He started chuckling and again didn’t answer.
I sighed.
Sam’s arms, which I belatedly noticed were wrapped around me, gathered me closer.
“So, this is the first time you’ve worn a dress like that?” he asked quietly.
“Yep,” I answered, nodding my head on the pillow again at the same time tilting it back because it was now closer to his.
“You wear it like you were born to it.”
Wow. That was nice.
“Wow. That’s nice.”
Yes. I thought it then I freaking said it.
Idiot!
He grinned.
Then he asked, “You think, you wear it like you were born to it, maybe you were born to it?”
I blinked. Then I considered this.
Then I answered, “No.”
“No?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?” Sam asked.
“Well, because that’s crazy. I live in the small town I lived in my whole life. I married a hick who cheated on me and beat me. He didn’t have a college degree and worked for a sheet metal factory and not well, if his performance evaluations and the nasty moods he’d get into after he got them were anything to go by. I also don’t have a college degree and, until recently, when I came into some money, I worked as an administrative assistant for five accountants and my job was b-o-r-i-n-g, boring in a way it was a wonder I didn’t lapse into a coma daily by three o’clock. I mean, they were nice guys but seriously, accountants and the work they did…” I trailed off and faked a yawn.
Sam grinned again.
I kept babbling.
“I got my first passport delivered two months ago. I had my first manicure, pedicure, facial and massage two days ago. I think, with all that, it’s safe to say I was definitely not born to wear a gown like this.”
“I was born in the barrio,” Sam returned immediately. “My father came and went as he pleased, he was gone more than he was there but when he was there, he was more of a dick than your dead husband. He took my mother’s money, ate her food, drank himself sick, cheated on her openly, beat the shit outta her and slapped my brother and me around. He didn’t work, not once that I knew but she did. She worked hard, she kept us fed, she kept us clothed but that was all we had and, it sucks, but you feel that as a kid no matter how hard she worked so we wouldn’t. But, even with all that shit, since we were kids and maybe before when we couldn’t even understand what she was sayin’, she told his we were bigger than the shithole that surrounded us. We were better. We were meant to live large. And she believed we’d do it; find some way outta that f**kin’ place. And by the time we got old enough to make decisions, she’d been fillin’ our heads with that so long, it sunk in. We believed her and we both worked our asses off to get out. I had added luck; God saw fit to grant me a talent that would lead my way. But Ma told me over and over, the talent He gave me was fleeting and fragile and I should not rely on it so I didn’t. I studied. I didn’t drift through college, I earned my degree. My brother wasn’t born with something like that so he found his way out and joined the Army about two days after he graduated high school. He stayed in it, they gave him the means; he got himself his degree and got on the officer track. He was going to be career Army, that was his goal, even his dream. But whatever his dream, like Ma said we would both do, we made it so we got the f**k out right after high school and never looked back.”
Touched by this as well as awed, I whispered, “That’s very cool.”
“Yeah,” he said through a smile, “but you don’t get me, honey. I’m here beside you wearin’ this f**kin’ suit and I wasn’t born to be here either. But I’m here, same as you. And wherever you are, however you got there, if it’s good, you’re meant to be there either because you earned it or life led you there and you were smart enough to hold on.”
Nine glasses of champagne or not, I found this concept profound.
Therefore, I shared that with Sam.
“That’s very profound.”
His body shook mine and the bed when he chuckled then replied, “It isn’t profound, Kia, it’s the God’s honest truth. You’re tellin’ me the woman I met at breakfast, saw last night and I’m holdin’ in my arms right now is a fraud. But I’m tellin’ you you’re wrong. She isn’t. She’s you.”
That was profound too.
I studied him then shared, “I think I need to ponder this.”
His arms gathered me closer as he chuckled again and muttered, “Yeah, you do that.”
“I will,” I agreed, tipping my head back further to look at him.
“Good,” he murmured, tipping his chin down further to look at me.
Then, suddenly, I didn’t know why and drunkenly didn’t care, I whispered, “I think I love your Mom and I don’t even know her.”
“She’s the kind of woman you love, even if you don’t know her,” Sam replied.
“She sounds like it.”
“What’s your Ma like?”
I pulled in breath and let it out softly then said, “Like a Mom. She cooks comfort food. She goes overboard with Christmas decorations. She knocks herself out for you every birthday because, for her, that was a day that changed her life in a way she liked a whole lot and she wants you to know it. We did the whole stereotype thing. Kyle, my older brother, was Mom’s little man and still is, even though now he’s big. I was Daddy’s little girl. So Mom was the one who was tough on me and Kyle got away with everything with her. And Dad was the one who was tough on Kyle and I could get anything I wanted if I ran to Dad. But, when I say tough, I mean in the sense that parents are supposed to be tough. They were good parents, then and now. I love them both and they both love me.”
“And how’d they feel about your husband?”
“They hated him,” I answered instantly.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“They tried,” I whispered back quickly, not wanting him to think they didn’t. “That was what I was thinking about last night when you saw me. I was thinking how I should have noticed they were trying and let them help me.”
Sam’s face warmed, his eyes grew understanding and his arms gathered me closer.
Then he said gently, “We’re not goin’ there, baby, not now. Now is for us. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Okay,” I agreed readily because I didn’t want to go there, not now, not in Sam’s arms, not after drunkenly remembering to warn him about me and then drunkenly forgetting I was supposed to be doing that and, instead, loving living this moment with him, so much, there was no way I was letting it go.