She would just have to be Samantha.
“I think I’m doing this wrong,” she said. “I was doing itathim. Proving to him that I didn’t need to change. That we didn’t need to change. I knew what the outcome would be. I put it out there like it was hypothetical. Like we were going to see. I didn’t let myself believe that at the end, he might choose that life. Away from me. I certainly didn’t let myself believe that I would be the one who might want something different. I have been certain for a very long time. The disruption of that certainty is always difficult for me. My mom’s death was that. This…it’s a whole other piece. I hate it. So I needed to make it something that I could control. Something I can be sure about. You’re right about me. I pretend to go along with what everyone wants, and externally I often do, but I also want my way. Pretty deeply. I thought I was going to be able to quietly and without conflict strong-arm my way into that. What would happen if I let go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. I don’t know. I don’t know, and I’m not even sure that I want to. I don’t need to. Dammit, that is really hard to say. I like to know how it’s going to go. How it’s going to end.”
“It’s okay if you don’t,” he said.
“I guess this is the part where you settle on that old cliché. That it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
“Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason.”
“I’m sorry. You’re not getting paid to be my therapist.”
“I would hope, Samantha, that after all this, you consider me a friend. Friends don’t need to get paid to listen their friends talk about their problems.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. You’re my friend.”
It felt momentous to say that. An admission of the independent affectionate feelings that she had for Logan, rather than putting it all onto Will and their friendship.
It felt like a step toward danger, and she wasn’t quite sure why.
Maybe it was more of that distrust of herself.
She had to stop with that. She had to stop doing that.
They drove back to the main highway, continuing on down the road toward where they would be staying for the night. “I did it,” she said. “I did not do anything stupid. I even let myself think about it.”
“Is that an achievement?”
“I don’t know. It feels like it. It feels like being able to trust myself is maybe something I need to work on. Or at least work on making myself the authority in my own life.”
“Well, tomorrow maybe you’ll get a tattoo.”
“I have to research tattoo shops.”
“Research away.”
Because she was wild. More so than she’d ever been in this moment. Braver, maybe, too.
But she also had no natural inclination toward getting that body art.
Reckless abandon…but with the appropriate amount of caution.
Maybe that was who she was. Maybe, if she let the chains loose, that was exactly who she was.
NINETEEN
She actually found the tattoo parlor that she wanted in Iowa. It surprised her. But it was a small-town studio that had a reputation for good art. More hipster than it was biker, which suited her just fine. Deciding what she wanted for a tattoo had been easier than deciding where she wanted the tattoo. It was so difficult not to ask somebody else’s opinion. It felt like growth, buying a dress and not asking Will or one of her friends if it looked nice. This was like an extreme version of that.
She had a lot of worries, about whether or not she would choose the wrong location for it, and then feel annoyed when it showed and she no longer enjoyed it. She thought about all these hidden places, but then she wouldn’t be able to see it. She wanted it to be her reminder. Of her mother. Of an event that had changed her.
Of the simple comfort found in the scent of lavender. How even in the end, there was comfort. She knew what she wanted.
She just had to stop being insecure. About her own decision-making. In the end, she decided on the inner part of her forearm, near her wrist.
She booked an appointment with the studio online en route, and they ate a quick lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall diner before walking down the street two blocks to the tiny shop. The receptionist up front clearly had no issues deciding tattoo placement. She had determined that they should go everywhere.
