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Then again, was that what Mike was trying to do? Work out or work off all the things that still haunted him? He didn’t think so, yet now that Jimmy brought it up, he couldn’t help but doubt if he was as “over it” as he thought.
Mike thrust his hand over his head and neck, wicking away the sweat there. “She’s cool to hang out with.”
Jimmy studied his brother for a few moments before he stood up and clapped Mike on the shoulder. “She’s like a sister to me. To all of us.”
Mike didn’t feel brotherly toward her, but he didn’t say anything else as Jimmy grabbed his stuff and made his way upstairs to leave.
Samantha wasn’t like a sister to Mike. She was a beautiful woman who made him laugh and kept him company. She wasn’t like a sister when she gripped his T-shirt and pulled him in for a kiss, or as she stared at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. But he always paid attention to her.
He paid attention to the way her lips rounded on certain words, likeyouandforandreally. He noticed how she never had fewer than three braided bracelets on her wrist at a time. And he certainly didn’t miss how her ass looked in the tiny shorts she wore yesterday.
Nothing about the feelings he had for her were familial.
But she was only here for the summer, and his time was rapidly slipping away.
* * *
Samand her father had devised a plan. Get as much of the big stuff done as possible before his surgery, while he could still get around. Then while he recuperated, he could sort through the piles of junk he’d acquired the last few years. He didn’t need to move much to box things up, as long as Sam and Gavin did most of the heavy lifting. That’s why she was currently covering up the bright colors of her bedroom walls. She’d taken a picture of thebeforeand sent it to the girls with a sad face, then started in on the beige.
Bending to dip her roller in the paint again, she caught her reflection in the standing mirror, next to the twin bed and bureau she’d pushed toward the center of the room. Her hair had fallen out of its messy bun, and she took a moment to redo it before taking account of her body, covered in paint-splattered mesh shorts and a T-shirt.
Therapy had taught her to understand that her body was her vehicle, and she needed to take care of it to keep moving. She didn’t study her body in the mirror, wishing it could be different anymore. Now when she stared at herself, she saw strength and determination. She saw shoulders and arms that powered through the water, legs that went for miles-long walks.
She was no longer ruled by the number of apple slices she ate. She didn’t write down everything she consumed; she didn’t count calories anymore. Instead, she focused on her energy and used food for fuel to live a healthy life. And most importantly, she was on her way to becoming a counselor for other people who suffered with eating disorders.
With a smile at herself, she grabbed the roller once again. Her family life might not have been perfect, her road to happiness and health was rocky, but she’d made it. Although it was sad to cover up all the memories—both good and bad—she’d made in this bedroom, it was only up from here.
“This sucks!” Gavin yelled from his room, next to Sam’s, where he was supposed to be cleaning up. “Why are we even doing this? Why does Dad have to move?”
“Why shouldn’t he?” Sam shouted back, extending the roller up toward the ceiling. This time, it barely dripped on the sheet she’d spread out on the floor. She was getting better as she went on. Practically HGTV material.
“Because packing sucks.”
“Well, you need to do it for school anyway. Might as well get a head start.” Before continuing on her next pass, Sam set the roller down and walked the few feet to her brother’s bedroom. Leaning inside, she smiled at his back, the top half of his body buried in his small closet that looked like a bomb had gone off inside. “You should make piles. One to take to school, one of stuff to keep at Dad’s new place, and a throw-away pile.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, scuttling backward out of the closet with three pairs of shoes in his hands. “You sound like Mom.”
Sam raised one shoulder. She did inherit more from their mother than her physical attributes.
“She keeps talking about you coming over,” he said, tossing the shoes toward a corner of the room that had a mound of random stuff. “She’s so annoying about it. Why don’t you just go over?”
Because of their age difference, Gavin had different memories of their parents and the divorce. Gavin was pretty well-adjusted. Sam, not so much. She’d been old enough to remember and understand their fights. Their parents had worked out a shared custody agreement, but by then, Sam had grown up in this house, and she wasn’t particularly fond of being shuffled back and forth between what then became their dad’s house and their mother’s new house with her “friend,” Lina. A year later, their mom had broken the news that she and Lina were engaged.
Sam loved her mother and was happy for her, but she’d never been able to get back to a really good relationship with her mom, with either of her parents. It was…okay.
“I will,” Sam told her brother. “She’s planning some big dinner for you before your graduation ceremony.”
“I know.” Gavin groaned and ducked back into his closet for a duffel bag. He began to shove everything in the corner of his room into it. “She invited Ava’s parents. That’s so awkward.”
“Why is it awkward?”
“Because,” he said, zipping up the bag and tossing it at Sam’s feet, saying, “School pile.”
She shook her head with a laugh. “I think you’ll need to take more than one bag of clothes, Gav.”
“That’s what you think,” he mumbled then stood up, combing his hair back from his face for it to fall right back down. “Like, I don’t even know if me and Ava are gonna stay together,” he said, going back to their last point. “Why would Mom invite them over and then me and Ava break up after?”
“Are you planning on breaking up with her?”
