Part 10 (1/2)

Yet even as I said it, I thought of someone who had told me he needed s.p.a.ce. Sam. It was Sam who made the call that we were done for now, because he wanted us to be firmly into our relations.h.i.+p, no in-betweens, no maybe we're dating, maybe we're not, we'll figure it out, we'll see how it goes kind of thing, while I had grown more fond of, or possibly more comfortable with, the maybes and the in-betweens.

But Sam was still the person I had checked in with every day for years; the person who, for years, had made all life decisions with me. And even though we weren't together anymore, I wanted to tell him that I was leaving town. It was a courtesy he hadn't given me last year when he'd disappeared, but what was done was done, and I didn't believe in punis.h.i.+ng.

I looked at my watch. It was Sat.u.r.day, which usually meant Sam was with the Chicago Lions rugby team. Sam wasn't one of the starters, but he was one of the guys who trained with the team or helped out when they traveled locally. The Chicago Lions schedule was still in my datebook, because I used to have to plan our social stuff around it. I glanced at the schedule. The team was on a road trip to San Francisco, and Sam didn't usually attend cross-country games. Instead, he was probably at his apartment, strumming his guitar, maybe having a Blue Moon beer. Just the thought made me miss him.

I told Mayburn Sam's address. ”I need to stop by on the way to the airport.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I held up my hand. ”Look, if I can't make any calls, then I have to stop by. I'm not getting on a plane unless I talk to him first.”

Sam's apartment was in Roscoe Village, sandwiched next to a bar called the Village Tap. He'd been there for years, to the chagrin of his mother, who, every time she visited, told him he should move out of his bachelor-esque pad and head downtown into a place more ”grownup.” The plan had been that Sam would move in with me when we were married, but since that hadn't happened, the apartment with the funky gray door was still his home.

”Hurry up,” Mayburn said, pulling up to the curb, putting on the hazards and focusing nervously in the rearview mirror. I jumped out.

”The Tap,” as everyone in the neighborhood called it, already had a hopping lunch crowd. You could hear happy outbursts of laughter from the beer garden in the back.

Sam had stopped carrying my keys a few months ago, a fact that had surprised and wounded me, but I'd never stopped carrying his. I guess I wasn't ready to put away the idea of Izzy and Sam.

If he was home, I'd tell him I was going out of town, and if he wasn't, I'd leave a note and call him when I landed. But at least I'd make the effort. He would know that I still missed us. I still thought about us. I still thought there was a chance for us.

I got out my keys, opened the street door and walked up the flight of stairs. I rapped lightly on the door, the way I used to, then let myself into the apartment. The living room was dark and looked the way I remembered it. His leather couch was slouchy and slightly dusty looking. The blue afghan with the Cubs logo, which Sam's grandmother had knitted for him, was tossed over the side of it. On the coffee table were financial papers and magazines like Barron's and the Fenton Report, and next to those were two empty Blue Moon beers. Sam had stayed home last night apparently, a fact that made me feel slightly sick with guilt, since I had spent the night, and the last few, with Theo.

Something glinted on the coffee table, something next to the beer bottles. I looked closer and saw they were two tiny diamond earrings, set in gold. I picked them up. For a moment I thought they were mine, but my diamond earrings were fake and set in silver. As I held them up to the sunlight filtering through the window, I could see that these were clearly the real thing.

Sam didn't wear earrings.

A shuffle from one of the bedrooms. I froze, irrationally scared for a second. What was I scared of? I looked down at the earrings. I thought I knew.

The door to Sam's bedroom opened, and there he stood. He was wearing boxer shorts, only that, over his short powerhouse of a body. He wiped sleep from his eyes, despite the fact that it was already noon.

”Iz?” He pushed up at his cropped blond hair, making it s.e.xily jagged with angles. He blinked his eyes, which were a sparkly olive color, so much so that I'd always thought of them as martini-olive eyes. But he was staring curiously at me now, and his eyes didn't seem to be sparkling so much as squinting. ”What are you doing here?”

He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him as he asked the question. And it was that movement, more than the earrings, that told me everything.

”So, you have a date?” I said.

More blinking. ”Something like that. Were you and I supposed to meet or something?” He said it in an irritated way. He knew we had no plans to meet.

”I'm going out of town. I wanted to let you know, and they told me not to make any phone calls.”

”Who's 'they'?”

I shook my head. ”It's a long story. But I'm going away.”

”Where?”

I could almost hear Mayburn screaming, Don't tell anyone where you're going! ”I'm not exactly sure yet.”

”For how long?” He s.h.i.+fted his arms over his chest as if he were suddenly embarra.s.sed to be seen by me-by me!-in his near nakedness. He was so cute, though, his trim, compact body so delicious in person-and in my memory-that I couldn't get worked up about his modesty.

But what happened next made it easy to get worked up.

Yes, of course the bedroom door opened, and yes, of course a girl in panties and Sam's Jeff Beck T-s.h.i.+rt, the one I used to sleep in, poked her head out. But that wasn't what left me speechless.

It was the fact that it was Alyssa.

Alyssa Thornton was Sam's ex-girlfriend, the one I'd been crazy jealous about since I met her at their high school reunion and had seen two things. One, she was ethereal, stunning, and, as I'd always said, thin as a bag of doork.n.o.bs, which, with my curves and my envy, was not intended as a compliment. With her white-blond hair, Alyssa almost looked like a miniature, female version of Sam. The second thing I had noticed at that reunion? Alyssa still loved Sam. She glowed when she gazed at him. Just like I did. But Sam had told me he was the one who broke up with her a few years into college, that they were just friends, only that.

After the reunion, I tried to put a lid on the jealousy, but it kept bugging me, especially because I knew they e-mailed often. Finally, I asked Sam if he'd stop e-mailing her. I knew my jealousy was irrational, I told him, but it wouldn't go away. Sam had smiled at me. And he agreed.

As Sam and I continued to date and then got engaged, I got over the thought of Alyssa. But then Sam disappeared, and I found out that he went straight to her for help when he did so. I later learned his reasons. But still. But still. I hadn't gotten over that.

Clearly, Sam hadn't, either, because there she was. There she was positively glowing at him again as she peeked from behind his bedroom door.

If my insides had been slightly twisted with guilt over the fact that I'd spent the night with Theo, my stomach filled with bile now. It's one thing to learn your ex is dating someone else. It's another thing to find out that ”someone else” is the girl you always had the bad, bad feeling about.

And it was a whole other bag of cherries to see them post-romp.

”Hi, Alyssa,” I said.

”Hi.” There was no triumph in her voice. ”I'll give you guys some time.”

She pulled her head back inside the room. Click went the door of Sam's bedroom, then click again, because it had to be pushed twice to keep it closed. The fact that Alyssa knew that slayed me. Tears sprang to my eyes as I stood there looking at my fantastic, adorable, beloved ex-fiance, who had clearly moved on with his life.

”I thought she lived in Indianapolis,” I said.

”She moved here a few weeks ago.”

”To be with you.”

”No, to work at Rush Medical Center. She's in geriatric-”

I cut him off. ”I remember.” Alyssa was a researcher in the geriatric field, working to improve the quality of life for the elderly, particularly those who were bedridden. She was, essentially, an angel of mercy. Which, I'd always said, made it pretty tough to compete with her as an ex-girlfriend. Or maybe she wasn't the ex anymore. It appeared she was the girlfriend now, and I was the former.

The energy I'd had in my apartment crashed, replaced by a sorrow so deep I took a few steps to the couch and sank into it, putting my face in my hands.

”I'm sorry, Iz.” He sat next to me and put his arm around me.

I didn't think there could be anything worse than finding Alyssa in Sam's apartment, but this-this-was worse. Sam awkwardly patting me on the shoulder, trying to comfort me, sure, but making it somehow clear in his stiff body language that his body didn't belong to me anymore, nor, apparently, did his heart.

And what of my heart?

I thought of Q, my former a.s.sistant. Q had just entered the gay world when we'd met, and as such, he took any and all breakups hard.

One day we were discussing his latest, and he had asked me when my heart had last gotten broken.

”Never,” I'd told him. And it was true.

The guys I'd dated before Sam-Timmy, my boyfriend in college, and Blake, the one I dated during law school-had been such insignificant relations.h.i.+ps compared to the one I had with Sam. I was the one who broke up with Timmy-his love of beer bongs got old after freshman year. And Blake and I were on againoff again and had finally decided to part when we couldn't find time to get together with our busy law school schedules and also found we really didn't care. And when Sam and I split, well...How to explain it? I guess I never saw it officially as a split. Even when he disappeared and even after that, when he said he needed to move on, I didn't really expect him to move on. I a.s.sumed that Sam and Izzy, Izzy and Sam was still an option that hung in both our horizons.