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I laughed. “Your instincts were right there.”
“So give me a little credit as far as that is concerned. I looked into who you were, where you were from, your background and all of that, but the thing that caught my eye was that you had a younger brother who went to the school where my brother coaches.”
I sat straight up. “Your brother…is Coach Vance?” I had heard Josh talk about the guy several times and he had been one of the people who came to see Josh most often in the hospital over the past couple of weeks. “I had no idea, I mean, I never would have made the connection there.”
Neil shrugged. “Of course not, there was no need to. Anyway, it just so happens that I sometimes go down to Jersey to help my brother out with practices. There have been a few times that he’s had to miss practice because of some kind of family thing with his kids and I’ve filled in for him when he’s needed me. So actually I had met your younger brother before I ever met you, I just didn’t realize it until later.”
I couldn’t stop staring at him now. “What a strange world it can turn out to be sometimes, the fact that you had already met my brother when we were working in a setting where we could have run into each other at any time.”
“I know, it’s crazy,” Neil agreed as he planted a kiss on my forehead.
“Okay, so wait though. When did you find out about his transplant surgery? Was it when you saw my application for the auction come through?”
He shook his head, but was quiet for a moment as Meredith came up with a tray full of breakfast items.
“Thank you,” I said as she set them all on the coffee table in front of us. I was hungry, as I had been all week with the increased activity, but I was more interested in hearing the rest of Neil’s story.
When Meredith had gone he spoke again. “It was a little while after he collapsed at the football game. My mom had told me that there had been some kind of accident at the game or something, but it wasn’t until about a week later that I got the real details from Brad. We had a charity event that my family often donates to and Brad and I were there, as each other’s date I guess you could say, because my parents were double booked that night and couldn’t make it for the event. I didn’t mind, it was always a good place to make some connections and hand out business cards. You never know who might be the next club member.”
“Anyway, Brad told me what had happened with Josh and I…honestly I had to keep myself from calling you that night, asking what your family needed, and rushing over. I hated the thought that all of you were in pain or that you were struggling to figure out how you were going to pay for such a drastic surgery. I knew what an ordeal that was going to be to pay for something like that because I remember when I was a kid and my mom had cancer. It was a struggle for us then. Having a family member who is sick and could potentially die has got to be one of the most difficult things anyone can go through.”
He brushed a bit of my hair out of my face and turned my chin toward him. “Are you doing okay in there? I mean, really?”
I nodded and offered him the tiniest of smiles. “Really, most days I am fine. Mostly I worry about my mom and how she is coping with the stress of it all. I know how my dad copes and I can tell by the number of absolutely gutted cars parked out back of his garage right now that he is getting any of that excess energy and grief out of his body and into something productive.”
“But you,” he said. “What about you, Samara?”
I inhaled deeply, smelling the coffee wafting up from the tray.
“I worry that I am going to lose him. I worry that none of this will work out or that the surgery will be a failure and we will lose my brother right there on the table. It is absolutely my worst nightmare, Neil. The boy is just a kid. I know he’s only a couple of years younger than me, but I am his big sister and I will forever be that. All I want to do is protect him and tell him that everything is going to be okay. For the first time in my life I can’t do that for him. There is nothing that me or my mom or my dad can do to make his fears go away. And it feels fucking unfair.”
I was sobbing now and I couldn’t remember when it started, but Neil pulled me into an embrace and held me close while I cried.
“And so you did what you knew you were able to do. You decided to give up a part of yourself so that you could do your part in saving your brother. It’s really admirable, Samara. I don’t think it’s something that everyone would do.”
I looked up at him and wiped the tears from my eyes. “You know what though? The thing that surprises me most about all of this is that I don’t feel like I gave anything up.”
“What do you mean?” Neil asked.
“I mean that my whole life I have been told that my virginity was some kind of big deal, and in the end it really wasn’t. Not that it wasn’t a ‘big deal’, you are a very big deal, Neil.” We both laughed at this. “But what I mean is that I don’t feel like I gave anything away. I didn’t lose any part of me. I simply opened up a door to a new part. There are things I can experience now that I never had before.”
“I should think you’ve already experienced a few new things so far this week.”
I grinned. “You have shown me a new universe to explore. I don’t know where I would be without you, honestly.”
Neil poured us each a cup of coffee and we sat enjoying the warm brew in the cool, crisp, spring morning air. It was beautiful up there, above the city, where everything had a kind of pinky golden glow to it in the first light of the morning.
“While we’re being honest, there’s probably something I should tell you,” Neil said with some hesitation.
“What’s that?”
“First of all, let me just say that I never intended to keep something from you, but I wasn’t sure you would ever see me otherwise. I could tell the sort of opinion you had of me the first time we met and I knew that I didn’t stand a chance. Even getting to know your brother, there was never going to be an opportunity for me to use that to my advantage and get you to go out on a date with me. And rumors run rampant at the club. The minute you had mentioned me to Suzy she would have been able to tell you twelve different things about me. Seriously, how did you never hear any of those things in the length of time that you worked there?”
I shrugged and took another sip of my coffee. “I don’t listen to gossip.” I said matter-of-factly.
Neil rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m glad you’re able to avoid it. Anyway, I knew you weren’t going to see me. I knew my chances sucked. So when I saw your name pop up in the stack of names that was going to go out to our elite members, I grabbed it before it could go anywhere. You literally never left my office once your name entered the building. Of course Elle already knew because she had compiled the list, but I told her to remove you from it immediately and that I was going to pay whatever the asking price was. I felt like some kind of crazed, lovesick guy in a stupid rom-com, doing whatever I could to make sure no one else could get their hands on you.”
He squeezed me tightly then and buried his nose in my hair, breathing me in.
