Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“But you didn’t have to,” he replied angrily. “It wasn’t mandatory, but you did it, like you just said, because it was easy, and then you blamed me! How is that even fair?”
Sam nodded. “It’s not fair, but that ain’t this.”
“But that was the start of everything,” he disclosed, and I could hear the fury in his voice. “And even before that—you just said I didn’t stick up for Jory with Tony, how about you sticking up for me with Dane? You’ve never once asked him about why he didn’t hire me. In all these years you’ve never gotten on him about that.”
Dane and Michael were both architects, and before I’d even met Sam, Michael had applied for a position at Dane’s firm, and been turned down for employment.
“He called my sketches rudimentary and unimaginative, and I’ll remember that for the rest of my life, but you have never once defended me to him.”
“That’s business,” Sam retorted. “Dane made a choice for his business. There was nothing personal about that. You can’t equate Tony being an ass with my brother-in-law deciding that you weren’t right for his firm.”
“I––”
“Are you kidding me?” he asked, standing up to face Michael across the table. “You can’t possibly think those things are the same!”
“Sam,” I said gently, because with both men on their feet I was worried that the argument could become so heated that one of them, or both, could leave. And if they left, would there be a possibility that they would ever be in the same room again?
He glanced at me, and then his head snapped up like something had occurred to him. “Did you allow Tony to go after Jory to hurt me? To try and take a shot at me?”
No answer, and I had to admit being surprised.
Michael hadn’t said those things to me himself, but he didn’t stop his friend from saying them, not because he believed them—Michael was not homophobic—but because it would hurt me. And in hurting me, more importantly, he would cause Sam pain. Which he had.
“Oh,” I whispered, upset but at the same time feeling stupid. I’d thought Michael and I were friends. Not super close, but I’d invited him and his last girlfriend, Joely, over for the big holidays. I used to invite him to many things, but he’d turned down more invitations over the years than he’d agreed to. And perhaps that was because Dane would be there. It seemed farfetched to me, but maybe not. If, for all this time, he was still holding on to what Dane had said, and that pain had grown and festered, then it could be the elephant in the room. The thing was, though, Michael had a successful career, and from where I sat, I didn’t see that not working for my brother had impacted him in any way.
The more important issue was that Michael and Sam weren’t close. But Sam wasn’t really close to any of his siblings, and they weren’t to one another either. It had been strange to me after seeing Aja and her siblings, Dylan and her brother, all of the children of my friends who, like Kola and Hannah, were like peas and carrots. Sam and his brother and his sisters were nice to one another, but they didn’t do birthdays together, and we only saw them on big holidays, and that was only at his parents’ house or if we were hosting. We also saw them, like now, for special events, but I had to wonder if Sam and Michael were done.
“Okay,” Sam said, taking a deep breath and turning to me. “I think it’s time to go.”
He put his hand on the back of my chair, and I knew he wanted me to get up so we could leave. The issue was, if we did, that was irrevocable.
“Are you sorry?” I asked Michael, who was now standing in front of the bay window looking out at the yard in front of the house.
“Of course I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning his head to look at me. “And I should have said that then, in Vegas, but then you just left. But that’s what Sam does, he leaves. He never stands and fights because he doesn’t care!”
And yet… I had seen Sam stand toe to toe with Duncan and hurl angry words back and forth. The same with Dane, Pat, and Chaz. Even he and his father over the years had been involved in some tense and loud disagreements. As a rule, Sam and I didn’t fight often, but when we did, he never left. He even argued with Aaron and Aja, but Michael was right, not with him. I also suspected he was right about the reason: Sam didn’t care. And not for a horrible reason, or a mean one. It was more simple than that. What Michael did or didn’t do had no effect on Sam’s day-to-day life.