Page 83 of Trip Me Up
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SAM
I scoured the roasting pan,watching chips of my black nail polish mix with the bits of stuck-on glaze. My nail beds were still shiny black, but the ends were almost all white. Qiana’s nails were always so perfect. I needed one of her hugs. And to talk to her about Niall, to untangle my feelings about him. Or would that be weird since she was his friend, too?
I shouldn’t have needed to talk to anyone about him. I knew the right thing to do. End things along with the tour like I’d planned from the beginning. I’d known not to come to Niall’s secret hideaway, but I’d done it anyway. I scrubbed at another spot on the pan like it was that annoying ache that started in my heart when I thought about the end of the tour.
“You all right, Sam?” Elaine asked. “You didn’t eat much at dinner, and most people can’t get enough of my pot roast.”
The sharp scent of yeast from the dough she kneaded curled up into my nostrils.
“It was delicious. I guess I wasn’t hungry.”
She gave me a sharp look. “Coming down with something? Niall is always so careful on those tours.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t feel sick, just not hungry.” I’d sat next to Niall, and when his leg brushed mine under the table, everything else, including my appetite, had fallen away.
“Might it be something more…emotional?” Elaine’s eyes were brown, but they reminded me of Mother’s laser gaze.
I focused on scrubbing the soapy brush over the back of the pan. “Emotional?”
Elaine scooped the lump of dough into a bowl and covered it with a towel. As she washed her hands in the sink beside me, she said, “I’ve seen the way you look at my son. The way he looks at you. You have feelings for each other.”
She took the pan out of my hands, rinsed it, and started drying it with the towel. “By my second date with Niall’s father, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep, either. I couldn’t get enough of him.” She set down the pan. “Infatuation like that isn’t just for love songs.”
I knew that. I’d felt infatuation for Stephen before he’d broken my heart. I couldn’t eat then, either. Mother, who monitored my calorie intake almost as closely as she monitored the stock market, had said something about how angular my body had become. My feelings for Niall were unhealthy, just like with Stephen. I needed to end them.
I pulled the plug and watched the water swirl down the drain.
“Sam.” The back door flung open, and Niall stepped inside, wiping his boots on the mat. “Come outside with me. You won’t believe the stars.”
“The stars.” I couldn’t help my lip curling up. “First the sunset, and now the stars?”
Niall’s face reddened as he glanced at his mother. “What can I say? I want to show you all the best parts of the farm.”
“It’s too cold out for Sam’s coat. Get her one of mine,” Elaine said. “I’ll find you some blankets.”
I shouldn’t have. But I let Niall bundle me into a traffic-cone-orange parka with his green scarf and a hand-knit wool cap, and I followed him outside. The chilly air prickled at my nose as we walked away from the lights of the house and the barn toward the woods. We stopped in the meadow where the short grass crunched under our feet. Niall spread out one blanket, and we lay down, side by side. He tucked the other blanket up over us, and I didn’t feel the cold anymore.
“Warm enough?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Listen,” he said.
There were no car sounds: no honks, no tires on asphalt, no idling engines. No ocean sounds, either. A creak-creak sound came from the left.
Creak-creak. Creak-creak. Creak-creak.
“What’s that sound? Crickets?” I spoke low, not wanting to disturb the stillness.
“No, it’s too early for crickets. It’s the spring peepers—little frogs, no bigger than a dime. I used to love sitting out by the pond at night listening to them. I’d imagine what they were saying.”
I smiled even though Niall couldn’t see it in the dark. “What did they say?”
“In my imagination, one call was higher than the rest. That was the Spring Peeper Princess. And all the rest of them offered her things: the softest lily leaf to rest on, the warmest spot in the mud at the bottom of the pond, the juiciest bug.”
“And which one did she accept?”
