. It’s hard to know what to say.
Instead, we’re eating pancakes.
He is frying up a batch with fresh blueberries, and I am sitting on the counter. This seems to be my spot whether we’re at my place or his, and I like it because he often reaches out to brush my leg with his hand or sneak a kiss.
Sam flips a pancake over his head, and I catch it, tossing it between my hands until it cools some. It’s strange, I think, that what has happened over the last twenty-four hours plus—all that I’ve seen and learned—has not broken me. I can make peace with this somehow.
I will.
It’s beyond my imagination, beyond what should be reality, but I refuse to let it undo my sanity or destroy what I have with Sam. The simple truth is that because I’ve been living with such a mangled sense of reality for most of my life, I can probably integrate this more easily than I otherwise might.
My mother is a bigger bitch than this death-tripping thing, and I survived her.
Besides, now, he’s hand-whipping heavy cream for the pancakes. Not everyone can do that, so that’s reason enough to stay.
“You must be starving,” he says. “I bet you haven’t eaten since our risotto night, have you?”
I shrug. “I guess not.”
“Whipped cream?” he asks.
“Sure.” I crinkle my nose at him. “If you do anything weird with that whipped cream, I’ll have to dump you.”
“Hmm…like this?” Sam wipes a finger full across my lips and then licks it off.
I giggle. “See? That’s precisely what I’m talking about. Whipped cream has gotten such a terrible name when it comes to romance, being all corny and whatnot. We need to class it up.”
Sam lifts his eyebrows. “You mean, like, with jimmies or something?”
I laugh. “No! And they’re calledsprinkles!”
“Jimmies!”
Sam wipes more whipped cream across my lips and then sinks his tongue into my mouth until I’ve forgotten that I don’t believe in mixing food and sex.
He eases back a bit, and I taste his words when his lips tickle mine as he says, “They’re jimmies. Always.”
“Fine. Jimmies. You win.” I lean back on the counter, but I wrap my legs around his waist, holding him to me. “Do you always get your way?”
Sam looks serious now. “Nope. I don’t.”
“Shit, Bishop. I’m sorry. That was dumb.”
“It wasn’t dumb.” He picks up a pancake and dunks it into the whipped cream.
“Can I ask you something?”
He squeezes my hand. “Of course. You probably want to ask me plenty.”
He’s right. I have a million questions swimming through my head, and it’s hard to know where to start. But I do. “How do you feel about Costa now?”
“You think I should be afraid of him? Hate him?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“I’m not afraid of him, and I don’t hate him. I was afraid of how you would react if you found out about me, what I am. But…I love him, even now. I don’t know if I can explain it in a way that would make sense, but he and I have a friendship that survives even death.” He smiles a bit. “A lot of death. I don’t always like Costa, but I’ll always love him. He feels the same way about me. We’re unbreakable.”
Unbreakable. I understand it now, how powerful their friendship is. It might not be logical, but life isn’t always logical.
