“Serendipity?” His voice rises with his incredulity. “That’s what you associate John Cusack with? Come on! You couldn’t go for, say, Grosse Pointe Blank, or Say Anything, or High Fidelity, or Being John fucking Malkovich, or—”
“Sam.” I stop him in midrighteous (and totally over my head) tirade. “It is, like, negative five billion degrees out here. I have no jacket. Or shoes. Or socks. Come inside.”
I snatch his hand in mine and sneak him in through the side door by the kitchen. At first I start leading him up to my room, but then I stop and sit down on the staircase instead.
“My dad’s cool, but he might not be so cool with me having a boy in my room,” I explain. “You know. Alone. At night.”
“Understandable.” He smiles a little and sits on the step below me. “You’re really okay?”
I start to nod before I remember I can actually answer now. “I am. I think. I mean—” Man. Talking is hard. I’d forgotten exactly how hard. There’s a reason I stopped in the first place. “It’s…it’s been a long day.”
“You talking again,” he says, “that’s a good thing, right?”
I glance down at my lap. “I don’t know. Is it?”
Sam takes one of my hands, and I watch as he plays with my fingers.
He says, haltingly, “I think so. If it felt…I dunno. Like it was the right time. For you.” He looks up at me. “How does it feel?”
“Weird,” I admit. “But good, too.” I curl my fingers around his. They’re all tingly. Probably from unthawing. But maybe not just that.
“I’m sorry about the project,” he says.
I shake my head. “Forget it. I don’t even care.” Sam’s face falls a little, and I quickly add, “I mean, I care, but—it’s not as important as other things.”
What’s important is the time we spent working on it together. What’s important is that Sam is the kind of guy who will trade notes on a sketchpad and teach me how to make tuna melts and drop everything to drive to a parking lot when I need him and throw stones at my window to make sure I’m okay.