AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She’s pretty, right, Dad? When I asked Sam, he just said,She’s all right.” Zabe did an imitation of Sam, making him sound like a depressed ogre, which wasn’t how he said it at all. At the time, he’d been inside a bathroom cabinet, trying to unscrew a drain in order to rescue a tenant’s earring. He was more distracted than anything else, and dealing with old pipes would make anyone sound like a depressed ogre even if they weren’t.
Regardless, he didn’t like how Jason continued staring after Luna and absent-mindedly saying “Uh-huh” to Zabe’s question regarding their neighbor’s level of attractiveness. Sam couldn’t decide ifUh-huhwas a better or worse answer thanShe’s all right.Who was he kidding?Hiswas definitely worse. Jason, at least, had been married for a period to Zabe’s mom before the divorce, and he’d also been with Bethany for at least a year. The guy had to have a higher level of charm than Sam. And now Jason was going to the fair where he’d run into Luna, win her heart with a giant stuffed bear, and then Jason, Luna, Zabe, and the giant stuffed bear would be one big, happy family, while the biggest thing in his life was attempting to keep a tomato plant alive.
“You okay?” Nicholas asked.
Sam blinked, emerging from his imaginative spiral. “Yeah.” Jason and Zabe were gone. “Everyone left?”
“For the fair. Come here, Luna.” The old man grunted as his body folded to lift the Chihuahua to his lap. He stroked the dog’s head, who shivered while staring with dark, bulging eyes at Sam.
“You’ve ever been married before?” Sam wasn’t sure what made him ask such a personal question. While they’d had plenty of conversations before, the range of topics were the innocuous type, but he was curious about the man who had lived at Schnell Ridge longer than he had.
“What was that?”
“Ever been married?” Sam asked louder.
“Me? No. My father died when I was young, and I had to take care of my mother.”
“Was she sick?”
“No, she, my mother, just always wanted to lean on someone. She depended on me to do everything for her, to always be there. So that was my life for a long time. Working and taking care of my mother. She died, oh, let’s see, over fifteen years ago now. That’s all I knew. I didn’t want to take care of anyone else. But when I was ready to finally go out—let me tell you something. Sometimes you put your life on pause for so long, you can’t remember how to unpause it. And then it feels too late.”
Sam couldn’t respond after that. He removed his hat, fiddling with the brim, Nicholas’s words striking him deep because he understood what the older man meant. Sam himself had been stuck in pause mode.
“You should go to the fair,” Nicholas said after a moment.
“Oh. No, I don’t—”
“Why not?”
“It’s really for kids.”
“Is it? That pretty lady from upstairs doesn’t look like any kid.”
No, she definitely did not. Sam slipped his hat into place. “She’s probably having fun with her family.” Or being impressed with Jason’s skills at winning giant bears.
“Let me tell you something, young man, no one is going to unpause your life for you. Only you can do that.”
Soon after, Sam decided to take a motorcycle ride, not heading to any place in particular. Perhaps Nicholas had a point. He had to make some kind of effort instead of being stuck all the time and, after being at his mom’s home, he wanted to hold on to the feeling of optimism a little longer. Like magic, he found himself at the fairground parking field, as if his motorcycle had conspired with Nicholas and made sure there wasn’t any other place he could end up.
He might as well wander around and see how much things had changed since he and Nate were kids. The problem was, he couldn’t see much from outside the ticket booth. What the hell. He might as well get a ticket and stroll through.
“Just one adult?” the teenage ticket worker asked.
There may have been a hint of judgment in the question, but Sam nodded.
“That’ll be twenty?”
“What? Is that just for me?”
The teenager pointed to the billboard with the listed prices. “Twenty for one adult, sir.”
Sam was about to pull aback in my dayin regards to ticket prices but now he was getting asirwhich made him feel even older. Instead, he grumbled while pulling the cash from his wallet and sliding it begrudgingly to the ticket seller.
No one ever said unpausing one’s life would be cheap.
Chapter Sixteen
“Knock it off,Lulu,” Ross said after getting pelted in the forehead with another piece of popcorn.
