Page 136 of Wreckage and Rain

I don't call ahead. Sam doesn't need me to. The bar opens at four for the early crowd. I get there at four-thirty. The room is mostly empty, he sees me come in. He nods.

"Bourbon?"

"Yeah."

He pours. Sets it in front of me. Doesn't ask why I'm alone.

"Summer is at home. Sleeping. We got in early this morning."

"How was Charleston?"

"Hard. Good. Heavy."

"Family good?"

"Greg gave me a bottle of bourbon he has been saving for years."

Sam sets down the rag.

"He did?"

"He did."

"How did that feel?"

"Like I'm going to be paying him back for the rest of my life."

"You are."

"Good. I want the kind of debt that doesn't close."

He picks up the rag. Goes back to the glass.

I take a sip of the bourbon. It's the same one Sam has been pouring me for three months and the same one her father gave me last night, and the symmetry isn't lost on me, two different men who care about Summer in two different specific ways pouring the same drink for the same reason. To say welcome, sit down, we're in this together whether either of us asked for it.

"Sam."

"Yeah."

"There's something I need to say to you. I've been writing it in my head for a while. I want to get it out before the rest of the crowd comes in and I lose the chance."

He sets the glass down. Turns toward me. Both hands flat on the bar. Patient.

"Go."

"I owe you a debt I can't pay. I know that. I'm not going to try to pay it down with a speech. I'm going to pay it by being a person you can trust in Summer's life for the next fifty years. That's the only currency that matters. I'm telling you that out loud because I want you to be able to hold me to it. If I fail her, you have standing. If I slip, you have standing. The way Greg has standing. The way Autumn and Jake have standing. You're in the room with them now. You belong there. Not because you earned it from me. Because she gave it to you. I'm not going to take it back."

He looks at me for a long time.

Then he says, "She doesn't need you."

I blink.

"She wants you. Don't confuse the two."

I know these words. Dom said them in my kitchen months ago. Different room. Different speaker. Same load-bearing truth.

"She built a life without you. She built it from scratch. She survived in Wicker Park for months on willpower, her notebook, a bartender who pours her favorite bourbon, and sheer audacity.The need part is done. The want part is the whole rest of your life. You aren't her oxygen. You're her partner. Don't get those confused. The minute you go back to being her oxygen, you fail. Want her every day. Don't need her any day. Need is your problem to manage. Want is what you show up with every ordinary day."