I could have given him Charlotte’s side of the story, but that didn’t feel very authentic. “Or maybe something about your parents? How they modeled what a relationship should be for both of you?”
Sam gave a soft hum at that. “I suppose they did,” he agreed. “But also not? Like... Pat and I are different people than mom and dad. I don’t think they modeled what a relationship should be in as much as they showed us that it is possible to be good with someone?” The explanation, or correction rather, surprised me.
It once again struck me as such a grown-up thing to say. And of course, it was. But the Sam of way back when would never have given such a thought-through, eloquent comment. My surprise must have shown, because Sam frowned at me.
“What?”
Even as I shook my head, I knew that I’d have to say something. It was hard to put into words exactly what I wanted to say. Lifting my wine glass to my lips, the liquid brushed against them, wetting them before I tried to speak.
“I don’t think you need to be nervous about this speech,” I said gently. “It’s obvious that you’ve thought a lot about this. About relationships and Pat and your parents. You hardly need my help at all.”
When we were teens, I might have helped Sam to express himself. Now, all he really needed was for someone to ask the right questions and help him pick the words he’d already said.
The look he gave me was skeptical, like he wasn’t sure if I was only saying that to be nice. But that had never been my style. Sam’s lower lip returned between his teeth. My gaze was mesmerized by it. The lightest blush crossed my cheeks when Sam looked straight at me. He didn’t seem to notice where my eyes had been focused.
“But that’s not really a speech?” he said, sounding unsure. “I mean, I can’t just talk about how Pat and I approach relationships differently.” Before I could say anything to that, Sam’s frown deepened. “I’d have to talk about you if I did that.”
And, no, it was hardly the right time for Sam to talk about me. So I did my best to bury the curiosity that suddenly flamed in me. What would this new, grown-up Sam have to say about our relationship? About the way it had ended? Could he see a way through our differences that neither of us had been able to imagine at the time?
It didn’t matter if he could. We lived different lives now, in completely different places. Neither one of us was any more able to move now than we’d been at twenty.
“I think you could talk about how your parents taught you to be good with someone,” I said, quoting Sam’s own words back to him. “And about how Pat’s always been so caring of other people. Isn’t it nice that he’s got Charlotte now to be caring of him?”
Sam smiled at that, giving a small nod. “It is really nice,” he agreed. “What did you think when they started dating? Pat called me when things were starting to get serious and he was like... he was just so sure,” Sam chuckled. “Five weeks in and he was sure he’d marry her one day.”
That wasn’t something I’d known but it probably was something Charlotte knew. Still, it seemed like a good thing to put in his speech so I wrote that down, too. “It was nice,” Sam went on to say. “To hear excitement like that in his voice. Of course, it was nothing in comparison to when she said ‘yes’!”
I smiled, remembering how excited Charlotte had been when she’d invited me over to tell me Pat had asked. The memories swirled through me, meeting up with memories of me and Sam, until it was hard to pull the two apart. But they were different, I had to remind myself of that. Sam and I weren’t going to end in a happily ever after - we’d ended years ago!
“It was a little weird,” I said, answering Sam’s question. “Pat being your brother and everything. It was… hard to see him as an adult, at first. Not because he acted like a kid, just because I was so used to him being one. Being your little brother! It was a culture shock to realize he was old enough to want to marry anybody.”
Of course, coming back to Lunengrove as an adult had been a culture shock in a lot of ways. Realizing that it was more than I’d thought it could be.
“That must have been harder for you,” I said. “Is it weird?”
Sam thought about it for a moment before he shook his head. “No, not that weird. It’s surprising, I guess, because I’ve known Charlotte separately from Pat, but I can see how happy they are together.” And they really were very happy! it was impossible not to be envious of the sort of relationship that Charlotte and Pat shared.
“Anyway, so this speech?” Sam said, taking us back to the original conversation. “What’s on your list?” he asked, peaking over so he could look at my notebook. “That looks like a lot of notes.”
Looking down at what I had written, I smiled. It probably was a fair few notes, but Sam had said a lot of really great things.
“We can narrow it down to bullet points,” I promised. From when we’d studied together, I knew that shorter, more spaced out notes were good for Sam. “This was just me writing down all the ideas you came up with.” It wasn’t really structured yet; that was something we could take care of together.
Listening to Sam talk about relationships had made me see a different side of him - of the new him, anyway. And as we narrowed down his thoughts,
