Romance Is My Day Job (22 page)

As Patrick and Sam shake hands, I soak up the moment. Their smiles, the playful jibing. When Patrick punches Sam in the arm—as one would a little brother—I know my brother is sold.

 • • • 

Sam loves being around family—his own, mine, and any other related people he can find. He and his brother, Warren, talk every day at least twice, to the point that I can predict when the phone will ring—when Warren is on his way to work or home, when Sam comes home from the gym, or at seven forty-five
A.M
. The Blooms also visit one another often, planning last-minute trips to New York or Orlando, where his brother and his family live. Sam's family is eager to meet my family, or at least to see what Sam is getting himself into.

Within a couple weeks of Sam's descent into New York, his brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces arrive from Florida to meet most of the Smith/Kelley clan. My mother and I nervously make arrangements to dine at a West Village restaurant. Patrick and Carlos can't make it.

As usual, I need to pop a tranquilizer, because you never know how these things will go. Will everyone get along? Will my stepfather behave? How bored will the nieces be? Does everyone hate me? Will my mother bully me into ordering an appetizer? (If she doesn't, something's wrong.)

The older niece, Kyra, feels under the weather and stays at the hotel, leaving Gaby, a blue-eyed, light-brown-haired teenage cherub, to deal with the adults. Gaby is poised throughout the entire meal, even when my stepfather uses the F-word. It doesn't faze her one bit, and she goes back to texting her friends. My mother is a dynamite conversationalist and keeps it all going, talking with Elise, Warren's wife, who resembles Gaby. I don't think I eat anything during the entire meal, but I feel a deep satisfaction that everyone is getting along. Later that night, we meet up with Kyra, a beautiful brunette with a love of theater. We've all met now, and it doesn't seem to be killing the relationship so far.

 • • • 

There are those moments in a relationship when you truly clash, even if it's in a nice way. In the books I edit, couples mesh beautifully during times of forced proximity. If Jake Hunter has to use Cassie's house in order to spy on the evil neighbor (whose landscaping business is a front for selling busloads of heroin), they live together harmoniously—maybe bicker a little, which masks their burning attraction. In small ways, they surprise each other. He knows how to make an omelet (all heroes do, oddly enough) and she is easy to love.

For our first few weeks, we settle into our blissful cohabitation and acknowledge that our relationship has no time limit. Sam miraculously finds a teaching job for the spring semester and has a few days to prepare for class. I have my own work, thus making us an employed couple. We're the easy-to-love Cassie and Jake, until reality sets in. Sam snores his face off at night. I have to tap him and tell him to turn over. Sometimes he yells at me that he won't do it. Sometimes he's complacent.

With his no-eating regime abandoned, Sam eats my yogurt, my leftovers, and my packed lunch. I buy groceries; they disappear fast. He eats my food without apology. So I learn to buy two of everything. Still, it disrupts my harmonious landscape.

It's soon obvious to him that I have trouble sleeping, that my habit is to stay awake forever, and to get myself to sleep, I often resort to clubbing myself in the head with a horse tranquilizer. This doesn't always work. Sam is dead to the world within five minutes of hitting his pillow. He wakes up at two
A.M
. to read, then falls back to sleep. He says he can function with five hours of sleep, but let's be serious: He gets eight a night, plus an afternoon nap. This is not fair. Cassie and Jake never experience such discord in their sleeping patterns.

I take a shower every day, sometimes two. Sam will take more than that. He loves showers, cleanliness, sweet-smelling hair, and an empty sink. He's obsessive about his towels, soaps, and face-scrubbing lotions. I don't wash my hair for three days in a row because it's so damn thick. Sam wrinkles his nose at me after the second day. My candlelit bubble baths are now done in secret since Sam witnessed one and said, “You're basically bathing in your own filth.” Nice. Jake would never say that. It's obvious that Sam knows nothing about girly indulgence.

After eating, I let the dishes sit until, you know . . . a few days go by. Sam has to pick them up before he does anything else. I barely cook, preferring to have food brought to me, which often means no dishes. Sam cooks pad Thai from scratch and really should be a chef. He's so talented that my mother gets uncomfortable when he comes into her kitchen. But she loves eating what he cooks.

Before Sam arrived, I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom once a week. Now, with the endless cups set down, food eaten, dust accumulated, bed unmade, laundry piled high, I let it all go. I can't clean and work and be in a relationship. I mean, I can, but I don't. We do the best that we can with this, but it's difficult. We don't invite people over because we're slobs. To add to this, we have no interest in interior decorating, which means we live in a pit with shabby furniture from twenty years ago.

Each day, I live more spontaneously, loosely, but it feels good. We don't have to be as perfect as Jake and Cassie. Sam and I take our preferences in stride. I try to be tolerant, and he's the most easygoing person ever. We get along great, until the night he goes out with his friend Reid from Taft.

I grew up with noises waking me up in the middle of the night. City sounds, people fighting or talking loudly, parties, usually my own nightmares rousing me, a weird phone call at three
A.M
. My bad dreams make me lie awake shaking for a good hour afterward. Now that I'm in my forties, I hate for my sleep to be disturbed.

Because I'm in this new relationship, still acting as Cheerful Girl, I am so happy that Sam wants to hang with a friend. Why not? He needs to have a fun boys' night out and blow off steam. Maybe since I have to go in to work the next day, he could be in by midnight? Sure, darling, no problem. We embark happily on our separate evenings.

Toward the end of the night, I wait and wait. No word from Sam. Finally, I put myself into a coma, hoping that he won't wake me up, but if he does, I'll be fine with it because I'm more relaxed now about everything.

At about two
A.M
. the door opens and in walks Sam, very quietly. He barely speaks, immediately takes off his pants and coat, and gets into bed, lying unmoving for the next few hours. I can tell he's beyond smashed out of his brains, mostly because he's so quiet and careful. I almost laugh, except I hate this kind of thing.

On the one hand, he should party if he wants. On the other, is this a habit?

I don't talk to him for about a day because of how neurotic I feel, waiting for him to come home, wondering if he's a crazy drunk, and why can't I loosen up and let him have a fun night out with a friend? All my worrying ruins my day. Also, there's the fact that he was inconsiderate, never thinking that such a late arrival would upset me. If we had a separate bedroom, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Do I want to get involved with someone who goes out until two
A.M
.? I'm really a square and only a brain transplant will change that. He knows I hate this middle-of-the-night coming home. Why did he do this?

Luckily, this happens only once and my revenge occurs as I watch him go to teach his French class at nine the next morning. He is miserably hungover.

 • • • 

I knew Sam was truly the One early on—maybe with the Facebook declaration with the Swiss saline solution. During the first few weeks and months of our living together, he prods me ever so gently out of my shell—getting me to be more social and less of a tight-ass, laugh more. But then . . . something happens that might be the deal-breaker.

“Let's go to Miami,” Sam says, a bright gleam in those irresistible green eyes.

My resistance flares. What the hell, traveling? That, for me, is the downside of a relationship, which a normal person would see as the good side—you have to go places when you're with someone. Oh dear God. I have to be on a plane with this man. Dibs on the window seat or he dies. For some reason, if I can look out the window of the plane and see where I'm going, this means I'm psychically managing this aluminum tube. I'm so not Elizabeth Gilbert and I
want
to be.

There is no way out this time because I have to fly to Florida anyway for a romance writers' conference. I just thought I'd be going alone, freaking out by myself on the plane, as usual. Why me? Of course we'll go to Miami together.

“Oh yeah, I have to meet your dad,” I say. If I have to fly with Sam, I will buckle down and do it. Meeting his father is a necessity. Not only are Sam and his brother obsessed with their father, talking about him incessantly, but I just want to meet the man responsible for Sam.

“He wants to meet you.”

I've always wanted to spend serious time in Florida, and this is the only way I'll do it. “I'd love to go.” And I vow to be a calm adult in my serene forties. What are the chances it will rain on the actual day? I hate flying in the rain.

Of course, the day we leave, it's pouring buckets. My spirit guides are laughing their asses off at the misery they've caused. The sky mists over, kind of like the haze that plunged JFK Jr., his wife, and her sister into the Atlantic in 1999.

These kinds of thoughts plague me as we sit in traffic on the way to LaGuardia. We have about two hours to spare and we watch the skies carefully, me hoping for a blessed cancellation and ultimately a delay to our travels.

No such luck.

We have plenty of time in the airport. Sam grabs a beer and I buy four celebrity magazines, my frantic, quick reading material for the two-and-a-half-hour flight. I keep repeating my mantra:
I will behave like an adult
. Even with a whirlpool of pain brewing, I won't let him see it. If I have to barf, I will gracefully excuse myself and go to the bathroom—though I have the feeling that Sam would gladly hold back my ponytail as I yak into a bag. If I were going to let him do that, I would wear my hair pinned back and contact lenses, since glasses could fly off during heavy spewing. Or so I've seen in horror movies.

All aboard. I glance outside the window and see a sky littered with angry clouds. I've flown my entire life, all over the world. I once flew through three storm systems (thank you, Toronto, circa October 26, 2005) and did just fine. How could one little trip to Miami kill me?

I suck on about half a tin of Altoids, my saving grace in any crisis, and, yes, I take half of a large animal tranquilizer. My nerves are there but not unmanageable. Sam reads the paper and begins to look sleepy. He leans his head back as we start takeoff, when my terror begins.

The first ten minutes are full of bumps. I curse inwardly and pray to the white cloudy sky to show some pity. Though drifting to sleep, Sam reaches over and takes my hand. Not overt support but just enough so that I relax instantly.

I know in my heart that I love him. I'll love him forever. He is the one for me. No doubt about it. He doesn't mind the crazy girl in me. This man is smart enough to leave me be during a panic attack.

After riding out the storm, I settle in to watch a beautiful view outside the window. This is the post-traumatic relief, the good side of adventure. I breathe. We veer out over the Atlantic Ocean, something I haven't done in decades, and for a moment, I want to rush back to France, a country I once called home. We land in beautiful Miami at night, and the lights of the city captivate me. I can't stop smiling. We survived!

Sam whisks me off to his father's large condo in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. Sam's father, Bill, well into his eighties, emerges from the back room and greets us warmly.

He is a classic charmer, the kind you'd call “a swell guy.” Within minutes I can see where Sam gets his sparkle. This is what Sam will be when he's eighty. His father has the family's bright green eyes; clear, tan complexion; and wide smile.

“Nice to meet you, dear,” he says.

When an older man calls me “dear,” I'm pretty much a goner. He grasps my hand and we tear around his condo together.

That first night in Miami, I sink into the bed and instantly fall asleep. I don't think of the future with Sam, if we will ever get married, buy a house, spend all our days together. With him, I feel no pressure to do anything except relax. I'm sure that this is the right path, no matter where it takes me.

For three days, we frolic around Miami. Walk around Grove Isle every morning, work out in the building's gym, swim in the sparkling pool, go out to fancy restaurants in South Beach. The beautiful palm trees seduce me since I've only known the Northeast foliage and the New Mexico desert. The weather hovers in the eighties and we peaceably stroll in shorts and T-shirts. Sam makes like Miami is same old, same old, but I'm sure he finds some joy in his home away from Big Bad New York.

If traveling is this fun, I will go anywhere with him.

At some point Sam goes through his closet. Because he's traveled so much over the years, his possessions are scattered—in a storage facility, with his brother, at his father's, and now with me. But he does know where he kept the picture of us from the Taft formal oh so many years ago.

Sam pulls out a shoebox and sets it on the bed. He goes through picture after picture and pulls out the one of us.

I am speechless. He kept this picture all these years. I don't even remember the moment, but the fact that it stuck in his mind touches me deeply. This guy thought of me as more than just a passing thing. I stayed with him.

The photo itself is hilarious. There I am with my cool mullet, that blue dress, and Sam in his tux. We have disparate expressions—me with slack-jawed surprise, Sam with an almost stoic smile. Over the past few months, we've shared our memories of each other. Mine are hazier than his. I remember the dance, him as a legend, but not that we took a picture together. He remembers the picture, me in the halls, calling out to me from across the pond, catching me smoking with another boy. If you add this up, Sam had a little crush on me way back when. And if someone had told me that the popular boy was accessible to me, I would have sprinted after him.